A2 Media Coursework: December 2010

Research

B-eat

For my research i have been looking at the website B-eat, this is the link to get onto the homepage: B-eat Homepage

This website had a huge effect on my music video and what was included in it, there are some very powerful stories on here that are all true, there are stories on this website about real people's experiences, some that are quite upsetting, here is a link to a few of the stories that have all had some impact on my music video:

Dove campaign for REAL women

Throughout research i have found out more about the dove advert, this is such an interesting story. Here is the link to a dove advert: Dove- Deodorant advert

This 33 second video manages to send across the message that they are trying to get REAL women to star in their adverts, i think that this is a very good thing to be doing without any editing or airbrushing, because all the adverts that do use these 'cheating' methods send across the wrong message. The message they Dove are trying to get across is to celebrate and accept 'the natural physical variation embodied by all women' and they intend to 'inspire women to have the confidence to be comfortable with themselves and the way that they look'.

I have found a campaigning video that Dove has done to show how we can be fooled by editing and airbrushing, even make-up!- Dove- Evolution. I think that this is a really strong message that they are trying to get across to us because when we see people like this (the end result) we believe that they actually look like this when in face they look very different to this, it is almost becoming normality for us to be seeing women and models looking like this and we don't even think about what they look like before they have had all the make-up on and before the pictures have been edited.

Social networking

I created a status asking my friends on the social networking site of 'Facebook' to find out what they would like to see in my music video.

These are the results that i received...

Megan Barrett If i were to make a music video about how a girl feels about herself, what type of things would you expect to see on it?

3 hours ago · · Comment

- Tom Kingwell how about having someone dancing? in the dance studio,
  then having someone singing somewhere else or in the dance studio, but
  not really there, if you get what i mean?
  
  3 hours ago ·
- Anna Moore is this girl meant to be insecure? like whats the character of
  her then u can determine what u would expect to see
  
  3 hours ago ·
- Megan Barrett Yeah insecure about what she looks like so she does
  things to see if it makes her feel any better, like stops eating and things
  like that...
  
  3 hours ago ·
- Anna Moore u could do a scene where she eats loads and then makes
  herself sick. then maybe a scene where shes looking in mirror and maybe
  have written on it in lipstick why am i so ugly with the girl crying looking
  at it. scene trying on loads of clothes to feel comfortable but just ends up
  crying. that any help?
  
  3 hours ago ·
- Anna Moore oh any maybe looking at media looking through magazines
  at perfect models and actresses.
  
  3 hours ago ·
- Olivia Deen umm maybe loadsa make up etc just to cover up the
  real her... cus i know a lot of people like that :)
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Arianne Williams
  
  havent read all the other comments so this might be the same...
  if shes insecure do shots of her with something symbolising how
  shes different, and of her friends looking "normal" make up and
  clothes is probably a good thing to look at.
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Lauren Mcmahon her with lots of make up on and then none to like
  show differant sides of her wiv (confident) and without (insecure) her
  makeup!
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Arianne Williams ooh and i like the magazines idea, do something with that :)
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Ella Robinson I haven't read all comments but a nice shot idea would
  be maybe a street full of people walking and then her just standing
  there, you could even speed up the people walking. So that she is
  invisible ??? Or have her looking in the mirror and the reflection back
  in the mirror changes due to how she feels?? x x x x
  
  2 hours ago ·
- Milly Harding Do it on her trying to find herself, trying different styles
  of fashion in a mirror doing poses, emo, punk, chav, posh, you name
  it and at the end she sees she is happy just the way she was. Shows that
  you're trying to show in a music video to be happy with yourself rather
  trying be some one else. Videos these days make people want to be rich,
  pretty, skinny..... Etc which you can say is making a bad example. X
  
  3 minutes ago via Facebook Mobile ·
- Milly Harding Make sure she starts insecure x
  
  2 minutes ago via Facebook Mobile ·

I found that doing this was a very good way of finding out what people would want to see within my music video, as there is a few suggestions that i think would portray my idea well i will be using these, for instance having the girl looking through a load of fashion magazines, having the girl look at herself in the mirror with things written on it and another thing that i liked was having the girl standing in the middle of a load of people walking past, i think this is a really good idea because it gives off the image that she is almost invisible to everyone else and she is trying to get herself seen by everyone that is walking past her.

Filming diary

Date	What filming I did
11^th December 2010	Today I filmed words from the song that im using (The voice within) using different things to represent the words, for instance the word ‘fall’ within the song I represented by writing ‘fall’ on an egg, then filming me dropping it and it landing on the concrete, this seemed to work very well and I really wanted to out it in my music video but when I uploaded it onto my video I had to speed it up quite a lot and it didn’t really work with the genre of the song as it quite a slow song. Another thing that I filmed today was the word ‘cry’ written on a piece of paper in glitter, I then got my friend to blow it away. At first this seemed like a really good and effective idea but when it came to doing it, it really didn’t work as there was too much wind and when my friend was blowing it away you could see her within the camera.
20^th December 2010	Today I filmed the title of the song using different things to represent the words, I used different things like broken up plastic cutlery- this was to represent the fact that my music video is all about eating disorders and not liking the way that people look to themselves. Another thing that I used was jewellery- this represented people wearing different thing than they normally do to make themselves look better and so that they think that they will fit in better if they look different to how they did previously.
2^nd January 2011	Today I filmed my friend Harriet (my actress) trying to eat some marmite on toast in the setting of my dining room, the footage shows her taking a bite of it and then pushing the plate away because she just cant face eating it. This bit is all about her wanting to eat it but knowing that she doesn’t fit in and hearing that they way that the models and people in the media loose weight is to not eat she doesn’t like eating.
13^th January 2011	I filmed Amelia (my acting singer) today for the first time, I think that it went really well apart from the fact that the lighting was too dark and you couldn’t really see her facial expressions, this is a problem to me because I want my audience to see what she looks like so that they can try and relate with the words that she is trying to get across.
25^th January 2011	I filmed Harriet again today, I think that it all went really well and I have used quite a lot of the footage that I filmed, for example- her looking at the magazines on my bed, her smoking outside, the E A T in the kitchen and her walking up the stairs. I really like this footage because I feel that people that don’t like the way that they look do this kind of stuff every day, so it is looking at the normality side of things, but also knowing that they are bad things.
29^th January 2011	I filmed Harriet sitting on the bench today. I wanted her sitting on a bench in the sunlight because it says in the sun ‘soon you’re gonna see a brighter day’ so I wanted to make sure that I had some filming in the daytime outside as a lot of my filming is done inside and at night.
3^rd February 2011	Today I filmed Amelia again and got all the footage that I wanted and needed, there was one problem when I uploaded it though and that was that some of the movements of her mouth didn’t fit with the words to the song, this forced me to do a lot of editing, it took a long time to get it right but I got there in the end and I am happy with the way that it looks.
10^th February 2011	After today I will not need to do anymore filming as I have now got all the footage that I need. Today I filmed Harriet (again) at my house, the things that I filmed her doing that I have used in my film are her ripping the posters off the wall, her trying on different clothes to see what she feels best in and her doing her make-up.

Storyboard

^^This is my storyboard ^^

I think that i have stuck by this very well as you can see within this that my music video follows this pretty much exactly, i am glad that i did a story board and that i stuck to it because i am very happy with my final product.

I stuck to this pretty much exactly other than changing the order of some of my slides around.

Distribution

The record company that i am going to be signed to is J records, this is a link to their homepage: J Records, this is a huge recording company, i would want to be signed by this company because they are very well known and they have signed many famous artists, i think i would fit in well with the people that they have signed because they are mostly R&B and Pop singers, and i believe that this type of song (The Voice Within-Christina Aguilera) fits into that R&B/Pop category.

My music video will mainly be shown on the music channel FLAVA and Kiss, this is because from watching these usic channels their preferred genre of music of R&B, and because i think that this song fits into this category, i think it would be best shown on these music channels. After it has been played and viewed many times on these music channels i hope that it slowly fills into other music channels like VIVA, 4music and MTV.

Another thing is that it will be available to download on iTunes, this will also be a good thing for my music to be sold from because it is so well known.

Thursday 9 December 2010