Production Diary

Before the start of the new school year I had already completed several tasks and put them onto my blog. These would include Music Through the Years, the Preliminary Task Britney Planning, the Britney Spears Video Analysis and the actual filming of the preliminary task

• Wednesday the 4th of September

Periods 4 and 5

During these lessons I edited the Britney Spears video that we had already filmed before the summer. It was vital that this was completed as it is a big part of the preliminary task. I learned a lot about editing from this. For example; the software that we used is the new Adobe premier and I did not know that in order to upload the complete video to YouTube I had to export the video to convert it to a different uploaded able file type. I spent a while attempting to figure out how I could upload the video when a teacher explained to me that it needs to be exported in order for it to be of the suitable file type. I also learned about the different techniques of editing: from how to use the software and how to use its features in order to make the video better. I feel that the editing went well and that the overall video looks effective. It is also fairly similar to the original which is the outcome the class was hoping for. I was hoping that the editing stage would be a little quicker considering that it was only a preliminary task and that the footage was only 45 seconds long. However, this experience should prove useful when I or other members within my group are editing our final music video.

• Thursday the 5 th of September

Period 4

In this lesson we was taught about the Laura Mulvey theory of the male gaze. We was given an information sheet to read through together as a class. After this we watched three videos, selected by one of our teachers, and as a class activity we analysed the three videos briefly based upon the Laura Mulvey theory. I feel that this was effective as it helped me to understand the theory more and put the analysis of it into practice. I could also listen to other people's interpretations of the video which will help me considering how to make my video. This also made me think about the Britney task and how that particular video related to the theory. I was happy with the thoughts and ideas that I had about the video. We were then set homework to put these ideas into practice when writing an evaluation and comparison about the three videos to then upload to our blogs.

• Friday the 6th of September

Period 3

Having completed some of the homework set in the previous lesson, we was allowed to continue on with it during our independent work time during lesson. At first, I found it difficult to get started and I did not know how to go about setting out the task as a whole. I then looked back at my previous work on my old blogger during AS level and then decided that I was going to use a simple post with the HTML posts of the music videos. This then meant that the videos would be on my blog and that the user would not have to use a link that would open up another tab in order to view the videos. I re watched the videos and began to write my analysis. I feel that studying media at GCSE and AS level helped me to write my analysis. It was detailed and overall I was happy with what I had written. I feel that I applied the theory to the videos well and understood the task.

• Sunday the 8th of September

Homework

Today I continued on with the Laura Mulvey male gaze theory ensuring that my analysis was detailed and fully written.

• Monday the 9th of September

Period 3

During this lesson I researched potential unknown artists for my song choice. I used YouTube and Wikipedia to do this. I read lots of information about different artist and this helped me to find some songs that do not have videos already. I thought that it was important for the songs to not have music videos as it means that they are unrecognisable and that the audience would be watching something that is new. Some examples of this would be on my blog under the header 'potential songs'. I did not post this research right away as I wanted my blog to be in chronological order. I wanted to post my overall research into different artists first as this research was simply just me browsing for some ideas for when I actually complete the song task. I will add this research to the further research that I will complete in upcoming lessons or as homework.

• Tuesday the 10th of September

Period 1

During this lesson I went over the Laura Mulvey task to make sure that I did not need to add anything else. I feel that this went well and it acted as a form of revision for me as it allowed me to go over my analysis. This would become useful as my teacher had set our class a homework task of choosing our own song to analyse with the male gaze theory.

• Wednesday the 11th of September

Periods 2 and 3

During these hours I posted my Laura Mulvey task work and then began to work on the next task. This was to chose my own video to analyse with the male gaze theory. I chose to do the song Troublemaker by Olly Murs. I feel that the previous task helped me to understand this one better and I knew exactly what I was looking for when analysing the videos. I feel that I wrote everything in detail. As an improvement I think that I could have used more interesting software as a form of presentation. Overall I feel that my analysis was good and in detail.

• Friday the 13th of September

Period 5

During this lesson we talked about our production diaries. This helped everyone in the class to understand exactly why we was doing them. I know that evaluation is very important and that this needs to be in the production diary. Then, after the talk, I began to work on my production diary more. I do this well and I always make sure that I write in detail as it is important for me to show my journey and it will be useful when looking back on it. However, I want to make sure that I do not get carried away and that I do not spend to much time of this section of the coursework as other parts are important too.

• Wednesday the 17th of September

Period 4

Myself, Karina and Frankie (my group members) decided that this week it would be good to focus upon group work and group research so that when it comes to the group planning we would all be on the same page. This lesson we used youtube and other internet sites to research artist such as Lykke Li and Nneka. These are fairly unknown artist and we thought that they would be a good choice for our song as people would not have anything to compare our video to. We made notes in our books on songs that we like. 

• Thursday the 18th of September

Period 4

We continued the group work that we had done in the previous lesson. We worked well together and come to some decisions about song choices.

• Saturday the 20th of September

Homework

I researched my song for our homework. We had to create a presentation explaining some of our potential song ideas. My song was Heartbeat by Chase and Status ft Nneka. I printed off the lyrics to annotate them as this would give some ideas for our narrative ideas. I think that some of my ideas were not very origninal however, in the next lessons my group members will be able to help put forward better ideas.

• Monday the 23rd of September

Period 3

During this lesson I decided to update my production diary as I had gaps missing from where I had been concentrating on the song researching tasks. I did make notes on paper for my diary so all that I had to do was copy them onto the computer. It went well as I did not spend too much time on this and was also able to complete some peer assessing for my peer assessment partner Faye.

• Tuesday the 24th of September

Free Time

During my free time I researched the theory of Andrew Goodwin. This has helped me a lot as it has given me a better understanding to music videos as I have realised that many music videos conform to the conventions that Goodwin put in place. I need to put my knowledge into practice by applying the theory to a music video of my choice to ensure that I understand it fully.

• Wednesday the 25th of September

Period 2 and 3

In today's lesson I am going to update my production diary and complete my analysis of a music video using Goodwins theory. I am going to use the theory to compare an old music video (Madonna Vouge) to a more modern music video (Lady Gaga Born this way).

• Friday the 27th of September

Period 5

In this lesson me and my group member Karina went through our blogs with our teacher Mr Anstee and he gave us some advice on what to do next. We did not want to start story boarding without our other group member and we decided that we all needed to do costume, setting and camera research before we started to story board. We also decided that it would be a good idea to select a similar music video from the same genre as ours and analyse how much screen time is spent on the performance and narrative sides of the video. Overall the lesson went well as I feel more organised and I know when me and my group are going to start doing our group research.

• Wednesday the 2nd of October

Period 3

Today me and my group members Karina and Frankie completed our lip syncing task. For me, I found this difficult as I am camera shy. In my video it is clear that I struggled to portray emotion but making the lip syncing convincing was easy for me. The task went well as it allowed us to get practice for when we film our actual video. We found that Karina was really confident and really clear at portraying emotions. We think that she may be a good lead role for our artist in our video and we feel that Frankie could potentially be the female actress within our video.

• Thursday the 3rd of October

Period 2

Today I put together my lip syncing video and my chosen song using Adobe Premier. I love editing so this was a really fun task for me. I then uploaded it onto you tube ready for my blog.

• Friday the 4th of October

Period 5

Today my group member Frankie showed me her section of the presentation for our pitch that she completed. Myself and Karina had already pitched our songs to our class mates but we wanted to make visuals to go with our pitch so that we could look back on it in the future when we make our video in order to remind ourselves of our initials ideas. Frankie completed song one and I had to complete song two with Karina finishing off with song three. I started to complete this in class.

• Monday the 5th of October

Period 3

In this lesson I wanted to start my paper brainstorm of the questionnaire that me and my group will complete soon in order to find out information from our target audience. I decided to do this as in the previous lesson I did the pitch which meant that I had good knowledge still in my head about our ideas and we needed to get feedback from our target audience on what they think. This was just a brainstorm. It went well because when myself, Karina and Frankie do this as a group I will be able to give us a head start.

• Tuesday the 6th of October

Period 1

In the lesson today I finished off my section of the presentation for our pitch. This is good because now we can post our pitch as soon as Karina has completed her section. Once we have posted this we can use it to help us with our treatment task and our questionnaire.

• Wednesday the 9th of October

Period 1,2 and 3

In this lesson me and my group members decided that it would be useful to get feedback from our target audience about our ideas seeing as we had just completed the pitch presentation. We took a filming camera from our media classroom and gathered 7 people, a mix of both boys and girls, to ask them specific questions. This video would become part of our treatment task as 'target audience' is one of the sections that we have to explore. We asked several questions, however when we had gone back to our classroom we came up with a variety of other questions that we did not get to ask them. Overall it did go well as we investigated into some of our ambiguous ideas and it also helped us to get a second opinion on them as our own opinions would be biased. We are going to complete another video on a single person and not a focus group in order to get more detailed answers and to ask any outstanding questions that we have.

• Thursday the 10th of October

Periods 3 and 4

Today I edited the video that we had filmed the previous day. I did this whilst my group members Frankie made a questionnaire and Karina did some more research. It allowed me to experiment with the editing software even further from when I had edited our class Preliminary task to editing my lip syncing video. I feel that I understand the software a lot more and that I would be able to edit an effective video.

• Tuesday the 15th of October

Period 1

Today I worked on my sections of the treatment. In previous group chats we devised the work load to ensure that no one was stressed and that each section would receive the same amount of time and effort: giving us a good presentation overall. We as a group feel that it is important for this presentation to be of an exceptional standard as it represents our final ideas about the video and other important features of our song, video and artist. Working on my sections today was useful as it means that I am closer to completing them and that we can soon move onto our storyboard. It is important for us to keep moving forwards as we need to meet our deadlines.

• Wednesday the 16th of October

Periods 4 and 5

Today our class teacher Mr Anstee arranged for us to complete and small exam to ensure that we are coping well with the course. It also reinforced all f the terminology from last years course that we should till be using now in this years. I realised that I do remember good terminology and that I do know the majority of shots that are used in media. This has helped me as I now feel confident that I have been and that I can use all of this knowledge appropriately. After this small test I carried on working on my sections of the treatment task.

• Thursday the 17th of October

Period 4

In lesson I was able to continue for the third time, my sections of the treatment task. I worked independently as I had already received the information from my group members ensuring that the information I was putting onto the prezi was all of our ideas. For this task we each had two topics. Mine were 'concept' and 'logistics', Frankie's 'location' and 'artist' and Karina's 'technology' and 'influences'. We have kept them all on one prezi to make it easier to read as they all belong together within the same task as they are our final ideas. At home today I was able to finish my sections so that now when Frankie and Karina finish we can post it onto our blogs and work together during class time on our storyboard.

• Monday the 21th of October

Period 3

Today I completed my star branding. The reason why I chose to finish this after I had done my sections of the treatment and pitch tasks was because those tasks are to do with the video. I feel that the star branding is research that I should complete for the digi-pack (website, cd cover ect) and this is why I chose to complete planning for the video first prior to the star branding task. The star profile helped me to understand the type of artists that there are and this helped to input good ideas about our artists song choice and video when me and my group had discussion. The star branding is about the artist as a celebrity and their image and therefore I chose to do this research a little after the planning for the video, although we still have the storyboard to complete. We are leaving this until all other primary planning is complete to ensure that we have a valuable amount of time to do this. I feel that I am managing my time well and that I am keeping my blog consistent.

• Tuesday the 22nd of October

Period 1

Today me and my group members Karina and Frankie all sat down together to discuss our storyboard. This was useful as we was all able to express our ideas to each other as we have just finished our pitch and are coming to an end with our treatment. We have decided to just complete the first verse onto a storyboard and then complete the practice filming of this so that if the ideas do not work we can make changes before we complete the entire storyboard. I feel that we are working well together as a group and we all are striving to do well by keeping our blogs consistent and up to date with work.

• Thursday 24th of October

Period 3

In this hour we had a discussion about what work we would complete in the half term. Having finished the first section of our story board, we have decided that we are going to film these shots in the half term which we break up for tomorrow. We have decided that Tuesday would be a suitable day for us all to complete the filming on. We took notes on what we was all saying and Frankie suggested that she should make a time table in order for us to remain organised and to help us be punctual. We also decided that we would complete research for us all to share on our blogs as efforts to go towards the success of the practice filming. This discussion has given me a clearer idea of what we need to have completed by the start of the new term and has also allowed me to set deadlines for myself with other work in my other subjects as it is important to allocate time to each A level that I am studying.

• HALF TERM

Day 1

Tomorrow is the day that we have chosen to complete our practice filming. This is why today, beforehand, I have had a group discussion with both Karina and Frankie about the upcoming events tomorrow. Frankie created a time table for us in order to guide us through the filming in an organised way. We had a group discussion on our smart phones by using a group conference chat. This is how Frankie sent myself and Karina the image of the timetable so that we could go over it together as a group. I feel that we work really well as a three and I am glad that these two are my partners for this project. Today I also started some research on settings. Myself and Frankie have decided to do this. I am going to complete research on settings and Frankie is going to do the same for weather and costumes. We have already discussed this in other lessons and tasks such as the treatment and the pitch, however myself and Frankie want to make sure that the research is completed in a separate post to show our journey from start to beginning clearly and concisely to the examiner and ourselves.

Day 2

Today we completed our filming. Our time table said that we was going to complete the filming over the course of two consecutive days. However, although we stayed true to the time slots that we allocated for each scene (remaining organised and punctual) we still found that the weather conditions would give us more than enough time to film both scenes in one day: especially because Frankie can drive and therefore it is easier to get to our locations quickly. The day went better than I had anticipated and I am very happy. I am very excited to go back to school, show our teachers/class mates and start the editing process.

Day 3

Today I backed up our footage. I find that studying ICT at A level is helping me with my media studies as I know that backing up my data is really important in case they become corrupted or lost. We have our filming on an SD card, my laptop and a USB stick to ensure that it cannot be lost as other wise we would have wasted our time and lost vital data. I opted to do this for my group as they do not study ICT so I am more familiar with storage and back up.

• Wednesday the 6th of November

Period 4 and 5
Our teacher for lesson 4 was absent at a compulsory course. She had set work for us on our class blog, stating what we need to be completing and what should already be completed (for example, our treatment). In this lesson I went through this list ensuring that I was up to date with all deadlines. Our other teacher had us for lessons 5 and he was in. In this lesson I completed more peer assessment for Faye as she had completed more work over the half term. It is important for me to keep up to date with my peer assessing as if I did not then Faye would not be able to make improvements to her work to gradually make her blog better. If I evaluate it as soon as she uploads it then she can improve her work at individual times rather than in bulks that could end up being stressful. I then updated my production diary for the work that I had done in the half term.

• Thursday the 7th of November

Period 1 and Lunch
Today I brought in the devices that were storing our practice filming. I uploaded it onto the school computer and Karina went through the shots to see which ones were bad and which ones were good. She labelled the good ones so that it would be easy to find them when we edit the video. Karina then started to edit the video. I wanted to familiarise myself with the software as the last time I had used it was when I edited the preliminary task for my class back in September. I watched several videos on youtube. They were tutorials.

• Friday the 8th of November

Period 3, free time 4th and Lunch

In these hours I edited the final video myself. Frankie and Karina contributed to video massively in acting and filming and therefore I really wanted to have a go at editing. I was really happy with what I had made and I sent the video to Karina and Frankie as soon as I had finished so that they could see our work. They were really impressed to and I now feel really confident a bout editing the final video alongside Frankie and Karina. We are all going to contribute to the final editing as we all have different ideas. It was also not be fair if I did it all myself as one the girls would not be able to have a go and two it would be too time consuming for me to complete it all by myself. Although I had finished editing the video I did not want to upload it to my blog yet as we had other posts to upload and I wanted to double check with the girls that they did not want to make any further changes to it. This is why I decided to leave until after the weekend.

• Saturday the 9th of November

Working from home

Although Frankie had already made us a timetable for our practice filming prior to the date of when we completed the filming I have not yet uploaded this to my blog as I want to add some extra paragraphs about what each sections of the time table mean and why we decided to do this. I am going to do this and upload it to my blog today.

• Monday the 11th of November

Period 3

Today me and the girls discussed our final video to make sure that we was all happy with the outcome and we was. We all uploaded it to our blogs and we now need to make an evaluation for it to show what we have learnt so that when we do our final filming and we look back on it we will be able to remind ourselves of what we need to do.

• Tuesday the 12th of November

Period 1

In this lesson I improved the image of my blog as I did not feel that it reflected my own personal music style. I found a collage of Rihanna on the internet that was bright and uses bold red colours. It stands out and makes a statement and this is why I chose to use it as the background tiling photo for my blog. I then added links into my sidebar section of my blog to websites that inspire me or that I have found useful. An example would be Mtv as I use it to look at new music and new videos; another example would be the official website for Rita Ora as I really like her look and would dress myself the way in which she dresses. I also feel that the websites I have chosen have helped me so far within the project. Sound cloud is a website that allows unsigned artists and dj's to put their own music on it and people can comment and give feedback. I found this particularly useful when I was researching for potential songs as me and my group wanted to use an unknown song by an unpopular artist to ensure that our video would be unique and to ensure that the audience would have nothing to compare it to. I also added a slideshow gadget to my blog to show in a more visual and direct way he type of artists and music that I listen to. I did one slideshow of Beyoncé (who has been my background photo up until now) and the other of Miley Cyrus (an artist who I am recently interested in).

• Wednesday the