Dear Moderator,

My name is Victoria Crouch and this is my blog; it contains all of the work I have done as part of the G324 A2 Coursework Portfolio Unit within the OCR GCE course in Media Studies.




I chose to work in a group of 2 to produce a music video to Ciara's "Livin' It Up". The project lasted around 5 months, starting in September 2013 and finishing in April 2014.




I hope you enjoy reading my blog!




Yours thankfully
Victoria Crouch

My Finished Music Video

Here is the final version of my music video to Ciara's "Livin' It Up"

Ancillary Task - Magazine Advert

Here is my finished magazine advert for a new album for my artist:

Ancillary Task - Website

Here is a link of the website I made for my artists:

http://vickycrouch.wix.com/hannahz


Home page:

About me page:

Gallery page:

Tour dates page:

Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 3

What did you learn from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

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

Evaluation Question 1

New Idea

Once we had finished our rough cut, we showed it to various people and one of them gave us a new idea; the shots of our artist singing on the stairs in the train station where we have her jumping from one place to another could be sped up to the pace of the music by adding in a few second shot of a faster version of this but not in the same order.


At first, I thought this might look a bit weird and didn't think it would really work. However, I still wanted to try it to see what it looked like. So, I got a second shot from each different place where she was standing, copy and paste it in a different / muddled order and it actually worked really well to the music. I put it inbetween the shots of her on the stairs and the next verse where there is a break as she is not singing.

Acting On Audience Feedback

Once we had discussed potential ideas to change the repetitiveness of the shots on the train station stairs, we went out and filmed some different shots for this part and added it to the ending.


I also then had an idea that for the ending that we could have our artist 'kissing the camera'. I didn't want to do a fast shot as towards the ending the music slows down and I thought that this shot would be a nice ending. So, I found a clean window, put some red lipstick on the singer and filmed the shot. It went really well and when I added it to the ending I felt it looked a lot better!

Audience Feedback

We showed a group of about 20 people in our target audience our first version of our music video. This is what we showed them:





We gave them feedback forms and asked them to fill these in after having seen it. On the whole they really enjoyed it but there were two main points that we said by a few people:

• It was a little repetitive the part on the stairs
• We need to change the dancers clothes

Editing - putting it all together

Once Amandeep and myself had edited all the parts of our song I started to put it together in one sequence as all the parts were separate. I created a new sequence in Final Cut and copy and paste the different parts together to the right bit of music. Once I had done this I realised that there were some gaps in between the different parts. To fill in these gaps I either lengthened the shots either side of the gap or I found a different shot from the rest of our footage to put in

Audience feedback for my website

After having incorporated my research into other websites and the audience for my website, I showed the finished product to a focus group and this is their feedback:

- They liked the picture and how it the artist was reflected and duplicated
- They felt it created a good relationship with the artist
- They thought it went well with the style and genre of the song
- They liked the colours used, with the bold yet girly pink and the slightly edgy use of black
- They thought the artists outfit was stylish
- It would encourage to buy the album!

Editing - Oola (train station stairs)

This was defiantly the most simple part that I had edited but looked quite effective. I cut one "Oola oola hey" from each different position our singer was in on the stairs and put it together to look like she was jumping from one position to the next. This worked really well with the pace of the music.

Making our website - plan

After having researched into similar artists websites, we came up with a plan for our website:



About 

For this page I kept it simple by adding information on Hannah about:

•       where she grew up
•       when she realised her talent
•       what inspired her
•       how she got there

We got from our audience survey on survey monkey so we knew what type of information to include i.e. she shops where our target audience does.

Tour

For this i looked on Ticketmaster and got the information of locations of tours for example:

-          02 arena - London

-          Phones4u Arena - Glasgow

-          LG Arena - Birmingham 

      Merchandise

I didn't think it was appropriate for me to add merchandise as we do not have any.

News

In this section i added the latest news about our artist and also promoted the magazine album advert creating synergy between the two products and added information on what she had been up to lately.

Gallery

I am going to add the photos of Hannah that we took when we did a photoshoot with her in this section

Extra's

Furthermore we had made Hannah a Twitter and linked the icon to her twitter page.

Colour Scheme

Hannah's personality is represented as being girly. Therefore when thinking of colour schemes i used a lot of pink. Also i have included a black and white theme throughout the picture with splashes of colour to represent her girly and edgy side. 

Filming Day 4 - Train Station

We used the train station as many different locations in our music video. We used the stairs for the "oola" part, the platform (stood infront of the train) for the part where she sings "I'll be rolling like a train", the other side of the platform (by the pole) for one of the verses and the walkway at the top where she is "dancing in the rain".


We spent quite a long time filming here because of all the different parts we had to shoot. I started with "I'll be rolling like a train". This was quite challenging as I had to time it perfectly with the train going past her and the right bit of the song. I had to film this part a few times but got there in the end.


We then filmed the bit of our singer on the stairs and on the walkway as she was wearing the same outfit for these parts. This was pretty straight forward and we both got plenty of different shoots from different angles so we had a variety to choose from when it comes to editing it.


The last bit we filmed was the verse that starts "I have my doubts in love...". We quickly have our singer her change of clothing, re-styled her hair and put on new jewellery and began filming it. Amandeep concentrated mainly on long and mid shots while I focused on close ups or her hands, lips, jewellery, shoes and face from high and low angles as well.

Editing - stage

Again once I had uploaded all the footage from the stage from both cameras I exported it to Final Cut and started editing it to the music. I pretty much went through the same process as I did with the tunnel, picking the best shots as I went along and put it to the music. Again this was quite different from what I had storyboarded but the storyboards I felt were really helpful when filming the shots, I just changed the order a bit.

Filming day 3 - house shots and lift

This location was for the introduction to the song and the first verse. As we had planned these shots we know exactly how many shots we needed and wanted. We filmed all our planned shots and more so when we come to edit it, we have a choice of shots and don't risk not having enough shots. 

When filming the shots for the first verse, Amandeep and I both filmed at the same time from different shoes so when editing it we have a variety of shots from different angles. 

Filming the lift shots proved more difficult that expected as it was quite a tight space to get the right framed shot of our singer and not get mine or Amandeep's reflection in the mirror and the lift shut a few times in the middle of our shot so we had to refill is quite a few times. Again, when I was filming the shots of our artist singer to herself in the mirror of the lift, it was a very tight space not to get myself or the camera in the reflection of the mirror so I did these shots hand-held. 

Editing - Tunnel

Once I had uploaded all of the shots from both cameras from the tunnel I exported it into Final Cut and began editing it. I used my storyboards to help me remember what shots I wanted to go where as there was loads of footage. When I was editing I knew that I wanted it to be quite fast paced and I wanted a variety of shots, including low angles, high angles, mid-shots, close ups, long shots and shots from the left and right angle. It was quite challenging to lip-sync but with perseverance and mixing around my shots a bit I got there in the end. The finished first cut was really quite different to what I had storyboarded in terms of the order of shots but I felt it looked best. I then spent a few days going back to the tunnel and tweaking a few of the shots before I added it to the full song with the rest of the shots.