My Evaluation Questions

I decided that in order to expand my use of technologies I would present my evaluation questions through Wix website creator, specifically made by me for the 4 evaluation questions.

Click Me For Evaluation Question Answers

Final Music Video

Final Music Magazine Advert

Final Digipak

Here is my final draft for my digipak. As you can see, I decided to keep with a theme of the bokeh light effect (and included this in my front over also). I did this because I realised for my images that their colouring was all quite different, with contrast of blues, reds and greens. This was a problem for me, as I knew from researching into existing digipak's that they often follow the same colour scheme throughout the entire thing. Adding this light effect means that the digipak has a certain house theme and colour that ended up pulling everything in together quite well. Also, as you can see, I decided to produce a four-panel digipak as opposed to a six panel one. My reason for doing this was because 'OCR Media Student A Level' website (http://ocrmediastudies.weebly.com/) has new examples of A2 blogs - all of the music video blogs has a digipak with only four panels. I believe that they scored highly here because they had more time to put effort into each image, rather than trying to get four individual images completed in a short space of time - bigger does not equal better. Producing four panels meant that I was able to put more time and effort into each image. I am very pleased with this product as all images are my own which were all taken from screen grabs of my music video or from unused clips for my video. I thought that doing this would be better than producing posed images as the video is the highlight point of the digipak and the poster, so orientating every image around the video would mean that if it was a real product, it would be more easily recognised by audiences if they had seen the music video.    

Music Video First Draft

Here is my first draft for my music video. 

After getting my media teacher and technician to watch the outcome, they gave me some constructive feedback, all of which all I agreed with as they are things I feel uncertain with too. At seconds 0:38, writing appears with a message that enforces the ideology behind the video and the message it carries - "it's impossible to hide who you are....especially from yourself". Both my media teacher and technician said that the quote was good, but the font doesn't tie in well with the video - it looks too basic and standard and does not look one with the video. I was aware of this during the editing process of my video, and It simply remained standard due to the fact that I wanted to see what the fonts on my ancillary tasks were going to be so that I could apply a smiler style/.the same font in order to tie the products together. I will be changing this for my second draft.

Also, my teacher and media technician commented on the clip from seconds 0:44-0:48 - it is edited to cut in time with the music to give a jump clip effect. However, they said that the black lags for too long and doesn't look as though it should be there - they said that the idea is clear and they think it would work well with a different approach. They also recommended replacing the black for white and shortening the length of space between the cuts in the clip or making a jump cut without the blank screen between. I will try both of these things to see which one works the best.

Lastly, they noticed that while I was recently editing, I must have knocked all of the clips out of sync by a fraction of a second as the lip syncing isn;t as in time as it was when I was edition it previously. This isn a mistake I knew I would encounter, but not too complicated to solve if done correctly. I have dealt with this issue a few times while editing, so it is now something i find quite easy to do in comparison to how I found handling it before.

Digipak Draft 1

Due to the fact that I want my magazine advert and digipak to link in regards to imagery, and my magazine advert design has changed due to the fact that my initial draft idea  did not end up working well when I started putting all of the pieces together, Ii now need to apply this to my digipak front cover I am glad that I decided to do one ancillary at a time as I knew they could always be subject to changes over time, and mine took a complete change of design all together, so if I had been creating my digipak front cover at the same time as my advert, both would have had to be re-done and that would have inevitably wasted even more time. 

This is the starting point of my digipak - I took a section of my music magazine advert and transferred it into another Photoshop canvas to adapt upon and add to. Here, I created a gradient around the entire image to soften up the image and keep continuity between it and the magazine advert. I also included the "Breathe" text from the magazine advert for the name of the album.

In the previous image, there is a baby blue boarder around the main image of the digipak because the gradient around the edges looked good with a sharp edge of colour to contrast - the baby blue is the same blue as the text for continuity in the image. However, the blue boarder make the image look a little plain, so i looked at it with a black one instead. The black boarder also looked a little plain, so I tried layering it with text from the hit song on the digipak (the song I used in m y music video) but that the made the entire image look very cluttered so I scrapped it and deiced to keep the baby blue. Many of my peers agreed with this change.

At this point, I decided to go for something different - to the right is a picture of a book that I had seen recently that I had got some inspiration from in regards to extra imagery in the cover of my digipak. I felt that the digipak cover before this point looked very bare and empty, and I didn't just want to bombard it with text, so I decided to add images that can be tied in with elements of the 3 products. In the book cover, there are stars hanging behind the writing, and I thought that I could try this and see how it looked alongside and slightly behind the frame of the cover, as there is no harm in taking inspiration from eternal mediums if they will work well. In the image above, I decided to make an image of lungs and crossed over male and female gender symbols as these reflect the "breathe" title of the digipak and the message of the music video which is acceptance of gender regardless of what you were born with.  Sp far I really like this front cover. I will be getting audience feedback on how to refine
this imagery and make it look as good as it possibly can for my audience.

Music Magazine Advert Re-do Draft 1

After deciding to re-start my music magazine advert because the last one was not up to the standards of a real advert, I decided to get some advice from my teacher to avoid making any mistakes in the photo taking stages. She suggested taking an image that was within an image, such as having a music magazine avert of a bus stop advert with a bus and such in he background. This seemed like a really good idea to me because my issue with the other advert was composition and content rather than editing, so making a good start with the imagery itself would make for a better end product.

I started by taking photos of frames in numerous places on numerous backgrounds - I wanted to use a photo frame (that would then be filled in with an image during editing) because it has a personal feeling to it such as my music video, and I then wanted to give it a rustic background in order to link some meaning ti the photo frame and the image inside of it. I decided on this brick wall background as they have many connotations of being, being in your way, resulting in you having to go the long way round to get what you want. These kind of things all reflect the identity of the character in my music video because they feel trapped within their own identity, and the only way to get round that is to take the long way round - finding and accepting your identity is much easier when you know you are the gender you are assigned at birth as it is the 'norm', and people tend to dislike anything outside of the 'norm'. This is ultimately all down to current hegemony - dominant ideas in society that women are suppose to have beautiful hour glass figures and men should be built like a machine. Not only are these ideologies unrealistic when you are identifying with the body you were assigned with at birth, but it is near impossible for trans* people wanting to pass as the opposite sex to apply these ideologies and physical expectations on themselves without the aid of hormone therapy and surgery, and this simply isn't an option in most cases. 

I ended up deciding on this image of the frame in front of a wall because it has plenty of space at the top and bottom to allow for text to be used. After choosing this photo, I then needed to elongate the frame to be more rectangular than square by using a few different editing methods in Photoshop (mainly the patch tool and the smudge tool to refine any imperfect edges). Once I had perfected the base photo to accommodate the image that needed to go in the frame, I then inserted said image into the photo and adjusted anything that needed adjusting such as the internal edge of the frame which needed to be neatened up. The image in the frame is a still from my music video - I really liked it for this advert because it tied in well with the message of the wall in relation to the expression on his face - he is dressed as a woman, which is who he wanted to be and yet he is still not happy - there is a wall in his way (hegemony) stopping him from perusing and accepting his identity.

When I got to the stage of the previous image, I thought that the walls were a little empty around the edges, so I created a colour burn gradient on the top and bottom of the image to give the subtle implication of the darkness of the wall engulfing the image in the frame. This not only enforced the message that the poster is trying to portray, but it also added some colour and a little more dimension to the advert. 

My next step was to include some text - after looking at more music magazine adverts (online as well as in my existing product analysis on the blog) it seemed to be that they mainly include the artist/band name, the name of the album (digipak) that is being advertised, a hit song from the album and it's release date. 

I ended up making the album name and hit song name in blue to tie in with the blue hues in the image in the frame of the advert - this also helps it stand out and contrasts the red of the wall so that it lifts up from the page. I also decided to call my digipak "Breathe" because after looking at the conventions of more serious albums from my digipak analysis and the 'how to title my digipak' post I did not long ago on the blog, I decided to go for something simple yet meaningful to tie in well with the video. The word 'breathe' has connotations of being a statement - someone telling another person to breathe if they are struggling to breathe. This can be linked in with my video due to the distress that the character is going through, it shows that the entire album could have these kind of connotations and meanings, therefore portraying the entire album as serious, which it is.

 I left the artist name in white (I changed the name of the artist to avoid copywriter issues, but also to something that I felt fit the style of all 3 products better - I asked my peers for their opinion on the name and they all thought that ti fit well). This is because if it was blue then too much blue text would be on the page and it wouldn't be as noticeable. Also, the artist name is the only bit of text at the top of the advert, so the white helps lift it from the dark gradient, and looking back at what my audience had said previously, colours often used for text in music magazines are white, black and red, and white fit the best with this particular colour schemed imagery. 

I named my artist Cassidy Blake as I wanted a name as interesting as Mac DeMarco, so I looked at where the use of 'De' before a last name came from. After searching online for a while, I discovered it came from irish roots, so I looked through some Irish last names as well as first names. For the first name I wasn't too concerned with how interesting it sounded as Mac isn't exactly extravagant, I was more interested in the last name. I simply saw Cassidy in a list of irish first names and Really liked it.

When I came to searching for a second name, I couldn't find one I liked to much in irish translation - I liked the sound of DeBlaca the most, but it didn't seem to fit with the theme of the video and the advert, and then I noticed it was translated from the name Blake, an I thought that Cassidy and Blake did sound good interesting together as though it could be the name of an artist, so I stuck with that.

 For the bottom right corner of the advert I included the cover of my digipak because that is what the advert is advertising, The imagery of the digipak cover and the advert are similar because this means that if the public saw this advert in a magazine and took just a quick glance at it, they would have a good idea of hat to look for of they were attempting to seek out the digipak to buy it/give i a listen to. This is something that music magazine adverts do with pages adverting a CD release. 

Magazine Advert Draft 6 Feedback

This is my music magazine advert after removing all of the text from it. In order to avoid any further mistakes or include anything that won't work well with the print, I decided to gain more audience feedback and ask them if this base layer itself works well. I asked two males and two female (David, Thomas, Emily and Beth). All of them said that this base layer, despite looking good and tying in well with the singing elements of my music video, they said that It doesn't look like the base kater of a music video magazine and that adapting on it would be (as David put it) "trying to cover a burnt cake with icing, it looks okay but the full effect isn't there.

From this feedback, I decided to scrap what i have worked on so far, yet take away from it all of the feedback and advice I have ben given in order to recreate and re-craft a music magazine advert that will work well with my music video but will also LOOK like a music magazine advert as well.

Magazine Advert Draft 5 Feedback

This is my magazine advert after incorporating the feedback from my peers for draft 3. So far I feel that this is better than draft 3, but at the same time it still doest't look right.

However, after consulting my teacher, she suggested to remove the TTN at the top of the page due to the fact that a music magazine wouldn't necessarily have the name of the magazine on it, and that could have freed some space up for writing. She also said that the font does not look like it fits the image well and the the brown gradient and background don't have continuation with the main colour scheme and style of my music video so far. I am going to take this feedback into consideration and redraft this magazine advert in order to get it up to standards.

Magazine Advert Draft 4 Feedback

Before attempting the suggestions my peers made for my music magazine advert, I decided to try something out that I had seen in an Arctic Monkeys music magazine advert in my existing product analysis post. I wanted to incorporate similar colours of the image as that is what the Arctic Monkeys advert had done. However, it doesn't give off the same effect as that advert, it still feels as though it doesn't belong there, so I think that for my next draft I will attempt what my peers had suggested and see how that looks.

Magazine Advert Draft 2/3 Feedback

Here is the second draft of my music magazine advertisement. I feel despite taking my audience feedback on board, the image still doesn't look like it could be an advert in a magazine.

I decided to add orange streaks of light over the image to enhance the bokeh light effect as I thought that was some good feedback from my audience and made sense. I really like the look of the lighting effect over the image and think it will stay that way.

 However, I do not like the white writing over the image - it looked out of place simply on top of the image, so i attempted to put an translucent black box beneath it to make it look as though it belonged there but this effect doesn't seem to fit very well with this image. I again decided to get some audience feedback on what direction to go in next. 

Emily: "I think that the font needs to be different and that there needs to be a gradient from the bottom that is the same as the background because they've done it on some music magazine adverts that I have seen - they put the text over the gradient".

Beth: "Yes I agree with Emily, that will look better than the box and the font needs to be more standard and less fancy. Also, I think that the logo at the top needs to be a different colour because the red and grey look really out of place with the orange, maybe make it a similar colour scheme to the advert".

I think I will give this a try because I do not like how this image looks at the moment. 

Magazine Advert Draft 1 Feedback

I decided to begin producing my magazine advertisement due to the fact that I now feel I have enough narrative in my footage to begin my ancillary tasks. Below are the stages i went through in creating my music magazine advertisement:

This was the photograph I thought would work best for my magazine advertisement as it reflects a lot about the music video and the message that it ends out.

I then blacked out the background as it made the image look less professional so having  a plain background made it feel more like it was taken at professional photo shoot. I took the black background idea from examples in my magazine advert evaluation post - one of Coldplay's adverts had a black background and it rally helped bring the foreground into focus. I also thought creating my own magazine name and logo would enhance the fact that it belongs in a magazine. TTN stands for 'Top Tunes Now' however it wouldn't need to be mentioned anywhere on the advert as it would be irrelevant. Also, I wanted to create an orange glow over the image to mimic the bokeh light effect i have included over moving images in my music video. 

I wasn't sure where to go next, so I asked my class piers (who also happen to be in the age group of my target audience) what they thought would look good regrading the text for the advert. Here is what they said after looking at my existing product evaluation of music magazine adverts: 

Emily: "I think you should make the orange much brighter and make it look like the orange lights you have in your music video/"

I thought that this was some good feedback to take into account due to the fact that I want top create continuity between all of my products so that they all look as though they are linked and belong to the same artist. 

Beth: "The writing should be white because music magazines tend to have solid colours like b;lack white and red, and it would also contrasts the black background really well"

This was something i was also considering in regards to the text, so I took it on board for my next draft. 

David: "It might be an idea to put the writing over him because if you have it all on the black background it will look squashed and the guy in the image will look like he's taking up too much space when he doesn't need to"

This also seemed like a good idea as there sin't much black background to use for the writing, so putting the writing over the image can take up some unused space.

Deciding against own graphic imagery

As you can see, these lips have been through the edition process in photoshop, and I have manipulated them very much to try and get them to look realistic. It was my intention to make these lips look as realistic as possible to become apart of all 3 products to provide a linking graphical element between them. I had intended this image to either be a company logo in corporation with the artist that I am going to make up for my products, or to be a an iconic image/logo for the artist. However, this image hasn't turned out how I wanted it to look and I do not have enough time to edit this image when it would have simply been one small component to the much larger products that are the promotional package. However, I may come back to this if I feel I have enough time for it, but otherwise it will be excluded from the products. 

Bokeh light effect

Solid Bokeh 

(Taken from: http://www.texturex.com/Bokeh-Textures

/city+bokeh+texture+light+effect+free+stock+image.jpg.php on 05/02/12)

Slightly blurred Bokeh

(Taken from: http://syafiqahrahmat.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_01_archive.html on 05/02/15)

Very Blurred Bokeh

(Taken from: http://wallpaperswiki.com/bokeh-effect-glare-light/ on 05/02/15)

A bokeh light effect is a blurred image of several small lights - it can be used as a man image or used as a secondary images layered over a main image with an altered opacity. This then makes the main image appear as though there is a kind of light projection on it, just very faint and subtle. This effect can be used over another image/moving image for many reasons, for example, to give it a softer look, to look vintage, to express emotions through use of colour in the lights etc...

These lighting effects can be altered and manipulated in many ways, for example, by decreasing the focus on the lens the image will be more blurred and the lights will become more hazed around the edges as well as much larger (depending on how far away you are from the lights will change this factor - the closer you are the bigger the lights will be, the farther away., the smaller they will be). As seen from the images above, you can create a solid, slightly blurred or very blurred effect depending on how much focus you put on the image. Also, the background of the lights can change the look of the lights - as shown in the top two image,s they have a black background so single lights are much more noticeable. however the third image appears to either have many lights over lights so there is no background between the lights, creating a gold effect, or, there is some gold behind the image such as gold paper, a gold/war coloured warm or even a gold coloured Christmas tree. this adds to the cluttered and full look of the very blurred bokeh light effect.

The very blurred bokeh effect however would be a bad choice to use in low opacity over a main image as the background and lights are the same colour, so in order to maintain the visibility of the image underneath, the bokeh light effect on top would have the be of such low opacity that the actual bokeh effect of the lights themselves would be almost transparent. For this reason, it is because to space the lights out a little and have a visible plain background that is of a different colour to the lights in the image such as black.

I want to use this lighting effect in my video as I was influenced by it with one of my stylistic influences - 'Talain Rayne - Twinkle Lightly'. I thought that this effect would be very beneficial to use in my video in relation to the message and style - the lighting can act both as an emotional piece but also add to a dysfunctional unreal element that synchronises  with the dysfunctional sound of my song choice by Mac DeMarco.

I first attempted this effect in my video with the slightly blurred bokeh effect above to see how a still image bokeh would look over a moving image. It turned out to look rather out of place along with a moving image so I decided it would be best to capture my own moving image bokeh light effect by slightly shaking the camera over the lights and putting the lights slightly in and out of focus so it looks as though they are having a glowing effect. This will allow some movement to the image without taking away from the main image.

so far this effect is working well with the main image - I may however, re-take this shot as the light's were not as defocused as i would have liked them to be. Also, I want to use several different coloured lights instead of white lights as this will add to the chaotic and dysfunctional elements that Mac DeMarco's song will suggest, but it will also symbolise a mixture of emotions the character will be feeling behind the exterior of his male representation.

How to Title My Digipak

When I analysed my digipaks I focused on the visuals and why they were constructed this way primarily, and only touched upon the titles of the digipaks. My reason for this was because I was far more focused on how the digipak would look visually over any of the text that would appear on the product. After re-capping the blog post I did on analyzing digipaks, I noticed a few things about the titles:

• All of the digipaks had the name of the band/artist on it, meaning that I will need to create the name of the band/artist in relation to the song in my video (Mac DeMarco's 'My Kinda Woman')
• The 'not so serious' or quirky artists had named their digipaks in a not so serious way e.g. Weird Al's 'Mandatory Fun', whereas the more serious artists such as Of Mice And Men named their album with something emotionally meaningful ('Restoring Forces') which can be tied in with the emotions and meanings of the songs.
• The font and coloring of the titles matched the theme of the digipak as well as the band/artist name on the cover.

From this information of existing products, I need to begin thinking of a name of an artist/band that fits the dysfunctional style of Mac DeMarco's song 'My Kinda Woman' as well as the serious tone for the narrative of the video. This also goes for the title of the digipak - it needs to fit the dysfunctional sound but still be somewhat serious to match the video content that goes with the song on the digipak. 

Digipak Initial Sketch Plan

In order for me to construct a digipak I first need to draft some ideas in order to see how I may want it to look. I will not be comparing this digipak to anything existing digipaks in particular as my video product follows a rather unconventional genre of combining dysfunctional sound with political messages. 

As shown below, the two images are the same with differences - the first image is the initial sketch that  I did on paper and scanned on the mac computer. Once I had scanned the sketch in, I started editing it in Photoshop to produce the second image. The second image has been cleaned up slightly by hilighting the background and crating a boarder. I did this so that I could see the image more clearly and see how it could look in a more professional light and, from this see if the elements of each panel could work well as a real piece. I think that each image on each panel does fit rather well and it all follows the same theme. However, I will be working on a few more sketches for the digipak in order to find what combination of images could look the best.

As shown in the second image, I have edited the lips from a sketch to an almost polished pair of lips with Photoshop. I did this as I was considering using a mixture of mediums for imagery so that the digipak would have several different elements and feelings to it. Also, creating my own imagery from near scratch could become slogan work and iconic images associated with the video and band/artist, therefore meaning it could be included on the print and potentially in the video piece.

The left inside panel is a tube of lipstick which I imagined would look nice with a bokeh light background. I think that the two would go well together as it would mirror the bokeh light imagery I am implementing in my video to give it a slightly more dysfunctional feel to match the style of the song in my video video and the original music video of song. Also, the lipstick mirrors the identity of the character in my video (whom will be the face of the band/artist for the song and video i.e David), therefore it is promoting the message of trans* acceptance beyond the music video.
This goes hand in hand with the inner right panel as it will be a pair of lips with bright red lipstick on. This also ties in with the front cover as for this sketch it will be an image of David applying make-up (this is also expecting to be the cover image of my magazine advertisement product as it will then show continuity between the pieces and actually show what the magazine advert is advertising).
The extra panel on the bottom left with be a compilation of many images of trans* people, showing the demographic that this band/artist is supportive of the trans* community and most likely of its fans as these images could be seen as images of fans as well as other trans* people. However, this image may be difficult to create as I would either have to construct many of he photos of people I know myself, or take images from the internet in which case I would have to ask for permission prior, wait for a reply and hope that they give me permission and this simply isn't reliable enough or practical enough o do in a short space of time to work with. However, this panel seems like a good idea to me so I will not dismiss it as of yet but I will not be replying on this image 100%
The song list on the bottom center panel is  work in progress as I need to decide whether I will take existing song makes from Mac Demarco or create my own. Also, the CD disk is a work in progress - i do like the idea of having an emotional quote in it, but it needs to tie into the video and the magazine advert otherwise it would be rather random, so this element of the digipak will be on hold until I decide what fonts I want to use and what phrases I want to run through the three products.

Initial Print Design

Here is my initial plan for the poster advertising my main video product for the song 'My kinda woman' by Mac DeMarco. Producing this poster was a way for me to get an initial understanding of how I may want my final print product to look in relation to colour scheme and visual orientation. From this, I feel that I need to research further into font styles and find what fonts could fit the themes to my video product. Also, I need to go back to my print research and look through some key visual elements to current music advertisements in order for this product to seem visually pleasing to my target audience. Also, now that I have produced this product for myself to see how I may go about producing such a product,  I can hand out questionnaires asking my target audience what features they typically like to see from a music poster.

Video Editing Plan

I've decided to create a plan of how I want the footage I have gathered to be constructed on a narrative and content basis. It is basically a storyboard plan to aid and guide me in editing current footage rather than a plan for pre-shooting. I wanted to create this so that I can stay true to many of my original ideas for the video and not get lost in the editing process and potentially change the meaning of the video. However, I will not restrict myself completely to this plan as I will have no idea how this plan will look until I have produced it in the editing software. If for whatever reason something in the plan does not fit, then that will be a time when things can be altered.

Plan:

Video Content update

I am currently at a stage in shooting where I have gathered all of the male footage and have begun editing it. Since editing the footage, I have realized that the double narrative of two characters is not required - the reason for this being that there is enough footage with the male character alone, and including another character into the mix of the video would seem pointless and serve only a purpose to fill empty space which isn't there. Also, I feel that having two characters with very similar roles in the video may seem misleading. I came to this conclusion while referring to Stuart Halls reception theory - I feel that the meaning I am trying to encode with two character could be receive differently by an audience. This is because in modern culture, if a man and a woman are in a video together, people come to the conclusion that they are going to come together and be the 'happy ending', which is not what my video is about. This conclusion for the newest narrative of my video is reinforced by Todorov's narrative theory, in which he said the end stage of a narrative has to be a restored equilibrium, and many products these days rely on a romantic ending for this equilibrium to be complete. For example:

Popular music videos in the UK:

Katy Perry - Friday Night

 Taylor Swift - Love Story

Lana Del Rey - Blue Jeans

Indie/less popular music videos in UK:

Talain Rayne - What Do We Have To Lose

 Crystal Castles - Not In Love (unofficial fan video)

Tokio Hotel - Automatic

These Images show that in many cases of feminine and masculine representations, there is often an element of the two coming together romantically to form a happy ending (or in some cases even a tragic ending, but the audience would still anticipate a happy ending nonetheless). This is something that I wanted to avoid in my music video, which is why I excluded the female character.

Of course something such as this was bound to happen as most of the meaning of a video is created during the editing stage of production. Currently, the narrative of the male footage is neutral to many if not all elements of the storyboard. This is important to me as I haven't strayed too far from my original video concept I have simply made developments on the original ideas and scraped elements that don't seem as though they would fit well now that I have begun the editing process.

Print Plan

Feature for print:

A picture of my main character applying makeup (one from the photos I took intended for use in the video as still images) - I want this picture so that the main picture of the poster has meaning to the single that is being advertised
Reason:
Having an image of the main character will enforce Richard Dyer's Star Image theory. Also, filters are extremely popular among my target audience (which is why I included a filter on the pictures of my main character applying makeup for the video, as well as because it gives the image more meaning when tied to the video - as mentioned in a previous post), and the photo i'm planning to use for my poster has a sepia filter on it, which goes hand in hand. Below are some pictures that give proof that filters are popular to my target audience (as my target audience is young adults primarily, and many young people in the modern day are dependent and reliant on technology and social media) - I searched in Google images for photos on 3 different social medias and almost all of which had filters:

                               'Instagram Photography':

                                'Pinterest Photography':

                                'Tumblr Photos':

Feature for print:

The photo of my main character to be Photoshopped to look slightly more feminine

Reason:

This feature is not to glamorous computer modified beauty, but to enforcing the message of the video is to embrace who you are, whether it be the social norm or not. Also, the image may not look so obviously trans* at first glance (which is what we want as that is the entire point of the video, to show off trans* identity) and enhancing it through Photoshop will make it slightly more noticeable and therefore people will be enticed into looking at it and reading it.

Feature for print:

Funky background 

Reason:

In order to suit the dysfunctional element of the music by Mac DeMarco - I'm still not 100% sure on this feature as I am unsure whether a funky background will clash with the filter on the image main image, However, this is what I feel would be the best choice for the print as of now, and if it does not fit later on then it will be changed to something more toned down or more appropriate. However, I do feel that there needs to be some form or dysfunctional in the print.

Magazine Advert Analysis

Planning - Appearance Of Locations

Plain Background:

Due to the fact that the scenes with the plain background need to be mainly focused on the emotions of the characters and less on the background, it is going to be set up quite simply and plain. The background will remain plain (with some texture in creases and such from the curtain so that the background has some lift and lift to it) whilst the foreground of the characters will be quite chaotic - filled with emotions and body language.

Bedroom:

The bedroom scene is where most of the narrative and meaning comes in. The bedroom scene will reflect the environment that the male character is living in, so for starters it needs to look lived in but still crafted to an extent to retain a professional and artistic look which will be visually pleasing to the viewers. Due to the fact that the bedroom scene I am going to be filming in is quite basic with mainly white and blues, I will liven it up with a tartan red throw over the bed (tartan is very popular at the moment such as with flannel shirts, shawl coats, skirts and furniture, and due to the fact that my target audience is younger they will be seeking out current trends and therefore will most likely be into this kind of element to the setting). My reason for livening the room up with a tartan red throw is because it contrasts the plain bedroom which can be reflected onto the character - their outer appearance isn't something that pleases them, its their inner identity that is who they really are and what makes them happy, therefore the red throw is a symbolic code to the characters identity Other symbolic codes which will be included in the bedroom scene will be books with titles that reflect the emotions and current reality of the characters life, and personal items such as perfumes which also mirror the femininity of the character. These items are typical to almost any bedroom, so they are't just random items thrown into the mix if the video to try and connote something about the character, they will serve a real purpose to the character and feel natural to the viewer seeing them.

Before Shooting

Before I begin filming I intent to do the following:

- Take a close look at my storyboard and see what elements I feel are the most important to             include based on narrative and importance to the message of the video.

- Book out my equipment ahead of time.

- Ensure that I have everything on my filming checklist.

- Ensurer that all equipment is charged and in working order.

- Prep my actor with the song lyrics and a rough idea of what he will be doing during the filming     beforehand so that he has time to absorb what he will be doing so that each section of shooting will be a little clearer to him.

- Make sure that locations are free and set up so that no time is wasted on the day of filming.

Character Costume and makeup

There are 2 different scenes of my music video with 3 different costumes needed in total. Here is what is needed and why:

Plain background scene:

Feature

- A t-shirt with a flannel shirt over of any colour.

Why?:

- T-shirts and flannel shirts both share masculine and feminine attributes to them so during this scene the characters gender through clothing will not be stereotyped to his male gender. Also, there does not need to be specific colour to this costume because all colours can be universal (and if pink was involved then that could simply add to the message that comes in later during the video that clothing does not necessarily define a person on first glance). Trousers/bottom clothing does not matter at this point because it will be filmed from the chest and up.

Feature:

- Red lipstick and eye makeup for part of this scene:

Why?:

- This scene will have all of the mouthed parts of the song in it so that the bedroom scene can look more realistic and relatable. So, I want there to be parts where the meaning of the video can be established through the singing parts as well as the narrative parts of the bedroom scene - David will transition from male to female as the video progresses, and this scene will be part of that transition also.

Bedroom scene:

Male costume

Feature:
- Grey t-shirt and baggy jeans.
Why?:
- Grey has semantic codes of being bleak, boring, bad, mundane and negative. This is how we want to represent the character when dressed as male because trans* people can get deeply depressed over their assigned gender at birth when they pursue it through clothing for whatever reason (perhaps social pressure or nonacceptance from those around them), and this can make them even more body dysphoric than they already are.

Female Costume

Feature:
- Red lipstick and a floral dress.
Why?
- Dresses are extremely feminine, which increases the hard hitting effect that this concept will have on an audience - dresses are a world away from men's fashion, meaning no man would desire to wear a dress, enforcing the fact that the character is simply not a man and was never intended to be a man - it was simply her assigned gender at birth. The lipstick is also important as it shows consistency with the plain background scene - they are linked through narrative, conventions and message.

Analysing Digipaks

I wanted to analyse digipaks because at this stage in production I am not 100% sure where my creative process will take me and what conventions are relevant when producing a digipak. Analyzing existing digipaks will give me a clear and cemented understand of what a digipak should look like and what style digipaks sell the best on the market. I realize that I am not aiming for high conventionality as that is not the kind of product I am interested in creating, but I know that it is important to have an understanding of what kind of visuals make a product desired by an audience.

Risk asessment

In regards to the locations I am shooting in, there aren't many hazards that could arise due to the fact that each location is in a controlled environment. However, there are still a small number of hazards that could arise, and though their chances of happening are slim, they are still possible, so I have made this risk assessment chart  in order to be aware of these hazards and the steps I need to take if they do occur.

Risk Assessment
What potential hazards may be encountered?	How will I prevent these hazards?
Plain Background Scene
LED light falling on my actor	Put the light on a stand such as a tripod or putting it as far away from the actor as possible.
Tripod falling on actor whilst sat on floor	Holding the tripod whenever I am filming my actor.
Someone having an injury at the school	Have number ready on hand to call for actors parents (they live close to the school we will be shooting in).
Bedroom Scene
LED light falling on my actor	Put the light on a stand such as a tripod or putting it as far away from the actor as possible.
Tripod falling on actor	Holding the tripod whenever I am filming my actor.