Analysing a digipak..

Here is our practice stop animation video we made in order to prepare for the final one. We will make this for the introduction of our song.

Digipak

Features-

Digipaks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipaks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that holds the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD. The plastic part is simply attached to the paper background.

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.

Bands and labels like to use them for aesthetic reasons. The three section digipack sleeves opens up more design options because there is more room. However, they're more expensive than traditional liner notes and jewel cases. Digipaks can also be more environmentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper and much less plastic is used. They aren't however always made in this way.

History-

IMPAC Group, Inc. originally owned the Digipak trademark. That company was acquired by MeadWestvaco (MWV) in 2000 and folded into its AGI Media division. Following this acquisition, the Digipak name and designs were licensed to manufacturers around the world. As the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic "digipack" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

In Monday's lesson me and Beste planned to meet up on Thursday during our free period to work on our stop animation, which we want to use for the introduction of our music video. We made a check-list of all the props and equipment we needed so that we would be organised for shooting. We managed to produce a really sweet layout for the animation we worked on, as we had the idea of using our different locations as the theme for each animation. For example the one we worked of consisted of balloons and shells, with blue material around the outside as the sea, as one of our locations is at the seaside. Our stop animation consisited of the balloons floating around in the middle and the shells twirling around the edges. We uploaded the photos onto imovie in yesturdays lesson and noticed that because we didn't use a tripod to hold the camera still, the pictures were quite jerky when we put them together. We also noticed that we will have to make each movement of the object bigger so that it looks more like they are moving. We've decided that we want to re do this as we feel it will work much better now that we've had a practice, and I have also come up with a few more ideas which I will share with beste on Monday!

Here are some pictures of our storyboard which we have finally managed to complete..

 

Etc etc...

Last year we didn't spend as much time creating a story board, we just wrote a list rather than writing in details such as the location. Obviously this year it was even more important to create a detailed storyboard, breaking it up shot by shot, as we have to make sure everything fits in time with the lyrics.

Last night I watched a film called Easy A, and Aly Michalka, one of the singers from our music video, happened to star in it. I was really shocked to see her as an actress as i only ever knew her as a singer. I thought it was a really good film, it had a lot of famous people in it including Lisa Kudrow (pheobe from Friends) Amanda Bynes, Emma Stone etc.

Here is a trailer from the film..



Here is a scene with Aly Michalka..



It had some really humorous moments throughout the film, which added to the chick flick comedy genre..here is a short clip from YouTube

Stuart Hall's Theory (Research)

Stuart Hall (born 3 February 1932, Kingston, Jamaica, then a British colony) is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall's work covers issues of hegemony and cultural studies, taking a post-Gramscian stance. He regards language-use as operating within a framework of power, institutions and politics/economics. This view presents people as producers and consumers of culture at the same time. (Hegemony, in Gramscian theory, refers to the cultural production of 'consent' as opposed to 'coercion'.)

For Hall, culture is not something to simply appreciate or study, but a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled."

Hall has become one of the main proponents of reception theory, and developed Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on part of the audience. This means that the audience does not simply passively accept a text — social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.

His works — such as studies showing the link between racial prejudice and media — have a reputation as influential, and serve as important foundational texts for contemporary cultural studies.

Hall has also widely discussed notions of cultural identity, race and ethnicity, particularly in the creation of the politics of Black diasporic identities. Hall believes identity to be affected by history and culture, rather than a finished product, he sees it as ongoing production.

Here are some pictures I took on our Journey to Richmix, archiving the trip.

On the train on our way to Liverpool street..

Arriving at Liverpool street..

Things we saw as we walked through London..

Here is a very typical London building, covered in modern art and graffiti, this would be an interesting location if we decided that we wanted to shoot some footage up London.

 Nearly there..

 Finally we arrived at the building and were each given a timetable of our day at Richmix..

Here we are entering the theatre where the presentations took place..

Richmix Education

Today we went on a media trip to Richmix in Bethnal Green. Here we were met by music producers and directors who showed us their work and gave us advice on how to make music videos. Me and Beste found this a great inspiration seeing their work and hearing about how they were made, giving us tips and ideas for when we make our own music video.

Our day consisted of many speech's starting with a morning session with Pete Fraser who is the chief examiner of OCR media studies. He gave us a presentation giving us tips on how to make a successful music video. He showed us a range of examples showing the use of voyeurism and the male gaze.We found that these codes and conventions are nearly almost always used in music videos.

Here are some of the examples we were shown:

At 0:20 we are shown the use of voyeurism where we see a frame within a frame (on the scopitone) of the artist looking back at himself. Then at 1:14 we are shown an example of the male gaze and how it has been used. We are shown this with the use of a downwards panning shot of the lady and her bare legs.

This particular video of 50 Cent's - Candy Shop is another example we were shown which uses a lot of male gaze throughout. This is presented with the use of revealing clothing, sexual innuendos such as the whip and the bath (two females pouring chocolate over themselves).

Voyeurism is also used very much in the music video for example, at 2.55 when the photo frame on the wall shows the female artist singing, again this is a frame within a frame.

At 0.36 voyeurism is used where we are shown the artist Jay-Z through the station screen. We also really like this music video as it is very snappy, various different camera angles have been used which are very effective for example, panning shots, point of view shots, zooming in and out, close up shots etc.

In the afternoon we were shown clips by Liz Kessler who works in the industry and produces music videos, followed by Corin Hardy who works as a music video director. I found it really fascinating hearing about how they managed to produce some of their work on such low budgets. 

Here is one of Corin Hardy's music videos. I love how we can focus on the emotion of the song rather than being distracted by tons of other things going on. Its a very symbolic music video, at one point we are shown dead birds lying on their chests, which could be symbolism of feeling trapped 'No Rest', as freedom and hope are connotations of a bird. However the bird in the video is death, so it could be symbolising that freedom and hope is gone. Also one of these birds was a black crow which has connotations of death.

Lately me and beste have been working really hard towards our storyboard, thinking up new ideas which have inspired us to get going and start filming. We have been looking on www.weheartit.com for inspiring images and have found a few which gave us ideas for shots which we'd like to include at some point.

Here is one which we thought would work well with our music video seen as it is about love making it relevant..(we'll try it and see if it works)

Primary images of our location..
Here are a couple of pictures I took on a day out to Southend which is one of our main locations..

This is the less busy end of the beach where there is plenty of sad, so we are hoping to film around here somewhere. This photo was taken during the day at around 3 o'clock, it happened to be a really nice day, it was warm and the sky was blue.

This is the other end of the beach, opposite to the end seen in the previous picture. This end has much less sand however we might chose to do some shots sitting on the ledges leading into the sea or even just sitting on the stones seen in the picture above. This photo was taken much later in the day, as it began to get darker. We have to be careful with the lighting, making sure we get there early, as we know it gets dark much earlier now.

Heres a picture of me and my dad just to prove that I was actually there!

This picture I took inspired my idea of having the heart being washed away by the sea as our song is about breakup.

There is a mixture of sand and stones down at Southend so we can experiment with different shots.

These pictures were taken on a weekend and not during a holiday period, this was a good time to go as there weren't many people, as you can see from my pictures, and so this would be a much better time to go and film, as we wouldn't be interfering with the public.

We will have to carefully plan our day, making sure we have all our equipment (eg camera, tripod, snorricam, flip cam) as South end is far and will not be easy to go back and forth from. We will need someone to take us there and back as well as a boy for some of the shots we are hoping to get, which we have recently storyboarded. We aren't particularly worried about the weather, either way we'll get some great shots, however we will take umbrellas to keep the equipment dry and warm clothing just in case it rains.

Secondary images..ideas of other locations and shots we've discussed using (recently story boarded)

We are hoping to go and film in either Broad Walk or Trent park, as we want to make the most out of the golden autumn colour leaves which would make some really lovely shots. It would create an effective contrast compared to to our location we are setting up with petals. It's symbolising time passing. We begin with the petal location which is spring, we then move to a summer location at Southend and then we go to the forest which will show winter.

As mentioned before we really liked the idea of having a pillow fight with the room set up similar to the photo below with fairy lights and draped sheets. The pillow fight is showing us having fun, despite the breakup. We want to represent women as being strong despite feeling hurt 'my armour was cracked'. The lyrics are basically telling the boyfriend that your nothing with out me 'your not livin till your livin, livin with me' and so us having fun shows what he'd be missing out on.

We wanted to make the most of the half term and take advantage of Halloween. Here is some footage we captured, as we want to perhaps use some of the clips for our real music video. Here is a little video we put together showing all the best bits..

Here is the presentation itself which we made on prezzi..

Copy of Aly & Aj on Prezi

Here is a wordle we made for our presentation. We filled it with bright colourful words, which we felt described the kind of music video we want to make, and the creative, young style we want to achieve.

In today's lesson me and Beste presented out treatment pitch to the class, and got quite good, positive feedback from everyone. Bellow is the footage of our presentation in order to show you our all ideas and research in more depth.

Here is a quick video I put together, just for fun, showing the outtakes from our prelim video.

Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features in music videos. They are:

- A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
- A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
- Genre-related style and iconography present.
- Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
- Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
- Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

He says that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song plus the artist. Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.

Many of these features are present in all music videos, depending on the genre of the song and the aim of the record company/artist.

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position.

The gaze is characterised by who is the gazer (viewer):

• The spectator's gaze: that of the spectator viewing the text, i.e. the reader(s) of the text.
• The Intra-diegetic gaze: in a text, a character gazes upon an object or another character in the text.
• The Extra-diegetic gaze: a textual character consciously addresses (looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall, the viewer.
• The camera's gaze: is the film director's gaze. The editorial gaze: emphasises a textual aspect, e.g. a photograph, its cropping and caption direct the reader(s) to a specific person, place, or object in the text.

Theorists Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen posit that the gaze is a relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the indirect gaze is the spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is unaware of being viewed; the direct gaze is the subject's demand to be viewed.


The Male Gaze and feminist theory:


In the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the "male gaze" as a feature of power asymmetry. The concept has been strongly influential on feminist film theory and media studies. In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Mulvey argues that in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze.

Beyonce's music video featuring lady gaga, is a good example of how the 'male gaze' is used in a music video. Both females are dressed in very revealing clothes, and use rather suggestive dance moves. At 2:54 Beyonce is crouching down stroking a very large gun (phallic object) which is sure to capture the attention of men. Also at 4:47 the camera focuses on Beyonce's body and cuts out her head which again looks at the male gaze and feminist theory "a scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body".

Genre

Genre

What is Genre/sub genre?

 A category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.

Genre we have chosen and why?

The electro-pop and dance-pop genres are the dominating genres of the year 2010 so far with artists like Lady Gaga, Kesha,The Black Eyed Peas, Taio Cruz, Usher, and Katy Perry topping the charts. 

We chose to do Potential Breakup Song by Aly and Aj not only because electro pop is a popular genre of music, but also because we liked its upbeat lively tempo. We felt that a more upbeat song will be more fun and dynamic to work with and so we feel that this genre is well suited for us.

What are the main generic conventions of a music video in your chosen genre? 

Background research:

Although synthpop in part arose from punk rock, it abandoned punk's emphasis on authenticity and often pursued a deliberate artificiality, sometimes using synthesizers to replace all other instruments. It owed relatively little to the foundations of early popular music in jazz, folk music or the blues, and instead of looking to America, in its early stages, it consciously focused on European and particularly Eastern European influences. Early synthpop has been described as "eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing", using droning electronics with little change in inflection. Later the introduction of dance beats made the music warmer and catchier and contained within the conventions of three-minute pop. Because synthesizers removed the need for large groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation.

Characteristics:

The lyrics often involve issues of love and peace, dancing and partying, or expressing and overcoming difficult emotions. The Synthasizer is usually the dominant instrument used in electo pop music. Electro pop music emphasizes percussion and rhythm with the percussion generally being a "kick" bassdrum with some variations on a 4/4 time signature. While the percussion is always done by synthesizers, it is a sound more typical of dance music and not the "beat box" sound typical of rap music. The tempo is typically around 140 beats per minute, but may vary.

Iconography used in the music video's of our genre? 


Electro pop is all about technology, connectivity, optimism and brightness. Lots of bold, vivid colours and graphics, kaleidoscopic patterns, postmodern art influences with bold colour contrasts, edgy black and hot white, retro kitch and urban chic all rolled into one bright and twisted style. Electro pop is quirky and fun, drawing on the surreal strangeness of artist Slavador Dali, and the intensely saturated pop iconography of Andy Warhol! We will see a huge amount of influence coming in from the likes of comic books, graphic novels and pop art! A lot of these features are seen in Aly and Aj's Potential Breakup song music video, with the paint splash effect and black and white colour scheme.

Is your chosen song's genre typically narrative, performance, concept or a combination?


I think that our genre is a combination of narrative, performance and concept, however our the music video for our song was all performance, there was no separate scene going on to show a 'break up'. When we come to make our music video for this song we are hoping to use a combination to make our music video less repetitive and more fun to watch.

Email..

Here is our draft for the email we are planning on sending to the producers of Aly & Aj. We still however have to find an email address in order to contact them.

Dear    ,
our names are Andrea Walker and Beste Bayram, we are studying Media for A2 which involves producing a music video for our coursework. We are both big fans of Aly & Aj and we love their music particularly their 'Potential Breakup Song'. We were hoping you would give us your permission to use the song for our music video. We have no intent of selling our video it is merely just for school purposes. Please get back to us to let us know if this is ok and also contact us if there are any concerns.

Many Thanks

Good Points:
I love the big beautiful locations, and her unusual yet stunning outfits. I also like the mix of coloured shots and black and white shots, it gives it more variety and makes it more interesting to watch.

Bad Points:
We were put off of the fact that we would need a male character and we didn't want to have to rely on other people to be available for when we need to film.



Good Points:
It's a nice song, tells a story through the lyrics, liked the wind effect and the location of the house with all the sheets draped and blowing around. Also like the shots when she's under a piece of material, something we could easily do in our music video.

Bad Points:
Nothing really happens, there aren't many effects and the colour is quite dull throughout.



Good Points: I love this music video, I think the locations are really beautiful, the light blue sky, the big red tree, the hotel room right by the sea etc. I loved how the light pastel colours contrast really nicely with her bright red hair it makes her stand out and makes sure that the focus is on her. I also like the moment when she is lying on the bed and slowly she gets further away from the guy, this looked really effective and went well with the lyrics 'distance between us'.

Bad Points: This would be a hard song choice for us as we would again need a male character at some point and obviously a big king size bed, preferably somewhere that looked like California since that is the point of the song. Its also slow and so less will be happening meaning that the location and costume has to be extra special otherwise it'll get boring to watch. Obviously we are limited with what we have available to us.

The reason we decided to choose Potential Breakup by Aly and Aj was because they aren't particularly that famous, I hadn't heard of them until a couple of months ago when we started researching for a song. We also both wanted to be in the music video and so we were particularly interested in songs with two female parts, and so when we found these two female artists we were quite excited, mainly because there aren't many. After listening to lots of their songs we chose the one that we both liked most because of its upbeat, lively tempo. Immediately we were inspired and started coming up with creative, fun ideas which would go well with the lyrics and with the meaning of the song. Another thing which we liked was the fact that the original music video isn't particularly exciting which is a good thing as we won't be tempted to do somthing similar, but instead do something completely different and much more creative.

Here are the lyrics for our song Potential Breakup by Aly and Aj..

Potential Breakup

It took too long
It took too long
It took to long for you to call back
And normally I would just forget that
Except for the fact it was my birthday
My stupid birthday

I played along
I played along
I played along
rolled right off my back
But obviously my armor was cracked
What kind of a boyfriend would forget that?
Who would forget that?

The type of guy who doesn’t see
What he has until she leaves
Don’t let me go
Cause without me, you know you’re lost
Wise up now or pay the cost
Soon you will know

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
living for me

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one
Oh baby please
Please tell me

We got along
We got along
We got along until you did that
Now all I want is just my stuff back
Do you get that?
Let me repeat that
I want my stuff back

You can send it in a box
I don’t care just drop it off
I won’t be home
Cause without me, you know you’re lost
Minus you I’m better off
Soon you will know

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
living for me

You can try, you can try
You know I know it’d be a lie
Without me you’re gonna die
So you better think clearly, clearly
Before you nearly, nearly
Mess up the situation that your gonna miss dearly, dearly
C’mon

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
living for me

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one
Oh baby please
Please tell me

This is the potential make-up song
please just admit you’re wrong
Which will it be?
Which will it be?

During the chorus sections we are hoping to get lots of different funky, lively shots of me and Beste having fun, splashing around in the sea, on rides, laughing etc.

Possible location..

In yesterdays lesson me and Beste started talking about ideas for exciting locations and we've decided that we really like the idea of filming at Southend beach and possibly on the rides in the theme park. We also discused the weather and we said that we'd go no matter what the weather, because even if it's raining we'd still get some great footage, rain would actually be quite effective.

I also really liked the idea of filming on the peer, I think we could get some really lovely shots.

We started coming up with lots of ideas for shots which we could get from the beach. When I was on holiday I drew a heart in the sand and I suddenly had an idea that we could film the heart being washed away by the sea since our song is about 'break up', and so I told Beste my idea and she really liked it.

Me and Beste recently went to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2, the very last Harry Potter film. The film shows Harry, Ron and Hermione's search for Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes in their effort to destroy the Dark Lord.

This movie is by far the darkest, and the most intense. The second half of the film was particularly emotional as we say goodbye to some brilliant characters who infact were a big part of my childhood. It was however a happy ending with good defeating evil, which was, after 7 films, a relief. One thing I found slightly disappointing however was how little the characters changed when we were shown them 10 years later with their children, especially Hermione who didn't look a day older, in my opinion quite a let down to the end of the film.

Overall I loved how the story and past events from the previous films all pieced together throughout the film, for example we discover that Snape did in fact have a very close relationship with Harry's mother, and we see Snape in a whole new light.

Here are some sreenshots from the film..

Neville Longbottem finally gets to prove himself as a hero, and stands up to Voldemolt.

At one point in the film Harry dies and we think that Voldemolt has won, however with the help and kind words from Dumbledore he manages to get back and finally defeat the dark lord.

The flames in this shot has connotations of evil, fear and death, showing that Draco's character is shown to be on the dark side, however throughout all the Harry potter films it seems that Draco struggles to know his place, I get the impression he doesn't want to be bad but wants to stick with his family and i also feel that he is a weak character terrified of the dark lord. I really liked the bit in the film where harry goes back to save Draco's life, and for the first time we see the two charactres come together flying around on the same broomstick, I think this was a really nice moment in the film.

The three main characters, best friends since the first day at Hoggwarts.