Wednesday 27 November 2013

Infographic Method of presentation

This is an interesting method of presentation used in The Guardian. You could use this same method for the following:

- key company/director presentations
- developing the brand of your artist (as part of the main and ancillary products)
- textual analysis
- as a visual representation of your idea for your music video

You can make your own inforgraphs using infogr.am (thanks to Danny for this!)

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Industry Research: Piracy and the Music Industry

You may wish to add a post about how piracy is affecting the music industry, what role music videos play in promoting music/artists but also how record companies try and assert their copyright and control of 

These clips may also be useful for the theory side of your course. You may have seen them before in your theory lessons.

Monday 25 November 2013

Make sure...

When you are downloading or uploading (if from a CD) just make sure you get a good quality audio recordiing for example you may wish to use 320mp3 or WAV/AIFF -I would view the audio quality (and this is the only audio consideration you have) as part of the editing/post-production process and it can affect the overall impact of your music video if an excellent video has some tinny sound.

ITunes downloaded formats are generally 256mp3s. This is the lowest compressed rate I would recommend. Anything else won't do your video justice!

Thursday 14 November 2013

Thicke Robin and Audience Theories

When doing your research and planning, you perhaps should look at issues around representation and possible effects on the audience of music videos. See the linked article from The Guardian on Robin Thicke's video 'Blurred Lines'. You could look at this in terms of audience theories such as reception theory, cultivation or effects models.

What do you think about the article/video? Can you link what you think to Stuart Hall's Reception theory?

Robin Thicke's controverisal video

Audience Theory booklet

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Downloadable templates for storyboards, artist contracts etc...

This site is quite useful for standard documents related to film making. Some of them may seem quite irrelevant for your film/video but it is a good piece of research and planning to show that you have got your performers to sign a contract etc...



http://dependentfilms.net/files.html

Monday 11 November 2013

R & P Good examples


Check out these good examples from your classmates!










Generally the blogs are looking blogtastic. Well done! Keep it up!

Remember: 
- try and always use media terminology in your posts: don't miss an opportunity to show off all of the key terms you have learnt in the past year or so...
For example, Harry (he's not the only one by the way) could apply Dyer's Star Theory or Goodwin's Ingredients of a Music video to this post

- don't forget about your ancillary products. You do not need to do as much R&P but you are expected to do some. Some ideas: 
-       a website homepage for the band;
Textually analyse a band's website. Look at how it creates synergy with their image and products, how it offers extras for fans (fandom) and how it provides a convergent platform for the current media age. See how band homepages are usually organised. You may wish to see how bands use music sales, promotion and network sites such as Bandcamp

-       a digipak for the album’s release;
Textually analyse existing examples; find out how much it costs to produce these items. Again, focus on synergy between the products and also how it may give fans something extra that casual listeners may not be bothered about. 

-       a magazine advertisement for the digipak.
Again...textual analysis and synergy! But perhaps also look at placement: which magazines are they in? Where on the page? What information do they include? How much do they cost the record company? When do they appear?



- remember to use a range of technology 

- start to move onto the planning tasks 


WORD OF WARNING: All of the writing must be IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Obviously some of the work you are doing as a group or allocating tasks; that is fine but at least attribute that piece of work to all of the members of your group. 

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Examples of music video blogs from OCR

Have a look at the following links and check out the marks they received. These are from the very useful OCR Media Studies weebly site - make sure you have a look at each of them and the marks BUT also read the short comments explaining why they got that particular mark.

Examiner feedback - check Andy and Sam

Andy Dennis

SamP 


important: by all means use ideas from these blogsites (methods of presentation/approaches to research and planning/ways of working/ways in which you may improve on this student's work...) but DO NOT copy these students' ideas. (a) It is plagiarism which is both unfair to the student and dishonest (b) As they are on OCR's official website it would be possibly the least effective bit of cheating possible!!

For your music research and planning, use your advanced portfolio checklists and if you come up with your own ideas and are not sure whether they are useful pieces of research and planning then check with myself or Mr Hudson.


Remember: All research and planning to be up on blogs by deadline 29th Nov (changed from earlier date of 22nd Nov)

Examples of marked music videos from OCR

Below are some links for recent music videos and the marks they received. I don't have the commentary available for those but you have included the marks for L1/2/3/4 and the criteria for L4 below. Remember the main production piece is out of 40.

Music videos

Level One: 0-14
Level Two: 15-23
Level Three: 24-31
Level Four: 32-40


Level 4

The candidate is expected to demonstrate excellence in the creative use of most of the following technical skills:

 
shooting material appropriate to the task set; including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot sizes and close attention to mise en scene

editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions, captions and other effects

recording and editing sound with images appropriately.


Where a candidate has worked in a group, an excellent contribution to construction is evident.



important: by all means use ideas from these videos (presentation/shots/approaches to /ways of working/ways in which you may improve on this student's work...) but be critical too - look at the weaker ones and work out why they DID NOT hit the criteria.

Blogger Help

Blogger confusion - PLEASE READ!!
There has been some confusion with blogger and how your site links to the main blog hub.
Hopefully this clarifiies it but if not please see me ASAP.

1. You should have set up your OWN blog site. You can do this by clicking 'create new blog' . Put your name, AS Media Studies Foundation Portfolio and your candidate number (if you know it). Do not post directly to our blog hub, this acts just as a gateway for us and the examiner to find their way to your blog site. Also this is where Mr Hudson and myself will be posting advice ang guidance and you can also look at each others' blog sites.

2. You need to make sure your blog site is not a google + account otherwise the link on our hub page won't take us or the examiner directly to your blog - it will take them to your google + page which pulls together all of your googly ways. You can change this back by clicking on the link at the bottom of this...
https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/1375600?hl=en

Sunday 20 October 2013

Useful website for music video production


Here is a useful website about music video making. It may be worth reading this, summarising the main points (and acknowledging the source of course...) and then having a meeting with your group (record it or video it rather than loads of writing) where you can discuss some of the decisions / issues it throws up!

Thursday 17 October 2013

Useful list of Music Video Directors


The article below is very useful for research into famous music video directors. I suggest looking at their work, how it got noticed, whether there are repeated stylistic devices or techniques and whether or not you may use some of these techniques in your video. This is also useful for the evaluation eg: We have taken some influence from Spike Jonze's music video style as we have incorporated various references to popular culture into our video.'




http://www.metacritic.com/feature/music-video-directors-turned-film-directors

Monday 14 October 2013

Top marks for research and planning!

Please see the attached blogsite for an example of a candidate that got top marks for research and planning. The level of detail is impressive but also the links to audience/genre theory and knowledge of the music industry and how it works.
Please note:
(a) It is for your reference and to help you with ideas for research as well as the portfolio checklist. Also her range of presentational techniqes was impressive although I would like to see more video/audio based research (recorded focus groups/more interactive presentations).
(b) Do not COPY her work as that is plagiarism - plus I marked it so it wouldn't be the smartest piece of plagiarism in the world!
http://amypiercea2media.blogspot.co.uk/

Tuesday 24 September 2013

How to do a YouTube textual analysis

Remember you should complete at least 3 textual analyses of existing products: music videos or short films (Danny). There are a variety of ways of doing this but seeing as all of you are doing moving image based briefs then I would recommend annotating a YouTube video. This quick video tutorial shows how to do it: it's so easy I may well do one myself!
Using Youtube for textual analysis

Sunday 15 September 2013

Welcome to the THS Media Studies blog hub!


Greetings student people! 

This will be the hub for your Media Studies portfolio work. You should be linked in the bottom corner, if not let me know as soon as possible. I will use the blog hub to monitor your work so it is essential that you are uploading/posting everything you have done. 

I will be posting information regarding deadlines, course information, practical tips and anything else relevant! 

You should be posting regularly and, as this Media Studies, using a variety of methods of presentation to make your blog suuuuuuper cooooool. Ahem. 

Please see the list below to find out loads of different ways you can present your work on blogger. Let me know if there is anything you want to do, but can't access here, and I will ask IT to unblock it.

Credit to Andy Wallis, Teacher of Media (check out his presentations on Slideshare) for coming up with this list.

No excuses now, be creative...