Production Diary

Monday 19th September
In today's lesson, we all decided to be productive and share our ideas for the music video. In doing this, we presented 2 songs that we had each found and then played them to the class. We then all sat in a circle, closed our eyes and listened to each song. Once each song had played, we then jotted down the ideas that we had in our head, and the rating we would give that song out of 10. In total, we listened to 8 songs and as a group, discussed our ideas. This allowed us to bounce our ideas off between each other, developing and creating ideas. We then created an emaze on the 6 that we liked the most and then we will then display this presentation to the class, in order to get a wider opinion from a larger audience. However, we also discussed as a group, what our favourite and top 2 songs were, and developed our idea's on those further. We felt that this would give us a head start into the future tasks that we knew we would need to complete. In all, the lesson was very successful, and as a group, we felt we achieved a lot within the hour.

Wednesday 21st September

In todays lesson we re-looked at our discussed songs. In order to make this clear, we created a power point, putting our idea's together and making a good analysis of each song, including bad points and good. As a group, we then put all of our ideas together, in order to make one big structured idea. The second half of the lesson, we watched another groups presentation. We then all gave their group feedback. This was an important part of the planning because it allows each group to gain a clear view and understanding of others opinions, not just our own. A lot of the feedback given, was giving them tips and advice for what they could add, and what we felt would have fitted and what we felt wouldn't have fitted. This allowed them to use our feedback and ideas, and improve theirs. We also all voted on what song we most preferred. However, as a group, you didn't have to listen to this advice and feedback, it was just helpful advice that you could choose to take on board or ignore. In the following lessons, we will present our ideas and hopefully gain a good understanding of others opinions also.

Friday 23rd September

In todays lesson, as a group, we got the chance to present to our presentation and ideas to the class. We created an emaze, where we were able to display our idea's, as well as showing the class our 4 song choices. After showing them each song, we then asked for everybody's feedback. We then made notes of these feedbacks, so that we were able to gain as much information and record everything they said in a thorough way, so that we hadn't missed anything out. This allowed us to gain ideas from other peoples points of views, rather than just our own. Our feedback was really helpful, as they commented on not only visual ideas that they could see, but also their opinion on the song choices. We found out that they really liked the Jess Glynne song and the foxes one, which is our favourite also. Therefore, this reassured us that we were on the right track, whilst developing our ideas further.

Tuesday 26th September.

In todays lesson, we watched another presentation and gave feedback on their song choices. Whilst listening to everyone's ideas, it gave our group some idea's of our own, being that we could include reverse shots, go pro shots and even time lapse shots. After giving feedback, we then went onto the lip syncing task. For this task we had to explore our groups ability at lip syncing, by playing the song we have chosen, and then filming us singing the song. This will give us a visual idea on who suits the song better and has the most confidence in doing it. We then began to edit the lip syncing onto premiere, whilst aligning the video up to the music. We then spent the rest of the lesson, updating our blog labels and exporting the video. All in all, it was a very successful lesson.

Friday 29th September

In today's lesson we decided to use our time usefully by discussing artist names. We came up with one that we are quite fond of, which is Ivy Blue. We felt that this name represented our 'Indie pop' genre. We then decided to get some planning work done, by researching similar artists' websites and digipaks to use for our future digipaks and websites. We wanted to gain a rough idea of the things needed to be included and felt that after this task, it was successful. We then as a group, researched music video inspirations and came across 3 that we really liked. One being a rihanna song, one being birdy and the other being Sylvan Esso. This also gave us a good insight into future ideas.

Monday 2nd October

In today's lesson, we watched the final presentation of the class. We gave feedback and all shared our ideas, in order to not only give our input and advice, but also to help one another out. After spending around 20 minutes doing this task, as a group, we then began to make a start on the shot list, music video timeline, lyric annotations and risk assessment. All of these tasks allow us to be organised as a group, preparing everything for when we begin filming. We feel that as a group, these steps are vital in the planning part of our music video. We then also discussed synergy for the artist, and came up with the name 'Lila Lux'.

Wednesday 4th October

Today's lesson was a little bit stressful. We found out that Tez, one of our group members, decided to drop the subject Media, leaving just me and Megan in the group on our own. However, we just kept our heads held high and got on with what needed to be done. In order to stay organised, we ensure that we forever refer and look back to our lap charts. These help us to establish the work needed for the music video, including coursework and music video planning. Looking through, we realised that there was a lot to be done, so we equally shared the jobs between the two of us. I began with doing the lyric timings, which would also help with the story board. After doing the lyric timings, I then began doing the story board, and after that was completed, doing the shot list. Megan began the risk assessment, as it is vital to establish the risks and how we can overcome them during filming. Overall, especially with just the two of us, we felt the lesson was very successful and were pleased with the amount of work we achieved.

Friday 6th October

In today's lesson, Me and Megan had a free together and then our media lesson straight after. Within this 2 hour time period, we decided to get on with some more planning. We discussed that we needed to complete, props, location, costume, steal-o-matic and storyboard. Even though, we felt it was a lot to do, we felt it was best to try and get as much finished as possible. By the end of the lesson, we managed to complete everything we needed to, which we were extremely happy with. We managed to complete the storyboard, most of the steal-o-matic, locations, props and costume. We felt that the overall lesson and hours spent doing work, was extremely successful.

Monday 9th October

In today's lesson, Me and Megan decided to go and have a look at our location for the lip syncing. Our location is by the pond, so we wanted to make sure that it was safe and suitable for filming. Therefore, we ensured that we took pictures of the location, so that we had evidence and could visually plan where we plan to film. We then took a variety of shots for the artist, and performed a mini photo shoot. We then arrived back at the computer and began editing the photos. We felt that the overall photos were successful, and we created the 'professional' look that we were hoping for. Megan also completed and finished the steal-o-matic and I began to create the website, using the photos from the lesson. We want and hope to make the website look as professional as possible.

Thursday 12th October

In today's lesson, we decided to use our time productively by working on the website and digipak. We decided to add in animations for our website, giving it more of a professional feel. We also discussed as a group when we were able to film in particular locations, as well as timings and when we can fit it all in. We also played around with font choices and how we can fit it in with our chosen pictures for our single.

Thursday 14th October

In today's lesson we wanted to focus on the coursework, ensuring that we were all up to date with the work needed to be completed. Both me and Megan, sat down and we both assigned each other the tasks that had not been completed yet. This way, we felt that we were successfully completing everything. We also wanted to complete a shooting schedule in order to ensure that we stayed on top of everything and do not fall behind on the filming.

Tuesday 19th October

For the past few days, we have been filming our lip syncing videos. In order to make the music video seem as professional as possible, relating to the synergy, we decided to order red rose petals and put them around my head, during a lip syncing section. We decided to go to the field area and we began to film our lip syncing sections. We did 4 different shots, 1 close up, 1 mid shot, 1 laying down shot and 1 laying down shot with petals.

Friday 22nd October

Today, we decided to put all of our filming shots together, seeing what they looked like on screen. We were overly pleased with the shots that we got and agreed that it was a successful filming session. We then added and cut the shots to where it matched on the story board. We then decided to make improvements to the website, making it suit Luella the artist. We did this by adding pictures of Luella as the background, so that Luella is constantly being advertised and recognised by the 'fans'.

Tuesday 26th October

Today, we wanted to focus a lot on the coursework elements. We decided to research other websites, so that we got a clear idea of what was appropriate for the website. We looked and thought of similar artists to Luella, and decided that Ellie Goulding and Jessie J were perfect examples. Therefore, we then took screenshots of their website and discussed what they had that was similar and what they both had that we liked. We thought the colour schemes were clever with how they matched, so we decided to apply that to our website. We then analysed both websites and discussed what things we like and what things we dislike. This  helped us establish the things we needed to add to the website and was overall successful.

Thursday 28th October

We felt that it was important to track our website transformations and stages. So we took pictures of our original website ideas, which we drew on a piece of paper. We then took screenshots of what  our website draft 1 looked like, and then how we adapted it from there. This was crucial in the website making stages, as it allowed us to see what we changed and the process where by we did it. The rest of the lesson, we then discussed costumes, locations, props further.

Monday 1st November

In todays session, we decided to focus on the social media accounts. The social media accounts that we created were twitter and Instagram. In order to make these social media accounts seem and look as professional as possible, we felt it important to take constant pictures of our process' and keeping the 'fans' updated. We wanted to upload professional looking photographs onto Instagram, making it look as realistic as possible. We then wanted to keep the twitter feed going, so felt it was important to ensure that we were tweeting regular, professional and realistic tweets.

Thursday 4th November

In todays lesson, we wanted to focus on the merchandise making. We used a site called 'create your own merchandise'. This site was really useful, as it allowed us to personalise our merchandise, from a list of clothing and accessories. This made it a lot easier to create, rather than starting completely from scratch. We decided to make merchandise such as,  tops, clothing, bags, phone cases etc. We wanted to keep our designs as simple as possible, in order for it to appeal to a wider audience and keeping it simple, we thought, was more fashionable.

Monday 8th November

In today's lesson, we decided to get some filming done. We wanted to film the bit where I was upset in the bath, with make up down her face. This was successful, because we managed to smudge mascara under my eyes, allowing for her to look realistically upset. We then recorded me going under the water. Overall, we really liked the look of these shots, however, felt that the lighting could have been a bit better, which we hope to improve in the future. But we managed to get it back on the computer, playing around with effects, and discussed that the shot looks really good in reverse, and slow motion as she enters the water.

Wednesday 10th November

We then decided that we didn't like the layout of the website, so we decided to research further into artists website, so that our website looks as professional as possible. We researched artists such as Ellie Goulding, Jessie J and Lana Del Rey, this really helped us to look at their features and elements of there website, for example, a pop up asking to subscribe, and a shop. This took the whole lesson, and we plan to create the website the following day.

Friday 12th November

Today we created the website. We wanted to make sure that the website was easily edited this time, as the last feature we chose, we found it hard to navigate around editing the website. We also plan to do a photo shoot on Monday, so that we can add images for the website. Also, we wanted to make sure that the colour scheme fitted and represented the artist well, highlighting the synergy. We plan to carry on editing and creating the website over the weekend.

Monday 15th November

In todays lesson, in order to carry on making our website look as professional as possible, we wanted to perform a photo shoot for Luella, in order to add this photos in to our website. We plan to do a photo-shoot, focusing on head shots and above the photo, so that it matches with the music video performance shots. We plan to shoot images of Megan with the roses, so that it fits in with the synergy of the music video. We then came back and uploaded these images on to the computer, and then uploaded them on the website.

Thursday 18th November

After a discussion with Megan, we decided that we no longer felt that the images and video shots of Luella's performance matched with what our video represents. Although we liked the shot qualities, we felt that the performance in front of the tree seemed irrelevant, so we sat down with our teacher and discussed performance ideas for what we could do instead.

Monday 22nd November

After a long discussion and thought process, we discussed performance ideas and found inspiration from other music videos. We found that we really liked the idea of a performance with a black background and lights hanging down, with a microphone and stand. We think that this will look effective if I pull off the performance. We then decided to plan and organise what exactly we were going to do, we then ordered some lights to dangle down.

Wednesday 24th November

In our next lesson, we decided to research into our artists trademark and logo. We wanted to research other artists logo's and see how they represented their artists brand and image. We then played round with a few of our ideas, and decided on a logo and theme together, creating a variety of options, then asking our peers to vote for the best.

Friday 26th November

On Fridays lesson, we decided to create the other song list and choices for our album 'Washed out red'. We picked titles that we thought represented our artists theme the most, relating to songs to do with love and red and darkness. We felt this would appeal to our audience, so that we don't stray and go off track too much. Like the lesson before, we then asked our peers for there personal favourites and then came to the conclusion on the ones with the most votes and the ones that we liked best also.

Tuesday 30th November

After finding out our favourite song tracks, we decided to make a start on our digipak, getting ideas and images together to see what we thought best fit. We both decided to do a layout of what we thought looked and fit our digipak best. We both then picked the parts we liked the most, and then planned a photo-shoot of the images we wanted to include.

Thursday 2nd December

Within the past two days, we decided to plan all costumes and props for the photo shoots and images. For example, we wanted to recreate the ideas from our actual music video performance shots, so we decided to dress myself in the same Luella performance clothes, whilst using the microphone and lighting from the music video, to help create a look that recreates the image and appearance for our synergy.

Monday 6th December

For todays lesson, we decided to put all of our work together and analyse what we can do to improve them. We wanted to ensure that all of our work was to a high standard and that we had checked off everything on our 'To do list'.

Wednesday 8th December

After finishing our first draft for our music video ( editing ) and showing our peers, we gained a variety of feedback and decided to list all of the things to improve and make the changes where we believed needed them, in order to improve it and make the video better and to a professional standard. We then focused on editing, deciding that there were sections that we didn't. So we quickly decided to plan more filming for the same day. We realised that a feature that we wanted to include was more of a relevance for the roses, highlighting the synergy. So we went to the shops and bought some roses, and decided to do a variety of new shots using the roses, including tracking, low angle, close ups and long shots. We felt that this fitted with our music video more, bringing it together more. I then went back and deleted the shots that we weren't happy with and added the ones we did like in. This made us feel more confident and excited about our music video, adding more narrative.

Friday 10th December

After finally feeling happy and confident with our music video, we decided to now focus on the website and digipak. Therefore,  Megan worked on the website, making it look more professional, adding different techniques like a main visual page that then links to the main website, a long with images and key themes of the synergy. I then worked on the digipak, changing certain images that we felt didn't fit or make sense with our theme. We then focused on this over the weekend, with the goals to complete and improve.

Tuesday 14th December

After now feeling more confident with the video, digipak and website, we then decided to continue with our blog work, asking for opinions and gaining an understanding of how to get our work to the highest level possible. We then uploaded everything onto blogger and continued to make changes.