For my digi-pack research and CD cover, I have decided to analysis two vary contrasting album covers, both of a pop genre, one is more stereotypically pop where as the other is classed more as indie pop. The covers I will be analysing are "the Kooks - Sway" and "Britney Spears - Circus" as both are very different and I think by doing this analysis, it will help m,e a great deal when it comes to designing my own cover.
I was on the main blog the other day having a browse at every body's blogs and seeing if there was anything from any lesson I had missed and I came across Oyinda's blog. I saw that she had recently uploaded an example of an A2 music video that had been awarded a grade 'A'. I remember a while ago when my group had finished and edited our as film project to perfection so we had a bit of spare time left over at the end and just for fun, we were looking at what music videos had been made on other media courses across the country. Funnily enough, this video that Oyinda has put on her blog, is a favourite that I liked watching back then.
I feel that this music video is relevant to our in the fact that many of our shots are edited in to black and white and adjusted with the contrast and saturation controls. Most of this video id edited to black and white, apart from the odd shot where certain bits of colour are depicted. I think we will hopefully be able to achieve this small amount of colour from the editing technique on final cut pro called "colour pass".
Also, on this video they have also used the Polaroid pictures effect where they begin to move inside from what started as a still image. I believe that this girl achieved this by using the "green screen" affect on final cut pro, so hopefully we can get ours looking as good as this groups does!
After watching the tutorial on basic editing techniques and how to use it, we were looking more into detail about what effects can be achieved. The main technique we would like to achieve is the "Green Screen" effect through a Polaroid picture to make it go from a still image to a moving one.
On this following video, it didn't have green screen, but it had many other techniques that we thought looked excellent and that we'd like to try out as group on our music video. My personal favourites were "through a brick wall" "gazing out of a window" and "time travel", but all of them looked excellent,however we will only need to use some of them as if the music video h as to many transitions and special effects, it will begin to look more and more like a film rather then a music video!
Now that in our media room our school has provided us with brand new Imac's, we are finally able to have access to the programme of final cut pro. final cut pro is a much more advanced programme then Imovie and a lot of better effects and techniques can be used and achieved in order to produce a better final product (in our case, a music video).
We were then told that out of the 6 brand new Imac's my groups' was the only one to have final cut pro on! we were delighted to hear this as we could get going on it straight away where as the other groups will have to wait a little longer until it is working on their new Imacs.
In order to help us understand how final cut pro works and how to use it etc, we watched the following tutorial video on YouTube to give us the basics and great hints and tips in making our music video look the best it possibly can!
Narrative theory and structure
NARRATIVE is the term given to coherence and organisation to a series of given facts. The human mind needs a natural sense of narrative in order to connect events together and make certain interpretations based on these connections. In every situation, our mind always seeks a beginning, middle and an end and by understanding this shows that we understand how a common narrative is structured and shown to us.
Narrative Conventions
NARRATIVES are always made up of several similar conventions in order to find it's correct meaning. Within this meaning there are a series of codes that need to be considered. When we look at a narrative we examine its: GENRE, CHARACTER, FORM and TIME.
Narrative Structures
There are many ways in breaking down and defining what a narrative structure is. For example, you may here a Hollywood film describe as "a classic Hollywood narrative" meaning it has three acts. News stories have their own individual structure. A lot of work has been completed by literacy theorists in to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative:
- Tvzetan Todorov suggests that narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium,
- Vladimir Propp suggests hat narratives strongly depend on characters and action
- Claude Levi-Strausse believes that there is a constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only ever end on a resolution of conflict. Opposites can be visual (light/darkness/movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate/control/panic) and do with the sound track. Also, he believes that binary oppositions can also be used in order to deconstruct the narrative of something.
For my summer exam, we have tow rite about a narrative piece either focused on AS or A2. Both the film we produced last year and the music video which is still undergoing it's editing process, have clear narratives. However, for the exam I think I will write about my A2 music video. This is because our short opening to a horror film last year was told in linear form and was shown in chronological order and the music video is much more complex when it comes to it's narrative. The music video includes flashbacks and flash forwards which fit in with the narrative and has a broader 'plot' and so I will have more to talk about when it comes to analysing the narrative in the exam.
Narrative on film
the basic narrative to our horror film was a victimized ballet dancer who was being followed and stalked by a villain all dressed in black. It was called "The music box" because of the fact she had a similar outfit to the ballet dancer that spun inside the box shown numerous times in the film opening and also because when the villain had possession of the box, he has possession of her as well. The villain eventually ends up following her home from dance class one day and the opening ends in a fantastic cliff hanger and the audience are left in suspense as to whether he kidnaps the girl or not.
Narrative on music video
A teenage girl has split up with her boyfriend and throughout the song, in between the performance clips (where she is just singing to the camera), she is reminiscing on all the good memories she had with her boyfriend before the relationship ended. There are many flashbacks of the happy times and therefore this reflects the overall narrative as a whole.
Overall, I feel i have exceeded my knowledge on narrative far More then what I knew at AS level and that when it comes down to writing about narrative for the exam this summer, I feel confident that I have the correct terminology and background information on to talk about the narrative of either my year 12 or 13 produced piece with in media.
Although I have already spoken about our outing to IKEA and what we filmed as a group, but it took me a while to find the clip that we used for our research and what gave us the inspiration to film some of material for our music video at IKEA in the first place. It's taken from a clip from the comedy/romance film "500 days of summer" where the couple are running around IKEA pretending it's their house that they have moved into together as a couple etc. We thought this had a really good effect on showing how realistic the couple looked. So, as Elle and Alex are Boyfriend and Girlfriend in real life, it wasn't hard for them to act like the 2 characters did in the film!
(video to be uplaoded)
