Ancillary Task - Website Design

Website Drafts

Drafts such as this one below gave me an outline of the structure of a website which I was able to refer to time an time again.

Development

Research - Website

This ancillary task required different presentation features which I did research into such as layout and convention as well as individual features like videos and interactive buttons. I was going to have to do research into all of these in oeder to present a website suitable for our chosen artist.


Below shows screenshots of research i carried out: (websites of artists, individual features etc)

Ancillary Task - T-Shirt Design

Research - Reggae & Pop themes

Ancillary Task - CD Cover

Ancillary Task - Music Magazine

As part of the task to create a music magazine the group and I decided on developing and creating a music magazine front cover as a way of advertising our product. as we were doing a video on Olly Murs our front cover had to relate entirely to him from the iconography to the colours and fonts used on it.

To do this we had to undergo some research which was both primary and secondary. in this we looked on the internet for things such as our artsists fashion, the types of people that listen to his music, the genres he covers and how he encorporates this in his songs. although this was secondary research we felt this was just as important as primary research so that we could accurately develop our product and represent the chosen artist in the best way.

Another part of our research was to look at the codes and conventions of music magazines and that of the genre of pop. we looked at pop magazines POPSTAR, Q, Bibloard and NME to gain an added insight into the overall iconography and layout of their front pages. we made sure that these were stuck to during the development process.

With all the research at hand, the sketches were made in order to get the ancillary task moving and it began to take shape through drafts that were made. without the research that had taken place, there wouldnt have been a clear focus in the development stages and this meant that there would have been room for mistakes.

This magazine front cover image is striking with the artist sitting very clearly above the header with the text beside it making him the focal point of it.

This magazine front cover also came to our attention with its use of style (Hip-Hop) and convention. The use of faded black and white colours gave us added inspiration as to the type of magazine we could create for our own task.

Ancillary Tasks

As part of our project this we, we have been asked to undergo some Ancillary Tasks of our choice. individually we had to create two Ancillaries in which we could pick, from Website design, Poster, DigiPack and an Album Cover.

Personally, I chose to create a website with links to other pages as this appealed to me more and I felt that I could apply my skills best to this task. I also chose to create a poster as my skills in production have developed over time and I felt most confident with this task also.

Other members in my group chose to create a DigiPack, an Album Cover, Posters and a T-shirt design, branching out from what was expected of us. With this we were able to give each other support as well as constructive criticism.

Production Schedule

As a group we were told that folowing a strict production schedule worked out by members of a group is essential for any task that has a deadline. We took this into consideration and decided this was best in one of our meetings.

This is a table designed by the group clearly outlining a schedule with dates and a description next to each one:

Date?	What? Where?
28/11/11	Meeting - Discuss stages of filming
12/12/11	Green Screen session
02/01/12	Review Meeting
02/02/12	Picture Taking (Ancillary Task)
03/02/12	White Screen session
12/02/12	Filming in Greenwich Village
15/02/12	Filming in Greenwich Embankment
24/02/12	Editing and Review for filming
26/02/12	Editing and Review for filming
29/02/12	Filming Re-Do's
06/03/12	Edit Footage

House Styles

After doing research into house styles the group and I created a style sheet which included specific colours we were going to include in ALL ancillary tasks as well as different logos for Olly Murs for us to choose from. Our style sheet also included fonts and font sizes we wanted to include in the ancillary tasks.

Mood Boards

As part of our pitch, the group and I did research suitable to present and one way of presenting the information gathered were through the creative use of mood boards which in a way told a story to whoever was looking at it about the chosen subject. As a group we made a few mood boards and with these were able to cover most parts of our research with them. These were not only a good way of presenting our research but they were often a reminder to us of things we had to include and what things we needed audience feedback on. Iindividual story boards were made for location (1) and overall iconography concerning album covers (2). We also used these to get things such as the mise-en-scene, camera shots and angles developed through research so that we knew exactly what we were doing when it came to filming.

(1) The first mood board concerning location has telephone boxes, sand and the seaside on it reminding us of British culture as well as referring to parts of the song. we often came back to this particular mood board when deciding on location and even when we were in the process of filming.

(2) The second mood board has different album covers from various well known artists such as Beyonce, Jessie J and Bob Marley. The purpose of this mood board is to identify the genres of the artist and the song. This mood board constantly reminded the group of the strong Pop and Reggae themes which we were going to keep to in the filming process. Another feature included in this mood board was the use of a presentation feature called Wordle. This meant we could have words on the mood board relating to the genres such as retro, upbeat and soul.

(1)

(2)

Olly Murs Inspiration

Whilst carrying out important research we wanted to get some inspriration from our artist and referred to some of his previous music videos. From these we were able to identify key points about iconography, mise-en-scene and other important factors such as location.

Group Meeting

As a group having had many meetings and decided to record one so that we could document and look back at things that were said in order to grow and develop together as a group. We thought that taking minutes was good but also felt that recording meetings would also help us develop and help us keep track of our developments. Below is a video of one of the meetings held:

Storyboard

Genre/Lyrics

These are the lyrics of our chosen song "Thinking of You" by Olly Murs and after a considerable amount of discussion and planning annotated the lyric sheet with thoughts about iconography, location and mise-en-scene and below is a screenshot of that. As a group we didnt want the lyrics of the song to be distant as far as the other products we were going to make were concerned and this meant we could include ideas from the lyrics in our Ancillary Tasks and other things such as location scouting. The lyric sheet became a very important part of our work and we reffered to it time and time again as part of our research.

Location

Through the annotation of lyrics as a group, we felt that we were comfortable exploring the different locations in which we could shoot. Thinking of me by Olly Murs is very much a feel good, reminisant song which we wanted to portray through our use of camera shots, angles and very importanly, location. To do this we had to decide as a group where it would be best to film and we were already given a head start as the song mentions two locations, Waterloo and London in general. With this we also came to the conclusion that shooting some scenes in places such as Greenwich, Erith Riverside and Camden would enable us to get the best out of the video and conform to generic codes and conventions of music videos.

Deciding on who would feature in the video and their character functions are key aspects, as their roles play an important element of the music video production. With this is mind, we sat down as a group and created a list of names of people, who could potentially feature in our footage. We had to consider the role of Olly Murs well and decided that Sam Robinson (a member of our group) would be well suited to be play Olly Murs. We also decided on 1 extra character within the video footage, a girl, who features as the 'romance' figure. Keeping it in the group we decided to have Faith Brackstone playing this character.

Group Pitch

On Thursday 13^th October the group presented a pitch based on their ideas and the different thoughts about their chosen song for their Music Video. The group presented a powerpoint underlining the key point, "WHY?"


Why was that particular song chosen?
What genres are used?
Who is the target audience?
Does the song have a mass appeal?


...and


How was the group going to portray these things?


This led the group onto their ideas about the iconography and mise-en-scene of the music video which they explored in depth. Feedback given to the group was based on the ideas presented which related to Gaze Theory and how this was going to be applied to the final product.


The pitch continued with the presenting of mood boards showing different album covers from both genres, Reggae and Pop. These showed the type iconography and themes of Reggae and Pop album covers that the group wanted to shine through in their final product.


A storyboard was also shown, outlining the ideas of shots and camera angles the group wanted to add to their music video and this helped portray the ideas the group had.


The group wants their media product to challenge forms and conventions of existing media products and hopefully set the benchmark for future products. The song the group have put forward being "Thinking of Me by Olly Murs" has an ideology based on adventure, remembrance and the seemingly never ending quest for love, which the group wanted to re-create.


With this the pitch came to an end after careful evaluation from the groups teacher, constructive criticism and feedback was given which was to help the group progress with their concept and overall the pitch was passed with minor changes.

Chosen Song

This is a video showing the song "Thinking of Me" by Olly Murs. Uploaded from Youtube, this video is a good indication as to what we want to recreate and also gives us an insight into the mise-en-scene and potential iconography. With these things in mind, as a group we felt that we were able to go about preparing our pitch.

This video highlights the mise-en-scene we wanted to recreate from looking at this video. This video is a great representative of one using minamal props and set and being set in a maximun of two locations. What makes this video is the use of camera angles used to portray and tell the story whilst including elements of narrative theory. The camera angles used make you think he is in a number of different locations.

The image below is a presentation feature created using Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) and this highlights two artists we were considering recreating (Olly Murs and Ellie Goulding) and the genres involved. Also in this image are words given back to us from our target audience which impacted our final decision. 

Preliminary Task - Open Day Video

For the Preliminary Task the class were split into groups and given a task which was to create a video for the school's Open Day. Each group was given the opportunity to choose 2 aspects of the school to focus their video on and the group I was a part of decided collectively to focus on Special Events and The Curriculum.

As a group we went out and collected information based on the 2 aspects we had decided to focus the video on such as what special events the school had been a part of and all parts of the curriculum. With the ground work sorted, we fond that for special events in particular, we would have to refer to stock footage left on the school system.

We created storyboards and carefully mapped out the shots and iconography that we wanted to feature in the video. When we felt that sufficient progress had been made, we sought feedback and moved on to the next stage.

The group used the program Premiere Pro to make the video's come to life and the skills of the group were tested heavily. In the end the group were able to come away with 2 good quality video's and the skills of the group in Premiere Pro were enhanced.

This task was a great help because the group and I felt confident moving on to the next task which is the A2 Advanced Portfolio in Media. Below are the 2 video's created by the group on Special Events and The Curriculum.

Research & Song Choice

After deciding on basing the music video on the song "Thinking of Me by Olly Murs" over "Your Song by Ellie Goulding," the group and I set about researching the genres involved not only with the song, but with the artist in general. These genres were Pop and Reggae.

The group began debating the qualities of both songs as well as discussing the potential iconography of them. The group were thinking mainly about how the song could work and how the mise-en-scene would play out.

After this, the group created a questionnaire to gain some much needed audience feedback on what song would be best to produce a music video on. The group used certain areas of the school such as the school canteen to address their target audience. Our target audience was from the very bottom of the school (Year 7) to the senior teachers.

In the beginning...

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Miles (: