Website

We managed to get the website we created uploaded to the internet. We got the website uploaded to the school website and to access it click here or type http://pendeford.org.uk/a2media/lild into the address bar

For an evaluation on the course work here is a link to my Prezi http://prezi.com/hrthkwqcjpsi/ or click here

Evaluation!!!

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions or real media products?

When we started doing this media product we decided that we wanted to challenge media certain media conventions of rap music. We decided that we wanted to challenge normal conventions in rap music videos by making a female character that would rap with backing vocals performed by the male characters. We used Danielle to challenge this and Manny and Me would be the backing characters. We originally used a song that knew Danielle could rap to and also we could do the chorus to. We also choose to make Danielle a nerd in order to make it seem even more challenging because normally nerds are not in to rap music.

With the posters and the website I decided to use bright colours to help make our “nerd” look more girl and also by using bright colours we was trying to be more individual because usually rap artists use dark colours. When I was researching digi-paks and websites most rap artists used very similar designs but when you change genre you start noticing the differences because now people start being more different with their designs.

When we changed the song for the music video because we need a song that would work with the footage we had in mind we lost a bit of the original ideas of the conventions. By changing the music video to include some dancing we accidentally followed a normal convention that is used by most music artists like Chris Brown and T-pain that is to include dancing in the video. So although we might have lost the challenging of male characters I think we still managed to follow some set conventions of having dance. I think we still managed to get the bright and vividness that was started on the website and the digi-pak.

I think our media products do not challenge conventions because the products I created because when we changed the song we then lost the challenging ability but I think the use bright colours and constancy in colour use and the usage of masks makes it a bit less conventional. I have only come across one rap artist who uses such bright colours and I think we managed to be part of the revolution.

How effective is the combination of your main tasks and ancillary tasks?

The main task and the ancillary tasks work very well together because all of them manage to have certain things that link them together and allow them to be work together. I think because the Website was created with bright summery colours and then the digi-pak followed on the same route allowing it to look very summery as well allowed them two to look linked as though as if they where made to work side by side.

The music video originally did not have the anything linking it to the other two ancillary tasks and this posed a great challenge because it would not make it possible for it to be able to be marketed as part of the two ancillary tasks.

When I found an opportunity to record more footage I organised the female dancers to have bright coloured tops that are different and also they wore different colours converses which meant that they stood out from each other and by doing this I created a connection between the ancillary tasks and the main tasks by using colours. When you look at the digi-pak, website and the music video you can notice correlations between the work and not just the fact that Danielle is in them all. I think that they all work well together as a combination because you can clearly see how they are linked.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

From the audience feedback I learned that one of the clip did not have the sound muted so they was my voice in the background speaking. Also they is a continuity error because on of the dancers took their masks off and you can actually see her face and this is not good. When people watch the video they actually say that the dancer has her mask off and this is the only major error that could not be rectified.

Also from the audience feedback I originally found out that flipping the picture of Danielle would make it more inviting and better. Although in the fine version the picture of Danielle is not flipped the people I asked to looked at the digi-pak they said it was good and I also learned that the colours and the design looked good and very effective.

I also think that the website we created did not work well because it made a mix of business and artist. From some feedback we got it came up that it would have been better if the artists site had less of the production company and had more about her maybe make the production companies page less more blatant making it for people who are actually researching into the company.

The music video also had errors within it that made it less professional as I wanted it to come out as. To find out the main errors click here

Originally we only made a front cover to the song and it was later on I realised that we needed to create a digi-pak and we had pages to the digi-pak missing. I then had to create all the other pages in order to convert the CD cover into a digi-pak for more read here

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

To construct the whole project I used different number of software and technology. The different types of software used were Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks, iWeb and iMovie. The different software changed due to the different types of work that was being published. The media technologies that are used to construction the ranges of media products I used in all the stages of the production process allowed me to get a professional finish on the different productions for example the digi-pak (see digi-pak for more: http://ngoniie.blogspot.com/2010/04/digipak.html). To get the effect I wanted many occasions I had to think of different ways to get the effect I wanted across.

What would I change?

If I was to do the work again I would change many parts of the video, digi-pak and website. I am happy with the current level of the work but I feel if I had a chance to do it again I would learn from my mistakes.

The main problems I feel that we spent a lot of our time doing nothing and when we realised that we wanted to change the group work and when we actually did change it, it meant that the work we had done was then irrelevant to our current brief. The work on my blog from dates before January 2010 was then useless and also it meant we had less time to do the whole project. Also the work we did might have been better if we did not wait till near the deadlines to actually start filming and editing the various products.

I also feel that we had poor communication because not everyone contributed to the work and it mainly ended up being me doing all the work not because I felt I could do it on my own but because I felt that if I did not do the work the deadline would pass with no work. Even though I did all the work I did give my group the chance to contribute and I would also tell them the things that were going on and I left it to them to be there to contribute to the group work.
I think that if I could do it again I would try and make sure that everyone contributed to the work and make sure that as a group we worked to certain deadlines that we set ourselves.

Music Video... Done!

This is the final video created for the main video tasks.

Now to do the Evaluation for the Media Course Work now that all the media products have been completed.

Editing Finished???

Today I went to school to edit the video footage of the dancing I recorded yesterday. When editing I faced some problems because some of the footage had my shadow in them and also the dancers seemed to be a bit out of sync some of the times and also at times one or two of them would just stop causing me not to be able to use the footage in the actual music video.

At times I had to use footage I had recorded as I was just testing the location and lighting. Also with my final video version I noticed a continuity error because one of the female dancers took their mask off which meant you could actual tell the difference and notice it.

Other than that the final music video looks good with a few minor errors. Which I cant correct due to the fact that I would require to record again and this will be more time consuming.

The print screen above shows when I asked permission from Madcon to use their song in my media work. I had to create a Myspace account in order to mail them.

Storyboards

The images below are of my storyboards of video we will currently making. The storyboards how how the video will be laid out and and everything will fit.

More Recording

During the past couple weeks I have been thinking of several was to increase the amount of footage for our music video. I organised a three female break dancing group for the music video. When we came to the recording day (Today) I managed to persuade a male freestyle break dancer to increase the footage as well.

Manny came to the recording as well and we both came with a mutual understanding that if we changed the song to a more up beat song it would make it easier for the dancers. Manny and me agreed to changed the song to begging by Madcon. This songs relates to the idea behind of having the two actors being in trouble and yet not caring. With this song the main focus has changed from it being about their love to more about the male actor begging Lil D not to break up with him instead.

Our first footage was based in school and wanted to get away from the school setting so when I got all the dancers together working together to try and come up with a routine I decided it would be best if they danced out doors because we would get some bright lighting and also it makes it seem less choreographed. The female dancers got to wear masks and this made it possible for the people who watch the music video thing that maybe one of the dancers is in fact Danielle a.k.a Lil D. The idea of the female dancers wearing masks also helps to keep a bit of mysteriousness to who the actors are.

Overally the recording for more footage went well and I am very pleased with what we recorded and I think that the footage we got today and the one we had already got our music video will turn our good. Now to the editing

Digipak

This is the final digipak version I created with some inspiration from some CD's.

The front cover of the too the longest to make because i had to think of a concept oh to market Lil D. I thought of many different possible cover designs but i choose to use this one because it seemed the most feminine and also it did not look like most of the album covers designs used by most artists. The front cover is also good because it actually uses the same colours that are used on the website and this shows consistency.

This image was originally the one which I originally created to use as the main front cover but then i changed it because I did not save the PhotoShop version which meant i could not edit to put the album name and i could not redo the image. The picture of Danieille a.k.a Lil D I used a range of effects. I used threshold and coloured and it and got a good effect. This image would be used as the centre fold out and would be two pages wide.

For part of the digi-pak I had to create the back half of the cover. I created this design to help show the basic designs that artists might like and I created the design with the lips to last through out the whole digi-pak and also I picked girly items throughout the different designs.

The CD design I feel it is very basic. I felt that i could have improved on the design more making is stand out more but I could not thing of ways it could be changed to be better and with feedback I found out that it is suitable.

This cover was designed to seat on the directly behind the CD. This design would become visible when the CD is removed from the cover.

This is the back of the digi-pak. I created the Back cover first because I had a lot of idea of how to make it and my main inspiration was from a album cover by Plan B. I decided to put the text on the back of the cover on a piece of paper trying to simulate actual writing.

I think that using PhotoShop allowed me to make this task better because it offered me the chance to use industry software and also it was easier to manipulate pictures using this software.

webpage... SORTED

Okay so the website was the second part of two out of the three items we have to create for our coursework. We decided to make the website mainly about Lil D. The website has different pages about Lil D and her recording company Keenie Productions. To create the website we used some images we personally and took and also I got some images of the Creative Commons on Flickr. I picked these two images because they worked with the image and because they are also copyright free. Here are two hyper-links to the images Drum-kit and Flower



The image above shows the homepage of the website we created. The page has information about Lil D such as how old and how she managed to be signed with Keenie Productions.



The page above is dedicated to the recording company. It has background information about how it was started and who made the group. It also has some on the companies current works and also previous works.



The last page it dedicated to Lil D's upcoming single and it has an mp3 version of the song and a making of video. The page is also going to have the final video. The page is going to have the actual video to the song that is available on the page.

Recording... FINALLY

Today we Finally started recording our main task. We got help from one of the teachers, we used her as an actor in our video because to try and help use get the nerd vibe across that we have been trying to portray. For our other actors we had Lil D and Damon. We recorded out video scene that lead up to the music and for the actual signing we faced a problem because no one knew the lyrics so we ended making them avoid camera contact and also got them to move their head as if they are singing.

The filming should now be complete now and now all we need to do is finish off the the editing and the coursework should be complete.

Website!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For our second task for our coursework as a group we decided to do a website because it seemed the easiest (me and Manny being I.T. fanatics).

Before we went on too create out website I looked at two of websites to try and get some ideas. I looked at official music artist websites. I looked at Nicki Minaj and Florence and the machine. I purposely picked the three different artists because they are very different and thus gives me a chance to see at different genres. Here is what I thought.




Florence and the machine is a female singer and her website is not very different compared to most musicians website. The website has got a background that has a wooden look and it has a rose and set of lungs which appear to hung there by a piece of silver ribbon. The website has got a weird look at it which makes people think of the iconography behind each element used on the website.



Nicki Minaj's website is completely different to Florence and the machines website. Nicki's website does have much hidden agendas compared to Florence and the machines website. Nicki Minaj's website has a more feminine and more bubbly. When going on to Nicki Minajs website the main thing people notice as soon as they go on to the page is an advertisement for her album, unlike Florence's website the album is not very noticeable.

I think that these websites are good as inspiration for designs for our website. I think that from these two websites I have learned that our website can have icons to help make our website more intriguing and we can just us the website as one big marketing campaign. I think for our website it will be better if we try and incorporate both ideas.

Sound....sorted

To create our music video we had to figure out what song we would use and this created a challenge because we have to think about copyright. As a group we decided it would be better if we wrote the lyrics ourselves. Before we wrote the lyrics we sat down and brainstormed a bunch of songs which we could do and in the end we all came to agree that we should write lyrics to The Dreams Rocking that thing.

Manny wrote the lyrics and this made it easier for us to record the song. Danielle then emailed The Dream asking for permission to use the instrumental and hook for his song Rocking that Thing for educational purposes.

We then spent the following lesson making the song in order for use not to have actually sing in the video. This made it easier for our actors to lip sync and gave us more options for recording our video for the actual thing.

CD cover for LIL D

Because we had decided on the music artist we were going to have we then started working on our tasks. For the CD cover I took some pictures of our artists Danielle a.k.a Lil D. after taking these pictures I decided that it is best suitable to use PhotoShop to edit the pictures because it is used by big media corporations for their publications.



Using the magic wand in PhotoShop i took out the whole background trying to make it better because the background had different textures which did not make it suitable to use as it was.



After taking out the background image I applied a a threshold to Lil D and then added colours to different sections to her clothing to try and making it more bright and vivid. I then looked at how Graffit is a font that is mainly used in the hip hop genre and thus decided to use it as the font for the album cover.

After finding out the Graffiti font style I then added it to the image and then I also duplicated this image of Lil D trying to make it seem a bit more 3dimensional and also eye catching. The image above was originally going to be the final image for our album cover. I was playing around with PhotoShop and I found out that the CD Cover looked more appealing when the image got flipped horizontally. After making the final changes Viola I had finished our album cover which is below.

The image above show our the CD Cover finished and it also tries to capture the whole different element to the to the normal convetions of Album Artwork/CD Covers.

Album Artwork inspiration!!

For our course work we need to create a CD Cover. To help use get some ideas I decided to look at some album covers for some big music artists because I thought it would help with the inspiration for out cover for Lil D. Here are some CD Cover and my comments :)


I like this KOL album artwork because it is very different to most of the ones usually used. It kinda makes me think different thought every time I look at it.



Gwen Stefani's album cover is very different because it uses almost the same colours and it blends them and also makes them look all smudged and it all seems as one design and it takes a second glance to actually notice the dancers in the background which makes the CD cover more intriguing.



Lily Allens CD cover follows the normal conventions of CD cover by having the artist on the cover with the album name. This however changes the whole perspective of the norm because everything else on the album cover is dull and her body colour is then more vivid making it more eye catching.

I think these album cover are very useful to the inspiration of out cover for Lil D because it they all are different from the norm and this has always being out idea for the coursework making it different from what people usually expect to see.

Female rappers again????

For our work we are going to be creating a fictional rap artist. this is some research i did act actual real female rap artists looking at particular trends.


Nicki Minaj is a female rapper who has just recently started getting a lot of media coverage because she is featuring on a lot of music with big name rappers that are in the recording label she is in. Some of the people in this recording label are Lil Wayne, Drake and more.

With most female rappers they tend to be more provocative with their dressing and their lyrics. Female rappers also tend to swear a lot more that male rappers. When looking at Nicki Minaj's her lyrics and comparing them to Lil Wayne (a rap artist know for his dirtiness and innuendo) she still sound very rude. The video below shows is a Nicki Minaj video to one of lyrics.



With most female rappers who are releasing music nowadays they tend to swear a lot and dress in a provocative manner. I think it is more noticed when female rappers swear and have blatant innuendo compared to men because it is not seen as the norm.

I personally think its like when music tries cross genre. Linking Park are a famous Rock band that rap instead of the norm or singing. However when a rap artist like Lil Wayne tries to do the same he gets abuse from rock fans because he is apparently supposed to stick to the normal conventions. I think this also applies to female rappers, when they try competing with male rappers lyrically they just end up with a lot more criticism for their lyrics.

Missy Elliot is a good example of a female rapper who has made her fame and does not swear in order to feel competitive with male rappers. Missy Elliot is the definition of female rap artists who are suitable for family listening and also comes up with good lyrics that are catchy and leaves with listeners "bopping their head" compared to Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliot is more mature and this makes her one of the most successful rappers gender aside. Here is a Missy Elliot song which was a great hit.

Female rappers???

In our music video we will use Danielle ad the female rapper because we are trying to challenge certain elements of female rappers. Female rappers face a challenge of competing with the male rappers because male rappers are more socially acceptable due to the fact that they are a lot more male rappers and it is not as acceptable for female rappers to sing for the same topics as man which makes female rappers very limited. Female rappers tend to dress very provocative and swear a lot more. They also tend to use a lot more of their sexuality which tends to help make them sell more records depending if they are dimmed to be good looking. Beyonce is an example of a female music artist who is well known for her body (personally that is what I have seemed to gather from all the conversation with other people).

By using their bodies now a days the female artists tend to gain more followers. An example of this would be Nicki Minaj. Although female music artists are slowly conforming to the male ideology of how they should dress and look. Because many people go by these subliminal rules it tends to be hard for people who are not to meet the standards that have been set they have a harder time breaking through into the music industry, this has also been seen over time with various people and artists.

In the 80’s we had Milli Vanilli a famous group who actually were exposed to be lip syncing when their song skipped looped while performing on a live MTV show in front of 80 000 fans. The German group was used by the original artists as eye candy and also a way to guarantee social acceptance. Here is a video of Milli Vanilli lip syncing to one of their “songs”.

Change of plan

Over the couple of weeks we as a group we watched a range of movie trailers and when we was watching all these trailers as a group we came to a mutual understanding that making a movie trailer was not as fun as we thought and we would much rather change the brief we are doing to the music video brief instead.

Due to the fact that we changed our brief we have to start our planning and research all over again. We have to do our storyboards for the music video, design website and also a CD cover. To make sure that our video improves our previous works me and the group members sat down and decided the factors that we could use to help make sure our music video not only appears to be a normal video but also has factors about it that challenge normal conventions of music videos.

To challenge the normal conventions of most rap music videos we wrote down a list of things that tend to be mostly represented in the same music genre. The main conventions we came up with where:
- Chorus mainly by female artists
-Girls in Bikini’s dancing
-Parties
-Men in control
-Gangster look
-Super “Swag”

Because almost all the music videos of this genre tend to have all the things listed above we decided to challenge the representation of gender. Even though it is mainly male rappers we do have female rap artist such as Missy Elliot, Eve, Lil Kim and many more. The problem with female rap artists is they very few white female rap artists. To help make our work more challenging we are plan to use a “white girl” as the main rapper challenging the male role in the music video and also try to give her a nerdy look to challenge the normal conventions of “swag” that are represented.

Coursework Day 3

today we sat down on the computer looking at trailers to try and help use make the best trailer EVER!!!

we watched a few trailers and this is what we thought

Kick-Ass

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/kick-ass/teaser-trailer

funny comedy clip
the clip used a mixture of different camera angles and also voice over’s to help convey the story line of the film. It also has a mixture of diagetic and non-diagetic sounds at one point.

The Slammin’ Salmon

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/the-slammin-salmon/trailer

comedy trailer
the clip uses a lot of fast paced midshots and close ups. The trailer also has no voice over’s but it has mixtures of diagetic and non diagetic sounds. The trailer also has texts on slides to help make the message more easily understandable

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/alvin-and-chipmunks-2/trailer

comedy
This uses a lot of text on slides and non diagetic sound. The sound of the chipmunks is also done outside of the world of the film. The film trailer also uses a mixture of animation and acting.

Bunny and the Bull

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/bunny-and-the-bull/trailer

comedy

the film uses a range about camera angels aimed to make you wonder whats going on and make you want view more

Clash of the titans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6CJenNMsb4

action
the trailer uses fast paced camera work that shows you a lot of information and goes with the rock so song. A lot of fighting

Prince of Persia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ0rIr_405c

the trailer is an action based and full of special effect and uses fast paced action and slowed down shots to make it more diverse. probably the BEST trailer we have seen :D

Coursework Day 2

My group spend the lesson doing our storyboards and completed the story boards and started thinking of the actors and the location :-) wahey here we go again being all so ahead of the game wooop woop now to do the research woop woop :D

Coursework Day 1

Omg omg we have finally started to do the course i am so excited :-). Today we sat as a group and brainstormed our ideas for what media task to do. We decided to do a promotion package for a new film. We decided to do the teaser trailer, website homepage for the film and a film poster. The teaser trailer will be a romantic comedy about a love triangle between two girls and a boy as the movie progresses it will have a twist :-)

Media Studies Second year

Its been almost a moth since I started my second year of media studies. The topics we are currently learning are We Media and Democracy and Media and Collective identity. Both of these topics have so far been very interesting. In We Media and Democracy we are learning about user generated media and the effects it has on the public and the media institutions. Media and collective identity is how ever very different yet interesting because of the key discussions we talk about. The after school lesson I am currently going to, to help me resit the exam in January are really helping because the elements that made me fail the exam last year I am learning on them and I have acquired more knowledge since we started. BRING ON THE EXAM :)

Media Literacy

Remix culture is a term employed by copyright activists to describe a society which allows and encourages work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization.

Remix video’s are becoming more popular and showing up on the internet. With the help of web 2.0 viewers are able to create their versions of different videos. The perfect example is when people remix homemade videos to make them even more funnier.

The image above is a print screen of a search on you tube to find remix videos. The image only shows 20 results of millions available on the website.

Media literacy and Remix culture are becoming more common with less and less people viewing television and resorting to using the internet to get all the forms of media in one place. Media literacy is the art of sending information across a group of people (consumers) using all possible forms of media like reading, writing, listening and video. The Remix culture is when people make their own takes of certain videos using the same material and the using dubbing or text to change the message that is being conveyed across.

the link is a video to our group video video remix. the video consists of two videos one is a science video and the other one is the Rick Ashley video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRgIAPFPVqs