Construction : Reflection 3

REFLECTION

Currently we are in the construction stage of our coursework, we are filming our scene and we are finding it a bit difficult to get the hang of recording as we haven't recorded anything in a while. There are some weaknesses that we are all facing such as the difference between our schedules we find it difficult to find time to suit each of us to film . To solve this problem we have created a calendar which has all of our schedules which includes days that we work etc. This will help us get more organised and know specific dates which we are going to film.

Construction; Reflections 2

Construction : Reflection 1

Over the last half term my group and I sat down together and analysed what we wanted to do in going forward, because we lost the spark that we had last year, our chemistry had gone and we needed to get it back so that we could produce a good video like we did last year. So we went out as a group and spoke about the problems in the group and what we wanted todo with our video this year.
This meeting was very successful because we came to a conclusion of what we are going to do, we know what tasks everyone is going to do and everything is looking really good right now.

Planning : Staying Organised

Planning: CD Covers

 

This is our Cd cover for the front, I created this through Photoshop as I manipulated Rihanna's photograph that I have taken. I admire the concept of the CD cover because of the way the photograph has been placed as have I demonstrated on how we can be able to view things from a different angle as I have purposely made this girl Rihanna (Ralia) position like this.  Also, I purposely changed the colour to black and white because I think that it looks professional and looks better and also because it relates to Rihanna's website.

Here is the inside of the CD cover, I purposely made Rihanna pose like this in order to engage the audience attention by doing this I use disobeyed the rule of third as I made the Rihanna's eyes right in the middle because the first the audience will see is Rihanna's eyes right in the middle then focus on other aspects. Also, I purposely related the scene to the other media products in order to keep the consistency flowing.

This is the other side in the inside of the CD cover, as you can see Rihanna is posed in an completely different way because I wanted to portray what she is feeling as she even looks vulnerable and scared in this photograph as her shoulder are quite tense leaning against her shoulders as she hides behind the tree, this relates to the other media products as she demonstrates what she is feeling in this photograph.

This is the back cover of the CD cover, it contains lists of Rihanna's music video as well as the barcode, sponsorship company, our company name and the copyright. the reason why we have put all these items is because we wanted to make the CD cover look professional. I have layered out Rihanna to be on top of each other which is called overlay, I wanted to demonstrate the importance of what Rihanna's story is about as she looks quite sad in this photograph.

Planning: Concept Art for Website

Planning: Concept Art for CD Cover design

Here is our CD cover, the reason why we designed and even have a CD cover is because of the releasing of our music as the album cover is the importance part of music culture. The use of the artist being on the side of the cover is different as it is very intriguing as it is usually the artist is in the centre because of the importance but the importance is the title itself as it is extremely big and in the centre.

Planning - Master Catalouge

MASTER CATALOGUEThis is the master catalogue where we have placed the main props, locations in which our scenes will take place , actors who will take part in our music video etc. This is to help us know what we will be using throughout our music video. Actors include : Ralia Aminu as Rihanna the artist , and Aderonke and Demilade as the two friends who identify her dead body.  Props include : Bed, tub, medicine, alcohol , microphone etc. We will also be using other props but as we were asked to list fourteen we listed the main props. Below are screenshots of the different categories and what they include as well as a description of each , and where we will be using it. 

Planning - Calendar

CALENDAR

This is our calendar for the month of December and what we pan to accomplish by these dates by the end of the month , this is a good method of organisation so we know what we need to know and by when , also since we all have other subjects and other dedications such as a job for example , this really helped us to see when we are all free and available to dedicate our time to our media coursework , This calendar involves days when we are filming , days we are editing , and days we are working on the blog , we also incorporated days in which we knew we wouldn't be available such as the week we have study leave for our mock exam however we will carry on our own individual assigned tasks during this time e.g. blog work.

Plannig: Storyboard

STORYBOARD

The next 9 slides on this storyboard is of the narrative in our music video , the previous nine were of her in the video studio singing.

Planning: Filming Location

Filming Location

We have decided to film at a cemetery, the reason for this is because we are aiming to record the scene where Rihanna's friends visit Rihanna at her graveyard, we decided to use a scene of cemetery for the story line, as this scene is the start of the narrative. The use of cemetery portrays death and sadness as we are expecting to demonstrate. 

Locations are very important in the music video because it helps to portray the purpose of the song or even make the music video look more interesting. Usually in a music video there are a variety of locations for its purpose, therefore our group have organised on where we are locating of our music videos will be and we have decided to use the cemetery in Romford. The reason why we are using the cemetery to portray death as Rihanna's friends visit Rihanna's graveyard as she is dead.

Our group and I decided to film at our friends house because her house is quite spacious for us to film in certain aspects, the reason why we have chosen the scene of our friends room s because she has a girl look, as we wanted the look to fit in with Rihanna as Rihanna is a young girl.

Along with using our friends room we have also decided to use her bathtub because it is quite big, which I though it would be quite useful for the suicide scene that we will be filming.








  We decided to film in an forest as well as the park because we thought it would be a really good idea to demonstrate Rihanna's anger and frustration in this scene in order to make it look intriguing.

Planning: Initial Ideas; Mind Maps

INITIAL IDEAS: MIND MAPS 

These are our initial ideas for costumes which will correlate with the narrative of our Music Video, these ideas may change as we begin to construct our video , but for now we believe these are the costumes suitable for our video . Each Costume is for different scenes in the video, we tried to incorporate recent trends in fashion to cater to out target audience.

These are the ideas that we have developed for out music video , it is based on sensitive topics such as suicide , drug abuse , deviant acts etc. We chose to use this concept because there has been a rise in cases on these topics and we believe that our target audience should be made aware of these problems in society as they tend to be under represented in the media, moreover this will captivate the attention of our target audience as it is seen as abnormal and against social norms and includes aspects of controversy.

We chose to have a narrative based on domestic violence as we have seen a rise in the number of cases on this matter have risen and seems to be under reported and under recorded in official statistics. we believe this is a serious situation that needs to be tackled and feel that the seriousness of this topic is not enforced enough to us teenagers as it does also happen in young relationships. The story line of the music video correlates to the lyrics in the song , the story will start off with a couple arguing and physically fighting, this will then lead to the girl having a mental breakdown with various scenes of her lashing out and causing chaos , eventually she turns to drugs as a form of escapism and later on reaches her breaking point and commits suicide.

Planning : Results of survey ; construction

Planning - Survey for Target Audience

SURVEY FOR TARGET AUDIENCE RESEARCH

We were asked to conduct a survey to gain research on our target audience , Target Audience Research is the process of collecting information about your target audience in order to identify there interest and preferences.In this case we will be finding what  our audience prefers in terms of an Rn'B Music Video. From this survey we aim to gain an idea of what we should integrate into our music video.
This is a screenshot of our survey we put together in order to conduct research for our target audience. We used Survey monkey which is a website that allows you to generate your own survey. We chose to ask questions about age, gender, costume preferences, motifs etc. in order to know what pleases our target audience. We came up with a total of 8 questions which we feel will give us the information we are aiming to gain from this research.

• GENDER The first question of our survey is about the persons gender , this is a typical question which is asked so we can know if our survey is representative and to avoid gender bias , it was important that we had both male and female answer our survey so we have a real interpretation of what people like to see in music videos.

• AGE The second question was about age so we could specify what age our target audience ranges from, so we know what aspects we should include.

• LOCATION We asked a question on where people prefer to see an RnB music video takes place e.g. Shopping Centre , in a party, city area, or video studio . we chose these options because these are settings in which we have seen most RnB videos take place in and we would want to know which one our target audience prefers.

•  COSTUMES We asked a question on costume preferences in RnB videos , we had options of casual, exotic, sports, or formal . We chose these options because we are unsure of what costume our artist should wear. 
• MOTIFS This question is concerned with what motifs people enjoy to see more in this type of music video such as ritual celebration , fragmentation of the body , special effects and mythical and mysterious.

• HOW MANY MUSIC VIDEOS DO YOU WATCH IN A WEEK ?We wanted to ask this question so we were aware of how often people watched music videos
• TOP 3 FAVOURITE RNB SONGS  We wanted to know what were the top 3 songs of the audience because we could watch some of these videos and involve aspects of them in ours and get ideas for a narrative.
• FAVOURITE RNB SINGER This question was asked for the same reason as the previous one , this will help us to look for things to include when creating the image of our artist, We can look at aspects such as their dress sense etc.

Planning: Reaching out to Target Audience

REACHING OUT TO TARGET AUDIENCE

I have posted the link to our survey on my Facebook so people can be able to access it easily , I have chosen to post it on a social media website because it is a source that everyone uses and makes it easier and quicker for us to collect the data, moreover, this will help us get a variety of opinions from different ages etc.This will also help us to get an idea of what we should incorporate in our video to suit our target audience.

Planning - Audience Demographics

Audience Demographics - Rihanna from RADDLTD123

Planning: Sketch of CD Cover

I have decided to change the cd cover into a different design because I believe that this idea is extremely better than the other idea, as this CD Cover is extremely different than most CD cover. I will be creating this idea by using Photoshop as well as taking a primary source from the artist and make it look interesting.

Planning: Album Cover

Album Cover 

Front Cover

Back Cover

Planning - Analysis of music website

Analysis of website from RADDLTD123

Planning : Green Screen Test

During the editing of this video I found it difficult to get it perfect because my hair was a bit messy , so i've learnt that you need to make sure everything is in place to do this test precisely .

Planning: Radio Spot

Radio Spot 

Preliminary: Lip Sync Test

This is a lip sync test.
The reason why we did the lip sync test is because we are preparing for our music video for furture reference.

Planning: Our chosen song- (Rihanna - What Now)

We chose to do Rihanna - What Now because it is a very controversial song which can include a number of different storylines, we have chosen to go down the path of domestic violence, self harm , depression, because these are very sensitive topics that people tend to look pass.

Planning - Analysis of chosen music video

Analysis of chosen music video from RADDLTD123

Planning: Analysis of Madonna

Analysis of madonna from RADDltd

Planning: Motifs

Common Motifs

motifs from RADDltd

Planning: Characteristics of Music

Characteristics of Music Videos 

In music videos there is a lot of similar characteristics and this is because of both psychological and economic reasons. 

Song length- is a common issue as it is very important that the music videos                                         are a certain length of time e.g. 3-5 minutes, song longer than that length are                                 often compressed.  

The reason for this is both for psychological reasons, such as, people switching off. people in general have short attention spans so if a music video is too long they will switch off and not watch it. An economic reason is because music companies such as MTV, make there money through adverts so the goal is to get as many videos played and adverts played in the shortest amount of time because that is more money for them and if they have music videos longer than 5 minutes that would prohibit them from playing that song as they can play 2 music videos in that time.  

Concept- there is always a concept in music videos because due to the short length of music videos there isn't enough time to develop characters so directors have to create personas so that people understand and the concept and they strive to create ones that stand out to keep people locked in and watching the whole video, an example of this is Rihanna's- bitch better have my money. There was a lot of controversial aspects which kept people watching and talking about it and that is very important when it comes to music videos, as it keeps music videos current due to the fact that they are constantly being talked about, but artists and directors need to be careful that it doesn't step into morè, thats when it reaches the point of offending people and the video could be banned. 

Fragmentation- In music videos there is a lot of fragmentation of the body, this causes the audience to focus on a particular part of the person or artists. And in general there is a lot of freedom in music videos because there is a lot of time to fill it up, but this depends on what concept you have, some artist use there music videos to promote themselves as dancers or even there products, for instance Lady Gaga and Beyonce when they were promoting the 'Polaroid' camera in the video, and also when Nicki Minaj promotes her drink in her music videos.