Opening Sequence Updated - Samit

Looking back on the opening sequence I noticed that most of the footage in opening sequence was not the same size. So after some editing using Premier Elements I was able to fix the mistake.

Samit

Updated Interview footage - Samit

After reviewing the footage which we currently had for the interview, I noticed that the footage i captured was portrait which created a lot of space on the screen which was not being used and made the whole shot look weird. So, using After Effects I edited the interview footage to fill the blank gaps to make the footage look more appealing in a landscape view.

Opening Sequence - Seyi

I made a copy of the opening sequence and added in my suggestions in order to improve it. I changed the transitions and added in some of my late footage, and achieved this as my end result.



I spotted a few mishaps in the work, and i aim to edit the video to rid of them.

• In the first part with the spinning globe, there are three dashes at the bottom of the frame and a search button in the top right hand corner of the frame. This came from filming the spinning globe on a phone. On premiere elements, it is shown that we had attempted to remove it from the frame, but it keeps coming up in the final rendered video. The image below shows this:
• I also noticed that in the rendered video uploaded to youtube, the frames are all different sizes. I will find a solution to this later.
• I also think that the globe footage is too blurry to be our final product. We may have to screencast on a computer in order to receive the perfect outcome 

NEW!! Updated three column script - Seyi

I spent a week gathering information to create this script. It is not completely perfect, as I need to simplify it, add more data that can be represented in charts, and make all the American information British (such as the currency).

Video	Audio	Time
Camera starts looking at the presenter standing outside the location. (Leicester Square music Station) Add in graphics (bar chart)	PRESENTER: Hey guys, it’s (presenters name) here for Independent Music News London. 50 years ago, we would have all owned a mixtape (pulls out a mixtape) of some underground artist or the other. But face-to-face mixtape sales has always been a means to an end. Streaming - the best way to release music since mixtapes. But is it beneficial to the artist, or just another method of exploitation? In an industry that is constantly changing, can artists be sure to make sales off streaming right now? Today more music sales are higher than they have ever been before, due to streaming provided from apps such as Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud and Tidal. As listeners can listen to as many songs as they want, for a cheaper price through streaming via the internet. This helps the artist reach audiences worldwide quicker.	35 seconds
Cutaways ( of what?) and edits matching the dialogue	VOICEOVER: In October 2012, unsigned rapper, Nipsey Hussle made $100,000 by selling 1,000 copies of his mixtape, Crenshaw, for $100 each. He shifted every single CD in less than 24 hours at a pop-up store in his hometown of L.A. So face-to-face sales is not completely dead, but streaming has done so much more for artists so far. But that does not necessarily make it 'idea of the year.' Spotify says that its average payout for a stream to labels and publishers is between $0.006 and $0.0084, however, Information Is Beautiful suggests that the average payment to an artist is $0.001128 – this being what a signed artist receives after the label's share. The worst payout of all for musicians, however, comes from Youtube, which pays out about .0003 per play. An artist signed to a record label would thus have to have their Youtube video played 4,200,000 times in order to earn the monthly U.S. minimum wage of $1,260. So what about Tidal? The service pays 0.007 cents per stream — while it doesn’t sound like much of a difference to its competitors, a signed artist would only need to be streamed 180,000 times on the service to make the monthly minimum wage. Musicians who stay independent have the potential to earn the most money, according to all the average rates. Unsigned artists average about $5.99 for every $9.99 album downloaded from iTunes through a distributor, while signed artist's average $2.30 per $9.99 album downloaded through iTunes. Minus a label’s take on profits, artists also make more per play on every streaming service.	2 minutes 30 seconds
	PRESENTER: Streaming will earn artists a lot, but only with enough users. Royalty payouts from streaming might seem small now, but that’s because it’s fairly new. Eventually as more listeners sign-up, the payouts would seem more significant. The alternative is piracy. If music isn’t easily accessible for free with ads or through a subscription, people will just steal it and then artists earn nothing. Last year alone, 1.2 billion songs were illegally downloaded by 7.7 million music fanatics, costing roughly around 1 billion dollars for the industry. So if streaming does not bring in the lion share at the moment, then what does? The big money’s always been through performing And Merchandise – Labels have always cheated artists out of recorded music dollars. Artists should think of streaming as a brand promotion tactic. So should remain as an independent artist or sign yourself up to a label. Labels Are Hoarding The Royalties – Services like Spotify and Apple Music pay more than 70% of what they earn to the labels, and most of the rest covers expenses of running the apps. The problem is that the labels push artists into exploitative record deals where they only get a tiny share of the royalties, and the labels keep the rest. Artists who are frustrated about streaming should demand better deals from their labels, and remember the alternative is getting their work stolen, be patient, and tour. Once more people realize how amazing it is to be able listen to any song they want, the money will come. As an independent artist, you are more likely to earn a fair share of the money you recieve. So through performing and merchendise, you may recieve up to 100% of the proceeds. However, there are more opportunities brought to the table when signed to a label. So one must be actively searching for opportunities, looking for ways to spread their music on a large scale and probably have a manager, if they are independent.	1 minute 25 seconds
Interview (with artists: a signed artist/manager and an unsigned artist, seated at the same table)	VOICEOVER: We then caught up with two people with experience in this industry... INTERVIEWER: We are here with (artist name) and (artist/manager) name) at (where you are). How’s it going? (answer) So, as we all know, you have achieved independent success in the industry, and you are currently signed to a label. We are all excited to find out, how was your time been in this industry? (answer) Where was your favourite live performance? (answer) Why did you choose to stay/leave your label? (answer) Do you feel you are better off with or without a label? (answer) Where does majority of your income come from? (answer) Can you see a significant change in income and name recognition since you first started? (answer) Do you think the internet has helped or hindered your career success? (answer) Lastly, which deal do you advise coming up artists not to sign or what do you regret ever signing? (answer)	3 minutes 15 seconds
Vox pops (questions for the public)	We also caught up with Londoners to ask them questions about how they access their music, and why they choose to access it the way they do. Listen to this… would you pay to stream this? Where do you buy/stream your music? Do you illegally download music? What was the last song you listened to that was paid for? Do you come across underground artists? If so… how?	1 minute 10 seconds

Interview footage - Seyi

Below is my footage from when we went to film on Chagford Road. I did not get to post this for a while because the footage was not importing into the computer:



Issues encountered while filming:

• My camera battery died, so I had to film with the charger in the camera on the tripod
• Samit filmed on his phone but in portrait, so the footage came out in an odd frame which does not match mine or the other footage we have filmed.
• Rye's battery died.
• Someone honked their horn whilst filming outside.
• I constructed a shot list, but I was the only one who followed it because of the space difficulty, the dead camera batteries and the access to only one copy.

How we could have done better:

• Our intention before filming, was to film with two cameras. However, there was not much space to set up, so the angles did not turn out as nice, and there was always a camera showing in the shot. We could have positioned them better in order to achieve a variety of angles and shots.
• We should have full batteries before going out to film.
• We should not have moved or zoomed while filming, because it is a filming 101 NO, it ruins the raw footage, makes it harder to cut and should only be done through editing or on a dolly.
• The room was quite dim, causing my footage to look a bit dull. For higher quality footage, more lighting should be involved, as it really helped in my AS work.

Interview Footage - Samit

Interview footage that we got from Jonny.

Samit

Opening Sequence Completed - Rye

This is the final draft of our opening sequence for our news prodction company

Ideas for graphics for the final product - Arman

I have decided to take it upon myself to create the graphs for our final media piece.  I will be learning how to animate to show percentages of our interviews and display facts and figures on the screen for our final production.

Potential interview with A.Human - Arman

Following our interview with Jonny and Danny, we have found many intriguing answers that opened our eyes more to how the music industry revolves around smaller artists.  So far we haven't received a response from A.Human for our interview, however we will have to find a new interviewee if A.Human doesn't respond within the week seeing that our deadline for research+planning is December 15th.

We have an interviewee in mind, he goes by the name of DJ Shitpost, here's his soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/6666666666
We hope that A.Human does respond in time so that we have the opportunity to have a bigger musical name as one of our interviewees.  Though we don't mean to belittle DJ Shitpost, we simply would find it more practical if we had a band assigned to a minor label rather than a freelance artist.

Icongraphic 1 - Seyi

Research & Planning AND Construction

Graphs: I decided to use the same graphs and information from the research and planning from the script. I do not intend on duplicating the graphs, but simplifying them and selecting which are appropriate for our central question/topic (streaming and the internet).

YouTube Tutorials: This is my first time using Adobe After Effects so I used many YouTube tutorials in order to create the final product. Below are those I had used:

This was the first video I decided to follow, in order to make my own template inspired by the video below. It was quite difficult as I went through several different videos until I came across the right tutorial. Many of them did not have the same controls as I did or their expressions did not work or it's complicated.



The first thing I had imported into this animation was a picture, to emphasize on the 'bad' statistic, because if our audience consists of independent artists looking to make internet success, then this statistic would be of disadvantage to them. Plus, it was also going to add a sense of humour to the animation, because the picture is constantly used as a meme on social media. I used the video below to learn how to do this.


I then used this song from the YouTube video below (using an online YouTube converter to change it from mp4 to mp3) to put in the background to make it a bit more humour as well as emphasize on the bad statistic. I did not need a YouTube tutorial to teach me how to do it because once I learned how to import pictures, I just applied common sense. The fact that it is a song from an independent DJ makes it more relevant to the theme of our news package.



I was then under the impression that I had finished, however when I had replayed the video because I wanted to admire my work, however I found out that it was not playing sound, so I used the videos below to instruct me on how to do so, and to save the video as an mp4 in order for me to upload it onto YouTube.

Final Product

After a few weeks of research and planning and actually constructing it. I came up with this. However, I will edit it later, just to change the colours to or central colour which we will decide early this week. I will also add the voiceover later, in order for it to make more sense to our viewers. So far it is 6 seconds long, but I will be making more infographics for this news package for more content. Below is my final product:

Going to interview Jonathan in Chagford Street - Arman

Today Rye, Seyi and Samit went to Central London specifically Baker Street in order to get footage of an interview from Jonathan.  We already set the interview questions beforehand and will be asking appropriate questions.  I've decided to stay in school and develop the website.  Though I've encountered several embedding problems I am going to try reshaping the site.  Here is what the site looks like so far.  We have a hyperlinked button which will navigate the user towards the news section of the website.  There's a slideshow on the front page displaying several different independent artists, you'll find some pictures of our unfinished site below.

After effects progress report - Rye

I've prepared the image so that we have a pure green background allowing me to remove it easily and add effects to my logo, hopefully i will have completed the effects in my next blog post.

Nearly finished - Rye

Today I further worked to completing the opening sequence and currently I just need to work on the animation for our company's logo so that it isn't static as well as replacing some of the footage. 

Location profiles - Arman

We have visited Buckingham palace for one of our filming locations, we have created timelapse footage from people walking around for a memorial service on the 13th of November.  We spent 40 minutes all together looking for a location and filming.





On the same day as we went to Buckingham palace we decided to visit trafalgar square for some breathtaking footage of the city for out intro.  It took us 45 minutes to film our timelapse.  We filmed on the side of the huge monument in the center of the picture, we climbed the bottom half and let the camera get a good overview of the whole of Leicester square.

At Hyde park we had some technical issues due to us running out of battery during the filming of a timelapse.  We only got 10mins footage before the camera shut off.  We are looking to going back into central to reattempt/gain additional footage which we should have gotten on that day, however since we are in winter, the day is shorter and so we didn't get as much daylight as we had hoped for.  However we did get a breathtaking view of the pond in the evening with civilians walking past.

On Sunday the 27th of November we took another trip into central to get some more time-lapse footage for our news cutaways.  We went to the infamous Abbey Road and set up our camera at the memorial and filmed passers by walking on the zebra crossing trying to recreate The Beatles.  It took us 15 minutes to get the time-lapse footage.

When going into Regents park, we encountered quite a few problems.  Firstly we couldn't skate in there, meaning we couldn't cover enough ground in a short amount of time to find a good shooting spot.  Secondly there weren't many people there at the time, which wouldn't give us good time-lapse footage of passers by leading us to going back to Hyde park for more footage of passers by and winter wonderland!

Shooting Schedule update - Seyi

I had updated the shooting schedule last week, however, the header was not showing on the document when I uploaded it to SlideShare and I could not copy and paste the table onto the blog when I wanted to. So, I just decided to screenshot the document and upload it onto SlideShare when it is finished.

Please excuse the tiny picture, as this is only provisional until it is complete.

How my thriller from last year used Media Language Creatively - Rye

1. My thriller is about a killer librarian who writes out her murders before she acts them out upon students however one student had found the diary and realises that he is the next victim.

2.Charles Derry believes that tension is why people are drawn to watch horror movies. He believes that they come to get their blood pumping as they enjoy the buzz they get from the build up of tension.

3. An example of this in my coursework last year was the cross cut between the feet to build up tension to an upcoming conflict.

4. The editing of having the shots alternate between librarian and student builds up suspense as it implies that there will clearly be an interaction between the two characters.

 5. Another example of a psycho-traumatic thriller would be the overlay of our Librarian stamping away at the books frantically with her crazy hair.

6. The tension is built up through the use of sound and mise en scene, we have the stamping overlap from two separate clips that make the stamping more rapid as if a heartbeat is increasing.



7.Strauss's theory that to drive any narrative forward there must be some kind of opposition or conflict within the story, an example being the contrasting views that the Sith and the Jedi have in Star Wars is always the driving force of the film or Good vs Evil.

8.An example of this is when we have a crosscut between our scrappy teenager and the cool, calculated librarian.

 9.We created contrast through the use of mise en scene as it is used to show the class and gender differences of the two conflicting characters centred to the plot.

10.A different cut was used between when the librarian puts the book away in her desk and when the student takes the book out from the drawer.

11.Using cinematography and editing, we cut quickly between the two characters whilst maintain the exact same static shot the show the two characters are linked, the jump shows off the mise en scene as well as you literally have a side by side comparison of the clothes worn by both characters.

 12.We attempted to challenge Laura Mulvey's idea of the 'male gaze' by having our lead female character be older and much more scruffier than the media usually portrays women and so I believe that our librarian challenges this stereotype similarly to Sigourney Weaver did in Alien 3.

Shooting schedule updated - Rye

On the 13th of November we already captured some footage of cutaways for our project in Central London We plan to go to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park on Sunday the 27th as this will allow us to gain additional footage that ca be used for time lapses. As well as this, there may be performers playing christmas carols hat we can also record. Finally we have Wednesday 30th of November where we will conduct our interview with our Independent music artist as we also get a tour of the studios.

Alternate music - Rye

This is some alternate music that would be in a completely different genre to the majority of the music that we have already made and can be used if we need more of a club/party vibe

Email to Interviewee - Seyi

Today I sent out an email to the artist our teacher recommended for us to use (as she knows the lead well). The artist first reached out to us through our teacher and said he was available on 30th November at 2pm, as he will be in the studio at that time, thus giving us the perfect venue to film the interview, as well as capture nice shots for the cutaways.

Below is the email I sent out to him, thanking him for considering taking us on and confirming our arraignments. 

What we did today - Arman

Today I called up island records in order to arrange a meet to get an interview with a member of staff and Rye worked on the music along with Samit since we need a new tune as our teacher gave us some criticism.

Cutaway Example Footage - Samit

The footage used in the cutaway example isn't the actual footage we are going to use for the cutaways. The footage that i used was from our time lapses, I wanted to see if cutting between the shots at the speed of the music would look pleasing while also having enough time of the footage being shown.

Samit

Interviewee research - Arman

Today I contacted 1 independent artist and an independent band for an interview in order for our group to gain an insight in what it's like within the music industry for smaller label performers.

We have decided to interview Mr.Selley from the band: A.Human, which is a pop comedy band who use both comedy and music to create masterpieces such as "Take Me Home".
A.Human have been touring with Art Brut and share a label with Reverend & the Makers. It's telling company: they're mainly-electronic pop merchants with a sort of overarching conceptual approach to music-making, or some sort of aesthetic ideal for living. The very least you could say about them is that they've got a couple of ideas. One of them is to question the idea of what it is to be human: "It's A.Human as in asexual," they told New Band of the Day, "as in Not Really Human. But it could also be Mr A. Human, or the average human." Got that? To reinforce the idea that identity, humanity and conformity are being questioned, the band members are all called Human, as per the Ramones. And yet, like Art Brut and R&TM, they've got one of those charismatic frontmen destined to become the focal point. Only Dave Human is apparently darker and more disturbed than Eddie Argos or Jon McClure, although the record company told us that so we'll just have to take their word for it. All we know is, A.Human's singer reads a lot, he's got a warped sense of humour, and during live performances he does wild and crazy things like sip people's drinks and tease tough guy hecklers in the audience until they're won over. He's been called "a sexy geek" and he sings about sinister characters like a Morrison who shops at Morrison's.

source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jan/28/popandrock  

Planning and Research: Script - Seyi

Today, I looked at several sources in order to gain information for the script, and I compared the script to other news packages and interviews in order to make it realistic.

These are some of the places of I got some of my information from:

Emeli Sande Footage - Seyi

As planned, I went to see Emeli Sande perform at her meet and greet and album signing at HMV Oxford Street.

I was only able to get footage of the last song she performed and the atmosphere of the place after she performed, because I was unable to figure out how to turn on the camera.

When I finally figured out how to do it, I quickly captured a few shots, however they were a bit shaky, as the room was packed and I had to raise my arm. Unlike Emeli's, Chip's meet and greet I went to last month was more intimate, so I had the opportunity to keep my had lower, have room for myself and get a closer view of the artist. However, I was using a phone to record and not a camera, in this case, I was slightly more prepared. I also found more trouble uploading videos from the camera, compared to my phone where I had just used Google Gallery

I had cut up the main videos in order to rid of all the shaky footage, and I handed it all to Rye and Samit to add into the opening sequence footage. We will use some of this footage for the opening sequence and some will either be discarded or used for cutaways.

Below is the cut up footage (Please note: start from 1:47!):

Three Column Script - Seyi

I spent a week gathering information to create this script. It is not completely perfect, as I need to simplify it, add more data that can be represented in charts, and make all the American informatio British (such as the currency).

Video	Audio	Time
Camera starts looking at the presenter standing outside the location. (Leicester Square music Station) Add in graphics (bar chart)	PRESENTER: Streaming, the best invention since mixtapes. We all use it for consumption, but nobody wonders what it might benefit the artist, or if it is just another method to exploit them. In an industry is constantly changing,can artists be sure to make sales off streaming right now? Hey guys, it’s (presenters name) here for Independent Music News London. 50 years ago, we would have all owned a mixtape (pulls out a mixtape) of some underground artist or the other. But face-to-face mixtape sales – has always been a means to an end; 50 Cent and Lil Wayne, obviously, do not sell their own material outside clubs, like the one behind me, any more. Today more music sales are higher than they have ever been before due to streaming provided from apps such as Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud and Tidal. As listeners can listen to as many songs as they want, for a cheaper price through streaming via the internet. This helps the artist reach audiences worldwide, quicker.	35 seconds
Cutaways ( of what?) and edits matching the dialogue	VOICEOVER: In October 2012, unsigned rapper, Nipsey Hussle made $100,000 by selling 1,000 copies of his latest mixtape, Crenshaw, for $100 each. He shifted every single CD in less than 24 hours at a pop-up store in his hometown of L.A. So face-to-face sales is not completely dead, but streaming has done so much more for artists so far. But that does not necessarily make it the idea-of-the-year. Spotify says that its average payout for a stream to labels and publishers is between $0.006 and $0.0084, however, Information Is Beautiful suggests that the average payment to an artist from the label portion of that is $0.001128 – this being what a signed artist receives after the label's share. The worst payout of all for musicians, however, comes from Youtube, which pays out about .0003 per play. An artist signed to a record label would thus have to have their Youtube video played 4,200,000 times in order to earn the monthly U.S. minimum wage of $1,260. So what about Tidal? The service pays 0.007 cents per stream — while it doesn’t sound like much of a difference to its competitors, a signed artist would only need to be streamed 180,000 times on the service to make the monthly minimum wage. Musicians who stay independent have the potential to earn the most money, according to all the average rates. Unsigned artists average about $5.99 for every $9.99 album downloaded from iTunes through a distributor, while signed artist's average $2.30 per $9.99 album downloaded through iTunes. Minus a label’s take on profits, artists also make more per play on every streaming service.	2 minutes 30 seconds
	VOICEOVER: Streaming Will Earn Artists A Lot, but only With Enough Users – Royalty payouts from streaming might seem small now, but that’s because it’s fairly new. Eventually as more listeners sign-up, the payouts would seem more significant. The Alternative Is Piracy – If music isn’t easily accessible for free with ads or through a subscription, people will just steal it and then artists earn nothing. Last year alone, 1.2 billion songs were illegally downloaded by 7.7 million music fanatics, costing roughly around 1 billion dollars for the industry. Labels Are Hoarding The Royalties – Services like Spotify and Apple Music pay more than 70% of what they earn to the labels, and most of the rest covers expenses of running the apps. The problem is that the labels push artists into exploitative record deals where they only get a tiny share of the royalties, and the labels keep the rest. So if streaming does not bring in the lion share at the moment, then what does? The Big Money’s Always Been Through Touring And Merchandise – Labels have always cheated artists out of recorded music dollars. Artists should think of streaming as a brand promotion tactic. So should remain as an independent artist or sign yourself up to a label. Artists who are frustrated about streaming should demand better deals from their labels, remember the alternative is getting their work stolen, be patient, and tour. Once more people realize how amazing it is to be able listen to any song they want, the money will come.	1 minute 25 seconds
Interview (with artists: a signed artist/manager and an unsigned artist, seated at the same table)	VOICEOVER: We then caught up with two people with experience in this industry... INTERVIEWER: We are here with (artist name) and (artist/manager) name) at (where you are). How’s it going? (answer) So, as we all know, you have achieved independent success in the industry, and you are currently signed to a label. We are all excited to find out, how was your time been in this industry? (answer) Where was your favourite live performance? (answer) Why did you choose to stay/leave your label? (answer) Do you feel you are better off with or without a label? (answer) Where does majority of your income come from? (answer) Can you see a significant change in income and name recognition since you first started? (answer) Do you think the internet has helped or hindered your career success? (answer) Lastly, which deal do you advise coming up artists not to sign or what do you regret ever signing? (answer)	3 minutes 15 seconds
Vox pops (questions for the public)	We also caught up with Londoners to ask them questions about how they access their music, and why they choose to access it the way they do. Listen to this… would you pay to stream this? Where do you buy/stream your music? Do you illegally download music? What was the last song you listened to that was paid for? Do you come across underground artists? If so… how?	1 minute 10 seconds