Bi-Weekly log

Week 1 – October
After being given my brief I wrote down some initial ideas with my partner. After this we decided upon our song ‘Enough For Now’ by The Fray and began planning our ideas for our video. We quickly decided on a narrative and performance based video typical of the Indie-Rock genre. This is when we found people wanting to take part within our music video and then decided on our location for filming. We carried out our first filming session, focusing on the narrative side of the video. To finish of the week we uploaded our first set of posts to our blog.

Week 2 – October
After screening our initial rushes to our focus group (consisting of my media class and teacher) we found that the audience were taking the aberrant reading to our media text due to its complexity, this was disastrous because if our audience takes the worst possible meaning from our text, completely not getting it we were in trouble. This is where my teacher said that it would be easier to start again without such a highly complex song and idea. This week we basically just decided on a new song choice ‘Hot Air Balloon’ by Owl City and our initial ideas for the song.

Week 3 – November
After deciding on our plan of action filming took place, I spent a whole day at my boyfriend’s house, using his little 5 year old sister’s bedroom to film the majority of my music video, to create the childlike paradigm. After the filming took place I uploaded all my footage on to my laptop to begin the editing. I also uploaded more research and planning onto my blog.

Week 4 – November
I had the first 40 seconds of my song edited and in place, looking good. This week I just focused on continuing with more editing and finishing the research section of my blog

Week 5 – November
1.05 min of editing completed, I showed this to my focus group (media class) and all took the dominant reading, so my video at the moment appears to be a success, they did however give me feedback on some of my filming saying it was too dark and sometimes a bit shaky so this week I went back to my filming location to re-shoot some scenes and also to take some more long shots as that had also been criticised.

Week 6 – November
Still 1.05 min of editing but all the filming I re shot is now up and loaded on to my laptop to begin changing some scenes and making any improvements. I also began on the finishing touches of my planning section of my blog.

Week 7 – December
My video was now up to almost 2 minutes of film and screened this to my focus group to see if what they criticised in week 5 has been improved and made any difference to their viewing. It was all positive feedback so this week I carried on with editing. I also started thinking of my ancillary texts but only in rough ideas. At the end of the week I finished off the planning section of my blog.

Week 8 – December
My editing is almost finished with my film at 3.00 min only about 20 more seconds to go. I began research into previous CD covers by Owl City and other CD magazine adverts. I draw up 3 designs for a CD cover and 3 designs for my magazine advert and put these on my blog.

Week 9 – DecemberI finished my editing on my music video and began making notes on 2 of my evaluation questions. I also took the photos for my chosen design of CD cover and magazine ad. I created ‘pages’ on my blog with different headings such as ‘research’ and ‘home’ to make it easier to navigate my blog and find particular sections.

Week 10 – December
I screened my finished music video to a new focus group comprising of my main target audience to see if their understanding of my music video was the same as my media class. They all took the dominant reading and I received positive feedback on my product. I began creating my CD cover on CorelDraw and wrote up my first evaluation question and put it on my blog.

Week 11 – January
I made finishing touches to my CD cover and began creating my magazine advert. I also wrote up my 3rd and 4th evaluation questions and put them on to my blog. I also read through my research and planning section and made some adjustments.

Week 12 – January
I finished both my CD cover and my magazine advert and put these up on to my blog. I also started writing my 2nd evaluation question.

Week 13 – January
I had given my work to my media teacher to assess and see what could do with improving. I had a couple of shots within my music video that were still too dark so I changed these. I also had to improve my magazine advert, one of my evaluation questions and my target audience post needed some adjustments.

Week 14 – January
Finished up the points I was told to improve on.

My class had previously been working on the same blog but uploading our own individual work but my teacher wanted separate blogs so I was in the process of uploading everything from my old blog onto my new blog.