Day 1. 22nd September.
In todays lesson we pitched our song choices to the class. We played the songs without the video on the screen so we could get ideas from the class about what we should include in our music video, and the sort of vibes they got from the song. We wrote all of their points down, and discussed them later as a group.
Day 2. 23rd September.
Today, we all listened to our choice of song and filmed ourselves lip syncing to them to see who looked best doing in and who would then go on to become the performer. It was hard, as we wasn't in the best environment and was laughing throughout some of the videos. We have a choice of two songs and feel is though each song is best suited to two different performers. Although this is the recorded version of the lip syncing, we are going to re do the auditions more privately.
Day 3. 26th September.
We had a setback regarding our choice of song due to the song we had chosen 'closer' making its way up in the top charts and therefore becoming too popular for us to make a video too, as it is very likely that the chain smokers would release an official video for the song and therefore would influence our video too much. As a result of this, we took this lesson to research other songs we could potential use and ended up choosing 'Love Now - Calvin Harris.' Although Calvin Harris is a popular and famous artist, the song we have chosen has never been released as a single and doesn't feature Calvin Harris in the vocals, the vocals are sung by an artist called 'All About She.'
Day 4. 27th September.
The priority of todays lesson was to really get started in the preparation and planning of our music video. We allocated every group member jobs to do. Ella was in charge of carrying out the risk assessment, Lollie was gathering all of our ideas together for the visuals of the music videos and is then making a start on the steal-o-matics. Charlotte was in charge of starting the shooting schedule and also creating the story board of what is going to happen in our music video.
Day 6. 30th September
In todays lesson Charlotte created a mood board for events that are going to happen in our music video, including some locations. We also added some style pictures of makeup and outfits to help create a mood for our video.
Day 7. 3rd October.
This evening we went to our first location and started to film. We all went to the A12 bridge and started filming a time lapse of the cars moving on the road below. We arrive there at 6pm and filmed until 7.30. It was just a still shot for an hour that we intend to speed up and cut down to about 5 seconds. We purposely went in the evening as we knew that the sunset was at 6.30pm. The shot shows the sun setting and created an excellent shot when it is all sped up.
Day 8. 4th October.
In todays lesson we gathered our footage from the time-lapse of the cars and edited it so that it was sped up. We then went on to complete some individual tasks for our blogs. I researched music videos in the same genre as our song and analysed them in terms of the editing, mise en scene, camera shots and sound. This was helpful as it allowed to see how other artists have portrayed there song in a visual music video and allowed us to have an insight into some ideas we could potential adapt for our own music video. Today we also created social media accounts for MYA including Twitter, Snap chat and Instagram. The social media usernames are @__myaofficial.
Day 9. 5th October.
We didn't have a media lesson today however after school we all went back to Ella's house and started to get ready for the photo shoot we are doing so that we have photos of MYA for our Digi - pack, and also for the profile photos of MYA's social media accounts, to finally put a face to the name. After we had taken the photos, we went back to school so we could use the green room to film some lip syncing for part of the video. We needed to use the green room so that we can replace the background with a metallic chrome type background to make it look edgy and cool.
Day 10. 6th October.
In todays lesson we started the editing process for our video. We reviewed all the footage and analysed snippets of each clip. We spent about 3 hours doing this as we made sure it was perfect and tried lots of different backgrounds for our green screen. We were really happy with how the footage had turned out, and this made us excited about the rest of our music video.
Day 11. 7th October.
Today, Ella and Charlotte recorded the story board for our music video. We wrote a script before recording so that it would be easier to film as opposed to having to keep starting again if we messed up. We then uploaded the footage to Adobe Premiere and edited it. We included still photos of our initial story board so that when the voice over was playing, the audience could see what we were speaking about. When we had finished editing it, we uploaded it to YouTube and then uploaded it to our blog.
Day 12. 10th October.
Todays tasks were to create a photo shoot for MYA. We needed to do a photo-shoot so that we can add images to our social media accounts, and regularly upload photos to keep the 'fans' updated. We gave Lollie a makeover and done a couple of different makeup looks and hairstyles. We managed to get some really good photos, that had a touch of professionalism. The hairstyles and makeup looks we done were funky and edgy to continue the persona of MYA that we had created. In the media lesson we had today, we also created the website for MYA where we plan to include tour dates, social media accounts, contact details, merchandise and also a list of the songs on the upcoming album.
Day 13. 11th October.
Today we uploaded all of the photos we had taken the day before to the computer and edited them to make them look professional and flawless. We uploaded them to @__myaofficial social media accounts; Instagram and Twitter. We also created a list of songs for out album and uploaded them onto the website. As well as this, we uploaded lots of other things to our website. We linked the Instagram account to the website, so that every time we post from the @__myaofficial account it goes straight onto the website. The social media account names were also added to the website, along with contact details for MYA's 'management' team; Charlotte and Ella. On the website there is also a personal message from MYA to her fans.
Day 14. 12th October.
Today we went to a graffiti wall in Chelmsford town and got some footage of MYA lip-syncing to our track 'love now'. We experimented with the go pro and also the camera that the school had provided us. We was at this location for a couple of hours. We experimented in ways to film such as resting the camera on the window of charlottes car and filming whilst driving in a clean circle to get a 360 degree shot of MYA while she was dancing and moving in a circular motion, this made it look like the camera was following her.
8th November.
In todays lesson we worked on the half way evaluation power point. We all had different slides to do in the power point. We also updated some of our social media accounts, we posted a photo on instagram from the myaoffical account.
9th November.
After going through all of the footage we have in todays lesson, we decided that we needed to refilm the lip syncing footage as we felt as though the outfit and the styling of MYA in the footage didn't really go with the artist we have created up to this point. We also felt that as we have been making this music video for a while, and Lollie has got used to being the performer, we would be able to film the footage again at a higher standard now in order to gain the top marks for performance. Throughout creating this music video, we have included smoke effects on our digi pack and photos and therefore thought it would be a good idea to use a smoke machine while filming the lip syncing to create synergy with our other work.
10th November.
In todays lesson, we reviewed all of the footage from the night before and chose the clips in which we thought looked the most professional and then added them into our music video and started to play around with the editing. As we filmed our lip syncing with a green screen in the back ground, we found it very difficult to use the green screen in the way that we wanted, which was to put a metallic silver background behind MYA lip syncing, but where we had used the smoke machine, it was very difficult to edit and did not look professional at all. As we also filmed the lip syncing without the smoke machine, as it allowed us to use the green screen background as we originally wanted to.
11th November.
The whole class presented their half way evaluations today. The half way evaluations included sneak previews of our music videos so far and also all about our artist. It also included showing our website and digi pack. After each group had finished presenting, we scored them out of 50 in terms of their brand image, website, digi-pack, clear target audience and appropriate music genre. With the feedback we received, we gathered it all together and discussed it all as a group and took on board the suggestions that were made.
14th November.
In todays lesson Charlotte and Ella made a tour poster for MYA that we could potentially use. The colours fit with the whole theme of our artist, and the smoke effect we have put on the poster mimic the theme of the digi-pack showing iconic synergy. Charlottes poster features more dark, grungy colours whereas Ella's as a white background and is genuinely quite light. We have both used different fonts and displayed it all differently, but we have both used the same photo as the main feature on the poster but edited differently.
15th November.
In todays lesson Lollie designed a magazine cover. We took inspiration from other billboard magazine covers such as Rihanna, Beyoncé, Adele. This isn't our final magazine cover, we wanted to see what worked and what didn't, so we experiment with different colours and themes. We decided that a black and white photograph on the cover would suit the theme we have created for MYA better. On the digi pack and tour poster, we have used grungy colours so we are now going to create another magazine cover to suit the theme of the other work we have done, using iconic synergy. Later on today we all came back to the media room and put in another couple of hours of work. we designed another magazine cover, which looked much better. We chose a rolling stone cover of Rihanna and created a cover based on it. We used the same design.
16th November.
17th November.
Today we created a magazine article for MYA to go with the magazine cover we have created. We looked for inspiration by researching 'Rolling Stone' magazine articles that Rihanna has done, as that is the cover that we took inspiration from, but as Rihanna is such a famous artist, there weren't any articles that we could relate to because MYA is an upcoming artist. We searched 'Halsey' magazine articles as she is a new artist and we found a picture we liked and recreated it.
18th November.
Today we reviewed all of our footage and watched our music video to try and gain a perspective of what we still needed to do. We still need to film quite a lot in order to make our video the standard that we want it to be so we can get the marks that we are aiming for. We sat down as a group and discussed times and dates where we can film, and the locations we could film at. We also discussed outfits and styling ideas.
22nd November.
In todays lesson we updated our social media accounts, we posted on instagram a picture of the tour poster and also posted it on twitter. We also relooked at the magazine article that we had created and double checked it and added some more to it. We changed the layout of it ever so slightly and moved the images slightly aswell. Although the changes we made were small it made the article seem that little bit more professional.
24th November.
In todays lesson we took the time to get ourselves sorted in terms of our blogs, Charlotte updated the production diary. We spoke more about what we was going to do when we next started filming so we were prepared, we spoke about camera angles and lengths of shots. We also discussed what we thought had gone well so far and what hasn't worked as well as we hoped so we know what to do the next time we start filming. For example, when we re-filmed the lip syncing footage, we used a smoke machine in the foreground to create synergy with the rest of our merchandise and our digi-pack and magazine covers and also our tour posters. When we looked at the footage again we found that the smoke in the foreground of the shot of the lip syncing meant we couldn't use the green screen in the way that we wanted because it kept interfering with the background we had chosen. We learnt from this that if we were to use the smoke machine again we should try it in the background of the shot, behind Lollie and see how that works or just try and edit it smoke in or film it separately to the lip syncing.
25th November.
Today we again used our lesson time to update our blogs so we don't fall behind. Charlotte continued to update the production diary and Ella and Lollie reviewed their blogs and made sure they were up to date. We also gathered some feedback from the magazine article that Mrs Brookes had looked at and used it to make amendments.
28th November.
Today we all sat down as a group and watched our video through and we felt like we had hit a dead end. Throughout the process of making our music video, we had another idea of a slower paced song called 'No Pressure - Pia Mia'. We listened to the song and started to brainstorm some ideas for the possibility of re filming our music video to a different song, while still keeping the same persona we have created for MYA, the same website, digi-pack and social media accounts. We haven't made a decision yet whether or not we are going to re-film our video but we thought it would be a good idea to gather our thoughts and ideas together to at least keep our options open. We have been researching videos of a similar genre for our steal-o-matic ideas, and overall feel excited by the thought of filming a new video with more of a performance in it to really show of our artist and make it look more professional.