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.