Preliminary task

Here is the final version version of our preliminary task where we had to replicate the music video 'knock you down' by Keri Hilson.

Preliminary task

Preliminary task from izzyhumphriss

Marketing for Bastilles 'bad blood' album

Analysis into the advertisement of the album 'bad blood' by Bastille
'Bad blood' is the debut album of Bastille  and was released in the UK on the 4th of march 2013. It reached number one in the UK album charts and spent three consecutive weeks at number one. The bands genre of music is described as 'indie rock/indie pop' and the songs on this album fit with this genre. An extended version of this album was released on the 25th of November 2013 and was named 'All this bad blood'.

A digipak is the promotional packaging used for a CD and here this is the front and the back cover of the album 'bad blood'. The front cover uses simple sans serif font which is bold yet simplistic, the same as the image on the front cover. The screen is dark but focuses on the middle with a man running away. This image helps us to signify the genre of music which the band produce. 'Indie pop/rock' music is often used to describe music which is simple but sparks emotion in the listener through powerful lyrics. This simple image signifies the escapism which some listeners may wish to experience whilst listening to Bastilles music as they can 'get away' from every day life and listen to and enjoy their music.The man running away could be symbolic for the audience who are teenagers/young adults, wanting to run away from real life.
The back of the album cover has the same colour scheme of a dark background with white writing. The back cover has a list of all of the songs on and the letter 'A's in all of the words are replaced with triangles like the 'A' in Bastille. This helps to market them as these have become part of their image and make them recognizable.
This digipak could help to sell the album and the artist and make audiences look into other albums by them.

The tour poster for Bastilles 'bad blood' tour is a similar design to their album cover. The dark background contrasts with the bold white font and the locations of the gigs are set out in a similar style to the name of the songs on the back of the album cover. This makes it recognisable and familiar to people who own or have seen the album and lets them know that the songs on that album will be the ones played on tour. This is good advertising as they have created an image for themselves and this poster contains most of the relevant information needed on a tour poster such as the bands name, the name of the album and the tour dates and locations. Alternatively, there is another tour poster for the extended version of their album which was released with a slightly different image. It is still simplistic and uses the same writing to keep the bands identity as well as having the image of a car on the front so it is linked to the original album cover but uses a black and white colour scheme and contains less information than the other poster.

Analysis of another students work

To gain a greater insight into an A2 blog I analysed the research, planning, muisc video, digipak, magazine advert and evaluation of another students work to see what they did well and things that they could've done better. The link to his blog: http://2015a2josh.blogspot.co.uk/

Research
This student included lots of research in the start of his coursework in order to give him lots of background information and insight into music videos and this in turn put him at an advantage for making his final video. This includedresearch into theorists, director research, audience research which he gathered through questionnaires and research into digipaks and magazine adverts and this is all relevant to his coursework later on. This shows organisation and that they've pre planned what they want to do. Its also well layed out and easy to read, making it easy to navigate his blog.

Planning 
The planning section is also as good as the research section. Again, this student goes into great detail with his planning and talks about and plans many aspects of his music video which he can refer to later on.
Something which could be improved in this section is the lack of different forms of media. All of his posts are restricted to mainly text with some pictures and if he were to include a prezi, slideshare or another form of multimedia then he could improve the appearance, lay out, ease of use and how interesting to use his blog was.





Music Video:

This music video is filmed to a professional standard and the shot transitions are sleek and the quality of the footage is clear. He's also used a wide variety of shots including an establishing shot, close ups, two shot and deep focus. This shows they have put a lot of effort in and are skilled in using different camera angles for the different shots.
A weakness of their video is that it doesn't really follow a story line which means that you focus more on the music rather than the visuals and music videos are usually more engaging, making the audience want to watch it more.



Digipak 
A strength of this digipak is that he showed each stage of creating it from the logo and screenshots of it being edited to the final thing. The final version of his digipak looks professional and like something that could actually be brought and published.The colour scheme is monocramatic and the use of lighting in the pictures is effective. The amount of detail he went into when creating it, such as using photoshop of the logo shows that he has taken lots of time and care and this paid off in the outcome.


Magazine advert

A strength of this magazine advert is it has all of the key information out such as when it's out, the name of the album and the name of the artist. This means that the audience will have all of the important information by just looking quickly at the advert, which they would be doing if it was in a magazine. The colour scheme fits with the digipak and creates an effective atmosphere.
Something which they couldve improved on is making the logo slightly bigger as it is difficuilt to see which company the band is with.

Evaluation 

In his evaluation, this student has gone into lots of detail and has spoken about different drafts of his magazine advert, digipak and final music video. This allows him to evaluate each stage and see where he could improve and did improve as his projects progressed. This type of self evaluation is a good way to finish his coursework as it provides an over view as to how everything went.
As with the rest of his blog, it is very limited in the different forms of media. In his evaluation, mainly text only posts are published with just one photo in his 'evaluation 1'. Text only blog posts can be dull for the audience to read and the amount of writing can be overwhelming with nothing to break it up.

 

Analysis of other students work

Analysis of other students work
I looked at a former students blog and analysed each section of her blog from her research to completed task and evaluation. The link to her blog: http://gsa2014a2cb.blogspot.co.uk/

 Research

Example 1: Stupeflix video

A strength of this students blog is that she uses different forms of media including prezis, pictures of notes, text, slideshares and embedded videos. This variation of multimedia shows her skills and that she has invested time and effort into the appearance and accessibility of her blog.
Another strength of this students work is the amount of detail she goes into such as creating a stupeflix video which allowed her to show shots of a video and then write about it on a following slide so you can visually see what she is analyzing and this makes it easy to understand and allows her to analyse in depth.

Example 2: A link which doesn't
work and appears blank 

A weakness of this blog is that a couple of the links don't work and this means that not all of her work can be accessed and the way it is layed out looks slightly messy which may make it harder to understand which bit of text is relating to which picture.






Planning

Example 3: Costume mood board.

Something which was really good in this students blog was the depth in which they planned each and every single stage to make sure they knew exactly what they were doing and how they were doing it. This included a fully detailed story board and mood boards as inspiration for costume and makeup. This detailed planning meant that they knew exactly what their music video was going to be like before they even picked up the camera.


Music video
Something I really liked about this video was the way in which each clip was only short and then switched to another shot. This meant that you didn't get bored watching the same girl in the same place doing the same thing. The student instead made it so each shot was set in a different location and the girl featured wore different clothing. This captures our attention and keeps us interested in watching. The locations also varied widely from a train station, to a park to what looks like a dance studio which meant that it wasn't repetitive.

Example 4: In the park, dressed in casual clothing.

Example 5: At the train station in more formal, old fashioned clothing.

Another thing which I liked was the use of editing and slow motion in this video. The slowed down footage which was also sometimes (deliberately) out of focus fitted with the song 'summertime sadness' by Lana Del Ray. Her music is described as 'chilled out' and 'calming' and so this effect works with the music to create a slow, relaxed feel to the video and gives the watcher a feeling of happiness which her original music videos also aim to do.

Example 6: A still from a clip in slow motion and blurred. 

Although this effect works well in parts and the editing was done to a good standard in some parts this was not done so well. When the girl in the video is miming the lyrics the slow motion effect made it difficult to see what she was miming and it seemed to not match up and took away from how sleek the whole video was as the music didn't fit with what she was mouthing.

Example 7: A still from the girl mouthing the words of the song.

Another thing which was good was the use of different colours and lighting. The contrast keeps the viewers attention on the video and is visually pleasing as well as interesting. In particular, the use of lighting used where the girl is dancing is effective as it creates two shadows, moving in time with the dancer and this clever manipulation of light looks like something which could be found in a proper music video.

Example 8: Girl dancing with two shadows reflected on the wall.

Digipak

Example 9: Final version on digipak with explanation why.

A really good thing about this students digipak is that they didn't just settle for their first copy, they made improvements to it in order to make it as good as possible. This is a strength as it shows time and care has been spent and their final product is also of a good standard.
Something which could have been improved in this digipak is the actual front cover as the colour red on top of the black and white background combined with the pictures doesn't look as professional as a proper cover which would have been edited with greater detail.

Example 10: Magazine advert

Magazine advert 
A strength of this students magazine article is that it includes all the important information which should be shown on a magazine cover such as the record company, when the albums coming out, who the artist is, the name of the album and such elements. This makes it a realistic advert and shows it could actually be used in a magazine.
A weakness of this is that it is rather simplistic and the editing of the girl could've been done better as around the edges it appears blurry and this takes away from the professionalism. The colours don't stand out or capture your attention which could

Evaluation 

Example 11: Summary in their evaluation section

A strength of this students evaluations is that they include a lot of detail and have created summaries to explain and evaluate what they have found from peoples reviews as well as how they themselves felt it wen. This is effective as it brings together evaluation from different people and you get an over all view about how well their work went.
A weakness of their evauluation is that is that they have only included three evaluations. The evaluations were to do with location, their digipak and a final review, this is limiting as it doesn't show you about all aspects of their coursework and some parts which they haven't included may have gone wrong or couldv've been improve. This lack of evaluation means they can't fully reflect on their work and see what they would do differently if they were to do it again. 

Shot count analysis

Shot count analysis
I looked at the first 30 seconds of the music video 'shots' by imagine dragons and looked and recorded all of the different shots, their duration, the shot type and what was happening in the clip

I found out some additional information about the music video which follows:
Track: Shots (broiler remix)
Artist: Imagine Dragons
Directed by: Robert Hales
Release date: Febuary 12th 2015
Length:3 minutes 10 seconds

I found this task beneficial and effetive to do as it allowed me to gain some more knowledge of music videos and it helped me to learn shots aren't much longer than 3 seconds each. It also taught me how shot types switched so this could be a long shot to a close up, giving more detail about the shot which didn't previously show anything.

Preliminary task planning

Planning for Thursday the 23rd of June
Costume 
The costumes that we will need for our preliminary task include one outfit for the person who is playing Kanye West and three for the person playing Keri Hilson as well as a couple of outfits for extras.
The outfit Kanye West wears in the video is Denim jeans, a denim jacket and an orange top, as well as accessories of black sunglasses, leather gloves, a gold chain and gold bracelets. We will make sure to try to match this outfit or get as similar as possible to it in order to be as similar to the original video as possible.

Kanyes outfit

 Keris outfits range through the different shots. The first includes a white vest top, a blue jacket, a green skirt,and gold jewelry, this outfit is repeated shown several times throughout the video. The second is a jersey jacket and a set of beats headphones. The third outfit is a pair of black leggings with a low cut white top and a black jacket.

Outfit 1 

Outfit 2 

Outfit 3 

A girl in a black hat appears quite
a few times behind Kanye so we
will bring a black hat to be used.

Extra costumes include;

Jeans worn for Kanyes outfit can be re warn
and a black jacket can be added. 

The only props that will be needed are paintbrushes for the shots where Kanye and Keri are together. The location will range from our schools green screen room which will be used with a white background, to classrooms throughout college.

Preliminary task planning

Prelim task

In todays lesson we had to get into groups and start to plan and look at our preliminary task. We looked at the song 'knock you down' by Keri HIlson featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo. We created a shot by shot story board and analysed 20 seconds of the clip each to cover a whole 60 seconds of the video, in between the third and fourth minute of the song
The full music video is below:

My work

 

Tammy's work

Abi's work