Who Alice meets and their relationship within the book

Feedback from the class on rough cut 25/11

From the feedback we were given we were first told on the good things about our music video and stuff within it the class had liked, these were;

• A lot of effort put into the music video with costumes.
• Have told the story well, can see from the beginning Alice is going into Wonderland from the spinning effect.
• The black and white filter when the artist says 'Is everything in black and white'.
• When everything rewinds on itself to go back into reality.

We also got some improvements, some of these were;

• At the start the artist moves her lips when the song hasn't started and it can be confusing.
• The start of the song is a lot stronger than the end.
• Try adding a cross dissolve at the beginning see if it blends the effect better.
• Editing the ending more to the beat.
• Use jump cuts to get her up the stairs by cutting the clip to the beat.
• Try using some other alternative effects instead of colour filters.

Rough Cut 27/11

Feedback from Marissa

As Marissa didnt view out rough cut on tuesday the 25th we have shown her wht we have so far today.Overall she was impressed with our music video as she loves the concept of it and its finally comih all together.However, we did get some feedback on improvements that need to be made such as we need to fix up the lip syncing makig sure its on point.We also need to tidy up the ending which we are working on in todays lesson.

What we need to do in todays lesson 27/11

At the start of todays lesson Marisa had looked through our rough cut to see on some improvements we can do today. Nothing was that major and our rough cut is coming along quite well but it does seem that whilst finishing the ending some clips must've been moved and became out of sync. As well as this we want to tidy up the ending a lot more and just overall improve it.

So the targets of todays lesson:

• Fix some clips that have become un-synced whilst editing and finishing the ending of the rough cut.
• Generally improve the ending of our music video

These are not that hard of tasks to do as fixing the lip syncing will be really fast to do as it must've just moved whist deleting clips or creating the ending of our music video. To generally improve the ending we are going to first remove the music files that are still connected to clips that we put in, we need to make sure cuts happen more smoother and give a general tidy up of the ending. We also had the idea of adding jump cuts when the subject is walking the stairs and adding earlier filters to make the filters that appear later look less random.

Music production-filming the opening.

Here are pictures of us filming the opening of our music video which was filmed last as oppose to first. This is because we didn't have the book of Alice in wonderland which meant we wasn't able to film as planned.

 

 

Things that went well (response regards to our rough cut)

improvements needed to be made(Response from our rough cut)

Another improvement needed to changed is at the end when everything rewinds the music is still playing so we need to erase that aswell as other changes that need to be made

The plot of our music video

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 Alice is the first character introduced in our music video as she is the main character. She starts of reading the story of Alice in wonderland and then  she goes into a trance and falls asleep where you then see her in costume as Alice.The rabbit is then introduced bumping into Alice where they then skip of through the forest and the rabbit runs away as he is in a rush we demonstrated this through the use of mise en scene such as body language as he point to his watch consistently.The mad hatter is then introduced who is conversating with the rabbit on a bench where Alice then meets them both Alice then dances with the mad hatter where Alice then runs away. After then meeting the rabbit and the mad hatter Alice finally bumps into the queen of hearts who is not pleased is outside her palace.We obviously couldn't include all the characters who star in Alice in wonderland however we chose who we think is the most pivotal in the story.

Digipack of the same genre to ours.

Here is a cd case of the same genre to our music video which is house.The use of bright colours delivers a positive upbeat feeling.The use of stars and swirls demonstrates the type of genre that it is creating a good vibe that people enjoy to listen to.The positive vibe house music presents allowed us to produce a fun engaging music video.The music video was fun to shoot and we hope it lets of a positive atmosphere when people get to view it.The font on the front of the cd case is  big and bold which grabs peoples attention.The use of different colours used for the font of the artists included on the cd  cover is colourful such as pink and purple this is a good idea as it makes people want to read it in comparison to if was black and white which doesn't grab the audiences attention.
These features inspired me when i was producing my own previous digipack.The use of font,deatail and images are pivital getting right as digipacks are key for promotion for the artist.We as a group come up with a colour pallet which was light blue,red,white and black.We decided that this was key to stick to a colour pallet for our digipacks that we are going to create.

An advert that supports the theme in our music video

This advert above was relevant to our film production as Alexandra palace was the location we filmed the majority of our music video.Unfortunately we wasn't able to capture the fireworks display as planned as they closed the gates earlier than we thought.This is the point where i knew us as a group could of planned more thoroughly as we didn't have tickets to enter the park once they shut the gates.This resulted us driving around capturing as much fireworks as we could.it was dissapointed that we didn't get to film how we planned to which was alice looking directly at the fireworks at the end of her journey.Alexandra palace also had two funfairs going on the 1st of december which we planned to visit as we planned to feature alice,mad hatter and the white rabbit on the tea cups.This prevented us from including that scene into our music video.

Production | Editing the opening

production of music video-List of editing effects used

1.Slow motion
2.Black and white effect
3.Cross dissolve
4.Changing the scale
We have not finished our rough cut so more effects may be added.

Targets for todays lesson 25/11

At the start of todays lesson louisa had looked through our rough cut and from her feedback, we can make targets for todays lesson.

The targets:

• Add a cross dissolve to make beginning a lot smoother
• Make it so the beginning comes out of the effect as the beat starts
• Correct a part that wasn't lip synced
• Add jump cuts as soon as the beat begins to drop
• Remove a certain cut where the artist is not engage within the video
• Finish the ending of the song

How we will do this is first correct the beginning as this is easy for us to do and won't take long at all, after that we can easily correct the part that became out of sync as we still have markers available to help us. We then can start working on cutting as the beat begins to drop because the clip that needs to be removed is involved in these, we are only like 4 beats off the begin each time so it won't be hard to start the jump cuts earlier. Once all the above is completed we need to finish the ending of the song.

Looking at conventions of another song within our genre

How conventions of House music are shown within house music posters

Ideas for evaluation question 1

Evaluation Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


From this I can briefly summarise it as:

• Compare conventions used in our music video to those seen in others from our genre
• See if any our challenged and explain why and how we have challenge

To do this we will have to go through our finished piece and simply spot out any typical conventions within house music videos, these conventions normally are:

• Fast moving jump cuts
• Obvious editing
• Editing matches to the beat
• A lot of movement within the video
• Bright colours and a variety of them

I think a good example of a music video that really expresses all of a typical house music video would be Secondcity - I Wanna Feel.

The video contains all the conventions of what you would expect within a house music video and something I would consider using when wanting to compare my final piece.


To help answer this as well we can look at the different theories we have learned this year, which include Andrew Goodwin, Laura Mulvey and Carol Vernallis. In my opinion the most important one of these is Vernallis theory on camera work and the different techniques that should be used such as base tracks, slow motion, jump cut and special effect editing. She also strongly suggest how good camera work can make a video loads more attractive so doing stuff like, matching to the beat of the song or having a large amount of camera movement would mean that the audience will be less likely to get bored and therefore keep the music video entertaining. I think all these as well as other techniques and ideas mentioned from the others and are all extremely important to have in our music video and so in question 1 we can talk about how we developed on knowing this knowledge and making sure we included it within our music video.

Getting an insight of the characters in our music video

http://a2set22014.wix.com/musicvideoresearch

 Here is a link to a wix I have made which really helps those who have not seen Alice in Wonderland or want to help refresh some of their memory on the few characters who are featured in our music video. It gives a nice overview on the personalities of the characters and how some people may view them differently to how they believe they act. Also at the bottom of the website there's links to our Instagram and Twitter, as well as this the site is even viewable on a mobile device!

Advert That Supports Our Genre; House

This advert in a magazine hugely represents our genre as it is an advert for a house event! Again there are vibrant colours, as well as a chilled neutral purple in the background. In addition to this, there are waves of which portray a calm vibe. The font is similar throughout but changes when important information needs to be highlighted. For example, the email address is in the middle in a different font and colour to the title in order for it to be seen. This taught us that essential information should be highlighted well.
This showed as when I personally created my digipak, I typed out the artist's name in a light pink colour. Afterwards, this didn't look good at all, therefore I changed it to a neutral darker purple and it stood out well.

An Advert That Supports The Genre Of Our Music Video; House

This is an advert that was plastered everywhere during the period of us filming. Before hand, we drummed it into our heads that we were lucky to be filming during Alexandra Palace fireworks. Unfortunately, we couldn't get in as they blocked it off after a certain time (Hence the video down below!)  But we managed to capture them while driving around endlessly for two hours! The advert that was also featured in a magazine, supports our genre as there are again vibrant colours, and fireworks. In addition to this, it features '2 large funfairs' which is what we tried to base our music video around owing to tea cups (the ride) featuring in Alice in Wonderland as part of the mad hatter's tea party.

Magazine Covers that Support The Genre of The Music Video; House.

This magazine cover supports the genre owing to the vibrant colours which support the hyper techno feel of the genre and the way people dance to it. The pinks and oranges stand out and contrast on the baby blue background and this is because the baby blue background signifies the chilled side to house. In most occasions, something we've learnt through researching the genre, when the beat 'drops' in a house song, especially a deep house song, it is normally followed by a chilled, mellow repetitive beat. The text is all very similar of which we have learnt again is essential through research as it looks consistent and is easy on the eye as well as not being too boring.

Costume changes!

One thing myself and my group realised is we cannot have costume changes! On the first day of filming, I, as Alice, worse the typical Alice in Wonderland dress, but with leggings and ugg boots as the weather was terrible on that day. The day after that, the sun came out and I ended up wearing the knee high socks, with tights, that came with the outfit. This meant we couldn't use any of the footage from the first day as the costume looked significantly different. This taught us that we couldn't change anything throughout. In the end, we even marked on the grass where we were standing etc in order to get a perfect shot everytime so that the editing was easier.

Skills Developement

This production was planned entirely differently to my AS production. It entailed much more thorough research as well as was more hard work owing to the artist having to lip sync in sync with the song. Lip syncing was the hardest part as I was chosen to be the artist. Lip syncing wasn't needed last year as we just shot the opening to a film. This only meant that we had to act, aswell as edit to a beat. This year, we had to make sure that not only did we edit to the beat, but that we had enough shots to edit owing to the location we chose. This was exceptionally hard as myself and my group all live quite far away from eachother, and a significant distance away from our chosen location; Alexandra Palace. This meant that we had to film very precisely and plan more cautiously, especially when it came to shots and outfits. Even our hair had to be exactly the same as if it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to thoroughly edit the shots in order for them to look like they were shot at the same time on the same day. This wasn't needed last year as we had less to fit into the project meaning more time to film when we didn't have the right shots etc...

Get to Know The Characters - The Mad Hatter!

Soon after her travels and getting lost in the woods trying to find the rabbit, Alice stumbles across a tea party; a MAD tea party! At the mad tea party is the Mad Hatter of course, as well as the Rabbit. For the Mad Hatter, we obviously used a large top hate with feathers and tags together with big orange curly hair, and over exaggerated make-up in order for the Mad Hatter to look extra mad!

Get to Know The Characters - The Rabbit!

Throughout her journey, Alice first comes across the Rabbit who rushes and rushes and rushes!
We captured the significance of this by portraying the rabbit in the music video wearing a suit with bunny ears and a large clock around his neck. In addition to this, make-up that looked like whiskers and a little bunny nose.

Get to Know The Characters - Alice!

Within our music video we decided to incorporate the story of Alice in Wonderland owing to the song title being 'Losing' and the main dynamic verb in Alice in Wonderland is 'lost'.

Our characters include the Mad Hatter, The Rabbit, The Queen of Hearts and of course Alice herself.
Lets meet them!



Alice!

Alice in the music video is played by the lead singer. She wore a blue dress exactly like Alice's from Alice in Wonderland, hence the big black bow in the middle of the dress.

How We Will Incorporate Synergy

The ways in which we will incorporate synergy include making our song available for download through popular, well-known, established companies such as itunes and soundcloud. The song will be available for download for £1.99 owing to 'Liza Dasilva' being an upcoming artist.

Kizoa slideshow: No title - Slideshow

The website for the original artist

Skills Development

Close to the end of our journey

We are now near to the end of our music video production we have produced the rough cut copy and re filmed what needed to change.Overall i can say it was enjoyable coming up with the idea of our music video and bringing it to life.However it has been a challenge to as some things didnt go to plan as exxplained in my previous refelction of progress blog.its good that we was aware of what needed changing and what we needed to include more of in order for a good music video for example more close u shots especially as our artist was new so we needed to present this to the audience more by shooting more close ups of her.I think that we did a good job as a team and came u with a good music video and hope that our hard work is acknowledged.

Feeback from peers1.

Before presenting our our pitch sheet were given out to each of us to white responses to peoples pitches in response to what went well and what went even better.I have used prezi to create a presentation showing to the responses our group were given.I thought this would be good further evidence of how our pitch went.

Pitch Feedback2 from peers

Planning for evaluation Question1

In What ways does your media,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Production | Filming the opening

Today we had finished filming the opening of the film, we got several angels of the artist reading the book and then falling asleep. This introduces the Alice in Wonderland theme for the video and to help show this to any people that wouldn't of picked it up from the costumes, the artist is reading the Alice in Wonderland book. We wanted to make sure to get some close ups as it helps introduce the artist and as we don't have many others throughout the rest of the music video. Towards the end we also had to film a 360 spin from the cameras point of view, this only took a few tries but we did manage to eventually get a good shot.

The front of the Album Cover

Changes made to rough cut 18/11/2014

At the start of the lesson today Louissa had looked at our rough cut so far, her feedback consisted of that we need to include jump cuts and start them earlier from when the beat starts so this was the first target that we wanted to do today. We had looked at both parts of the song when the beat begins to drop and had noticed that we could easily begin the quick jump cuts a lot earlier than before.

 [Add screenshots]

Since this was the last lesson of filming we wanted to make sure the opening was 100% finished, so we went out, finished filming it getting all the type of shots we needed and put it within the rough cut so it now has an appropriate start.

[Add screenshots]

The last thing we finished working on was how the opening is going to transition into the fantasy world we try to show featuring Alice, as of now the idea we have is that it 360 spins and as the camera begins to get blurry from the spinning the clip begins to fade into the other clip but it is that fast that the fade isn't noticeable, this helps us as it helps the reader understand that when the the artist falls asleep she goes into this dream world as Alice in Wonderland.

[Add screenshots]

Teacher feedback on blogging

Last lesson we had feedback on our blogs. 

The key points made were that;

• I have a high skill ceiling a potential to make all blogs to a high grade.
• I'm inconsistent with blogging.
• Few old blogs I'm missing out on.

As said the first key point was that I have a high skill ceiling when it comes to blogging and have shown with my audience research blogs that I can make high graded blogs, as well as this I should go back and polish some blogs that are produced to a really low standard as with minor improvements to them it'll considerable help my blogs as a whole.

The second point was that I'm inconsistent when it comes to blogging, to improve on this I need to design a blogging schedule and not just blog a lot at once as this will just make me not want to blog and will lead to demotivation to blog.

The last point made was how there was some old blogs that I needed to include as I had made drafts but not actually completed the blogs, these were the synergy task, lip syncing tutorial and my own reflection on progress.

Planning | Pitch Feedback

After presenting our pitch we had asked the class for feedback, they liked the overall idea and how we planned our music video. The idea of Alice in Wonderland and introducing a character every chorus was taken well and was considered unique and out side of the box. Louisa had also liked our audience research and said that we presented a clear personal profile that illustrates our target audience. This gave the class a very informative view on who are target audience is and what we are going to do to make sure the music video appeals to them. Another positive aspect was our synergy and how we are going to play off the Alice in Wonderland theme. Overall me and my group felt that our feedback was positive in general and a lot of risky ideas such as telling a story and playing off a certain theme really paid off as unique and a good idea.

What we have changed to our rough cut 13/11/2014

Today whilst editing we added a black and white filter within a verse.This is presented when the artist mentions that everything "turns black and white".

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we have decided to get rid of the close up of our artist at the beginning of our music video. This is because our artists is not looking directly at the camera so she is not breaking the fourth wall which is important for a new artist. It is important that this shot gets replaced so the artist and audience have a close connection as she is a new artist. However we do include another close up shot further into the video as she is then breaking the fourth wall and it helps identify and introduce the artist towards the audience.

Feed back 2 from peers

photos i have taken whilst filming

Dani Kennedy's SlidelyGallery by Slidely Photo Gallery

Post production pictures from Instagram During filming!

We created an instagram page for our artist - We also included videos etc.

click here to see Liza Dasilva's instagram!

Here are the pictures!

Production

Day one filming, The weather wasnt too bad but it was raining which gave us some troubles while filming as we were filming in a green area.

Day two filming, shooting (Me) as the Mad hatter with (Steve) as the rabbit

Day 3 filming which was our last day to film as we had done the most of we can while we had issue with not turning up. but we manage to do the best we can with what we had.

Feedback for pitch1

As a group we were all equally happy with the feeback we got given by Louissa.The majority of our ideas she liked and could see our idea clearly and how we planned our music video to be.In particular she was pleased with our idea of introducing new characters in every verse.This idea was unique and the whole class liked this idea too as we thought outside of the box. We had also presented a clear personal profile that illustrates our target audience.This gave viewers a good understanding of who our particular target audience is and what they can expect from them when it comes to both music and personal lifestyle.

Reflection Blog post

Skills development

For this years music video i believe that alot more detailed planning was done before filming compared to last year when we made a teen film opening.I Think that alot more planning had to be done for our music video for example location planning.This is because we planned to film in the forest close by to Alexandra palace which is a big place which meant that we had to go and see where would be suitable to film.I made sure i took many photos of our location to post to illustrate the environment it was in.We also explored the forest so we could pick the best possible place to film.Compared to last year we paid more attention to detail for our costumes this was important to us as we had a theme for our music video  which meant we had to get all costumes looking good.

rihanna-Only girl in the world; Third influence

Our third influence included Rihanna's song; Only girl in the world. This influence our music video as she walks through a field on her own in a small dress which also initiates male gaze. As the main person in our music video is a girl, we decided to focus and imply male gaze.

Rough cut editing - Day 1

This is only our first day of editing for our music video rough cut, at this time the opening still needs to be filmed. As well as this we need to cut more of the music video to the beat to help emphasise our genre which is house music. We're also planning to include filter changes on certain lines such as when the artist says 'black and white'.

Refelction of Progress blog

The improvements i have set myself previously were to continue to blog effectively and continously. Admittedly i havn't been on top with the blogs recently as much as i should have been.This has now made me set new targets for myself before the upcoming weeks which an obvious one is to post more blogs of our journey of making our music video.

I also aim to use different uses of ICT that i havn't yet used in order to make my blog posts more interesting and creative.The use of ict i plan to use is moovley, emaze and thing link.

Although i havn't posted as much as i aimed to i have kept to my previous target which was using uses of ict instead of just texts on the blogger.

Bat For Lashes - Whats a Girl To Do; Second influence

We then watched 'Bat for lashes-What's a girl to do' which also influence our music video as we understood the distiction between choruses and verses. In this music video, the chorus shows humans dressed as animals coming from behind the main singer and leaving when the verse begins. This influenced our music video as we follow the story of Alice in Wonderland. For every chorus a new character comes out and for every verse, 'Alice'/the main singer is alone; just like the bat for lashes video.

Becky Hill - Losing; First influence

The first influence on our Music Video was the original to the song that we chose, Becky Hill - Losing but without the remix. This video includes a funfair and many fun aspects which include the main character having a good time. We tried to include this in our music video owing to the genre (being pop) allowing for a fun/jumpy effect.

Skills Audit

Skills Audit 

My skills since AS have developed in the way that I conduct my research as I have investigated a wider range of theories to look at; for example Mulvey's theory etc. In addition to this, last year I thought that without planning, the production can go ahead smoothly. This is a lesson I learnt the hard way and this year I understood clearly that I had to plan beforehand with production and locations etc.

Another different element this year includes the copyright permission we had to receive in order to use the songs we chose for our music videos. We didn't have to do this last year. This made me understand the importance of copywriting and how imperative it is to receive permission for music/footage you want to use.

Last year, it was easier to choose a song choice for our film openings as we chose a genre and then chose a stereotypical song to go with the genre. This year, it proved more of a challenge owing to the music being the main element of the music video, and setting the genre as opposed to matching it.

Research | Reflection on progress

At this very moment my blogging is very inconsistent, my skill ceiling is a lot higher than last year however it seems I'm not pushing myself enough to reach it. However I do believe if comparing my best from this year to last it is a lot better, the content I can produce has used a lot more ICT and the level of detail can be very high (as well as this be more moderately acceptable on other posts). If I was to give myself a mark right now I would consider it to be just fairly above average as I do have work easily considered done at the highest level possible but not all my work is done the same way therefore I can't say that my overall mark would be as high as I would like it to be.

3 Things that I need to improve on:

• A blogging schduel, therefore I am not doing aload at once and overworking myself so this will mean I'll have less of a chance of becoming demotivated to blog.
•  Put more effort into blogs, I am doing this now and finding it a lot easier.
• Try not to post blogs late.

Research | Synergy Task

Adding markers for the music video

We used markers within final cut pro to illustrate every 4 seconds of the beat, this making it easier to edit to the beat which is needed within house music videos.