Last Blog

This blog is now closed.

Last blog & a little something extra

This is our final vlog!



A goodbye picture!

and a little something extra..




Enjoy!

Evaluation 4

This is my 4th evaluation.

Evaluation 3

This is my 3rd evaluation.

Evaluation 2

This is my 2nd evaluation.

Evaluation 1

This is my 1st evaluation.

Rudimental Email.

So as a group we decided that we would go ahead and email Rudimentals management and also tweet them just to see whether we would get a response and as when we were talking to the audience after our showcase some said that we should look into it and atleast try to see if they would contact us back.

So here's the result..

So this is the email we sent, well hannah sent on behalf of all of us and...

above is the reply from them!

Below is also the tweet we sent them aswell as the email but got no reply to that one!

This is Rudimentals official twitter page we contacted.

Evaluation Questions

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

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

3.  What have you learn't from your audience feedback?

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

Audience Feedback

  So we presented our music video at the AS&A2 Showcase evening this week and we decided it would benefit us majorly if we received and captured some feedback from the audience. So the video you are about to watch is of all the feedback we received, we didn't just pick the good bits, well we didn't need to there was none!
 Hopefully everyone else agrees with the feedback and this will also help us with our evaluations as well as the survey we are currently carrying out now online at www.surveymonkey.com and I will later post our other findings either on my blog or in my evaluation.

WARNING!

Our video contains repeated flashing images so if you have photo sensitive epilepsy we would advise you not too watch the video as it may trigger it. We used strobe lighting throughout our video so we felt that for health and safety reasons we should highlight this and warn those with photo sensitive epilepsy by using a warning at the start of our video. Many other artists use these warnings at the start of their music videos as shown below in Jay-Z and Kanye Wests music video.
Also below i have shown our own warning for our music video.

Final Music Video!

   Finally after all the changing of ideas and our own minds we were finally able to agree on a great concept, even though last minute, worked wonders! I am so glad that our concept came together so well  and as soon as we started filming more and more ideas were being thrown around and were working to our advantage.

Just a quick recap on the concept of our music video to refresh your mind before watching it.. We decided to use our great actor Hannah as our young girl who is struggling with a mental illness, schizophrenia and seen as a psychopath. In our video we set out to represent her locked up side where her symptoms are obvious and highlighted eg the room shots throughout our video. We were aiming to construct a mental institution situation and how her mental illness affected her but also contrast with her freedom. Using the park scenes and the rose gardens to add a sense of her freedom by having shots of her alone in a wide, open space to highlight her freedom and her 'normal' side as others may see it.This is why we used the black and white effect to highlight the contrast of her different state of minds.

 So here is our video filmed and edited by Taneshia, Alicia, Hannah and I! We spent several months on our music video working hard every inch of the way to get it to the standard we wanted it to be and how we believed others would enjoy it.

Watch and enjoy.

My Final Digipak

This is my final Digipak that i have created for my album ' Reflection'.

I chose the other 2 images from our music video 'Can't Hide' to promote the song and video on my album cover!

Magazine Advertisement

So for our ancillary task we had to create a digipak which i have already uploaded on my blog and we also had to create a magazine advertisement to promote our music video. Below is my Magazine advertisement which I decided to use the same cover image as on my digipak so both my digipak and my advertisement can be linked by the front cover. Also I decided to use this image as the front cover for both as it is a beautifully disturbing image and the  contrast of the beautiful scenery and the dark ghostly silhouette also links to our music video and adds an interesting effect.

I have included the release date, the title of my band and album, my record label "Pure Life Records", our band website and where our music video could be downloaded and also ratings from other magazines to promote the music video and album more highly. From researching other album magazine advertisements I found that these were the necessary requirements to produce my own interesting, eye catching magazine advertisement.

My Digipak

I decided to do a four panel digipak as they seem to be more current and popular in our chosen genre.
These two pictures will be used for the front cover for my digipak and the back cover. I chose to use these two pictures for the covers of my digipak because i was using the theme of reflections, hint hint the name of my album and so thought these pictures of the river in town park highlighted this. Also on my front cover i have used the image of the river but also wanted to capture a silhouette of a girl which also links to our music video where there is a creepy feel to it. I chose to use water shots to highlight freedom which is again reflected in our music video.

Ancillary Task Research

For my ancillary task I am going to create a digipack and a magazine advertisement. To do this I needed to research the necessary requirements needed to produce my digipack and advertisement for my music video and album.

Digipak

So a conventional digipak is typically made from a plastic outer case with a cardboard inner. It is usually opened in a gatefold way and inside consists or one or more plastic trays to hold the cd or dvd inside. Depending on how many panels a digipak consists of, either 4 or 6 being the most common or 8 being less common would depend on the layout of the digipak.

8 panel digipak template

                                                               4 panel digipak template
   

                                                               6 panel digipak template

Digipak packaging is used mainly for Cd's and DVDs and the packaging is less likely to crack or wear than jewel cases which record companies switched from using to digipaks. This meant Digipak casing grew in popularity among record labels and recording artists in the early 2000s.

I have also been looking at other artists digipak casings to get an idea for what should be included and how to layout my own digipak.

 

All these digipaks from various artists and record labels all also vary in templates however most features are the same. They all use images that relate to one another and for instance Rihanna uses a them of nature and flowers and bold, loud colours which also relates to the name of her album "loud". Also Christina Aguleria also uses a different theme "Bionic" the name of her album and the relation between the pictures used on her digipak. From this research it has helped me to develop more of an idea on the path and theme i want to use for my own digipak which will be explained in my blog of my digipak chosen images.

cracking on

So we decided whilst editing our existing footage, these past few weeks, that we should shoot some more of the scene in my room. This location we found has turned out and worked the best for us in our music video as it adds a great state of her mind through the use of the flashing lights, the room itself and Hannah's acting of course. So today we are planning on getting the final footage in the room so we have more to add in instead of reusing the shots we have already chosen to edit in and also try ad get a few different angles as last time we mainly focused on 2 angles. I will post a few more pictures when we are done and upload a snippet of our edited music video and then crack on with our digipak.

Vlog Update!

A quick vlog update on how we are doing, how far we have progressed and what stage of editing and filming we are at at the moment.

Similar Music Videos!

As previously mentioned before we have decided that our music video will be focused mainly on the psychopathic behaviour of our female character and does no hold a specific narrative as it is more a visual viewing of her stages of mental illness. So we wanted to capture our concept through the use of lighting, mise en scene, cinematography and obviously editing and while creating more ideas as a group on what techniques we should use and finally filming the scenes we wanted I found similar concepts in other relevant music videos.

 Rihanna was the main artist that I researched first as I knew she only recently released a music video to her single 'what now' taken from her latest album unapologetic which, when watching again, has very similar characteristics to our music video. She uses similar mise en scene to us such as the stereotypical white room and dull, plain clothing and the contrast with another scene with dark clothing. Also the same demented feel is captured and conveyed through the video as we have tried to capture in our room shots. Like rihannas video where they only shot her scenes in two locations a black and a white room, we also kept it simple by sticking to three locations, an open field, white room and forty hall so we could focus more on capturing our characters emotions than busy surroundings. Also in her video she uses overlaying shots a lot which we have used to create more effect and relate to her mental state more.





Also two of Rihannas older music videos, 'Disturbia' which was released in 2008 from her album 'good girl gone bad: Reloaded' and 'Russian Roulette' released in 2009 from her album 'Rated R' also share the same similarities bwteen the concepts of the music videos. Using Rihanna to act in psychotic ways and convey her as disturbed or on the verge of insanity. Again using similar qualities such as the dark, dreary colours and white rooms, quick shots and flashing lights which we have also included in our music video. The use of the overlay shots really works in all three of these video and adds a sense of disorientation, as does the flicking and flashing of lights, in our case we used strobe lights to add this effect while filming, which we have also wanted to capture in our video and have been making progress with while editing. These videos have been really inspiring for us and given us even more ideas on what we could do and add to our own music video.

Sneek Peek!

These are just a few bits I've put together from our filming days and some of the footage you will see in our final music video once we have finished editing.. (ignore the messy room and the beautiful singing from us all!)

Mood board!

This is our mood board that we created so we could create a clearer image to others of what characteristics and ideas we are aiming for in our music video.
There is an overall feeling of darkness and sadness portrayed through these pictures which we are aiming to also portray in our music video. The dark makeup, dull clothing and open, empty surroundings all symbolise the loneliness and emptiness the individual is feeling which we hope to capture through our music video.


                                

Filming day!

So we also added another location, Forty Hall, where we decided we would get some natural shots of hannah in a stable mental state and of her lip syncing. We all thought that it would look better if in our music video she was lip syncing in her stable state and not in her psychiatric state and this would then contrast her mindsets, even though we have still captured hannah lip syncing during the psychiatric shots just in case.

After we headed to my house to get the last shots of hannah in a look a like of a psychiatric ward having a breakdown and going crazy!
Just a few piccys of our day..

          

         

      

           

      

New Idea!!

So for our new idea we have decide to use hannah as the protagonist who is mentally ill and has a psychological problem which is highlighted through all our shots. We have two main locations, the first location is in a large field, it may sound unoriginal and quite stereotypical but we all decided that this scenery would work best for the shots we wanted, the field was also flooded.. just what we needed as you will see later on. Our second location is in my bedroom which we are currently painting white and turning into a psychiatric ward like room and will be hopefully filming there on wednesday when its all sorted. Below are some pictures from our first filming session, we should be finished filming by next week which gives us enough time to edit all of it even though we have already started editing what we have filmed.

Hannah before filming..

and after..

Alicia pre filming..

The muddy conditions we needed to film in..

Permission

This is the new email sent to 'Asylum Records' asking permission to use the song 'Right Here' ft foxes for our A2 Media  coursework. It states the fact that it will not be sold on or used for any other reason than solely for educational purposes, also stating any copyright issues.

Rudimentals music video.

This is Rudimentals original music video to this song however this is 6:19 long so we have decided to use the radio edit which is only 3:28.

Lyrics for our new song!

Rudimental Right Here

(feat. Foxes)

[Verse:]

Late at night when you realize you're on your own

I know the feelings inside you start to grow

[Per-Chorus]

Please tell me that it's alright, alright, alright

I wanna know

Please tell me that it's alright, alright, alright

I wanna know

Please tell me, tell me

[Chorus x2]

'Cause everybody's got something

Something they can't hide

Let it out into the open

Right here, right now

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

[Verse:]

When you turn up the light and you're all alone

Cold as the shapes and the shadow's gone

[Pre-Chorus]

Please tell me that it's alright, alright, alright

Tell me that it's alright, alright, alright

I wanna know

Please tell me, tell me...

[Chorus x2]

'Cause everybody's got something

Something they cant hide

Let it out into the open

Right here, right now

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

(everybody clap your hands now)

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

(Everybody clap your hands oh oh oh oh)

Oh oh oh oh

[Chorus x2]

'Cause everybody's got something

Something they cant hide

Let it out into the open

Right here, right now

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh 

(Everybody clap your hands now}

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

(Everybody clap your hands oh oh oh oh)

Oh oh oh oh

Oh oh oh oh

(Everybody clap your hands oh oh oh oh)

Big Change!

So this is our vlog on how we've changed our whole idea including the song and why we've decided to change all our ideas so late in the day but no worries, we've got this!