Blog 15 - DVD Digipack

As part of our coursework, we have to design and create a digipack for our chosen video to go into. A Digipak is basically an album with all of the songs from the artist but it includes the video to one or two of their songs. History of the DVD Digipack Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. Since Digipaks were among the first alternatives to jewel cases to be used by major record companies, and because there is no other common name for Digipak-style packaging made by other companies, the term digipak or Digi-Pak is often used generically, even when the media holder is a hub or "Soft Spot" rather than a full plastic tray. DVD Digipack Uses Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums and the tall DVD Digipak (DVDigipak) is used as a premium package for DVDs and DVD sets. Because such packaging is less resistant to abrasion than jewel cases, it tends to show signs of wear relatively quickly. Licensed digipak manufacturers such as domestic U.S. printer and disc replicator Oasis Disc Manufacturing recommend coating the raw printed paper with a protective UV coating, thus ensuring greater longevity. Here is a recent example of a Digipak by Katy Perry , an artsit who shares the same genre as the one we are going to be working with. Here is another artist/group that share the same genre as our chosen one, but have a slightly different 'style' to the one we are aiming for, but this is their version of the digipack; The reason I have selected these two digipaks is because of their differences; both equally do the same thing but the way they have been made could potentially confuse someone, for example you could mistake the Katy Perry Digipak for being a general CD and you could potentially mistake the Take That Digipak for being a DVd of say their tour. Target Audience for our genre The majority of Kesha fans fall into the socio-economic classes, Kesha targets the lower classes such as D/E as she is a fresh face to the music industry. I have done some research and found that Kesha has appeared on many front covers of US magazines. She has appeared on the front cover of the magazine ELLE, who have a target audience of mainly teenagers to middle aged women. These two digipaks present this really well, the younger fans generally like the combination of both listening to music and watching DVD/Videos so a digipak is a really smart invention to have the combination of the two. Flat Plan Ideas for Digipak This is my first flat plan idea that I had for my Digipack, the reason I went with this idea 'Dinosaur' was because it was similar to other names such as 'Animal' and outrageous designs that she has done before in the past. The reason I decided not to use this idea was although it was similar it was a bit too immature for what I felt she is like, the reason I feel this is that she has quite explicit lyrics to her songs so title would look odd in comparison. The inside of the digipack was similar to the outside, I used the mouth to 'hold the cd' but I found it quite over the top and again didn't think it was mature enough for the target audience. My second idea 'Shock' was an idea that I was debating using for my final result, it is similar to Kesha with the lightning bolt as she often uses it as her make up so the audience could relate to it. The reason I opted not to use it was that I could only benefit if I used a long shot of the actress, to show what it was about but, Kesha generally only uses close ups for her album covers so I didn't think this design was applicable. The inside of this idea was really simple, it would have involved just using colours and no picture behind it as I felt the digipack as a whole was quite simple and I didn't want to over do it by making it too extreme. This is my final design, the reason I chose to use this one was because I felt it suited her most, the title 'Z-list' I felt was a hint of what she thinks she is, she doesn't come across to be to full of herself that she knows she's famous, I felt this was a reflection of her. The make up I used for this was what I felt she would use, I adjusted the final picture itself as I didn't want to make her look too 'fake' but I still used the other ideas I wanted to. The inside of the digipack is quite 'out there' but still stays quite subtle, it'll just show her at a concert with all the audience looking up to her, the reason I chose this idea was because I felt it'd show the people buying it, how she would be in a concert. Final Piece Digipak Here are copies of my final pieces of work for the digipack, I went for the same theme continuing through the digipack so the inside and outside shared the same effect. I originally wanted to have the inside as a picture of a concert with a crowd, but I felt that there was no way that this would have been achievable as I was not able to use images of the internet and affectively I was unable to create this type of scenario, so I opted to simply stick with the same theme, although this is not really the theme Kesha would necessarily take, I used effects and fonts and colours that I believe she would follow. I then uploaded both of my final piece inside and front cover Digipack's on to the Social Networking site Facebook, where it would be viewed for everydoby to see, they reason I dont this was because I wanted to get a range of opinions and peoples feedback as to what they thought worked and what necessarily didn't work so much. Here were the results I got, These were the result for the Front/Back cover of my Digipack. These were the results for the inside of the Digipack.

Blog 14 - Shooting Diaries

I felt that all of the filming we done worked and went really well, we spent one day, filming for 4 hours straight and the following week doing the same amount of time. We felt this was enough time to complete what we wanted to. There were a number of hurdles we faced in the process of filming, our main one being the lighting, we wanted to create the atmosphere as if Kesha was at a house party and generally these would take place at night time, where alcohol and possibly drug taking would take place, the situation we were trying to set through out was that you see the effects of Kesha taking drugs but you don't physically see her doing it, by this I mean, we've used certain effects such as 'blurring' and 'handheld' camera movements during the filming to give the effect of Kesha 'hallucinating' from the drugs, from a distance and also from the actresses point of view. The main issue with the lighting was that it basically wasn't dark to show a party, the time we done the filming was during the day, but had to make it dark, so we had to close the curtains and certain doors to be able to get a maximum amount of darkness. Only after filming and capturing the footage did out teacher tell us that this actually worked really well, the lighting was enough for the actress to still be seen, and that if it was too dark that we wouldn't have been able to cope with the effects that we wanted to do as they wouldn't have looked very effective. Whilst my partner filmed certain shots/takes I would fill in the shooting scripts after each to comment on how it went, what worked what didn't and why it didn't work, I would say what shot was coming next, then we would swap roles so that we both had a chance to experience the filming and note-taking sides. After we captured all of the footage back, we became very confident that the final piece would work out really well, this was mainly based on our teacher giving us a lot of good feedback as well as giving his opinions on certain shots that we'd taken and how they worked and how in some cases they may not have. For example, we had a shot in the kitchen where Kesha is having a cigarette with herself, (formed by layering) where you see her sitting on the side, in the background you see the light coming in through the blind and it gives the room a really good effect, after our teacher saw this he gave us praise and told us that it was a really good shot and that if someone who didn't know had seen this they would think that it was an effect that we had used. So just his little inputs like that made us really positive that it would be a good piece.

Here is an example of our shooting script, this is an example of the first 6 shots that we took and the feedback that we gave after each shot, we carried this process on through out up until shot 10 where we began to improvise our video.

Blog 13 - Shooting Schedule

Initially we felt we would need to spend a few weeks filming and capturing the film that we wanted to enable it to be at a high standard, but we found that we were able to film the majority of all of our video in a couple of sessions.

The first day we decided to film was the 5th of January 2011, we spent 4 hours atraight filming, although we had to go over certain shots (sometimes a bumber of times) this was the day that we were able to get a huge chunk of our filming done, we were really happy with the results, but felt that certain shots may have been re-doing. We spoke to our teacher who advised us that the filming we had done was of a really high standard and was very impressed with the progress that we had made.

The equipment that we needed to use was;

Camera Tri-pod

Camera tape

Empty bottles

Lights

Props- Make up, shot glass, bottles, boots, bedroom, #

Before starting filming, we has to create a 'call sheet' where we had to take note of all the people involved in making our video go ahead, in this we had to include contact details.

Blog 12 - Health and Safety

Before we were able to take part or produce any filming we had to create a Health and Safety checklist, in this we had to point out the risks that we may come across whilst filming and also in the location it self where we could come across various risks. Before we were able to hire out the camera we also had to fill out the same sort of Health and Safety/Risk assessment for the college to make sure they were OK with us borrowing their equipment.

This is our version of our Health and Safety checklist.

Risks that may occur whilst filming

- Whilst the actress is taking part in her POV shot from the stairs with the camera, she may fall down.

- The dog may come into contact with the camera/tripod and knock it over.

- The camera may not be connected to the tripod properly so risk of the camera being too heavy and toppling over.

Problems that may effect filming taking place

- Parents may be in the rooms that we wish to use for the filming.

- It may not be dark enough for the filming to take place.

- The location itself may not be existent when we wish to film.

- Not everyone involved can do any of the days that will be put across.

Blog 11 - Storyboard and Animatic

These are our drawn/written versions of our storyboard for our video. We waited until the end of our project to complete this as we wanted our video to flow and be completely improvised as oppose to it being scripted and potentially the actress being quite stiff. This worked really well for us and also for our actress as she is a very outgoing person who fitted perfectly into this situation.

Blog 10 - Mise-en-scene

The house we will be filming in will be used as the main part of the video for a 'house party', it will include the normal props that are symbolized with a house party, such as music from a stereo system, empty bottles of alcohol, lights, a possible smoke machine to produce smoke, this will create the effect when filming of a party.

For our video we plan to use a friends house and swimming pool, this is because the house is of a similar size to one we would imagine to be used in the video. The swimming pool is sheltered therefore the weather is not really a concern, but the fact that the pool is sheltered adds to the effect that the owner of the house is wealthy.











We will have around 15-20 people involved in the music video which will be extras in the background dancing and socialising. They will be dressed in a similar style to each other, casual but formal clothes such as dresses and heels with standard make-up or jeans and top for the males.
However the character we will use for Kesha will be in a similar style to Kesha, so outrageous clothes and colours, with big hair and make-up for example in this picture;

The actions of Kesha will be along the lines of Kesha/Lady GaGa's themes, such as un rehearsed, random therefore adding more to the reality that it is a house party, this type of filming will appeal to the target audience as it will feel like they are included and directed at them.
An example of the sort of make up and clothing we would like is along the Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Kesha theme, all linked together as they all have and enjoy the same kind of style.

Blog 9 - The Pitch

In this section I will attach a link to the presentation that we had to produce.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLMWRmYzRhNDEtZGQ5Zi00YTExLWIyZTQtZTE4ZjkwZDlhYTY2&hl=en

This powerpoint was presented in front of our teacher and filmed for the examiners purpose. In this presentation we had to discuss; who our artist was that we had chosen to represent, quite a bit about them, for example how they started out, who their tartget audience was and how we would engage this audience too and a brief outline of our initial ideas and how we would go about creating our music video, including the mise-en-scene etc.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLNmJlYjgxOGItODcwMy00NWQ5LTg3MTQtNmE4NTM2YWExMjdh&hl=en
This is the video of us presenting our presentations to the class and our teacher.

Blog 8 - Initail Ideas

In this section I will talk about what I am aiming to be able to achieve and what I hope to by the end project will roughly be like.

A few ideas we had for our videos linked into various lyrics of the song. For example, we are hoping to be able to use a friends outdoor swimming pool and go along the lines of a pool party.

Here are a few ideas of the various features and ideas we would like to use;




The idea that we would like to potentially use is to use an indoor swimming pool, with lots of people in and around the pool as the lyrics to the song state; “Swimming pool, limousine, come on let's do it” the reason we chose this was because of the lyrics it is clear to see that the person has a wealthy lifestyle and the location we intend to film this follows this.

Another aspect of the video that we have is at the same location and is to film a house party including disco lights and music with empty bottles of alcohol to relate to the target audience.

A way in which this music video will relate to Ke$ha’s old videos is that they are of a similar production for example her music video; Tik Tok and we imagine that this video would look similar to something that she herself would produce.

Blog 7 - Copying an Existing Video

As an extra lesson in the week we are taught by a music video producer, here we have been taught how to use the camera and various aspects of it, as well as working in groups to produce our own version of the famous music video Teenage Dirtbag. In our first lesson we were taught how to use the camera, from turning the camera on and working right through every detail. We were taught/reminded of the various angles/movements you could use and also when each one would be used. We were told how for Health and Safety reasons to mount the camera onto the tri-pod for more steady shots. We were taught about White Balance and the 4 different settings; - Automatic White Balance (AMB) - Which can prove unreliable - Indoor Setting - Picture of a lightbulb - Outdoor Setting - Picture of a sun - Manual Setting Exposure; - Shutter speed - 1/12, 1/50 & 1/1000 - (This is the fastest) How to use the controls; - - Use controls to select setting - Bottom button = Shutter Speed During the next few lessons we worked in groups to recreate the whole of the Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag video so each group was given a number of shots to reproduce and each member took it in turns to use the camera etc. We had a main character who had about 5 extras included in each shot. During this time we were able to get a better understanding of how each piece of equipment works and also we were able to experiment what works in the video and what doesn't so that we could produce the video to the best of our ability. After we had finished filming our scenes, in our next lesson we were taught how to begin editing the clips we had made using Final Cut Pro, we were taught how to connect the camera to the computer using the FIREWIRE then changing the setting so it was on VCR/playback so the computer was able to recognise the camera connection. We discussed what format the PAL should be set to in this country, which we established was 24 frames per second. During this lesson we were also told about 'Scratch Disc' and what it is used for, the destination of all captured footage. As well as learning how to capture back the video and also learning that we coukd control the camera by the computer using the 'device control'. Now that the shots were captured on the laptops we then had to edit them, as there were many takes of each shot we had to do we had to distinguish which shots were the good shots and those that weren't so good, using a 'razor tool' on this particular programme we could select the slot of time that was of good work, so this was moved onto another track- track 2 -seperate to that of the whole video, once all the good shots were seperate to the rest we were then able to delete the poor shots we had captured. This is known as the 'Assembly Edit'. Here is our group video of the re-production of Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag; http://bb.sdc.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_654_1%26url%3D We also experimented with Timelapse, to show certain ways of the editing that we could do/achieve; http://bb.sdc.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_654_1%26url%3D

Blog 6 - Video Analysis

In this section of my blog I will analyse two different videos which fall into the same genre as our artist we have selected; Kesha. The videos we choose will include along the same lines of the 'Party' theme we are wanting to go for with our video. We will also compare the Representation, Narrative, Audience and also the meaning of the video.

One of the videos we will compare will be Lady Gaga - Just Dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Abk1jAONjw&ob=av2e

This video can be compared to that off the one we wish to produce as the video involves a wild party involving lots of people, loud music a typical teenage 'free house' party. It shows the typical representation of what the average person thinks a teenager is and what a typical teenager does. I think this has been done as a way of proving a point as such. The narrative of this video would be a typical house party with over the amount allowed of people there and where each guest wears a 'wacky' costume, this type of party you would see as for an older audience as you assume that there would be drink, drugs and sex.

The other artists video we are going to choose is Katy Perry - Teenage Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Abk1jAONjw&ob=av2e
This video also falls into the same genre as both the above artists, although they are not the same style video, the Genre of Pop falls into both. Pop music is made up of expressing love and aimed at teenagers. This song represents teenage love and the possible effects of falling in love. This falls into the representation and the common representation of teenagers are that they fall in love too easily and often get their heart broken. This relates to the narrative of the video, it shows a young girl falling in love whilst on a holiday, which relates to the typical stereotype of young people.

For both these music videos the audience is teenagers and young adults, this conincidently agrees with the fact through varios research that teenagers are the main target audience for both of these audiences chosen as well as others that have been discussed.

Blog 5 - Target Audience of Artist/Band

Whilst browsing the Internet to find who would class as being the target audience of Kesha herself, we found that on the social networking site of Facebook, Myspace and also Twitter we found that the majority of fans 'following' her were that of young girls, a reason for this could be that Kesha comes across as a type of role model and is attractive towards boys, so a young girl would idolise her to be like her. Also the music she produces is often seen as controversial and as the theory goes something that an adult doesn't like, a teenager would like for that exact reason.

The majority of Kesha fans fall into the socio-economic classes, Kesha targets the lower classes such as D/E as she is a fresh face to the music industry. I have done some research and found that Kesha has appeared on many front covers of US magazines. She has appeared on the front cover of the magazine ELLE, who have a target audience of mainly teenagers to middle aged women. A recent survey by http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html shows that on average ELLE sold 587,000 copies of ELLE to women between the ages of 15 and 44 on average only 152,000 women aged over 44 purchased the magazine. This clarifies my theory that Kesha has a younger target audience.

Another magazine that Kesha has appeared in is the US magazine 'Rolling Stones' she did not feature as the main front cover but she featured as a main article within the magazine.

Rolling Stones magazine has a wide variety of target audiences. The main age of readers are between the ages of 18 and 54, the group of 18 to 49 being the most popular at 10,262 people, this sets a completely different range of what was that in ELLE magazine, another difference is that in the Rolling Stones magazine the majority of people that purchase the magazine are Men. The socio-economic group that this magazine attracts are that of the higher class group A/B.

From this research I have found that the two magazines I have studied contradict each other, which effectively shows that Kesha has a broad audience.

Blog 4 - Permission

As part of the allowance of us being able to create this video, we needed to ask permission from the record label of Kesha herself and ask them for copyright permission. The reason this was essential was that if you use a copyrighted work without the appropriate permission, you may be violating the owner's rights to that work. Infringing someone else's copyright may subject you to legal action, including being forced to stop using the work or paying financial damages.

Blog 3 - Song Choice

In this section I will talk about my final song choice, why I chose the specific song and also talk about song we listened to but decided not to use them and why we thought we should reject them.
The song we have chosen for our final music video is; Party At A Rich Dudes House by Kesha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnG780EyeYQ&feature=fvst

Swimming pool limousines (come on let's do it)
Come on let's cause a scene (come on let's do it)
Cigar in the caviar (come on let's do it)
I'm pissin' in the Dom Pérignon (come on let's do it)
Now, come on lets do it
We're gonna do it now
Come on let's do it
Come on let's do this

(Chours:)
Woah oh oh
There's a party at a rich dude's house
Woah oh oh
There's a party at a rich dude's house
If ya wanna go
Then ya know oh
We're gonna fight til we do it right
So let's woah oh oh
Tonight

(Verse 2:)
No we're not on the list (come on let's do it)
No we don't give a shit (come on let's do it)
Dance til your pants come off (come on get naked)
Party til the break of dawn (come on let's do it)
Now, come on lets do it
Come on, come on, come on

(Chours:)
Woah oh oh
There's a party at a rich dude's house
Woah oh oh
There's a party at a rich dude's house
If ya wanna go then ya now oh
We're gonna fight till we do it right
So let's woah oh oh
Tonight

(Verse:)
I wake up in the front yard
(We don't care)
White stain on the sofa
(We don't care)
I threw up in the closet
And I don't care
Cause the sun is coming up
And oh my god I think I'm still fucked up
Get fucked up

(Chours:)
There's a party at a rich dude's house
There's a party at a rich dude's house

Woah oh oh
There's a party at a rich dude's house
Woah oh oh
There's a party at a rich dude's house
If you wanna go then you know
We're gonna fight til we do it right
So lets woah oh oh
Tonight

The reason that we chose this particular song was that we wanted to follow the Pop party theme and the culture of the present day teenagers who can relate to the song as they would also go to random houses with friends and people they didn't generally know or socialise with and this song gave us this capability.

Whilst looking through potential songs we came across a range that we felt were not really suited for what we wanted to do or the theme we wanted to take. These songs included a range of Katy Perry songs including Hummingbird Heartbeat, the reason we decided not to use this song was because the lyrics related to summertime, the reason we could not go forward with this song was because the timing of the recording would clash with Winter so we would not benefit from the flowers and bees as stated in the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUZGCN-F2wQ

Another artists songs we decided not t0 use were Lady Gaga's, we considered them with a lot of thought and thought they would be really good videos to shoot but realistically we knew it would become a really hard task. We also decided not to choose one of her songs Teeth, as we felt it did not meet the theme we were going for, we felt it had more of a rock genre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk5vRoc0_nk



Although we chose Kesha as our main artist, we did come across songs of hers that we felt wouldn't be appropriate and w0uld not give of a brilliant impression. Also it would be a hard video to film as we can't relate to it ourselves as it isn't our lifestyle. The song was called Backstabbers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACV005hd1Vs

Blog 2 - Exploring Music Video

In this section I will be analysing four different music videos and commenting on various parts including their; Genre, representation, narrative and also how long the video communicates a meaning. During class we watched an episode of Channel 4's 50 greatest music videos and were asked to go away and study the four music videos of our choice providing they all had various different styles etc.

The four videos I will be analysing and comparing are;
- Run DMC & Aerosmith - Walk this way
- Johnny Cash - Hurt
- Lady Gaga - Poker Face
- Sinead O'Connor - Nothing compares


Run DMC & Aerosmith:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-kYnCzHYHCpA/run_dmc_ft_aerosmith_walk_this_way_official_music_video/
Genre: Rap v Hardrock -
Rap refers to "spoken or chanted" rhyming lyrics
Hardrock is a heavy use of disorted electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, and often pianos and keyboards.
Representation:
Narrative:
Length of meaning:


Johnny Cash:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2341604/johnny_cash_hurt/
Genre: Country Music - of which is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains. It has roots in traditional folk music.
Representation:
Narrative:
Length of meaning:


Lady Gaga:
http://www.tu.tv/videos/lady-gaga-poker-face-official-music-vi
Genre: Pop - consists of relatively short and simple love songs and utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.
Representation:
Narrative:
Length of meaning:


Sinead O'Connor:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2cdyy_sinead-o-connor-nothing-compares-2_music
Genre: Rock/Soft Rock - a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1960s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll,rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music.
Representation:
Narrative:
Length of meaning:

Blog 1 - Introduction

In this task I will be working in a group, aiming to produce a Media portfolio of a Music Video.

This will include; 2 print items

- A cover for it's release on CD/DVD & a magazine advertisement

It will also include; a Music promo video.

I will present my research, planning and evaluation in the form of a blog using this source. As part of my AS course, my task was to complete the front cover, contents page and double page spread for a Music magazine, this A2 task will carry on from that and show development skills since then. Here is a link to that product I produced last year. http://elisaknight.blogspot.com/

This piece of work will be monitored by my teacher at various "CHECKPOINTS" which have been set in place to keep an eye that we are on course and aren't getting too behind with the work or workload.