FINALIZED IDEA FOR FRONT COVER

We have made a vast improvement with our album cover since last Monday ...

On Thursday during my study period I decided to give drawing up my personal ideas for the front cover another go ...

It turned out to be a great success !!! 

     This is what I created in my study period

After showing this to Georgia, we both agreed that this held all the symbolism and connotations from our music video and has to some extent representations of our chosen artist.

Georgia then took this home and scanned it onto her computer added on the font that we had discussed and agreed on.

The image with the added font . The artists name and the title of the single is a piece of intertextuality taken from Madonna's 'Like A Virgin' Album where her 

name is recognizably bigger than the song title.

                   

Georgia and I also communicated via imessage ( A text messaging service for iphone users)on possible ideas for the background of the drawn image...

Georgia then emailed me theses to look at...

I then took the images and played around with them ...

I made the silhouettes darker on 'Paint'.

We realize that it is compulsory to use 'Photo shop' in order to finalize our creation of our digipak so we will take all these little creations and ideas into the mac room when we get the chance to pull the whole thing together.

I have also taken the time to look at the

similarities and differences between the 

front covers of Madonna's 'Like A Virgin'

 and our original Vince Kidd version.

ALBUM COVER

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF AN ALBUM COVER? 

An album cover is the front of the packaging of a commercially released audio recording product, or album. 

EARLY YEARS OF ALBUM COVERS 

In 1938, Columbia Records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director, he was credited with inventing the concept of album covers and cover art, replacing plain covers used before. After his initial efforts at Columbia, other record companies followed his lead. By the late 1940s, record albums for all the major companies featured their own colorful paper covers in both 10" and 12" sizes. Some featured reproductions of classic art while others utilized original designs. 

This was a brown sleeve that was used on records covers before images and fine art  were used.

This is one of Alex Steinweiss' creation  which is more developed than the one above.

An early album cover

A current album cover

Georgia and I have not got very far in terms of designing an album cover ...

 HOWEVER

during one of our study periods on Monday we came up with a few ideas that may feature on our album cover...

Images and notes of things we came up with ...

cherries - symbolic for virginity, the term "popping your cherry"
It would be an ironic feature on our album cover because our subject matter
flips the focus onto the male.

condoms - symbolic when thoughts look at intercourse.

We didn't come up with very much together as our minds did go a drift from our work ...

I have taken some time to look and analyse the album cover of Madonna's 'Like A Virgin', to
see if using this process would give me any extra ideas for the creation of our album cover.

These are my personal ideas for our album cover...

Silhouettes - To connote the facelessness of the subject matter and the fact that anyone can become a victim of peer pressure.

Speech bubble - symbolizing the many confused thoughts that were going through our male 
protagonists head in our music video.

Condom - similar to the reason that Georgia and I came up with together 

                         

WE AIM TO PLEASE ...

On Monday my media class were given the freedom to either do blogs or filming during our 3 hour time slot of media, Georgia and I decided to head up to the mac room ...

                                                           

We both did separate tasks in practice and preparation of editing our music video.

 TASKS:-

GEORGIA decided to dabble on 'Toondoon'  in practice of turning some of our shots into animation.

&

I decided to go on imovie which is one of our possible editing software to look more into effects and other things that could make our music video high quality editing wise.

Above are a few images I took whilst playing around with the effects.

                                    

PREP FOR 24/11/12

Below is a structured interview sheet for tomorrows soiree event.

The sheet consists of 5 questions that are linked specifically at the chosen undeground artists that we are going to interview.

THE PLAN

Today Georgia and I went  back to Jubilee park after school to re-shoot the beginning of scene 1, looking back at the footage it seemed a bit shaky so we came to mutual decision to re-shoot.

We had also planned to edit bits of our music video that needed to be turned into a cartoon ..

                                                              

UNFORTUNATELY

Georgia's brother Theo, who was going to lend us his equipment to do so, told Georgia this morning that his mac has crashed and we wont be able to use it for the moment.

We are stuck at the moment on what to do next but will be blogging as soon as we know our next step.

WHAT NEXT ?

LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES 

We have decided to plan what we want in terms of editing our music video, after producing our 

AS media text we did some reflecting and realized that lack of planning for editing was the 

downfall of our thriller opening. 

SOOOOOO .....

Plans so far for editing ...

ANIMATIONS

 We have selected 3 shots of our story board to be turned into animated cartoons.

We have chosen to do this because it connotes innocence and adolescence behind the whole subject matter.

We have also decided to add in a few animations because of 'A-ha - Take on me' and the way this music video changed the way videos were made in the 80s. (Could be classed as a piece of intertextuality)

(A-ha - Take on me) 

Above are the cropped shots from the storyboards that will be turned into animations. 

- This is as far as we have gotten so far in terms

of planning our editing.  We plan finalize by next week what software we plan to use to edit  our music video.

DAY 2 OF FILMING

LOCATION:

JUBILEE PARK 

FILMING TIME:

16:00 - 16:30

DATE: THURSDAY 15th NOVEMBER 2012

DAY 2 OF FILMING

Last time I blogged, I said that I would be filming the other half on Wednesday 14th November however Georgia and I negotiated the date with some of the cast members who had to get some work done before a deadline.

On Thursday after school we set off to the park and met the male protagonist there. Finding the spot that we needed wasn't an issue however due to the season we realized that it would get dark really quickly making us slightly rush things.

Arriving at the park and setting up the tripod and the camera Georgia and I realized something ...

WHOOOPSY !!

I FORGOT TO CHARGE THE CAMERA !!

Luckily we had 7 minutes remaining on the camera which was long enough as long as we switched the camera off after each shot, this wasn't to much of a problem as most of the shots we were doing were still shots.

However looking back at some of the footage Georgia realized that one shot was a bit shaky so we are planning to re-shoot that little bit on Monday during one of our free periods.

WWW (WHAT WENT WELL) 

- We got the shots that we needed done quite quickly.

- We weren't a particular public disturbance and the public were not a disturbance to us.

EBI (EVEN BETTER IF)

- Prepared equipment more in advance (Charging the camera) 

- Thought about the season and scheduled shooting time so that we wouldn't have to rush before it got dark.

CHANGES THAT WERE MADE - 

We had an addition in the ensemble cast to give it a fuller atmosphere our addition was ..

DEREECE GREEN

Costume :- My costume was not the same as what I posted on previous posts because of the recent whether however the clothing is similar and carry the same connotations. (Same change in DAY 1 of filming)

Above are photos of the cast and director (on the right)

(Directors commentary)

DAY 1 OF FILMING

LOCATION:

GEORGIA'S HOUSE

FILMING TIME: 

16:00 - 19:00

DATE: WEDNESDAY 7th NOVEMBER 2012

WE WERE IN A VERY SERIOUS MOOD ON THAT DAY ..

DAY 1 OF FILMING 

Although out of the shooting time table that I had prepared we have finally started to film our music video, not only 

have we started but we have nearly finished filming !

We did the filming after school which we had learnt previously was the best time to film to keep a hold of all of the cast members. 

We began filming around 16:00 with a few delays and mind wandering which was to be expected.

We decided to film the second and third scene before the first scene at Georgia's house because the second and third scene are the most time consuming and we thought that it would be a good idea to get it out of the way. 

SCENE 2

There was a little change in cast in scene 2 'Marios Diamantides' could not make it as ensemble because he is also a media student and unfortunately we had a clash in filming days. However this didn't affect our filming which went pretty much to plan. 

For this scene in total we took about 4 takes which is an improvement from AS where we did 9 takes 

in total !

This scene was where part 2 of the peer pressure began for the male protagonist.

WWW (WHAT WENT WELL) 

- We achieved what we wanted to at the end of that scene 

- Props that we had (Alcohol) complimented the atmosphere that we were trying to create.

EBI (EVEN BETTER IF)

- We could have briefed the ensemble on more about the subject matter (real life examples)

- We could have checked the lighting before hand to speed up the process.

SCENE 3

The rest of the cast went home except for the male protagonist (Praise Ntiamoah) and female protagonist (me) for this scene. Again a few changes were made to this scene such as positioning of the cast and angles at which the music video were filmed from. 

In all honesty we did drift away from the storyboard quite a bit, out of both the scenes that were shot on that 

day I think that this scene did cause the most distress and frustration, reason being because that scene 

is the foundation of our music video subject matter.

In total we did 9 takes for this scene.

WWW (WHAT WENT WELL)

- The male protagonist responded in the way we had planned for this particular scene.

- The changes that were made in positioning could potentionally make the media product seem more realistic.

EBI (EVEN BETTER IF) 

- We checked lighting in Georgia's room beforehand.

- We practiced the space invading scenes between the male and female protagonist before hand 

this could have prevented awkwardness.

FINISHED STORYBOARDS

We have finally scanned on the drawn up storyboards ...

What a relief ...

The little box in the corner of the first story board is a piece of intertextuality taken from Beyonce's music video 'Diva' where she defines the key word to the narrative of the music video, we have taken this idea and made it more relevant to our music video so instead of defining the word 'Diva' we are going to define the word 'Virgin.

Below is a cropped print screen of where we have taken this idea from her music video.

 In the second box is another piece of intertextuality that we have taken from another music video.

'Our house- Kid British' where the original 'Our house ' is played out of a jukebox before the music video starts. For our music video we are going to play the original 'Like A Virgin' by Madonna out of an iphone before our music video begins ('Like A Virgin' - Vince Kidd)

Below is the music video of 'Our House - Kid British'

 The second and third box on the story board is another piece of intertexuality taken from Kanye West's music video 'All of the lights'. Towards the end of the video there are the lyrics that the artist are rapping/singing appear on the screen at the same time and this is what we will be doing at the end of our music video.
Below is the music video of Kanye West 'All of the lights' 
(3 minutes and 35 seconds is where the text appears)