Fully Edited Britney Vid

This is the edited scene that I participated in and choreographed.

And here is the whole final video from all the 2011 Media studies.

Representation of Women in Music Videos

Representation

Representation is the construction in any medium (especially the mass media). Representation is how people know and understand the world of reality.

Media does control us in a way. They choose what we see, they implant ideas into our head.

In music video terms the creator of music videos for example producers and directors pick aspects of reality and reshape them to fit with current society trends and will create a profit. This is how stereotypes are continuously used as audiences will recognise them and people know they will sell. 

Representation of Women

Drawing of early burlesque dancers

The current representation of women has been developing from a image of women as early as the 1800s. The stereotype of women was borrowed from showgirls of america in the begin of the silent film industry and Burlesque dancers.

Poster from early Burlesque Days

Another development of this stereotype has developed from strippers. Some characteristics of strippers are:

• Bra and hot pants
• Glitter on body and clothing
• Provocative dancing
• Heavy makeup

These aspects have easily made their way into the music videos, particularly in some genres. Rap and r&b, these genres are dominated by men and it is common for them to have women in their videos, some of them are actually strippers.

This is now become the norm. An example of this is the american show candy girls which shows how one women has set up a business by employing girls and they appear in music videos not wearing very much.

Candy Girls OFFICIAL TRAILER from Think Tank on Vimeo.

Beyonce

Gaga

Women are objectified. They are seen as passive and objects for men. Laura Mulvey has introduced the male gaze theory. "Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera".

Many female artists from the pop, r&b and rap use this stereotype as they (more importantly their record label) know that sex sells. Many examples of this are Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Ciara.

Mini-vids Update re-shoot

The weather was really bad today so the group decided not to re-shhot and postpone till sunday. Hopefully the weather will be better because the deadlind is tuesday.

Mini-vid Re-shoot

After looking at the footage some to the group got we decided that we would need to re-shoot if we wanted to be able to use the many different effects and tools in Final Cut. We just didnt get enough shots. We are hoping to film on Saturday.

Media Day- Britney Spears- Hit me baby one more time

Tues 12th July. Normal lessons were suspended for the media students and we were assigned into groups and each group was given a different section of the video to remake. My group was the car park group and it when had from 1:24 to 2:20 to shoot.
We had to first watch the video and deconstruct each shot and make a note of the camera movement, lyric, mise-en-scene and the costumes of the extras. Then we had to produce a call sheet and note the close-ups and what order we were going to film the shots. Then came planning the costumes and different props we would need such as the wig and a car to use. We had to decide what roles people were going to take, Roam- cinematographer, Rob- director, Asa- PM and Vod-cast, Kyle- producer and Myself- Choreographer it was also my job to bring the basketball outfits for the extras and britneys costume.


The day consisted of us starting with practice of lip-syncing and then going through a little if the choreography. Then we began doing a small piece for the vod-cast. After break we met up with the other group and discussed when we would be needing each other as extras and discussed if where we would be shooting. We began filming period 4 outside the main entrance. At lunch time i went to get some additional shots of a gymnist because i thought it would make our section look more like the real video. Some of our group were extras in the corridoor scenes then we went to film our carpark section as it looked like it may rain. One of the main difficulties was time and choreography, we only had an hour to shoot which meant that we didnt have time to look back an see if we got the shot we wanted. Also only having an hour to practise the dancing meant some people didnt get the steps down like i would of liked.
The car we originally wanted to use was a convertable but last minute changes meant we were unable to so we had to use our backup. Throughout the day Asa filmed footage for the Vodcast.


After we filmed we all went back to reflect on the day upload the footage and do a blog post. I feel the main problems were time and the amount of rehersal time we had. We were being rushed when it wasnt really nesseccary, and because of this we didnt use the costumes to their full ability. Also 2 members of our didnt turn up so we had added presure of having to do more things. Hopefully the end result is good when it is edited.

Fisheye Lens

FISHEYE LENS

'In photography, a fisheye lens is a wide-angle lens that takes in a broad, panoramic and hemispherical image. Originally developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation and called "whole-sky lenses", fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. They are often used by photographers shooting broad landscapes to suggest the curve of the Earth.'



This is the type of images they create.



Fisheye Lens is common in the R&B genre. Artists such as Beastie Boys and Busta Rhymes have used this lens as it creates distortion and they were trying to do something visual to keep the audience interested.

Prep for Media Day

Many things need to be organised before Media Day on tuesday or the day will not be a success.
Costumes- I am in charge of finding the white trackies and pick crop top for Britney to wear in the carpark section. Also I am bringing in 2 basketball jerseys and shorts for some extras to wear in the dancing shots.
Car- Our 1st choice is a convertable because one is used in the real video but we also have a backup which is not a convertable, this is good because it shows we are organised and are planning if things dont go according to plan.
Lip-syncing- We are hopefully going to be great at lip-syncing but we are going to practise in the morning.
Choreography- We are going to simplify the dance moves so that people can pick it up easy as we dont have enough time to teach everyone.
Fingers crossed everything goes well :)

Albainan Videos

In one lesson we were shown some music videos from Albania- This lesson was on codes and conventions on music videos. The 1st video we were shown was this one below. This video is not a typical music video as it doesnt follow some of the general conventions such as short takes and shot variation but it also does have an attractive woman and cross cutting which are two codes that are common in videos.

Another video we were shown was to look at how mass media can influence culters around the world. This video has taken on some codes from hip-hop culture such as the blig, lots of tatoos, being muscular and the use of guns.

The 3rd video shown was also to show how other cultures take on western ideas. These rappers live in NYC they have adapted their sound and if you didnt know you wouldnt think they were from Albania. It shows how countries like the US take over smaller countries.

Coursework Task

The Task

The task is to create a music video for an existing song released over 10 years ago and two ancillary products to create a package.

The two ancillary products we are creating are; a digipak and a magazine advert. 

Digipak definition: Digipacks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipacks 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 hold the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD - the plastic part is simply attached to the paper background. [About.com]

Marking

This is broken down into three areas:
Research and Planning: 20%
The Products: 60%- This is broken down further; Video:40%, Digipak and Advert:10% each.
Evaluation: 20%

Mark scheme

All three aspects are assessed as one of

• Minimal:     0-14       0-7        0-3
• Basic:        15-23     8-11      4-6
• Proficient:  24-31    12-15    7-8
• Excellent:   32-40    16-20    9-10

Total mark out of   40          20        10

Banned Videos

Censorship of music is the practice of restricting free access to musical works. Censorship can range from the complete government-enforced legal prohibition of a musical work, to private, voluntary removal of content when a musical work appears in a certain context.

• Blanking; when the volume is muted for all or part of the word.
• Bleeping; playing a noise, usually a "beep", over all or part of the word.
• Resampling; using a like-sounding portion of vocals and music to override the offending word.
• Resinging; Replacing a word with a more appropriate word.
• Backmasking; taking the offending word and reversing the audio, sometimes the whole audio is reversed (often because it is a home-made job), but more usually only the vocal track is reversed.
• Repeating; repeating the word just said before the explicit word was used.
• Skipping; deleting the word from the song without a time delay.
• Echo; instead of saying a word, it echoes the last word(s) said in the line.
• Disc scratching; in hip hop, scratching on the word, making it sound like another word, or make the word said faster or slower.
• RoboVoicing; making the word totally non-understandable by overpowering a robovoice effect (usually used as a last resort for home-made jobs).
• Distorting; Usually in Hip-Hop, less offensive words are distorted. It is usually done by shifting down the pitch.

A well-known artists that has has some of thier videos banned is madonna;

Madonna, USA - Several videos banned and attempted boycott (usually by religious groups) of several of her concerts (such as her visits in 1990 and 2006 to Rome, her visit in 2006 to Russia, her visits in 2009 to Poland and Bulgaria, etc.). When American television network NBC aired a concert from the artist's Confessions Tour, the part of the show where Madonna stages a crucifixion was censored and replaced with images of orphaned African children (images that were part of the live performance involving the crucifixion, but which were displayed on the on-stage screens behind the singer).

Final Cut

Final Cut is the software we will be using when we edit our footage for our music video which we have filmed on the HD cameras. Final Cut is similar to software we used last year when doing our AS course, IMovie. This was quite simple to use and had basic functions for doing things such as adding effects. Final Cut is different to IMovie as it is more complex. It gives you the ability to do more things with your footage such as cropping, and placing two shots next to each other. Probably the biggest difference or the tool we will use most is adding multiple layers. The is placing different shots over each other and changing the opacity so they can all be seen.


When I first used Final Cut i thought it would be a lot harder to handle than it was. The basics are quite similar. A good point is that you have 2 view boxes so you can look at your whole thing as well as clicking on a specific shot. I think the video layers tool will come in handy when i edit my own coursework.


Some of the pointers I have picked up on:

• Using the up and down arrows will take you to the start (up) and end (down) of the clip. If you are using them in the timeline you can move up and down the whole sequence.
• Pressing the 'B' button will change the mouse to the cut tool (razor blade) which is a helpful short cut, 'A' takes you back to pointer tool.
• clicking on the snap tool is very useful when you are inserting clips as the automatically fit right next to the previous clip. It also helps when you are layering clips and want to cut to the end of the the layer. 
• Pressing the delete button to delete a clip will move all the other clips up.
• To select a certain part of the clip to select and in point 'i' and out point 'o'

Im defiantly going to find all these helpful for when i edit my own. 

Also have i brief look at the effect i can use. The fade in and out and cross fade are going to be use in my video as well as blurring the image or desaturating.

The Brief

Brief

Create a music video of our choice (around 2-4 mins would be ideal) using HD Digital Camcorders to film and Final Cut to edit. We also need to create a "Digipack" (a digipack is a card cover for a CD) and we will then advatise our music video in a Magazine.

Creating a mini-vid: Madness- one step beyond

My group was Harry, Asa, Kyle and Emily. We were given a choice of 3 songs and we chose Madness- One step beyond. Our task was to come up with at least a 30 second clip of an idea for the video. This task is to give us a chance to use the HD cameras but also so have a practise at coming up with an idea, planning and developing the idea, shooting it and then editing it.


Our idea was to focus on one man/boy who was outside in a city or town and an incident to occur with another person (male or female) and then this person begins chasing them. This then starts of a chain and then other people being joining in the chase. We also wanted to have cut away shot to different people tapping in time to the music. The idea was to be in black and white to give it an old feel a member of our group came up with a good comparison to Charlie Chaplin who was an old slapstick comedian.


We decided we want to use Ilkley town as our location as it is where most of our group live. Also Ilkley to is busy on a weekend which is when the group plans to film. We are hoping to use our cast members and then hopefully get some extras to film.