Goat Videos

Goat Videos are the latest Youtube phenomenon. What it involves, is taking a well know music video and inserting a goat screaming (like a human) in time to the music. What makes the videos so funny, is not only the bizarre noises these goats make but the fact that you know exactly when the sound is going to come on, yet it gets you every time.

Below are some examples of Goat Videos (that haven’t been taken down for copy right):

Creating Film Posters

As an introduction to the second year of Media Studies, we are using photoshop to create a film poster for our first year horror film. This is the first time many of us have used photoshop so it has been a new learning experience. I have had to do a lot of troubleshooting to get to the stage I am at, at the moment. The photo was taken of our male lead using synthetic lighting and against a blank screen, this then made it easier for my editing process to begin. The idea behind it is, the journalist is using his job to hide behind so no one will know that he is killing girls to create the perfect woman. Hence there is newspaper print layered of his profile.

Below are some shots of my poster process. The first shows the basic image. The next shows with some text. The third shows it with new text and the image moved over to the right, so there isn't a huge blank space.

Dyer's Star Theory

Dyer’s star theory from oliviahawthorne

Keith Negus

We have been looking at Keith Negus, he believe that there are two ways of thinking about artists from within the music industry.

Organic Ideology

Or

Synthetic Ideology 

 Dependent on which ideology they follow shapes the type of career they will have.

An organic artist is someone who is natural (hence organic). They tend to have a longer life span in the industry. The emphasis made my the label is album sales rather than singles. They are often aimed at the older audiences, because they are more mature.

A synthetic artist is someone who is essentially created and molded into what the label wants them to become. They are only given a very short time to prove what they are made of, sometimes they succeed and go on to be massive, and sometimes they fall at the first hurdle. The emphasis this time is on the single sales, aimed at the younger generation.

In order for a big label to work, they must have a good balance of synthetic and organic artists. The profits from the organic artists, ensure that they can take risks on smaller synthetic artists.

Here is a powerpoint comparing an organic artist with a synthetic artist:

A New (academic) Year!

This is my first blog of my A2 media career! 

This year we will be focusing on the music industry and how artists are affected by it.
For me music is major part of my life, in the form of singing. I am a singer and performer so I would like music to be a big part of my life. When it comes to music taste, I'm a bit indifferent. I'm not opposed to any genre of music, except crunk...I CAN'T STAND CRUNK. I don't tend to rule out and particular genre, and I'm quite open to new stuff.

Personally, I love people like Katy Perry. Although she is super mainstream and on the outside looks superficial, if you look behind the whole candy queen persona she is actually an amazing person.

Just watch this documentary on her life, it's insane! She is such a trooper!!

I also do love a bit of Bastille and tend to sing it in the car with my dad. A particular fave at the moment is "Pompeii", that is a stable car tune.

I'm not going to lie to you, I am very musical theatre. So, if you were to look at my itunes this what you would see:

As you can see, the variety of artists I listen to daily isn't vast. I'm not ashamed of passion!

I am hoping that maybe this course will help me broaden my musical taste! (For the sake of all those around me...)

Audience Feedback

 We asked the class to watch and give feedback on our thriller, Paragon. There seems to be a general consensus on what we need to do in order to make it more effective, and it’s to do with the sound.

Most say that what their main issue with our piece is that the voice over is too loud. This is simply down to us not judging the levels right, but is something that is easily fixable. Others say that the voice of the girl isn’t particularly clear, this is something that we hadn’t noticed before. This might be due to the fact that we know the script so well as we wrote it, that we don’t spot it because we know what she is supposed to be saying.

Funnily enough, most said our strength was also the sound, specifically the voiceover. We had a variety of reasons why it was well liked, some said that it was humorous making a slightly creepy piece slightly comic. Others said that it built tension effectively. It’s nice to have our hard work on the sound look like it’s paid off.

When it comes to the story line, almost everyone understood that he wanted to kill the girl. The reason he wanted to, however, was not clear to most people. No one picked up that he was a journalist, but then again that isn’t particularly clear in the first opening sequence. One viewer said that he thought this was the plot: “Murder looking for his next victim, like Dexter.” Although he might not be bang on target about the fact that he’s looking for his next victim, I am happy that the Dexter persona shone through as it really was a major inspiration.

This exercise showed me how our product is viewed honestly by others, not friends saying “Oh it was great!” even if it wasn’t. Although at times some of the criticisms sounded stupid to us, it really was a helpful learning experience. I think our film making skills will all have benefitted and hopefully next time our products will be better.

Evaluation Task 7: How has your filmmaking progressed since the preliminary task?

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Camerawork:

In the preliminary task the camera work is very basic, simply due to the fact that we had little knowledge on types of shot and different angles. We were also instructed which shots to do, in the storyboard given to us. We made various schoolboy errors, such as film a shot where the reflection of the cameraman and camera can be seen in the window. Since then our camerawork has improved greatly. We are much more aware of checking that only things that are needed in the shot are in it (no reflections) and the variety of shots we used was larger. For example, we tried a birds-eye view shot over the desks – something that we didn’t even know we could do at the time we were shooting our prelim. We also used a mini track so that the camera could smoothly pan across the office or move foreword effortlessly.

                       Over-head shot

 <- Camera reflection in window                                                                                                                          

 Mise en scene:

With the preliminary task there was barely any mise en scene. We were told to have a piece of costume or a prop so we could create some sort of character to fit into the storyboard, rather than just two people saying lines that meant nothing. We had the Star Wars costume and a light saber; both aided it in creating a plot that had slightly more depth. In the thriller we decided to use a real office because it gave us easy access to all  things office-like, such as: desks, chairs, monitor screens etc. To add more character to the office we added extra props. For example, on the woman’s desk there are multiple trashing magazines and post-it notes all over the rim of the monitor. The costume was of more importance too; both were dressed in traditional office attire making their setting more believable. We used light much more effectively as well. Desk lamps shone in different directions, while the main office lights were off to give the sense that it was dark and after hours. 

Editing:

In the prelim the editing process was quick. We just threw the shots in without really thinking too much about precision. The editing was reasonably choppy and jumped around a bit. In our thriller we are taking much more time on the editing, because especially in our piece it’s where it starts to make sense. We have started using more complex effects, such as slow motion to add extra dimensions to our film. We have also thought more about making sure the entire cut links together creating the most fluid run possible. We have included text in appropriate places in the appropriate order of role (lead actors, followed by smaller roles...). Our final title of 'Paragon' was quite complex. We used adobe after effects and photoshop to layer some colour over the text. We also took a picture of cracked glass in order to create the crack through the word, paired with sound effect of a slashing knife pulled from Youtube. This holistic approach made our ending quite impacting and I think quite professional looking.

Sound:

In the prelim the only sound we had was the voices spoken on camera, plus some background shuffles and noises. Sound in our thriller is incredibly important because it is what implies the weird and crazy. In the thriller we use a voice over to convey the thoughts of the male lead, we recorded this in the studio post-shoot. This was a integral part of our film. As well as this we have various noises, such as a pencil scribbling, that have been heightened to have attention placed on it. . Something that we payed attention too whilst editing the sound was making sure that we didn’t have unnecessary noises in the background, like muttering or shuffles. To do this we split the sound track from the footage and deleted any background noise. This process took time but was definitely necessary and made all the difference. We used an effect on Final Cut Pro to muffle the voice of the woman, we also tuned down the frequency so it was at a much lower pitch giving it a slight grumbling tone. Our hard work and dedication to the sound payed off as we won an internal award for 'Best Sound in an AS thriller', this we were very pleased with.

Organisation

Organisation is key to creating a good piece of film. This can be shown very clearly between our two pieces of work. In the prelim there was pretty much no planning done. The only thing that we had to do was decide what we wanted our characters to be, and even that was done reasonably last minute. We got the costume together about fifteen minutes before our shoot began and the light saber was used simply because it was in the media room. We didn’t have to write a script or storyboard because it was all given to us. As for location we used the edit suite because it was an empty room and it was convenient. The organisation for the thriller was much more advanced. We knew exactly what props and costume was needed way in advance and we made it clear by creating mini mood boards and tables. We confirmed the location of our film as soon as we knew we wanted an office setting. We spent months on planning the storyboard, creating multiple drafts before finally deciding on the order of shots. However, we were slightly unorganised when it came to scripting the inner thought monologue. This was written only a few days before it was recorded. This wasn’t due to the fact that we didn’t know what to write, it was because we wanted to make sure that the action would fit the voice over. With the thriller we spent a lot of time researching other films and other psychological thrillers to get ideas and inspiration.

Group Work

In the prelim we did actually work reasonably well as a group and we all did a little bit of everything, but we did mostly stick to one role (I was directing). Whereas in the thriller we really made sure that everyone did and had a go at everything. We all combined our ideas making sure that if we thought we had a concept that it was heard and acknowledged even if it wasn’t heard. I do however feel that at times there were certain members carrying the group more than others, but overall we all worked hard and it shows in our finished piece.