Welcome

This blog will have all my Research and Planning for my A2 Media Production which is a music video. This will include: Focus Groups, Questionnaire and Storyboards. I will also include the planning of my Ancillary Task which is an Album Cover to go with the Music Video. The rest of the criteria can be found on the DVD, such as the Deconstructions, Location Report, Casting Notes, Evaluations and the Music Video itself.

Also I'd like to mention I worked with Joe Taphouse on my production and we split the tasks as equally as possible e.g whilst he did the Casting Notes, I did the Location Report etc.

Hope you enjoy it! You can find Joey's work on: www.sleep-in-v2.blogspot.com Enjoy!!!

Ancillary Task-Plan

Ancillary Task-Album Cover

The inspiration for this album cover came from the concept of the title. It sounded catchy and like a good theme to build upon so that's what I did. My idea was to show the audience who Jack is, so he could be easily recognised in the music video as well as showing his guitar and therefore implying the style of music. The background shot is one I took in the Reading Town Centre; I tried to capture a regular, busy street and then the editing is done to blur the image to make it seem like the people are 'rushing through life', while the black and white colour is to go with the music video. The back of the album took a few ideas. Initially I thought a big picture of Jack would be a good idea with the track names to the side of him. Yet this would've contradicted the idea of the 'drawing board'. So then the obvious answer came to mind: show the tracks on an actual drawing board. The sketched text is to yet again go with the concept yet the lower case wording is to give a simplistic almost childish feel to it.

Front Cover:

Back Cover:

Focus Groups

The focus groups were used as a means to discover what peoples preferances were in terms of the videos shown. I chose three completely different videos: one with performance and heavy editing, one with narrative and little editing and

one with the same amount of both. I did this so I could decide what would be more effective for my own music video. What I did was get my cla

ssmates and have them watch the three videos of my choice and then following the video I asked a series of questions which my classmates then discussed.

I also handed out sheets of paper for each video asking about Camera-angles, editing, mise-en-scene and sound as well as anything else that was interesting in the video. I did this so if people couldn't get a say in the footage at least I had their thoughts on paper. Here is an example of the handouts:

Storyboard

The first draft of the storyboard was more or less mine and Joe's attempt at pitching ideas to each other and showing each other exactly what we meant.

As you can see some of the shots we keep in later drafts as they were our opening ideas that we kind've based the rest of the video on. Everything more or less came from these ideas.
The original concept for a couple breaking up came from these plans. Also Jacks involvement as a sort of 'onlooker' to the characters in the video and some his performances angles are decided in this. Finally the importance of the significant material object which the girl gives back to the boy at the start was decided here. A ring is used but it could be anything.





Following the decision to use flashbacks in our video this storyboard was some of the main ideas for them. The flashbacks were a means to show the audience and to remind the characters of how important these places were to them. Also this was our brain-storm for possible endings for the video as we'd decided on the beginning and most part of it at this point.

With the 2nd draft, I had already begun half of the final version for the storyboard but I got stuck half way through with how to lay out the remainder of it. This helped me finish the storyboard correctly as I needed to put a scene between the Restaurant scene and the end to the video as well as showing the camera shots that would be used for the performance.

The following storyboards are the actual ones which I've had scanned in to be able to show:

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