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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Final Focus Group (2.0) - (largely extension analysis on audience feedback Evaluation Question 3)

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Further explanation on this is given in evaluation question 3.

Final focus group - knowledge gained and reflection.

This focus group was largely reassuring to us, in that most of the comments did not criticize our decisions to too much of an extent!

Question 1 - (rather ostentatiously asked): “What did you like about the music video?” Immediately followed by Question 2 - “So, what could be improved upon?”

A large amount of the praise for the video was due to some of the advanced editing that we were able to incorporate, specifically fade editing as the band appears in the shot next to Lola, then seemingly disappears a few moments later. Anthony commented that the editing could “portray a voice in (Lola’s) head”. This shows how we were able to expertly toy with the concept of the psyche of Lola and how gender corruption can leave some individuals feeling unstable or mentally strayed, to some extent. People also talked about how the urban mis-en-scene of Stokes Croft was extremely effective, and given that we interviewed the girl that first suggested this location for shooting, we were very pleased to hear that we had recreated the image that she had in mind effectively. It is worth noting though, that whilst the location devices in the mis-en-scene, as well as the “70′s vibe” was very effective at creating a strong sense of image; one criticism we did receive was that we needed to better our “makeup skills”! Whilst Zoe said this with a smile, we concluded that it was important as it must have slightly corrupted our continuity that we desired, in reflection, you can see the mascara not properly making an impact with the eye, so at times the video did lose some of its feasibility. A final issue we were made aware of was that, despite our attempts to stabilize some of our shots via the Warp-Stabilizer, a few of the shots still appeared quite “shaky”. If After effects tools were not sufficient to remedy this, in hindsight, we should have viewed shots on the camera at the scene of shooting and then re-shot. In colder areas, we could have used skin-tight gloves on the cameraman so that they could still make contact with the camera, but reduce shaking from the cold. An example is given below of the professional gloves with a conductive material, that I believe we should have invested in to fix this issue if we were to repeat this process.

Question 3 - “What did you think of the narrative focus?”

The overall feedback here was very positive, and one of the stand-out comments that I took from this was “you have shown the personality of the band, whilst incorporating a narrative”. This comment was very helpful as it provided us reassurance that the inclusion of the band felt natural in the narrative, where it could easily have felt out-of-place. By extension, it demonstrated that we have successfully followed the part narrative part performance format in general which is an intricate format for a music video.

Question 4 - “After seeing the music video, would you buy the album?” Again, the overall feeling was very positive here and people said that our media product would definitely draw people into buying the full album, meaning it was commercially successful (for reasons I believe were discussed in evaluation question 2). Anthony also mentioned here about ‘promoting gender equality’ in the school which I am fully backing to the extent where if I was to redo this task I would consider including some facts about transvestism in the closing credits so that there is a strong sense of morality in the music video. Otherwise, I feel it would be feasible for some audiences to argue that we have been insensitive by portraying someone with a very real conflicted sexuality and not explicitly supporting it.

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Evaluation question 4 - How did you use media technology in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

I decided to creatively take on the task of answering this question in the format of a magazine interview with ‘Director, Callum Waldock’ under the self-titled magazine “Media Excite Weekly” - with the article named: “Advanced Media Technology, feeder of arrogance or filmmakers commodity?”

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has been hugely influential in the decisions that we have made, even on the basis of our ideas to the recent critical evaluation at the end of this project.

Focus group 1.0

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Before we actually conducted any proper work into the script-writing or even storyboarding of our basic ideas we all came to the agreed realization that conducting a focus group out of a range of members who suited our target audience of ‘open-minded teenage middle-class teenage’ demographic so that we had second opinions on some of our basic ideas. This proved hugely helpful to us and it even literally influenced the setting of the location Stokes Croft entirely where we had not even considered this prior to taking the focus group. Specifically, within the focus group, when we mention how we are aiming for a ‘seedy’ set ‘artistic environment, Ann replies that Stokes Croft is “really artistic” and “less mainstream yer arty”. Upon further research, we realised that this example of audience suggestion was completely validated as it suited exactly the tone of this section of the narrative, that we intended to create. The below screenshot presents the shots that we were able to achieve, having followed Ann's advice:

The initial verbal response to our ideas also heavily reinforced our premise that a narrative and performance style production would be feasible for us a team. They all agreed that this would diversify the piece and bring higher spectator interest to the music video. It was also commented that ‘if you can link the two together - then it works’ and this comment heavily resonated with us as it led us to construct our idea of a band that is physically next to Lola but does not acknowledge her presence as a means of reflecting the metaphorical barrier that Lola has between herself and the acceptance she desired from greater society. The below screenshot presents how comments like this influenced some of the cross performance/ narrative intersections in the music video.

It is worth noting that whilst we did not receive any audience feedback in the form of criticism in our opening focus group (given that there was no content yet to criticise!) We did receive some ideas that we chose to deviate from entirely upon consideration as we knew that maintaining respect and by extension, not generating any negative emotive response in the music video was paramount when tackling personal identity issues.

Also of note here in the first focus group was the mention from some people of the importance of followability in the music video - in that the idea could become so outlandish that people lose sight of what we are actually portraying. This was almost accentuated sometime later when it was suggested that we could delve into a comedic genre with this because it proved to us from the early days of production that we needed clear mis-en-scene and shots that showed a serious depiction of a video tackling gender identity properly without any feelings of belittlement being passed on from us. An example is given in the below still from the video of some of the carefully considered shots/mis-en-scene we established to create this thoughtful image.

Initial responses on YouTube

The above comment was taken from the music video from an unknown individual and we found it incredibly helpful to us as it confirmed to us that we had completed some of our intentions whilst also providing us with ways to improve on our production if we were to repeat the task. Even receiving any form of criticism regardless whether it was positive or negative was hugely helpful to us as it conforms to the idea of the web 2.0 world where we have students have the opportunity to be regarded like a professional media outlet. The comment did inform us that at times the flow of the video was partially disrupted as a result of the length of a few shots. We also noted this but decided to maintain the length of some shots (in allowing some to go on for longer amounts of time than others) as it created a stronger sense of rhythm in the shot types which as a result meant that a juxtaposing portrayal of the conflicted emotions in Lola was presented. This example presented to us that some people will differ in view from your team in some of your creative choices and sometimes it is acceptable to maintain your original intentions if you have reasoning to keep it.

Similarly to the previous comment, Finlay's comment here is overall very positive and further proves to us that we have succeeded in creating a good sense of ‘followability’. He does mention, however (as the previous comment also did) that there was a slight issue with the colour or perhaps lack of lighting in the final shots that we took in Weston. We were also aware of this and tried to correct it via the Three Way Colour Corrector in After Effects, but as mentioned, this left a slight unusual undertone to the colouring. Given the combined criticism to it, we should have considered reshooting some of these shots or spending more time in the editing stage trying to correct the colouring as it would have dramatically improved the films aesthetic. Finlay also mentions here about the ‘contrast in colour profiles’ which is a concept that we were actually unaware of until we read this comment. In hindsight and through research, I now understand the importance of maintaning some recurring colours across the entire video as opposed to constantly contrasting them as this maked the music video subliminally more coherent to a viewer. I make note of the issue he is presenting in the below screenshot as it presents the stark contrast in colour that feels unnecessary, to an extent.

Focus Group 2.0

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I also provide Feedback on the second focus group in the form of a personal podcast on SoundCloud in which I discuss some of the choices that I made.

https://soundcloud.com/user-979126594/second-focus-group-podcast

Click the above link

Transcript

.The second Focus group was probably the most important feedback we had because of the loose conversational style, which meant that we received a natural set of opinions on the choices we made and ultimately the product that we made. .There was a lot of positive comments suggesting that specifically one of our main highlights was that we emulated the sense of a metaphysical presence in Lola’s mind very well, this means that we explored the abstract feelings that gender confliction carries with it. As well as this, we received a lot of flattery for the well-considered mis-en-scene especially for developing the “rock and roll aspect”. I would agree that the dramatic focus via the slider shots at extreme close up reflected the dramatic dependency that Lola had on alcohol as a substance.

There were also some key areas that could have been improved. (which is arguably more important feedback as it shows how we could better ourselves in the future).

.One comment that was critical for me was when Zoe mentioned that the mascara did not make proper contact with the eye. This led me to consider how breaking the believability of the narrative is extremely dangerous as it spoils the sense of audience inclusions in the world that you create as a media producer .We also received some comments mentioning shaking in the camera. This I feel was quite inevitable in the shooting circumstances given the freezing temperatures. However, in the future, I would consider purchasing some skin tight gloves so that shaking could be dramatically reduced.

My own intentions if I were to repeat this process... .Generally more advanced equipment in the editing stage, for example, upon viewing other work in the future I would be interested in creating multi cameras to play with effects such as Slow motion and other advanced skills. .I would finally be interested in applying more advanced physical equipment for example perhaps even drones or dollies to create interesting and innovative new shots across my work.

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Getting the shot.

We realised from the first shooting day that some shots we had planned on in the storyboard were either totally unfeasible or could be very much improved via a more creative new idea. A notable example of this is our unscheduled use of a low-angle, time-lapse whilst Lola stands abandoned against a wall in one of the Stokes Croft shoots. Whilst the shot originally looked as he had hoped, the time-lapse was too short as it lasted only 4 seconds when sped up which did not create the desired effect. We concluded that the low-angle was hugely effective as it portrayed the expectations of the world looking up to what Lola should categorically be as a gender; as well as creating a stark and effective shadow in front of him as a figure, further metaphorically presenting the darkened and embarrassed state of existence he leads. However, we realised that the duration needs to be lengthened as we discovered that this type of shot is very time-consuming (given that you need to leave the subject in position for a minimum of 10 minutes to get measurable time-lapse to include in a music video). We, therefore, had to get Lola to remain perfectly still for this time period and then allowed the general public to go about their business whilst walking through the shot. This created an illusion of loneliness in Lola as other people moved past him whilst he remained still looking down which connotes an emotional depiction of weakness and defeat.

Above is a still of part of the time-lapse portraying the low angle and the effectively positioned shadow against the graffiti stricken wall.

A logistical difficulty in the shooting generally was also attempting to shoot the band generally because we had to properly organise a time in which the entire crew and cast were available to shoot. We needed to set up the drum kit in various locations around Ned’s room which is physically demanding, as well as framing the band so that they could look subliminally present but not in Lola’s line of sight as this would break the continuity of Lola not acknowledging the band. We chose to make this decision as the lack of interaction between the band and Lola presents the disconnected and lonely nature of her/his character. The following shot ultimately was hard to achieve because of the framing, the band needed to surround Lola and be at contrasting height levels for it to look properly staged to an audience.

The above screenshot presents the carefully considered framing so that the band entraps Lola which could display societies entrapment on Lola as a burdened character.

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Problems and solutions during the editing stage.

One of the main problems that we encountered as soon as we loaded all of our footage onto Photoshop was that in fact a large amount of our footage was far shakier than we had first anticipated. This was present even on shots that had been filmed with a tripod but especially prevalent on free-hand camera shots. We eventually concluded that the best way that we could remedy this was via a separate programme that we had been informed about called After Effects. The process of stabilising the shots included firstly to select the Timeline panel and choose Animation, followed by Warp Stabilizer VFX. A blue panel then appears immediately, meaning that the stabilising process has begun. Once the titled ‘warp stabilzser’ VFX has finished stabilizing, and the orange banner has disappeared, we created a RAM tab to review the changes that we had incorporated. This had dramatically improved some of the shots, specifically, the opening shots that cut into the house had become far more steady and professional.

The above screenshot is of the effects control settings via the After Effects programme that we used to steady the shots with.

That was one of the main problems. Another consideration we took was that our basic footage when Lola is running presented the illusion that she would run in one direction and then immediately run in the opposite direction that didn’t seem to maintain much continuity and arguably broke the Match On Action effect that we were looking for. To remedy this issue, we rotated a few of the ‘opposite’ clips exactly 180 degrees so that Lola appeared to run in a singular direction in the video; this made the piece seem far more coherent.

The above screenshot shows the rotation effect that we employed to do this.

We finally also realised that some of the greys in our shots at Weston Super Mare beach looked overly bleak and so we attempted to use a colour correction on these parts of the footage. We did this by selecting the problem clips in the timeline and applying the three-way colour corrector and then using the effects panel that was part of this.

The above screenshot shows the Three-Way-Colour-Correctors Effects setting control. We concluded though that no matter how minuscule the percent on the effect level, it consistently gave the footage a very unnatural colour tinge to it which we concluded we should certainly avoid. Therefore we left the footage unedited and instead argued that the greyness of the shots gave a notion of realism to Lola instead of some flamboyant or embellished version of her.

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main task product and ancillary tasks?

Creating a strong sense of continuity across all three of the media products was a key method that I tried to incorporate via similar themes, motifs and an overall commercial brand identity that expanded upon some visual notions of the music video.

How does this affect marketing? If there is a strong sense of continuity (via a repeated symbolic artistic-notion) or general brand identity (which I will soon discuss) then an audience will have a sense of trust in the product. More generally this means that all of the media products become recognizable to the audience and thus directly associate a given theme with a product.

General brand identity

A brand identity is a recurring theme across all of one's media products that reflect a certain purpose behind the products meaning in the world to an audience. The main focus in my own work was to try and replicate the context of the real song's release as best I could so that I could develop the psychedelic and experimental time period that Lola rose from as I believe the context heavily inspires the artistic commercial decisions made by media producers. The overall themes of our interpretation of “Lola” were isolation, freedom, deviance (on a spiritual level) from societal expectation and finally self-identity. Through this, I concluded that incorporating bright colours and aspects of graffiti as an aesthetic and artistic product as opposed to something that should be condemned and frowned upon reflected upon our audience the true beauty in Lola’s conflicted gender identity. I developed this brand identity via font, colours, and images that I will later discuss in further detail. Real life artists similarly have developed corporate brand identities across their own media products so that they portray the right image to an audience which by extension attracts the correct audience to their media product. I will now compare some similar and contrasting real-life media products from bands and musicians to my own work on The Kinks “Lola”.

Font choices:

The Font is arguably the most important feature of a brands identity because it is what the audience will look at first, due to the fact that it conveys all of the essential information in the media product. I first explored some modern conventions of media products and explored how a modern style is created. I learned that spacing and capitals help to portray a secure and bold image. I, therefore, emulated this in the opening credits of the music video because I realised a professional and slick approach like this was necessary for it to appear well produced and considered. The following font created via the Adobe Premiere Pro font selection created an empowered and bold first impression to our viewer.

However, following this example of a more modern style, I maintained continuity in every other choice by following the experimental graffiti style in all the other fonts presented across my media products. A clear example of this is in the album advert; I found a font via ‘Dafont’ that replicated the actual background of the 60′s style graffiti because it created an illusion of the text of the poster itself being a part of the graffiti. This is seen below in the following screenshot:

The above font is titled ‘Bell-Bottom’ and was originally based on the branding of flare trousers that were frequently worn in 1960′s England. I, therefore, thought this was appropriate as it is quintessentially a psychedelic and experimental font-style that mimics the similar style in graffiti (taken from a real photo that I took of a graffiti-covered house in Stokes Croft). The clear continuity across all three of my media products here being that Lola strolls through Stokes Croft that is famously covered in experimental graffiti fonts across all of the walls and buildings in that area, (albeit this actual house is not seen in the music video) and the graffiti design all over the digipak such as the images of Stokes Croft also seen on the inside sleeves of the Digipak.

In relation to a real media product, artists such as Arctic Monkeys have made use of a recurring font style in their own work, for example in their latest release of the album ‘AM’. The below image reflects how the Vinyl single font design reflects the artistic brand identity of the album design itself of the simplistic black background with white sound waves making the shape of the font.

Also worthy of note is the fact that font is in spaced block capitals, as previously discussed which is a method our video similarly incorporates which is typical of modern indie style productions. This was more suitable for Arctic Monkeys as they are a modern indie/rock group, however, I chose to deviate from this method into a more retro style in my own work because it appealed to Kinks fans as opposed to more modern audiences.

A second more prominent font motif across all three pieces is the gender symbol “Lola” design, whilst I have edited the font slightly differently between the music video and the other two pieces it was still a hugely effective motif that included the gender symbols to reflect Lola’s jointed sexuality. The inclusion of the same font-image across all three pieces meant that it became relatable to my audience and therefore made the product more memorable as a whole. The below screenshots shows this gender symbol across the pieces.

Colour choices:

A consistent colour scheme across all of the media products is essential if you wish for an audience to subliminally link these products in their minds. If the separate media products seem similar to an audience, it is more likely to be commercially successful, which is what we were ultimately trying to achieve. Within the music video, it was sometimes unfeasible to add artificial colour to some of the grainy images seen. Therefore a lot of the colours are based on the natural colours of the separate environments. In Stokes Croft, there was a natural darkness to the image and in Lola’s silhouette which was effective at presenting the abandoned and troubled nature to Lola’s mindset, whereas when Lola is in the security of his/her own bedroom there are typically more bright and inviting colours - which presents the sense of comfort and freedom of self-expression available there. The below screenshot shows the juxtaposing colour levels in the music video which have been used to portray separate feelings in Lola to our audience.

However, the main point of focus within my media products is between the album advert and the digipaks artistic motif of the contrasting colour schemes of pink and blue that is maintained across both pieces (it was not feasible to include this into our music video as we found it was out of place). I decided to develop this colour scheme because the colours typically connote masculine and feminine sexuality and their crossing is similar to Lola’s conflicted sexuality. The continuity of this across the advert and digipak would consistently remind the audience of who Lola is and ultimately what our interpretation of the song represents. The below screenshots shows how this colour motif was used across the media products.

As seen above the pink and blues of the blue title “Lola” itself compared to the pinks that I have edited into inclusion via the Colour Fill tool on Photoshop is used to reflect the contrasting gender connotations

A good example of a colour motif in a real media product... Is seen in The White Stripes promotion of their album ‘Red Blood Cells’, within this, there is a bold red and black colour scheme which reminds the audience of the idea of blood and seems conventionally hard and stark (given that they are a hard rock band). As a result, in the music video of the album's single “Seven Nation Army” this red and black scheme is maintained which is another good example of continuity across separate media products that are ultimately promoting the same album. The below screenshot presents this:

Image choices:

It is important to only include images that are attractive and relevant to the target audience otherwise they have no commercial value when promoting any musical album. Given that my target audience was a group of open-minded and innovative thinkers who were willing to accept the open portrayal of transvestism, I decided to primarily focus on some of the unconventional urban images seen in the music video, more specifically graffiti. The graffiti connotes freedom of expression and the open social-views of a city being expressed in a visually exciting manner. I therefore exclusively used graffiti based images across my digipak and album advert as this created a strong sense of continuity and unison in the media products which are highly important. There was one example of the bottom left image straying from this design (as seen below) as I simply used a still from the music video itself here. As a result, I edited the picture by adding more contrast so that it appeared more artistic and more comparable, as a result, to the graffiti. The comparison can be drawn in the below image.

In relation to a real media product... Artists such as the band Guns N’ Roses have too included recurring image motifs in their work specifically in this case focusing on the Guns, that carry quite a sinister and dangerous connotation, which again is because this is suited to their target audience of adrenaline filled, excited teenagers. They, therefore, include an image of a Gunshop in their music video “November Rain”, as well as in their logo and digipak design for the album partly as a nod to themselves and by extension to remind the viewer of that symbol and the brand identity that it carries as a hard and dangerous musical unit. The below screenshot presents the link between the image of a gun in their music videos and in their logo artwork (similar to Lola’s shared inclusion of graffiti as a visual image symbol).

Appeal to our audience...

Normally a media product attempts to create a strong sense of relatability between main characters (protagonists) seen in a visual representation (via a film, music video etc) which is done by including mis-en-scene and images that our audience may also possess or relate with. However, because we were conveying a very niche condition/ sexuality of transvestism, it is hard to include relatability to a much broader section of society in our audience. Instead, we appealed to the audience on a more metaphorical and subtle level. Because we were aware that our target audience was AC1 social grouping, we did not need to have commercially excessive portrayals of wealth as seen in some rap music videos for example as it would be more irrelevant to them, so we instead used a basic room as the root set of the music video that did not contain any luxuries or materialistic appeal. We also concluded that our target audience would be fans of artists that were also successful at the same time as the Kinks (who produced Lola) as these bands were of a similar time frame and genre, therefore making our audience vintage, classic rock fans. We, as a result, appealed to this by having intertextual references to these artists in the mis-en-scene of many shots - including posters of artists like Bob Marley (as seen in the below image), Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. All of these artists are also famously free-thinking individuals which would further subliminally attract our target audience because we were aware that if our target audience was accepting of viewing transvestites they would have to appreciate modern and innovative thinking.

Overview

Through my in-depth analysis of all three of my media products, I can now comfortably state that there is a very strong sense of brand identity and effective recurring themes and visual notions across the digipak, advert and music video. A viewer can draw many subliminal links and repeated messages across the subtleties of all three pieces - the ultimate depiction being the freedom of expression in art reflecting the freedom of expression of sexuality and their similar condemnation in society. Finally, I have proven that there is conform to media theorist ideas such as Altman, who stated that there is shared syntactic elements in a given genre; I have done this by using contextually appropriate psychedelic fonts and images across all three media products which has helped to construct a product that suits "Lola's" context and message precisely.

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I decided to answer this question via a Prezi PowerPoint as it allowed me more freedom to visually demonstrate the layered process underwent by us as a group to develop ideas and how we were able to incorporate media theorist notions and conventions of real and successful media products to our own work.

http://prezi.com/swl5rwhl_w-b/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Album Advert

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Animatic - Lola by The Kinks

Animatics are used as a means of having a visual movement of the story line in relation to the song, it shows us how we deviated from some of the ideas but also how we followed the basis thoroughly enough that all of our footage fitted the song duration

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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My Digipak Evaluation

Digipaks are used primarily as a commercialized artwork that advertisers an artists album and by extension portrays the themes of the music and artist as a complete entity. Therefore one of the first decisions I had to make was which part of Lola’s conflicted personality did I consider to be the most prominent feature to base the artwork design on. I eventually concluded that a graffiti design (featuring real edited photographs taken at shooting locations Stoke’s Croft as well as the top right picture that was taken in London) would be effective as it would represent the ultimate rebellion to societies rules about gender. Graffiti is a connotational image of an urban crime to an institutionalised building of ‘beauty’ but the irony that many have pointed out over time is that the graffiti is of higher artistic standard than any of the architecture it is painted upon; the symbolism here is that Lola may be wrongly condemned by some in society as they simply do not understand the inner beautiful qualities of transvestism - as an untainted sexuality. The front cover of the digipak including the “Lola” gender symbolic image is the first thing an audience would see on the store shelf, per-say, so it requires the most attentive focus on detail whilst remaining eye-catching reflective of the artist. I started by obtaining a still from the actual music video and screenshotting is at 1080p and then removing the background via Photoshop. I then adjusted the contrast to extreme extents so as to eventually develop a blatant and intentional silhouette over Lola’s face. I then used the Colour fill tool where I made all the colours on the left hand of the image pink and then juxtaposed this with shades of blues and greens in the right-hand screen. The effect I was desiring here was the typical connotational symbols of pink as a stereotypically effeminate colour and the blue to represent the masculinity - with Lola's face in the centre of this. This was used as a blatant metaphor to the audience for Lola’s conflicted sexuality and the overall blurring of things that are normally emulsions or ‘separate’ entities.

Above is an image depicting how I was able to achieve the pink (and later) the blue colour shades seen on the front cover using a Colour Fill.

I then developed the Lola title design (my favourite part of this media product). I was able to create this by using the included fonts in Photoshop, I then used the arrow symbol, rotated it and resized it so that it would create the arrows coming off of the letters. I then merged the layers into one so that I could apply a blue colour fill, taken from a blue shade in the background to fill the entire colour of the text. Finally, I added a black shadow to the text so that it appeared separate from the background also.

Above is a visual description of the adjustment I made to the separate layers so I could use the Lola symbol as one merged layer across this and later my advert.

In a general level, besides the artistic colour schemes and graffiti, I also followed the common features of digipaks. I included a barcode, which I used the background remover tool to get rid of - this was so that ere wasn’t a solid white background to it which would look unprofessional against the pink background I also looked up The Kinks real record label, ‘Reprise Records’ and then included the logo, again by first removing the background.

The above screenshot shows the tool that I used to select the area I wished to keep via the Quick-Selection-Tool (where the rest of the background is removed)

The reason that I included these features was so that it accurately emulated the commercial nature of a digipak. It needs to promote the greater label that the media product is a part of and also demonstrate that it could be on a high-street shelf through the barcode. It is worth noting that some audiences could rightfully argue that my digipak needed to be more plain, as it is an almost overbearing use of colour, in some frames, particularly the cd; albeit I chose not to do this because of the nature of our music video. Through the complete freedom of expression that colour splashes connote (more specifically consider the actual LGBT rainbow logo), I thought that open colour splashes like this were effective for this digipak because it presents continuity in Lola’s apparent freedom across all the media products. The psychedelic and outlandish look to the entire product reflects an uninhibited period of time (the single was released in 1970, the end of the raucous sixties, in England) and the social groups that evolved from it.

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callumwaldockmedia · 7 years ago

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Shooting day #2

6/12/2017 We filmed our opening location, Ruth’s house on the second shooting-day and due to some very bad circumstances, it was ultimately a failure for us as a group. This was the day where we had planned to shoot the band when at this point they were going to be playing outside of the house that we were shooting in. Because this was one of the wettest periods of shortest days on the British calendar, it became very treacherous to film anything outside at all. Whilst I was frantically trying to pick up the band members and all of their kit, the rest of the crew remained at the location and did the feasible shots that they could without us. As it was her house, Ruth quickly organized the mis-en-scene that we had discussed by cleaning out unnecessary clothing and excessive litter and then replaced it with carefully strewn beer bottles to give the illusion of an abandoned setting.

Above shows the shooting room partway through its preparation.

we aimed to portray an unstable individual, as reflected through the mess strewn around the room, although we equally had to assemble the mis-en-scene for the shooting to work. This included moving chairs and pictures so that we could frame some of our intended shots properly, for example, the purple curtain that we laid out in front of the door. We also interestingly had to create an illusion of a mixed gender, which entailed having some stereotypical masculine and feminine items this was presented by some of the violets, intimate lighting contrasting the men's aftershave and overall stark nature to the room, therefore presenting the conflicted nature of Lola’s personality.

By the time that we were actually ready to shoot, the lighting was already getting the better of us as the beginnings of sunset had begun to ensue. This meant that the lighting was grainy and some odd tinges and shades were beginning to be seen in some of the shots. We later attempted to solve this by using a large lamp from the inside the house and then covering it with a yellow onesie, so that it caused the lighting to feel warmer and more inviting. We were aware that the proceeding shots after these were in Stokes Croft which we intended to use as an area to reflect an emotional hardship so we knew the lighting here would have to be grey and weak - thus meaning that Lola’s room needed to look warmer than this to reflect the contrast.

We were able to do some of the shots in Ned’s room as a result, however, the main aim was to shoot the band on the day which we were not able to do. This was because I was on a mission to assemble all of the members and I was stopped by traffic, bad time management and notably having to swap drummers halfway through as Fin had remembered he had to go to a drum lesson that night! We did attempt to shoot the band by adjusting the DSLR’s white balance... so as to accommodate for the reducing light exposure.

Above is a picture of this setting being added

We eventually concluded that a sensible decision for us as a group would simply be to re-shoot one week later under the concluded notion that filming on slippy decking that is unavailable in darkness wasn’t feasible for us (as a result of our schedules), so the band would now be shot inside. This led us to evolve from our storyboard to some extent and in fact led to some interesting and revolutionary changes that contributed to the music video’s narrative, which took place in later shooting days. From this day though,we took some positive out of the failure in that we better understood the extreme professionalism that is needed to make media projects like this functional - and it was under this premise that we were able to better our teamwork and professionalism in later shoots.

#A2media #preproduction

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