Closing Post

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Four (Summary)

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

Over the past decade technology both in itself and within the internet had progressed dramatically. Now artists can freely upload their music onto YouTube, connect with their audience through UStream and even crowd source for funding products. When it came to creating a Portfolio for my A2 Media Studies coursework I chose to present it on an online Blogger. By using the internet I have had many more opportunities for presenting my research, planning, construction and evaluation stages. I have been able to create PowerPoint’s and embed them online using SlideShare. This has enabled me to efficiently reveal information to my audience as well as have it clearly laid out in a post on my blog. Years ago to research a band would have been much more difficult. However when it came to finding out what the Pop genre consisted of it was very easy for me to simply look on the internet using sites such as Google. Advertising our group in order to attract fans was also very easy thanks to the increase and development of technology. By using social network sites such as Facebook we were able to quickly get the name of our band out into the public eye for free. This would have been near on impossible years ago as publishers would have to have printed posters ect to advertise a band. Cameras and the equipment included have also dramatically increased. We were able to use a small camera which had a high quality of pixels and the filming we got looked very professional. This equipment is what allows small artists to produce music videos without having to spent lots of money on expensive items. Overall I think that our A2 Media Task would have been extremely difficult if the internet and the technology we used had not been available. I believe I tried to use a variety of technology within my music video, ancillary tasks and blogger in order to make them appear more advanced, professional, and a good quality. By Amelia O’Callaghan

Evaluation Question Four (Evaluations)

In this blog post you will be able to see how I answered the question 'How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?' In this particular answer I have veered towards my technologies used when answering my Evaluation questions.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Four (Music Video)

In this blog post you will be able to see how I answered the question 'How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?' In this particular answer I have veered towards my music video. 

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Four (Ancillary Tasks)

In this blog post you will be able to see how I answered the question 'How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?' In this particular answer I have veered towards my ancillary tasks. 

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Three (Music Video Feedback)

In this blog post I created a video recording feedback I received from my target audience. I have included my plans for what to do with the feedback in order to improve our music video as a whole and in my own section.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Three (Ancillary Questionnaire Results)

Here are the results to the questionnaire I created based upon the evaluation task 'What did you learn from your audience feedback?' Below in the PowerPoint you will be able to see how I used each point in order to advance the progress of the poster and my sections of the Digipak. 

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Three (Ancillary Questionnaire)

'What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In order to get feedback for my Digipak section and our Poster I decided to create a questionnaire for others to fill out and for me to then use to edit our ancillary tasks. Below is the questionnaire we used and on the next blog post you can see the results and how I used the comments in order to get our ancillary to appeal to our target audience.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Three (Facebook Feedback)

In this blog post I have answered evaluation question 'What have you learnt from you audience feedback?'. I have created varies blog posts for this question but this particular one is about the feedback we received from fans on our Facebook page and how we then improved our music video from them.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Three (Class and Teacher Feedback)

In this blog post I have answered evaluation question 'What have you learnt from you audience feedback?'. I have created varies blog posts for this question but this particular one is about the feedback we received from both our teacher and students in class and how we then improved our music video from them.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question Two

In this post I have answered the question 'How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?' I feel that I have managed to successfully answer this question, by analysing my three products and explaining in detail how the combination of them all is effective.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Evaluation Question One

In this post I have answered the question 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'. I have carefully thought about what the question is asking and from this analysed all my media products in relation to the question.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Our Final Music Video

Here is our final music video that we have now uploaded to Facebook.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Our Final Poster

Here is our final poster which was created by myself (Amelia O'Callaghan) and Siobhan Fox:

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Our Final Digipak

Here is the image of our final Digipak. I have put them altogether facing one way so you can see what each picture looks like. In reality however, if we were to print the digipak off, we would have to turn the top row upside down in order for the digipak to be effective.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

My Filming and Editing Log

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Creating My Digipak

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Creating the Poster

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Updating Our Facebook Page

We regularly update our Facebook Fan Page as it is important to receive feedback and have our target audience interested in what we are doing. Here are some examples of us connecting to our audience.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Second Intial Screening Feedback

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Splitting up the Editing

We have decided that due to the length of the song we should break up the editing into equal amounts, in order for us to all get a fair grade. Here are the timings:

0 - 1:00 minute = All three of us contributed to editing this section
1:00 - 1:50 minutes = Siobhan's Section
1:50 - 2:20 minutes = Amelia's Section
2:20- 2:30 minutes = ("Hey Hey Hey" section) All three of us contributed to editing this section
2:30 - 2:50 minutes = Amelia's Section
2:50 - 3:40 minutes = Bonnie's Section


When editing I also added the 'Ready, Steady, Go' sequence.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Self Assessment

12/40 for Music Video - I feel happy with the editing we have completed however there is still lots to complete and to correct.

0/10 for Digipak - So far we have only draw out sketches of what the Digipak could look like. We have yet to collaborate our ideas into a final Digipak.

0/10 for Poster Advert - So far we have only draw out sketches of what our poster advert. We have yet to collaborate our ideas into a final design.


Need to do: 

Music Video: 

• Sort out middle bit
• Correct Arms
• Sort out lighting
• Divide up between all three of us

Digipak:

• Scan in Digipak
• Collaborate all our ideas
• Make final Digipak

Poster: 

• Design ideas for poster
• Add all ideas
• Finalise Poster design
• Create Poster

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Initial Screening Feedback

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Initial Poster Design

Here is my original poster design. I hope to improve it before the final product, but I feel that this is a good starting point:

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Initial Digipak Design

Here is my original digipak design. I hope to improve it before the final product, but I feel that this is a good starting point:

By Amelia O'Callaghan

THEORIST: Tvetan Todorov

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Possible Merchandise

I feel that if our group O.M.G was to become very popular we could bring out products with our faces on it, such as a puzzle that fans could complete. Have a go yourself with this one!


By Amelia O'Callaghan

Research Into Existing Magazine Adverts/Posters

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Uploading Video to Facebook Page

After uploading our video to our blogs we decided to upload the video to our Facebook page. By doing this we can get feedback from the public which will help us with our final music video.


By Amelia O'Callaghan

Initial Filming Cut

By Amelia O'Callaghan and Bonnie Massey

THEORIST: Abraham Maslow

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Communication skills and promoting O.M.G.

In today's lesson we sat down as a group and made a Facebook FanPage together. We decided this would be a good device to use when we wanted to communicate with each other and to get feedback from others when we upload clips of our video, costume ideas ect. Here is a print screen of our home page. We've added pictures of when we have filed so others can see what the group looks like.

Here is the link to the site: http://www.facebook.com/pages/OMG/125105730983441

Risk Assessment Form - Filming

I felt that it was important to complete a Risk Assessment Form as when filming for a music video it is important to be Health and Safety conscience. Here is my risk assessment form assessing the dangers or filming and how they can be prevented.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Aims of today's filming session.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Research on Existing Digipak's

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Communication Skills

By Amelia O'Callaghan

What I need to do:

Shot Type Comparisons

By Amelia O'Callaghan

A Narrative section of our Music Video

StoryBoard - Narrative Shots

By Amelia O'Callaghan

StoryBoard - Performance Shots

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Costume Ideas

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Location Shoot

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Shot List

Here are some shots and ideas we could include when filming our music video. We all worked together however  drew and wrote down our ideas.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

THEORIST: Stuart Hall

Today we learnt about Stuart Hall - a Media Studies Theorist. Stuart Hall came up with the idea of the Encoding and Decoding theory which consisted of three main concepts each looking at what the director wants and whether that is pushed upon the audience and whether it actually effects their feelings..


The Dominant Reading - 
This concept is based on the idea that what the director wants the audience to feel is felt. An example of this would be in the James Bond Films - the director always portrays the antagonist to be evil and usually gives them a feature that is not appealing - therefore the audience feel negative towards the antagonist - a good result for a director aiming for a certain reaction.

The Negotiated Reading - 
Within this section the audience usually understand where the director is going when portraying a character however may develop their own feelings and thought of the character that the director did not intend. For example in James Bond Skyfall the antagonist was badly treated and was left with a disfigerment - therefore although the audience are still repulsed by him and know he is evil - they may still feel slightly sorry for him.

The Oppositional Reading -
Oppositional Reading means that the director has intended the audience to feel one way about a character or situation however they feel completely different. For example if the director is trying to make a character seem sad and the audience to pity him whereas the audience find the scene funny and laugh - that would be oppositional reading as the audience have rejected the directors idea. 




By Amelia O'Callaghan

Location Ideas

Narrative Shots:

Classroom
Playground
Corridor

Performance Shots:

Plain Backdrop
Brick Wall


The majority of performance shots within the pop genre do end to be inside or against plain backdrops, due to the group trying to stay with in the conventions of a pop genre we will try and only do performence scenes behind a backdrop or a plain wall.




By Amelia O'Callaghan

Character Profile: Megan

As a group we decided that we should base our own characters on a singer within Little Mix itself. We belive that by doing this it will help to get inspiration when picking things such as outfits and hairstyles. I chose Little Mix's 'Perrie' to base my singer 'Megan' on, this is due to us being fairly similar already with our stlyes.. Here I have created a Character Profile in great detail in order to be able to get into charcter when on screen, this could also be put onmto an official group website for fans to look at. I have also colated some outfits together that I could wear within the music video - these I have based upon Perrie once again.

Name: Megan

Age: 19

Born in: Bristol, England

Favourite Colour: Blue

Favourite Animal: Dog

Nicknames: Meg, Meggie

Style Inspirations: Boho, Flowery, Hippy, Summer!

Biggest Fears: Snakes and Injections

Favourite Artist/Band: The Script

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Group Name Ideas

As a group we created a mind map on differnt names to call our girl band. We tended to aim the names around the idea of 'three' due to ther being three members. The names highligted in red were our favourite, we therefore placed these into a poll for the public to vote on their favourite. Although not many votes were placed, out of all our blogs the most popular name seemed to be O.M.G - this we liked as our charcters names are Olivia, Megan and Georgia so therfore fit the acronym.

Results from my Blog

Results from Bonnie's Blog

Results from Siobhan's Blog

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Our Target Audience (Girls Aged 11- 16)

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Analysing Promotional Campaign

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Lyrics To 'Wings' and Narrative Ideas

We have chosen 'Wings' by Little Mix as our final song and therefore decided to start thinking of some narrative ideas. From analyzing the lyrics we came up with three main story lines:

Main Character being bullied

"And we don't let nobody bring us down

No matter what you say it won't hurt me"

Mum of main character telling them not to waste their lives. 

"Mamma told me not to waste my life

She said spread your wings my little butterfly"

Girl standing up to her dominant boyfriend

"No matter what you say it won't hurt me

Don't matter if I fall from the sky These wings are made to fly"

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Statistics for Little Mix Video

Website Analysis

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Letter to Music Company 'Syco'

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Our Chosen Song

After lots of research into Pop genre groups we have decided to create our own Music Video using the song 'Wings' by Little Mix. 

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Music Producers in our Genre

Little Mix

Little Mix are produced by Syco Music. Syco Music has the exclusive right to sign winners and finalists of The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent which was founded by Simon Cowell in 2002. Distributors for the artists signed to Syco music are Sony Music Entertainment and Columbia/Epic label group. Some POP artists already signed to this label are:

• Leona Lewis
• Cher Lloyd
• Rebecca Ferguson
• One direction
• Olly Murs

Katy Perry

Katy Perry is produced by Columbia Records, an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment and founded in 1888. She is also produced by Island Records, a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell and Graeme Goodall in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group. 

Cheryl Cole

Cheryl Cole is produced by Fascination Records, a UK -based record label owned by Universal Music Group, the label was launched in 2006. It concentrates on a relatively small number of POP acts such as

Kimberley Walsh

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

The Saturdays

Cheryl Cole is also produced by will.i.am music group who also produce POP acts such as Fergie and LMFAO.

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Pop Genre Moodboard

From creating this mood board it is clear to me that the genre of 'Pop' is very colourful and has a rather unusual funky image. 

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Results of Questionaire

After sending out an email and posting my questionnaire link on social networking sites such as 'Facebook' I managed to get a fair few amount of responses to my questionnaire on genre. From these results I gained a large amount of evidence about the types of ages that liked what genres and particularly their favourite parts. It appears that girls aged between 15 and 20 years old enjoy listening to POP music, including artists such as, 'Jessie J', 'Little Mix', 'Stoshe' and 'Katy Perry'. The majority of the votes also seem to prefer to enjoy some sort of narrative within music videos, therefore I feel it important for us to include for us to include that within our piece.



By Amelia O'Callaghan

Genre Questionaire

By Amelia O'Callaghan

THEORIST: Andrew Goodwin

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Comparisons between R'n'B and Pop

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Genre Research - Pop

This was created by Siobhan Fox, we each made our own and uploaded them to each others blogs.

Genre Research - Pop

This was created by Bonnie Massey, we each made our own and uploaded them to each others blogs.

Genre Research - Pop

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Types of Genres

By Amelia O'Callaghan

Describe how your skills in pre-production have improved from AS to A2

RESEARCH AND PRE-PRODUCTION

I believe that my team work and time management has improved since starting Media Studies at GCSE level and has improved even more through the tasks completed in the AS Media course. When planning our film opening at AS level, time management was crucial, not only when filming but when we could all meet up to film. Whilst completing the film opening task, working as a team was very important if we wanted to get things done. Therefore we all learnt to make important contributions and listen to each others ideas. I found I also researched in more depth when finding out information for our film opening, for example I had to research lots about the genre of our film opening and how it would relate to our target audience, we did this by looking at other Romantic films and picking out the typical conventions. We also had to research what the time was like when our film was set (1960s), we had to look at the locations, costumes, hairstyles ect. I feel my computer skills also improved greatly. By creating blog to post our research on I was constantly thinking of different ways to present my research in order to make the Blog more interesting. Using progammes such as Voki made the Blog unique and creative. Before going out to film we had to create a detailed storyboard so we were completely sorted when we went out filming. This I believe was more intense that GCSE Level.

PRODUCTION

When actually completing the tasks involved with AS Media Studies I believe I learnt lots. Due to the fact I was the one being filmed I didn't get much chance to work the camera. Nevertheless I did help set up the tripod and learn about the different setting on the camera. As a group we had to think about 'framing' and what was in the background when filming. From the planning we also had to include the correct shot types. We did also make sure that the lighting of where we were filming was appropriate. One clip was unable  to be used due to the position of the sun causing shadows onto the scene. After this we learnt from our mistakes and corrected them. My confidence also improved whilst acting in front of the camera which I feel is an important feature within Media Studies.

POST PRODUCTION

Overall I feel I believe I improved the most on post production. When in year 11 I did do lots of editing but only to a basic level. In the AS task, however, we had to edit our film opening with a lot more skill. I learn how to edit the sound of the clips and change the lighting settings. I discovered how to add 'titles' to the film clip and how to edit the size of the clip itself. After I felt I had improved lots I was able to help others in my group who were still struggling with certain parts of the editing. When we started to edit on the machines, the idea we had didn't work so we had to change how we made the pictures move. After lots of trial and error we finally managed  to find a editing trick that allowed us to capture our original idea. Although it took very long and got tedious we managed it in the end and I felt it looked brilliant.





Amelia O'Callaghan

Deadlines (Time Management)

Here is the deadlines for which each of our assignments need to be completed by. By sorting out or time management like these I feel it encourages us to get on with things and include everything necessary.



Amelia O'Callaghan