26.11.09

Today we went round our focus group that is within the age of our target audience (14-22 years), and asked them to choose from our seven designs what one they preferred. This was the results:

Design 1:      5 votes

Design 2:      2 votes

Design 3:      4 votes

Design 4:      0 votes

Design 5:      0 votes

Design 6:      0 votes

Design 7:      0 votes

From these results we can see that Design 1 was the CD cover that was most liked by our focus group. The Design that came second was Design 3 and then Design 2 came third.

we also received feedback from a few people from the focus group:

• ‘I like the idea of the Polaroids’
• ‘The pictures should be from the video’

This is positive feedback because it lets us know that our design ideas are liked and how to improve them. What our designs did not show our focus group was that we were already thinking about using pictures from the video for our advertisement.

Next week we plan to start filming on Thursday. We will all bring in our equipment that we decided on before and set up the room upstairs in L building. If everything goes ok with the lighting and setting up hopefully we will be starting to film and get through about 30seconds of our music video once we have done some test shots.

CD cover design

In today’s morning lesson we decided to individually create designs for a CD cover for our music video. We thought about what we wanted individually and designed them on paper. Once we had created at least one design each we showed them too each other. We decided that we liked the idea of Polaroids on our cover that Jasmin had come up with. Holly and I then designed two more covers that incorporated the idea of Polaroid pictures.

Next week we will combine our ideas to create a final design. This will be hand drawn and scanned into the computer. I will also complete all of the research for the magazine advert.

Today I also found these pictures of Magazine adverts for newly released albums. These are research for our advert for our music video.

12.11.09

Today Holly and I completed the storyboard for our music video. We managed to plan it all out and work out the timing of the shots. The only problem we have is trying to work out how many shots we will need per second. Usually stopmotion videos are about 24 or 25 pictures per second but that is hard to work out when actually shooting accurately. I like that we have finally finished our storyboard because now we can get on with finding props and actually starting the video production.

Next lesson we will finalise all of the pre documents needed before we start filming and also bring in all of the props that we need so that we can set up our first scene ready for shooting in the lesson after.

I will be bringing in two paintbrushes, coloured plastercene and the camera

Holly will be bringing in Blue tac, White card and a tripod

Jasmin will be bringing in a bendy ruler, a yellow pencil, and desk lamp.

I will also be creating more information about CD covers and Magazine adverts so that when we get to making the CD cover and Magazine advert we will have the information and style models.

05.11.09 Afternoon

We received an email back form XL recordings.

We replied with the information needed by the company and we are now awaiting another reply.

 

 

This is the reply she gave us . We must now contact someone else.

 

05.11.09

Today we searched for the contact details of who we should as for permission for the use of the song ‘Have I been a Fool’ by Jack Penate. We looked up the recording company that he records with and have written them a letter:

Sarah Taylor
4 Bynghams
Harlow
Essex
CM19 5NR
05.11.09

To whom it may concern of XL Recordings,
We are students of Harlow college studying A2 Media. Our project this year is to create a music video of our choice. We have to choose the music, settings, actors and actually create the video. We have decided that we would create a stop-motion animation to the song of Jack Penate -  ‘Have I Been a Fool’. We ask if you could please allow us permission to use this song. It will be used only for our media project purposes and it will explain that we did not create the song but in fact it is Jack Penate’s.
We hope that you can get back to us soon. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Yours Sincerely

Sarah Taylor        Holly Miller         Jasmin Bice

The address that we will be sending this letter to is :

One Codrington Mews,

London,

W11 2EH

We also sent this letter in an email directly from their website inquiries. We have decided to contact them in more than one way so that if they do not get one method of communication for any reason (such as postal strike) then they will still receive the other.

03.11.09

This is some research on music CD covers. For our project we have to create a CD cover for our Music Video. I have decided to look at many different styles of CD cover so that they can stimulate different creative ideas that we could use.

22.10.09

Today we chose the song that we are going to use for our video it is Have I Been A Fool by Jack Penate

We chose this song because there  is a bold story line that is interesting and easy to work with. Also it has quite upbeat poppy music with interesting lyrics.

Choosing the song made it easier for us to create the story board. I was mainly Holly and I who created and came up with ideas for the storyboard. We planned the different stages around the different parts of the music such as the verses and chorus. We visualised how the video would go and how long each frame would take along with the music. We managed to plan out half the stopmotion to suit the lyrics but we need to complete the storyboard, this will be done in the next lesson.

We also need to write to the producers of the song to try and get permission to use it for our video. To do this we will email and write letters to a variety of sources that are involved in the production of the song including the record label and band. I also need to research CD covers and magazine features that will be similar to the one that we will produce to advertise our music video.

Horizontal and Vertical Synergy

Film: New Moon

• First promotional poster released 19th May 2009
• First Trialer released 31st May 2009
• Two scenes from the film were presented at tehe 2009 San Duego Comic-Con
• Second trailer released online 12th Auguse 2009
• Theater showings sold out two months prior to teh relase date
• Twlight: gross over $350 Million
• New Moon $50 million budget
• Summit Entertainment
• Biggest selling childrens paperback of 2008 selling over 5.3 million copies
• Soundtrack can be bought for around $9.99

Summit Entertainment

• Independent American film studio headquatered in Santa Monica, California with two offices in London
• Founded originally in 1990s Launched in 1996 by Patric Wachsberger, Bob Hayward and David Garrett under the name Summit Entertainment LP as a distribution and sales organisation
• April 2007 became fully independant film studio
• Added production, acquisitions, marketing and distribution

 

 

 

 

An interesting website :

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#5pB6ui/moviefill.com/news/Pixar-vs-the-Rest/16999//

16.10.09

Today we started to fill out our production documents that we must do before making our films and videos. Holly and I filled in the risk assessment and explained to Jasmin so that as a group we all know about the risk assessments that are involved. Also today we printed out more story boards so that we can expand our ideas in detail so that we know exactly what we are going to do and when.

We decided as a group that we would use the small room at the end of LG1 because our scene will take a few days to make because it is a long process and and intricate idea to put together. Also one of our risk assessments is that we will be in a confined space to get over this problem we will make sure there is little movement in the room to ensure that other risk assessments such as camera cable/grip equipment was not moved or fallen into when producing our stopmotion. We did not have a major risk problem because there are no actors (possibly one but that can be one of us) at the moment and there is little movement. Because our stopmotion will be hard to film we have minimalised our set to a desktop so that it will be easier for us to shoot and will take less time. The lighting will be one desk lamp at the side still in shot to make it look like an actual desk scene. We have decided that we will probably spread the shoot over three days because otherwise we might get tired or loose interest and therefore the outcome will not be at a high standard.

Next lesson we will continue our story board and make it more in depth so that we know exactly what we will be doing. We will also finalize a song that will be playing. This means we can start on our letters to the producer and artist getting permission to use there song for our media project. We will be finding out the timings for the different sections of the song such as verses chorus and bridge so that we can time our stopmotion perfectly as the stopmotion will reflect a similar story as the song does. Also we will fill in more paperwork that is relevant to our video so far.

8.10.09.storyboard

Today we started to draw our ideas out onto a storyboard. This is a interesting and helpful way to plan our video because it is indepth and helps us get our ideas straight. We did basically our first few frames. So far it is a person point of view of a desk and then someone leaving a room. The room will be in darkness and the door will have a window in with light from behind and therefore showing a silhouette of the person (never showing the identity of the person). It will then cut back to the desk and desk height and the book on the desk will flick through the pages and will be a cut to a close up of a sentence saying something like ‘and then they came to life’. This signals the stationary on the desk to come to life and create a story on the desk. The music will probably come in once the door has closed and there wont be any dialogue.  Next lesson we will continue and hopefully finish our storyboard. We also looked at some songs and were thinking about what ones we would like to make our video too and what was suitable. I Think that we should have an up beat acoustic song.