06/09 - How to Video!

Our home work task for our first lesson was to search youtube and find a video which interested us which we thought was a good example of a "How to..." video, here is my chosen video. This video also involves a major passion of mine dance:

6th september

In todays double lesson we began by talking about what the course for this year would contain and discussed both the coursework and exam aspects. The first hour was then consumed with decision making for our first task which was going to be shooting a how to video. We chose our groups and then got to work with creating ideas. After a while my partner and i decided upon making a "HOW TO... not drown when you cant swim". The rest of the lesson was then taken up by creating story boards of our ideas and sharing them with the class.

The second hour of the double lesson involved moving to another classroom with TV facilities in which we then watched two short documentaries each of about 10 minutes and discussed the similarities and differences of the videos.

The first of the two clips was "the urban savannah" directed by matthew cook, vincent luna. Which was created in UK 2004.

We then assessed the features which were clearly in the video and how the clip aimed to Inform, entertain and educate. The clip involved analysing the lives of two different social groups as the documentary puts it the townies and the skaters.

The features we noticed were commonly used within documentaries were:

1)Explanatory Narrators/Commentators

2)Experts (academics)

3)Observational view (fly on the wall)

4)Dramatic events

The aspects of the video which aimed to INFORM were the voice over or commentator who narrated throughout the clip. and through the way the narrator used formal language and included specialist terms such as "the dominant male".

The aspects of the video which aimed to ENTERTAIN were the way in which the director aimed to used a comedic approach and attack the humour of the audience in the way he represented the teenagers as animals.

Finally the video aimed to EDUCATE by the use of specialist experts to explain aspects of the video.

The second of the two videos were "i love my nails" a short video directed by Katherine Freeman created in UK 2004.

This clip did contain the use of more informal language and often had periods of silence due to lack of commentary. The filming was still an observational view even though unlike most documentaries the filming was more close up and personal as the clips involved question and answer sessions with those who were involved. The clip did no contain a sense of a dramatic event except for the revealing of the ladies nails when they'd finally finished being decorated in a sense the "tada!" moment. The clip wasn't necessary educational however was rather bizarre.

Task 1 ; School tour

Our first task of preparing for our final project within the A2 course was to create and shoot a guided tour of our school, st marks west essex catholic school. Our brief was pretty much that, it was then our choice to decide upon camera angles and other such matters as who would be our target audience and which we thought were the focal areas of the school which would need to ensure were projected to this audience. My group for this task was made of my self and 3 other girls, we decided to approach the audience of current year 11 students who were perspectively next years sixth form. The video was aimed to give these students and their parents an insight into what st marks sixth form could offer them.

The first aspect of our films which we learnt about and had to asses was how steady we was with the camera. Our teacher spent a while with us explaining how something as simple as a shaky shot could make a good film awful. We each took it in terms to attempt to take a free hand shot and to assess who had the steadiest hands to use when a tripod was not an option. Not only would an unsteady shot make the video seem of a lower standard but it would also cause us to lose marks on our overall video due to this being an aspect of which we would be gaining marks, simply on if we could hold a steady shot.

The second aspect we had to take into consideration was whether we framed the shot appropriately this involved making sure that all those in the shot who were meant to be within the shot were visible and the video didn't cut any on out. As we used a tripod this part of our skill level was pretty much taken care of for us however there was instances with audio where we chose to frame a long shot from afar and then we lost what was being said. This is therefore something we should look to improve upon within our final piece.

As just mentioned we also had to vary the distances in which we took our shots from. My group and i did experiment with this aspect of our filming but as mentioned it did cause issues at times with audio and therefore in future circumstances we would have to look to how we could suitably vary out shot distances but at the same time still be able to make out any use of audio. Our group varied out distances by changing the camera angles and by using features of our camera such as zoom. how ever we could look in future to vary the height of our shots as well as the distance as the tripod caused many of our shots to seem pretty much from the same height and of eye level. By varying the height we could give our prospective students another perspective of the school.

A2 MEDIA!!

How does NME attract its audience?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

slide 14 - Conclusion.

Overall i am extremely pleased with the outcome of my final product as although i did exsprience technical difficulties along the way the final product was fit for its purpose by using, developing and challenging different types of conventions, whilest mainly focusing on those which attract its target audience. The overall outcome was of a high standard and looked very professional with ensurance of all aspects of real media products.

The Publishing company which will distibute my magazine is Bauer.

And the target audience for my media product is females aged 14-17 of a working/middle class back ground. I shall attract this target audience though the images and exsclusives which my weekly magazine shall offer.

In doing this task i have adapted my own knowledge and practicle skills within blogger, photoshop and even within the use of my own camera. The unit has helped me to gain insight and knowledge into the magazine industry and those who hold great power over it. The biggest of these being my chosen publisher bauer. I began this course with what i thought was overall knowledge of photoshop however i have proved my self wrong and my final product taught me that there were still exstensive depths which i had not explored.

If i was to reproduce my product or to redo the entire course i would look to manage my time more effectivly by making use of free lessons more effectivly too ensure that through trial and error my overall piece was perfect. I did have issues with technolody and photoshop not agreeing with the running of my system at home and this led to me falling behind with work. However i did manage to recover the situation and with all events taken into account i am pleased with the work i produced of course in future id like to divert this perticular glitch with technolodgy. Most of my time was spent on perfecting my front cover, which then led to neglect upon my contents and double page spread.

slide 13 - Feedback of my media product?

In class our teacher printed up our finished products and places them each on their own table. Every member of the class was then handed a sheet of paper which contained 10 questions. The idea of the excercise was that we went around table to table accessing the work of our peers. The purpose of the task allowed us to gain an insight to what others thought of our work and what aspects they beleived werent as good as others. It also allowed us to asses others work and compare it to our own in order to gain ideas and inspiration for future tasks at A2 level.

The questions which we had to answer were as follows:
1) Target Audience of the finished media product?
2)Genre of the finished media product?
3)Is their a clear Housestyle, and is this continuous?
4)Do 3 pages fill exspectations?
5)Do articles forfill exspectations?
6)Images used suitable?
7)Overall impact of DPS?
8)Is the finished product suitable to fit its intended genre?
9)Any errors?
10)Any improvement which could be made?

Feedback:

Candidate #1;

1)I think the target audience is Teens.

2)Rock or maybe Indie.

3)Yes, blue black white.

4)Yes

5)Yes

6)Yes

7)Good, some errors.

8)Yes

9)Few spelling mistakes, minor errors

10)Proof read work

Candiate #2;

1)Youngsters/Teens

2)Rock?

3)Yes, brick wall is good.

4)Yes

5)Yes

6)Yes

7)Yes pretty good some errors.

8)Yes

9)Hmm, frontcover "kayley kills" contents "kelsey kills"

10) Proof read work to avoid above.

Candiate #3

1)Young adults 14-16

2)Unsure.

3)Yes good housestyle and yes its constant.

4)Yes

5)Yes

6)Yes

7)Pretty good, well done!

8)Think so unsure on genre though.

9)All seems okay maybe a few small errors.

10)Check for small errors and the text on the DPS the title reading VAMP gets lost in the background.