Reflections from the shoot

So over half term we had our shoots! On wednesday 28th Ot me and danni and tom went by ourselves to our location and shot some scenery shots so that we didn't have to waste Sian's time. Then on Saturday 31st Oct we did our first shoot with Sian. We shot in our Carnaby and Soho locations and i think this actually went really well.

We realised that when having moving camera-work, it looked much better if we carried the camera on a tripod to steady it, so i think that those shots look much better. However although we were planning on shooting on Sunday 1st Nov there was torrential rain. Shooting outside in October and November we knew that we may come up against weather issues, and so we planned for this by having many colourful umbrellas on stand-by, that we could work into our shoot. However, this was just too heavy and we didn't want to risk the equipment in such heavy rain. Consequently we are now shooting next sunday 8th Nov - this is when we will do our shots in Brick lane and Spitalfields.

Having looked at our footage from last sunday, we have realised that it is quite good to have a weeks gap between the shoots as we can really see what we need to do. Therefore we were able to come up with another shooting list for this weekend, meaning we won't miss anything.

Overall i think it did go well and i am happy with the footage we have. Hopefully this weekend will go well as i can't wait to get all the footage to ether so we can really get into the editing.

Album Covers Notes

A) 1- Typical Features:
* Barcode
* Album Title
* Artist Name
* Track List
* Web Adress
* Strong, main image
* Booklet with additional info and extras
* PUG

2- Categories
* Genre
* Groups/Solo Artist
* Male/Female
* Drawing/ Photo
* Image of artist/or not
* Debut Album?
* Greatist Hits?
* Compilations or one artist
* Record Label
* Era
* Double Disc or not
* Audience

3- Different Functions they serve:
* Attract buyer = constructing an audience
* Show artist
* Informative, shows which artist, what album
* Track listing, how many, sometimes shows times
* Style of Album to match style of artist
* Selling the genre

B) Michael Jackson
History: Past, Present, Future book 1
Released: June 1995

*Very striking image on the front. Michale Jackson in concrete as a statue, behind is a fireball.
* Prestning himself as a statue gives us the idea that it is all very epic, and he is creating history.
* Fireball continues on the back - implying the songs themselves are epic and amazing and histroy making
* The booklet inside conventionally shows song words. But also begins with a written extract by Elizabeth Taylor and Steven Spielburg basically saying what a legend MJ is. Also lots of pictures of him growing up, his life, him performing and people at his concert holding signs saying 'king of pop' etc - once again presenting him as a historical legend with an epic life.

OUR STORYBOARD

DYM MYSPACE FEEDBACK

A good range of examples provided with confident analysis. Possibly, make your identification of the Myspace conventions more obvious.

Myspace and Website Analysis

Madonna Myspace
www.myspace.com/madonna

The background colour of this myspace page is black with a white pattern of stripes which make it kind of look like speakers representing the dance music she’s making at the moment. But what immediately catches your eye is the massive heading ‘Madonna celebration, the ultimate greatest hits album’ predominantly yellow and pink, which are bold, fun colours illustrating the feeling of celebration. As you scroll down there is lots of pictures from her album cover where she looks like Marilyn Monroe, giving it a look of an icon for her greatest hits. There are links to lots of videos mainly of her new song ‘celebration’, as well as this you can play many of her recent songs, there is the option to add her as a friend, a link to her blog and a promotion for the charity she supports called ‘Raising Malawi’.

There is also a feature where Madonna says ‘bring me to your city’, ‘demand it’ where you can request her to visit where you live. And then at the bottom there are loads of posts from her fans, mainly just saying ‘I love you Madonna’ – this shows her diverse range of fans.

Myspace and Website Analysis

VV Brown Website
http://vvbrown.com/

VV Brown’s website is quite simple, with a plain white background. There is a MS of her at the top, wearing a leopard print hoodie which makes her stand out, and is quite striking against the plain background. The leopard print also gives her a quirky feel, which represents her image and music quite well. Additionally her name written in dots is another striking feature which stands out straight away, and I think is her signature font. It has lots of links to her myspace, facebook, bebo, twitter, youtube page and last.fm.

Her music had been described as funk, soul and retro pop, and the style of the website captures this quite well – but this is mainly shown through pictures of her, and her personal styling. There is also a video of her performing live at V festival. At the bottom of the page we are shown her record label ‘island records’ this is definitely a conventional feature of an official website, but there is not a lot of information about island records. When thinking about her target audience it is quite hard to get a sense of it just from her website, but i would guess young people because obviously she is young and she has quite a cool funky image. I would also guess probably mainly girls.

Myspace and Website Analysis

Black Eyed Peas Official Website
http://www.blackeyedpeas.com/

The main image at the top is unconventionally, not of the band, it is of a computer generated green head. The same as their new album cover – The END, this indicates as to the BEPs electronic hip hop music from this album. Also their signiture font from their album cover is used quite a lot on the website. Down the right hand side there are lots of links; for example to the BEPs official store, iTunes downloads, Will.I.am’s solo song as well as Fergie's official store. Again this is unconventional to be promoting individual projects on the bands website. There were also many posts from the website members down the side – showing their huge amount of fans.

Down the middle there are more links, and boxes of info about the release of their albums deluxe addition, their appearance on Oprah as well as a link enabling you to vote for them at the recent VMA awards. Surprisingly I couldn’t see any links to Myspace, blogs, or twitter pages of the band, at least not on the home page – although there are links to Fergie and Will.i.am’s personal websites.