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

At the end of first year we were told more about second year coursework and given a task to create a short lip sync to a song of our choice. My group decided to do Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe. This gave us an idea of how to get the lip sync right and think about different camera shots. It also made me think about the kind of genre I wanted to choose for my A2 coursework.

When I came back after the summer, I decided the genre I wanted to pick was pop. I then did some research tasks. The first task we were given was a shot count activity. I decided to look at Jessie J’s Domino and realised it was quite a hard video to analyse because throughout the whole video i counted 344 different shots. I also created a 9 frame analysis to Beyoncé’s video Countdown. This helped me think of different camera shots and mise en scene I could use in my video. I knew once i had created the music video that I had to create an advert and digipak so i also did a little bit of research on this. The research task that helped me the most was the last music video analysis. I had to analyse a whole music video. This helped me with the narrative, locations, shots and costumes for my own music video.

There were a lot of planning tasks I had to do before I could start filming my music video. I had to send a request for permission. I did this by email and I also tweeted Capitol Records on Twitter. The lyrics breakdown helped me think of some different kinds of camera shots to use because I knew when each line was going to be in the song.

I decided to create my initial ideas using lino. This is where I thought of ideas of what I was going to use in my music video. For example I planned to take a shot of the main star winking when the song says ‘It takes more than a wink’. I also included a picture of a restaurant on my lino because I decided that I wanted to go to a restaurant for one of my locations. The mood board I created was quite like my initial ideas but this was made up of pictures, the locations I wanted to film at and different make-up I wanted to use etc.

For my planning I had to create an audience profile and do some audience research. For the profile I looked into the target audience, which is teenagers of both genders. I decided to look into a 17-year-old female student as I think my song choice would be aimed at her so if a music video came out to the song then she would watch it.

After writing down a lot of ideas of different names for my record label I finally came up with the name Bright Star Records. I created the logo using Photoshop. I created a colourful background then added the name. I thought it looked a bit plain so I decided to make it look like lightning going through it as this would also link to the name with the word bright.

I looked at a few inspirational videos to help me think of new ideas for my music video. Some of the videos I watched were Taylor Swift’s – We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, The Saturdays – 30 Days, Katy Perry’s Part Of Me and Jessie J’s Domino. I looked at all these different pop videos for different reasons including the narrative, locations etc.

The other planning tasks I did were now more about my own music video. The treatment sheet and call sheet brought my ideas together as I wrote all about the camera work I wanted to achieve, the performance, style, costume and make-up I wanted to include from the main star.

One of my locations was the studio in college where the green screen was. However, I wasn’t sure how this filming was going to turn out so I decided to do some test footage. I took recce shots first as this showed the technology I was going to use. Once I had filmed my test footage I realised using the green screen wasn’t going to work well in my final music video.

I knew the other locations I was going to use so I then created my storyboard. This then had to be turned into an animatic, which turned out really well. I took the storyboard with me when filming and this helped me a lot as I knew what I was going to do because of my planning.

For one of our lessons on planning we were shown some Photoshop Tutorials to see if we would like to use any of them when we got onto creating our digipak and advert. I decided to experiment using the grunge effect tutorial. This turned out well but I don’t think it would fit in well with the genre of my song.

Throughout the planning of my music video I kept calendars of my plans for October, November and December. These calendars were really helpful, as I knew what I was going to be doing and when I was going to be filming.

Once I had filmed all my footage I started editing it together. I created 3 rough cuts before I had my final cut. Every time I created a rough cut I looked back at it, analysed it and then knew what I wanted to change next time. To create my final music video I used Final Cut Express HD. As I had already used it before I knew how to work it so I got straight on with editing it together.

I also created some draft digipaks and a draft advert. The drafts helped me with what I wanted to change when creating my final ones. I used Photoshop to create these drafts along with the final ones. I also found this software very easy to use because I use it all the time with the other subjects I do. I don’t think the draft digipaks were very good so I decided to change them quite a lot when I created my final one. However, I did use mainly the same photographs because I picked out my most successful ones before I started creating it. I only decided to create one draft digipak because it was looking quite successful. The only problem I had with it is that it looked quite plain and not all the conventions were included

so when creating the final one I made sure I included all the conventions and added more colour to it as it made it more eye catching so more people will be drawn in and actually look at it.