Laura Mulvey's Theory

Production Diary - Week 3

We have begun to look into our target audience. As a group we decided upon the age range and gender of our audience and what kind of people that they would be. We then created a questionnaire targeting our audience to find out what they would quite like to see in our video and if there is anything they think could improve our ideas. We will take their opinions highly into account because they will be the ones who watch the video and make it successful. We finally conducted a focus group where we focused completely on the opinions of 6 members of our target audience, we chose to also include the opinions of boys in our age range although our audience will be mainly female because we think that it is important to reach a wide audience.

Focus Group

Questionnaire Results

Audience questionnaire analysis from naomi_pierce

Audience Questionnaires

Audience questionnaire from naomi_pierce

Our Target Audience

This is an example of an ideal member of our audience:

Production Diary - Week 2

This week we have created a reconstruction of Britney Spears’ ‘Baby One More Time’ video. This has been really fun to recreate and has taught me a lot about how to plan, produce and edit our music video. The main areas which I would like to implement from this into our video is using multiple cameras and planning in detail. I also edited the whole video and so have gained much more editing experience which will be helpful for our video. After completing this I am much more excited for our final product and feel as though I have developed more skills to create our final piece. I have evaluated our music video which has helped me to highlight the areas that I should use in our final product as well as what we should work on. For example, if we decide to use dancers we should ensure they all know the choreography and are confident to dance on camera.

Our substitution as we could not do the dance routine

The use of 2 cameras

In the image below I have outlined some areas in the production that I found useful when editing. The razor tool was very helpful to split clips so that I could choose specific parts of a shot. I decided to layer the real product over our shots when editing so that I could compare them and ensure timing was good. When adding a shot I would insert one clip and split that into the parts I wanted then delete the rest before moving onto another clip, this was very helpful in minimising the time I spent editing and is something I will consider doing in the post production of our final product.

Britney Spears Comparison and Evaluation

Now that we have completed our Britney reconstruction I think that it is important to see how close it was to the original and assess which areas need to be improved to help us when we create our own music video.

A Level Media Progress Check
Date	19/9/2015	Assessed by	Myself
Focus of assessment		Britney Reconstruction
Evidence of progress/ evidence of meeting criteria		As a whole, our reconstruction is very similar to the original video. Our shot types and angles have a very close resemblance to the ones in the original video and our timing is very in sync. Our mise-en-scene is mostly similar, the settings are close to the original and we used costume well in most of the video. We carried out planning of the mise-en-scene as well as creating a storyboard which helped to ensure that the video was authentic and as close to the original as possible, this also reduced risks of continuity errors. When editing the video I edited it alongside the original which helped to keep the transitions the same and in time.
Areas to work on next/ ideas to consider		One of the major limitations that we came across when filming is that we could not all learn the dance moves and keep in time. We first decided that we would just do it shot by shot and, although we thought that this would be sufficient, when we came to editing we hadn't lip synced in the correct places and it became impossible to match it to the original. We found a solution by using myself, Leanne and Sam as Britney to just simplify the dance moves to just clicking from side to side. This was a much more effective method and could be edited in time. This is important in showing me that if I were to include dancing in my music video to ensure that all actors know the dance moves well and to ensure that it is recorded with the lip syncing of where we would like it to be placed in the song. Another area that could be improved is continuity, as a result of the issue previously mentioned, we had not planned to refilm and so did not have costume which meant that there were continuity errors with us wearing different outfits as well as the fact that we filmed in a different location. This means that when creating our final product we will need to ensure that if it is necessary to refilm that it will all be carefully planned to ensure that all mies-en-scene is kept the same.
Additional comments		This reconstruction task will help me when creating my final product because it has made me realise the difficulties of continuity and it has given me more experience into the process of making a music video. I have learnt the importance of storyboarding and planning to ensure there is minimal continuity errors and that the video looks the same on screen as in your head. It has also given me the idea of filming with more than one camera at any one time to obtain a variety of angles and shots. In terms of editing, it has shown me that a large amount of short shots are used within music videos which is different to the film opening that we created last year and may be more challenging to edit.

               

Britney Spears Reconstruction

Preliminary Task - Production

In the original music video, they switch between different angles of the same shot. To ensure that the shots would flow we set up two cameras as shown above, one we zoomed in to get the close up shots where as we used the other for long shots. This is a very effective method and something I plan to use when filming our final piece. A limitation we have come across is that there is dancing involved in the Britney music video, however as a group we aren't able to replicate the dance moves, we have tried to simplify them and hope this will still look effective. Overall, I think that filming has been effective, we have all been in costume and the setting that we chose is appropriate.

Preliminary Task - planning and research

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We have been set a preliminary task to recreate the first section of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time music video.

Today, we have been planning how to do this so that we can begin filming tomorrow. The first thing that we planned is the costumes as we wanted our video to replicate the original as close as possible. For the video, girls will need to bring in a black skirt, white shirt and black socks to wear. Boys will have to wear black trousers, a white shirt, a blazer and a hat.

We also decided which props we would need, and the locations for each shot. We have decided that to be more efficient and to film faster we will split filming into 2 sections. For the first day of filming we will set up cameras and all work on the main shots of Britney with her back up dancers and the beginning shots inside the classroom as a whole group. Then the second time we film we will split into two separate groups, my group will film the shots of Britney in lip syncing in front of the lockers and a second group will film any extra shots, including the shots of other students by lockers and leaving classrooms. We have decided to use two actors as Britney to be more efficient. We have created a storyboard of the first minute and 20 seconds of the video to ensure that we get all of the shots that we need to complete this section and that they replicate the original as close as possible. Within our storyboard we have included the angle and the length of the shot to ensure that it is precise.

Production Diary - Week 1

Our Pitch

Pitch

More presentations from Naomi Pierce

Types of Music Video's

Production Diary - Summer Work

Over the summer I have completed various pieces of work looking into the music industry. Firstly I looked at the history of music, I found this really interesting and think that this will help me to develop a further understanding of the industry and the production of music videos before making my own. I also looked at the definition of being a star to help me when creating the image of my artist. I chose to look at Beyonce because she is one of the biggest stars around, often being referred to as 'Queen B', so I thought that looking at her own image and history would be most useful to establish an artist who would have a wide fan base. I then briefly thought of some ideas for my own piece as something to build upon in the future. I then looked more personally into my own experiences with music and how my taste in music has grown throughout my life, this was interesting to consider how the music I listen to has altered and broadened and will help me to consider my target audience for my artist.
I think that carrying out this work is extremely useful as a start into the research of the music industry and has given me some inspiration into what I would like to do for my own video.

What Music Means To Me

Initial Ideas

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Star Profile

The History of Music