Week 8 - Group: Animatic

The animatic should be embedded and the following questions addressed as a group response: Please ensure you use bullet points:

1.What was your individual contribution to the storyboarding and animatic task?
2.What have you learned from completing this process in terms of, camera - distance, movement and angle; editing - duration and transitions; sound - relationship between lyrics/sound and visuals, emotional colouring; Mise en scene - locations, character blocking?
3.How else has this process helped the development of your concept?
4.How was this task more complex/different from the same task at AS?

Week 5 - Preparing the Pitch

Include the following slides:

• Link to track with comments on emotional colouring, grain of voice, initial ideas
• Genre of track and some explanation of conventions
• Themes and ideology
• Treatment
• Detailed breakdown of track including lyrics
• Location reccies
• Characters and cast
• Costume and props
• Visual effects and lighting
• Shot ideas
• Storyboard including first and last shot
• Advert ideas and mock up
• Digipak ideas and mock up
• Challenges

Analysis of Promotional Campaign - Deadline: Monday 21st September - 6pm (13A)

For this task you need to analyse three music videos and one digipak and one magazine advert. One of the music videos is off an album and you will need to find an image of the album cover (digipak) and a magazine advert promoting the album. Use the framework in the booklet for analysing the three music videos. Cover all six areas but apply two only to each music video. Analyse both print products using the separate framework on the next page of the booklet. An example of a promotional campaign with a music video and digipak and advert would be:

Moodboard - Individual response

Decide what is going to be the focus of your primary research.  It could be investigating the metanarrative of an artist you are considering for your track.  It could be that you are deciding on genre and need to look at content and style of promos from a range of artists more thoroughly.

Share your ideas with your group and ensure that you are each doing different research which is useful in pushing your planning forward.

Complete the task in prezi.  This enables you to embed videos from the artists and include stills, examples of print work and captions.  It is also a way of making the blog more multi-media. Use terminology and show engagement with the task.

When you have completed the task, embed it on the blog as an individual post.  Then look at your colleagues' moodboards and post a comment saying how you found their contribution useful.

The power of the video / print promo package... Justin Bieber

1. How does a music video provide a platform for an artist to reinvent himself/herself to a target audience?
2. In what way can the CD cover design contribute to this process?

Justin Bieber is  currently in the middle of a 'come-back' campaign.  Look at how the promotional material (subsidiary media texts) is crucial in re-positioning his star image and post a group analysis on the blog.   As a group:

Watch the two videos and analyse two CD covers.  Consider each element separately - using the questions in the booklet to frame your analysis.  Then, analyse the collective promo package and it contributes to the artist's meta-narrative. Use narrative frameworks, Dyer, semiotics as tools to help you.

You will be assessed on the following:

1. Ability to work as a group to organise and complete the task
2. Perceptive analysis of how print and moving image constructs meaning
3. Use of critical theory
4. Use of ICT in presenting the task on the blog

Deadline:  this work should be up on a group blog, along with your individual contributions (holiday work, Term 6 work) by 8pm Tuesday.  You have lesson and HW time to do so.  If you work effectively as a group, this is more than manageable.

Research tasks for summer holidays - due first lesson back.

The holiday tasks will give your contribution to group discussion in the first lesson back. They will also be an individual blog post. To recap, you should all have the following documents ready to upload to the new group blog - planning for the music video and print production: 1. Comparison of two music videos. 2. Digipak - front pane using Photoshop with supporting comments 3. Initial track ideas. HOLIDAY TASK: Find three contemporary tracks which do not have a music video. Post a link for each one. Underneath each link bullet point ideas you have on how to visualise the track. 4. Inspirational music videos. HOLIDAY TASK: Find three. post links. Underneath each link, bullet point style, narrative, performance features which you think your group could try to emulate.

12B - how is meaning constructed in videos?

Consider how meaning is constructed in some of the following videos, using your reading from Archer's article and using the framework of semiotics to deconstruct the signifiers:

12A - Applying narrative theory to a music video

Now that you have considered how approaches to narrative reveal repetitious and recognisable narrative structures in your film openings, apply the same concepts to music videos.  Watch the videos below and choose a narrative theory to apply.  Does this reveal that these music videos are experimental in their approach to storytelling, or do they use familiar and recognisable structures, despite the lack of dialogue?

Task 2 - Semiotic analysis and representation

1) What visual signifiers are encoded in the video? 2) What ideologies are being constructed?

Welcome back everyone! Post 1: Key features of a music video

Andrew Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory, 1992 stated that typical music videos have the following features:

1. Genre characteristics
2. A relationship between lyrics and visuals
3. A relationship between sound and visuals
4. A high proportion of close ups
5. Visual motifs
6. Notion of looking
7. Intertextual references

To test this theory, analyse your own choice of music video below (looking at page 47 of the booklet and the writing frame in shared area if you need it).

1) What is the genre of the track and what typical conventions are evident in the music video?
2) What is the relationship between lyrics and visuals?  Give three specific examples from the video.
3) What is the relationship between music and visuals?  Give two specific examples.
4) What is the proportion of CUs to other camera distance shots in the video?  What other shots are prominent or significant?  What are the CUs framing?
5) Does the artist have any visual motifs?  If so, what are the connotations?
6) Is there any notion of looking present?  Where?
7) Is the video voyeuristic?  Is it fetishistic?  Why do you think that is?
8) Are there any intertextual references to film, news, tv programmes, art, other music videos?
9)  Is the video primarily performance, narrative or concept based?  If a mix of two or more, what are the proportions?  What is the relationship between the two different sections?
10)  Does the video conform to Goodwin's theory?  Explain.
In addition: What visual effects are employed?  Is this typical of the artist?  What would you say about their style?