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

Footage for cutaways - Rye

This is some time lapses I did in central London over the weekend with Arman and Samit

Difference between in major labels and independent record labels - Arman

Sony Music Entertainment vs Carpark Records

Carpark records takes on smaller artists such as Saint Pepsi, as shown in the figure on the left.  This is a small label company has helped Saint Pepsi distribute 5 albums so far!  He is now a major artist on youtube receiving millions of views on his songs, all without the help of a major record label.  This goes to show that in todays music industry you don't need to be assigned to a big label in order to become well known artists, but not famous, as major label arists, since major labels have tv deals and ads and websites which help promote major artists more, making them better for becoming bigger, so most artists start off at small labels and work their way to major labels.

With major labels such as Sony Music, you only get well known major celebrity artists assigned to them, nobody who isn't already well known.  For example, A$AP Rocky was assigned to Sony Music in 2011, after he had joined a smaller group called ASAP Mob in 2007, who helped him gain some minor attention which helped him in the process of gaining fame, the deal was worth $3 million.

In Reality, all major artists started from smaller labels and worked their way up the music industry in gaining fame starting from smaller
labels and then getting contracts from major ones
such as Sony Music.  So in reality all artists who
start from small labels have a chance at becoming
A-list artists.

Opening Sequence Draft - Group

After the footage that we needed on Sunday we were able to create a draft opening sequence for our news package. The footage that we got may not be final and is subject to change if we decide it doesn't suit our style of news package.

CHIP Meet & Greet Footage - Seyi

On Novmber 4th, I went  to Oxford Street to do some shopping. When I was getting ready to go home I wanted food from McDonald's. Passing JD on my way, there was loud music being played in the store, I tried to ignore it as it didnt really concern me, but then I though that it would be useful for media, so `I turned back and went into the store. It turned out that I was hit by a stroke of luck because I was right on time for a free in-store meet and greet with an artist who used to be independent, then made it big, then started his own record label for himself alone; Chip.

I was unprepared entering the store, as i had 2 heavy bags to carry and 1 phone with few storage space on it. That explains why my videos were cut short, disorganised and shaky. However, I came up with an idea to use this in our favour. I could use it as an amateur video which are shown on the news often, when they do not have access to such footage or a correspondent in the area (example shown below). AND we could also use it in the opening sequence, as I had made a comment when the whole group was together, stating that the footage connotes our actor as lonely, and music is often shared with a number of people.



At the event, Chip stated many things that could help our news package; such as information Grime as a very underground genre, and how he started off at age 16, and how his first album was made in a spare room of his producers mum's house, and he was not the only artist to start from there. This also lead me to gather more information, such as Frank Ocean's last album was released independently, as he is now an independent artist, and it lead him to great success. However, I could not get it all recorded because I did not have a video camera, instead I had my phone with low storage space. I recorded some on snapchat because the videos could be saved to Snapchat Memories, in order for me to retrieve them later. I will put those videos up soon or later, in case they are needed to be of use.



I am going to film again at another artist meet and greet, Emili Sande on the 14th of November, and I will take a camera to film, this time, to avoid making this mistake again.

Analysis of Last year's work and improvements - Rye

After analysing my work from last year, I recognise how I have improved over the year shown in the quality of my posts and what changes I would make now were I to redo the course.

Last year's original storyboard compared to this year's shows that I've used more videos to more accurately portray how our presentation is going to look as last year I only used pictures with music that wasn't what we would actually use. 

br />

Laura Mulvey research, I now would add a video as evidence to show where i got my knowledge from. More detail could have been added to my explanation and I should have used another example to cross reference and backup my Alien example.

With the Zombieland title editing sequence I would have now used different angles and length shots in each segment as the currently the shots are plain static shots with one tracking shot. The length of shots need to be changed so that there is a greater variation of shot types. long shots, close ups etc.


When it came to filming i had made a screenplay however ended up not using it nor did I make a new plan for the opening after I decided I wasn't going to use my storyboard. I should have made a new storyboard with a list of camera shits and angles as well as the props that we'd need. This would have allowed our group to be more efficient and effective with the time we had during filming.


For our final piece I like the transitions between the student and librarian however I believe that it doesn't build up anything and doesn't suggest anything to the audience other than these are two characters that will both be involved in the story. The sequence also stays focused on the walking at the start for too long and in my opinion this part would have been better served cutting away to items linked to the plot e.g. a bloody knife


More emphasis should have been put on getting an accurate storyboard that precisely portrays all the shots that will need to be done showing transitions. Videos would have been better as they are better for group to visualise what will happen.

   

Transition from year 12 to year 13 - Arman

I will be writing a blog post reflecting upon the past decisions my past group(Lit productions) and what I am doing differently now or what I could have done to make the final footage better than what it already is with knowledge I acquired throughout the year leading to our groups new production.




In the prelim task we were made to do,  we had rushed out prelim since we took too much time trying to get a plot to film.  In this footage you can hear laughing which wasn't cut out at 19seconds in.  If I were to redo the prelim again with my current experience, I'd cut the audio out sooner before the laughing and have smoother cuts since at the start of the footage we have to replay it twice which isn't very visually appealing watching the same scene twice but from a different angle, I would instead film the scene and jump cut to another angle whilst the character is still walking to keep the place in time but make the scene look more normal.

In the filming stages of our thriller opening credits we had problems in the process of filming,  we couldn't round all the people whom we asked due to us asking everyone last minute.  This caused a huge problem in the production of the opening credits since we couldn't round everyone in time for the original shooting plan and had to postpone it to a later date which put us really behind schedule.  If i were to redo the filming with my current knowledge I would have made sure to plan the filming at least 1 week in advance in order to round people I know will have the time on the filming date, and also be able to ask other people incase some people can't make it.

Our group was stuck on making an ident for a couple of weeks, I decided to take it upon myself to make a rushed ident since we were over the deadline to make out ident, it took me 30minutes to put together.  I wasn't proud of it and felt that I could've done better.  The outcome is a very basic looking opening.  If i could have redone the ident with my current experience and time management skills, I would have made the ident a priority and given it more time and thought with my group in order to perfect it to the highest quality I can possible output.

Capturing Footage - Rye, Arman & Samit

Today we attempted to capture footage for our opening sequence using my phone. However, it did not turn out as we hoped it would. To correct this we need to understand the features that my phone has to offer when recording the footage that we need.

Transition From Year 12 to Year 13 - Samit

Transition from year 12 to 13 blog posts have allowed to reflect on how to properly utilise the blog to allow us to have a smoother process in creating the News Package. This is because we can see that on my blog from year 12 that my group took many shots of the same footage over a long period of time. However, now I know that I should get the final version of the footage so that we are not wasting time and to be more efficient.

The screenshot above shows that I had incomplete versions of my task, and that I should adapt so that we can upload the final version to our blog so we dont have to worry about re-filming the footage again.

Another way in which we have adapted into making it better for year 13 from year 12 is that we need to make sure that our editing skills are a lot better this year as our final version of our horror opening sequence had very bad editing which lead to a decrease in marks.

The screenshot above shows that we didn't have much experience with editing due to the contrast of colour on the thumbnail.

Samit