Change of plan!
In early December, Amy and I got talking about Deja Vu, and I expressed doubts in how I wasn't sure about whether or not our planned music video would be as successful as we'd previously hoped. I was relieved to find that Amy had the same concerns and we decided that perhaps we should change the song.

In our next lesson we shared our views with Sophie, and although she wasn't worried about Deja Vu, she did agree that we should change the song if we weren't all happy and decided on the song. We recognised that we all had to be one hundred per cent content with our song selection before planning in detail. One major concern was that 3OH!3 is male, and our group is solely female. If we relied on a lead and they pulled out part way through, it could dramatically affect our music video and waste valuable, crucial time. By choosing a song with a female lead, one of the three of us could be the focus of the video and there is no way any of us would pull out.

As Amy revised, me and Sophie searched YouTube for songs lead by female vocalists. We searched: Ke$ha, Amy Studt, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. We knew that we should pick a song without much (preferably any) publicity, and without a current music video so that we wouldn't be subconsciously influenced.

After listening to a few tracks by Taylor Swift, we realised that she was the artist for us. All that we had to do was choose a track that followed our criteria we'd drawn up prior to choosing Deja Vu. One track that did this is: Better Than Revenge by Taylor Swift. Instantly, we both knew that this was the one we wanted to work on. The tempo, pace and story line through the lyrics were ideal for a "live" performance and was open to a strong and satisfying narrative. We called Amy over, and she agreed with us.

For the rest of the lesson, me and Sophie then began discussing possible story lines for narratives. We had very different ideas, but they all were related to a main female character plotting revenge on another female character, ultimately for 'stealing' her boyfriend. As we kept disagreeing on underdeveloped ideas, we decided that it would be best for all three of us to go away and get to know the track, and form ideas of our own ready to discuss, compare and hopefully to combine. By the next lesson, I was the only one to have started due to the others having to focus more on other subjects, so I printed off sheets with lyrics and space to write and gave them to the others to save them having to take time to organise things. I then got cracking with my own decoding of the lyrics and transforming my subjective interpretation to realistic and creative ideas.



I decided to look at a certain section in more detail, as this is where the tempo noticeably slows down, so instead of having disorientating edits, this part needs to portray a little more cohesion and I hoped that planning it carefully would get this across. To include all the necessary information needed in a more visual way, I designed a storyboard.

PASTE PLAN WITH LYRICS HERE

After sleeping on it, I reached the conclusion that no matter how we did it, it would be far too confusing for our targeted audience, especially as it is all our our first attempt at a music video. I told the others how I felt and they agreed and said that it would probably be best to keep things simple to start with, and then build in professionalism through editing and swapping footage for new more advanced footage if we felt we were capable and it would improve our work.
For the rest of the lesson, I got another sheet with lyrics ready to write down all of our ideas combined to form our first proper draft.

The opening is what I'd planned, as the others hadn't got around to producing their own ideas for the introduction yet. The instrumental then, I'd figured out the timings. I said that we should introduce the "live" performance somewhere here so that everybody important is introduced early on, like in a film. They agreed, and Sophie suggested that we should have a narrative introduction too, setting the scene. Me and Amy thought that it was a good idea too, and said that we should produce a montage of footage conveying a harmonious relationship between the main female and her boyfriend. The editing should be in sync.
During the next lesson, we shared ideas. Amy had formed the idea that instead of there being one female plotting revenge on another, it would be one female angry at her split personality. Sometimes she is kind to her boyfriend and completely normal, the next minute she's like another person. I said I needed a while to get my head around this idea in relation to the entire song, so we said we'd continue next lesson.In my free periods I planned and jotted down my ideas whilst listening to the track on my ipod. I worked out the exact timing of the introductory instrumental part, and planned an general story line. I then began thinking about how to get suitable editing and camera angles in, and focused in on locations, mise-en-scene, costuming and colour choice.

Media Storyboard

Above is our completed lip syncing product of Moto Moto from Madagascar 2. We recorded and edited the footage for just 60 seconds, as it was purely a practice to use the program for the first time, though it allowed us to try out everything we needed.

The shoot itself proved to be an issue, we struggled finding a venue as we didn't know of any vacant classrooms in the school, so finding one was time consuming. When we eventually found one, setting up the camera with the tripod took time, as none of us had ever used either before. Next, we had to decide on the camera angles and shots to use, as well as any dance routines - we hadn't planned any of this at all!

From this task we learned that:

• In our real music video we need to facially over exaggerate every single word - even if it feels ridiculous, it's easier and more comfortable for the audience to watch.
• We need to record each frame more than once, as the footage we found was not always suitable - we had to go out and film on two separate occasions! It's better to have too much to use rather than too little.
• We found that we should be listening to the track at the time of lip syncing so that we're all in time with not only each other, but the track itself. We found that as we didn't do this with the chorus, the recordings didn't fit as accurately when we were putting it to the track.
• Every single shot needs to have been carefully planned, as we went out with just a rough plan and found that our ideas weren't developed enough to do everything without planning more. We need to consider: location, costume, actions, lighting (our lighting was very dark and shadowed, to an upbeat, content song - we edited the recordings to make it brighter, however this lost a lot of the quality), and most importantly; CAMERA ANGLES, before setting out to record.

Postmodernism.
A Background to: Modernism (the experimental phase).
Modernism believed in experimentation; it broke boundaries in the early 1900s to the 1950s that had already been set in a variety of art forms. TS Elliot, for instance, broke the conventions of poetry for the first time ever, at the same time that abstract art was developing and expanding - Tracy Emin for example, with her Unmade Bed image, as well at Stravinsky's music. Modernism was percieved as appealing to only the most elite (the most educated).
A Background to: Postmodernism (a theory by Leonard, consistantly modernising).
Postmodernism brings supposedly the end of originality. It involves sampling texts from different contexts and combining them in order to form new material - something original.
Postmodern material is often self-referential, as it wants the audience to be reminded of real life, and then become aware that it's engaged with a media text. The texts also use allusion to break any illusions of reality. In the early days of television and music production the aim was to make the text as realistic and lifelike as possible. Postmodernism, wanting to be different; tries to do the opposite to this. It used intertextuality regularly so draw in order to connect with certain audiences, rather than using an emotive connection from media to viewer.
Lady Gaga's 'Telephone'.
One incredibly influential present day example is Lady Gaga. The entire music video uses allusion to grab it's audience and keep them entertained.
There are:

• Graphics similar to that from Kill Bill.
• Graphics and editing genre-crossing, referencing film.
• Jump cuts are used as a reference to CCTV cameras.
• Self-referencing - Lady Gaga. "Told you she didn't have a dick".
• Product placement - again genre-crossing, this time with advertisements. Virgin and diet coke is used. The coca cola is infact self-referenicial as well, her fans will pick up on the fact that it's highlighting that Lady Gaga used to curl her hair with it as a child - strengthening the connection between media and audience.

Audience
The audience is perhaps the most important factor to consider when producing any media product, including music videos, as it is the audience that determines the video's success - or lack of.
There are two main parts to consider when focusing in on an audience to target: the demographics and the psychographics.
Demographics- basic information: age range, gender, occupation, income, married/single, living situation, etc.
Psychographics- what the interests/personality of the targeted audience are. ie. risk takers, conservative(don't take risks) trend setters, trend followers. What their image is and how it fits in with the product - the music video.

Audience Theory
In recent years a selection of theories have been devised in order to assist the media in understanding how the media itself works, so that producers can use the findings to their advantage, to unltimately dominate the media.

Hypodermic Needle Theory: this theory infers that the media is like a drug (ie needle). The audience are passive receptors - they do not think about what they're told, they just accept it. An example is in fact Adolf Hitler; he used the German media to influence his public against the Jewish. The audience take on the ideology of the media text - mass media, revealing that the media does in fact have significant power in influencing their chosen targeted audience.

Two step theory: the idea that media influences 'group leaders' or influential people within a given community is what the two step theory revolves around. In short; the media only influences certain people, which then "mexican waves" through to the rest of the public.

Uses and gratifications theory: this theory implies that the audience pick and choose which media texts they engage with. The audience have control and power; they have an 'active role' in making decisions based on their own psychographic profiles.

Effects debate: the Effects idea suggests that the media has a direct impact on the thoughts and behaviour/actions of the audience, for example when young children/adolescents have in the past watched horror films then attempted to imitate what they'd seen in reality. However, with no research having been undertaken, there is not evidence to develop the Effects debate, from a debate into a theory.

Encoding and decoding: this is also more of a debate than a theory. When a producer of a text uses codes to convey certain meanings but the audience decode them with a more oppositional reading, or with individual interpretations, who has more power? Who has more control - the media or the audience?

Reception theory: this theory opposes the Hypodermic Needle Theory. It believes that the audience is in fact actively involved, similarly to the Uses and Gratifications Theory, though it also insinuates that the audience constructs the meaning of the text. They ultimately create the meaning through the process of decoding - postmodernism.

Theorist: Roland Barthes: in his essay: The Death of the Author, supports the Reception Theory. He writes that the author does not control the meaning of the text; the audience does, and they can decode aspects in unintended and even oppositional ways.

Marketing
In order for us to expand our prior understandings of the details involved in marketing, we were set the brief to promote one of eight possible bands, invented by our media teacher, and; paired. I chose to work with Ashlie Bowes, to promote our chosen band: The Dynobots.
We were given a basic overview on what the group were about, and breifed that we needed to promote them to Frambois Records (a fictional record company), but it was only once we began planning our pitch that we realised how much work was involved. We thought about their:
iconic image
audience
genre
first album
influences
suitable venues, and
possible promotional strategies.
Then expanded each section, giving real, believable details.
We presented all of our work with a slideshow to visually aid our pitch, this was particularly good for unveiling their iconic image. We believe that we covered all the necessities and put forward a realistic and influential pitch.
THE DYNOBOTS

Group Meeting

In our own time our group got together with the intention of choosing a song for our music video. We discussed artists that we like and that could be suitable, and after a fairly long list we considered 3oh!3. We watched as many of their music videos as we could find to obtain a feel for their style, then began listening to their songs without videos. We knew that we wanted to choose one without a video so we wouldn't be subliminally influenced. We considered I'm Not Your Boyfriend Baby amongst others, but came to the conclusion that the song; Deja Vu had the strongest lyrics for a narrative, and had no expletive language unlike the majority of other tracks. We researched 3oh!3 (see the label 3oh!3) and discovered their iconic image which we now know we need to incorporate into the video.

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Yesterday we had another group meeting during class. We knew that it had been suggested that we try out a preliminary lip syncing task in order to get the hang of it, so that we have more of an insight into how it will work when it comes to doing it for real in our actual music video, as none of us have ever done it before. We should also learn the cans and can'ts of lip syncing which is useful to know before the planning stage.

As a group, we decided that we wanted something light, not very serious and with a change of tempo so that we could experiment properly. As Amy had originally wanted to do Dinosaur - Ke$ha we looked into that. It was fun, but after the second verse we'd all become sick of it and no longer wanted to work on it. After individually Youtubing songs (I looked at Beyonce, Eminem and Florence and the Machine) Amy came across the perfect track. It was fun, had a change in tempo and was quite 'tounge-in-cheek' which is ideal. It is Mono Mono from Madagascar 2.

We then spent the remainder of the lesson listening to the track, practicing miming to it, reading through the lyrics and compromising on where to make cuts and jotting our decisions down. It was very rough and we're not so bothered about costume or location as we're focusing solely on making the lip movements in sync with the track. So far we have worked very well as a group, although we do have very different opinions and ideas, we've all been talking it through until we agree or compromise.

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Today we got together again, although this time to focus on our main piece. We decided to plan a rough idea of what to do for the video. Initially we came to the conclusion that we would like:

• A narrative with the storyline linked to the lyrics, featuring the artist miming
• A plain, empty room solely for the artist
• Fast, varied cuts
• At least one section with sped up photographed stills

Next, knowing what we were setting out to achieve we listened to the song the whole way through, each mentally forming ideas of what we could do. The second time through we paused after each line and exchanged ideas. Most of the time they were actually quite similar, other times; one idea would outshine the others so we went with those, and a few times we disagreed so we kept talking until we reached a unanimous decision.

Some of Sophie's ideas stood out:

• Filming out of a car window at night, then speeding up the footage in order to create a blur of lights which should create a preferred reading of the main character travelling between locations.
• When the main character emerges from a females house after a one night stand, his clothes should be on back-to-front/inside out, etc for a comical effect.

Amy:

• Thought through the practicalities of our intended plan of having our main character jumping out of a second storey window.
• She also said that she could borrow some real police equipment and clothing from a policeman she knows for our 'officer officer' scene.

I:

• Suggested the idea of involving a seperate room for the artist, aside from the narrative in order to make the video more conventional and busy.
• Focused on the camera angles and movement in each frame.
• Organised the group during our discussion in order to make our ideas merge rather than clash.
• Am taking on the responsibility of gaining the use of a taxi for our 'cab driver cab driver' scene.
• I'm also looking into venues available for our useage that have a bar.

The rest of the planning stage was a combination of all of our ideas put together.

Oasis Album Artwork

Conventions

Oasis' first album - Definitely Maybe, adheres to many of the central conventions expected of album artwork.

• The band themselves are feature.
• The band name is positioned at the top left.
• The album's name is also situated at the top.

Codes

Every aspect of this album cover can be subconsciously decoded to reveal an insight into the personality and intentions of the band - this is evidence of a good album cover.

• Sanded down wooden floors, fire place, leather sofa, plants - all exposes sophistication and class. Serious band.
• Red wine glasses, BNH cigarettes and a lighter - in the foreground. These objects decoded suggest that the band do follow the band stereotype by drinking and smoking, however they go full out and do things properly. This reinforces the upper class tone to the album cover.
• There are however some more working class props merged in - framed photograph of a Manchester City player - this implies that Oasis originate from Manchester. They are proud of where they came from which is obvious from their feature in the artwork, and although the band are now situated in more upper class surroundings, they still remember their roots.
• The positioning of the artists - is also incredibly important. From this alone, the audience can tell that the man in the central foreground, the lead vocalist, Liam Gallegar, is the central focus of the band. He's lying on the floor. This could be to implant the impression that he is high on drugs, or that he is rebellious - a trend setter. He's lying on the floor simply because he can. He's the only band member not facing the television, suggesting that he's isolated himself from the group - a code for arrogance and originality. He is trying to be unique. The next most important to the band is Noel, the lead guitarist. He is sat up on the sofa, initially raising his status already and his body language is relaxed over a guitar. When decoded, the musicality focus of the band is highlighted and strengthened. The fact that Noel looks so relaxed and laid back implies that song writing comes naturally to him - exposing the high quality of their music. The other three band members are in the background. One is positioned slightly closer to the camera than the others, however he is sat lower down, whereas one is sat on a chair, the other standing up; equalising the three. It seems that these three are the least important and impressionable, in fact these artists did leave the band and become replaced which backs up the code.
• The fact that the band are watching television - enforces a sense of realism. They seem like a family, emitting personality and spirit; which is essential for a band to make it on a large scale. Their potential audience and fans need to be able to connect with the band in order for them to be successful.
• Globe - can be decoded as the band's intentions - world domination, they're 'aiming big', worldwide, not just a small thing. The simple placement of a globe raises their own profile. The featuring of the globe has become iconic to Oasis' album artwork.
• Font: Oasis - has also become iconic. The bold black and white font can be decoded as simple, bubbly, serious, down to earth, low budget, sophisticated - which is what Oasis wanted to be perceived to be. There aren't any capital letters used, implying equality.
• Font: Definitely Maybe - the scribed font reveals more of a personal touch and exaggerates the band's input to their music, they write their own lyrics for example.
• The ideology of the album artwork is trying to get across the idea that although the band members are doing well and are much more well-off than they were, they're still the same people. They don't want to lose their original Mancunian fanbase.

Conventions
Oasis' third album: Be here now, differs greatly to previous albums. Most of the conventions are in fact broken.

• The band name is featured to the top-right of the cover - as opposed to the left, showing that they're a little bit different. The font used had already become iconic by this point, so it didn't need to follow the conventions.
• There is no title on the cover. This implies that they're arrogant - too big now for a title. The title itself: Be Here Now, is imperitive; it's strong and demanding, overpowering, reinforcing the idea of arrogance.
• The band are once again featured however; following a convention of album covers. Thisis unlikely to be for the purpose of being conventional, but in fact for the pure fact that they want to be on the cover of their album: implying arrogance and self-obsession; which is more likely.

Codes

• There is a mansion towards the background, enforcing sophistication, and the dispersion of expensive items, eg. classic car, motorbike, moped - Vespa, Roles Royce, etc, suggests that they do in fact have more money than they can be sensible with. However, this isn't of course the preferred reading, the preferred reading would be that they are rebellious, unique individuals, and they have made it in the music industry successfully.
• There is a clock featured, though it has no hands. This portrays the idea that time no longer controls them. They're independent and manage their own time now: they're free - and the fact that they are outdoors with wide open green space and a blue sky, confirms that decoding freedom is correct. The clock may also be missing it's hand in a way that can be decoded as: time has stopped - it is their moment. This enforces their importance.
• There is a calender on the cover, displaying: August 21st - which is when the album was released. It's not neccessary, and unique. Oasis can do what they want now.
• The guitarist appears to be playing an extremely large key, once again reinforcing the idea that they are in control, in power, and of course unique.
• The greenhouse shows that they have much more money than ever before, they can spend it on really unneccessary modern items, but the abicus adds a touch of 'old school'. The director could have placed it there in order to keep the link between the band's original Mancunian fans and the band strengthened. The guitar, television and globe also add to the connection between the first album and the current one.
• The car in the pool presents their recklessness and rebellion - they don't care about or appreciate their money. They use it to pull big stunts, like this one, for publicity.
• The grammar phone subtley implies that Oasis want their fans to believe that they're going to be classics, like the grammar phone. They're going to go down in history.
• The telescope on the globe could be decoded as Oasis have to look through a telescope to see the rest of the world - they're so far above everyone else, they're 'out of this world'. All of this boosts their status just from people looking at the cover. The globe is also iconic to their album covers.