Y12 NEA Music Video Task

My Music Video (in two parts):

Since starting the mini-NEA on 18^th June, I have developed my performance skills through our training before lip-synching and dancing around the studio on our workshop day. I have also acquired new knowledge of the equipment in the studio as I used the camera and tripod on the shoot, learnt how to cable bash while my teammates were filming a dolly shot and gained a basic understanding of the lighting system in the studio.

In my NEA so far, I have created a key look, clothing and hair/make-up, for my artist persona Fr'ankie and shot a variety of vocal shots in the studio to the song 'High Five' by Sigrid. During the studio day, I directed and filmed my shots featuring Derek and Zain and performed in their set-ups before also featuring in some of my promotional photography.

I am intending to continue with my same artist, with look, and the song as I am very pleased with the footage I have from the studio day and would like to continue working with it. In September, I am intending to shoot more dance shots in the studio using the dolly to integrate more shots with camera movement into my music video. Due to the requirements of the brief, I also plan to shoot narrative footage on location, outside the studio, to emphasise the themes behind the lyrics of the song. As well as this, I intend to shoot some more photography of myself in different costumes, using these new shots in addition the photos I have already taken to create my single cover and fill my website.

News Practical Task

1. Explain your role/responsibility within the team and the task. What were you required to do?
Harvey and I were in charge of creating The Telegraph's social media pages within our team, with Dara, Derek and Zain working on The Telegraph Online and Morgan and Andreas creating The Daily Telegraph newspaper. I was in charge of the whole Twitter page, where I chose the story, an image, a post and a Twitter headline, and Harvey and I both contributed towards the Facebook page, where I was delegated to choose the image for the story and the page's cover photo.

2. For one media form, describe the codes and conventions you chose to follow and explain their intended impact.
For the Twitter, I began by choosing the story about the Brexit deal being agreed as this was going to be the main story for The Telegraph Online and so by promoting it on the Twitter, it would be more likely to get more hits overall. I also chose MCU two-shot of Theresa May shaking hands with the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, both with big smiles and the UK and EU flags behind them to create a celebratory tone for the post. A very similar picture of the two politicians was also chosen for the Facebook page with a more concise wording of the same story for the post, "Britain is out of the EU after a deal is agreed." This is a convention of The Telegraph's Facebook page and would allow the audience to recognise the same story but perhaps understand it better in the clearer wording. For the Instagram page, Harvey chose a picture of Oxford Street and overlayed it with bars of pink with "Does the internet mean the end for the Christmas high street?" in a black font. This follows conventions of The Telegraph being focused on London and putting a caption over the photo, which they often do on Instagram. As well as this, a professional picture was chosen which would appeal to the target audience, who would open Instagram to look at pretty pictures.

3. Explain how your choices reflect the real newspaper's values and target audience.
Our choice to make the Facebook page's cover photo a picture of the Union Jack flag with the Big Ben and Houses of Parliament in the background reflected the London-centric perspective of The Telegraph's audience. As well as this, we wrote our headlines to signify Theresa May as a good leader and chose the headline "Theresa May feels ‘a weight removed off her shoulders’ after Brexit deal agreed in historic divorce talks in Brussels" as the Twitter headline to allow the audience to sympathise with Theresa May as they would support her government and party. We chose not to feature the Brexit story across all three social media platforms and instead created our Instagram headline around the story that 'Christmas High Street sales figures significantly down as shoppers choose the internet.' This is due to the younger age of Instagram's audience in comparison to the other social medias, and perhaps the fact that they would be slightly more interested with the festive event of Christmas shopping than the more continual talk of Brexit.

4. Explain how your team adapted the news across the three different media forms and the reasons behind your decisions.
We chose to not include the Trump headline about his 'Twitter troubles' on the website (although it featured as a secondary story on The Daily Telegraph's front page) as we believed that it would probably feature under a section of the website rather than on the front page. We also chose different pictures across all the platforms to make each unique, with one large scenic shot of the snow on the print version, two Brexit and one Christmas high street on the social media platforms and 5 smaller photographs for the online version, which is conventional to the style of that media form.

5. In hindsight, is there anything about your team's outcomes that you would adapt or improve?
In hindsight, our team would change the Facebook headline "Britain is officially no longer part of the EU" to something about the Brexit deal itself being agreed, which is what was featured on all the other forms (we realised this towards the end of our practical task and didn't have enough time to change it.) I may have also not had the bold textboxes on the Telegraph Online as they look slightly out-of-place and unlike the website. Other than that, I think our team prepared very well for the task and worked as well as we could, with the tight time restrictions, on the day of the practical task.

Minecraft Pocket Edition Gameplay Video for YouTube

1. How you did it (for example, what videos did you look at, what technology did you use and how?)

I looked at DanTDM's YouTube videos for inspiration, especially his one playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition called 'Minecraft Pocket Edition | I Lost My World...' I liked his relaxed style and casual conversation that he would have that allows the audience to also be hooked on his bubbly personality as well as immersing them into the game play. I think it is very important for Minecraft YouTubers to have an interesting personality, as the viewers could otherwise just play Minecraft themselves.

I used two iPads, one to film myself with and another to "play" on, where I watched the clip that I was talking over. This allowed me to react to it in real-time and do it all in one-take, like the YouTubers would when they play the games. After recording it, I edited the two clips together on Filmmaker Pro where I inserted myself onto the other clip using the picture-in-picture setting before uploading it onto our YouTube channel.

2. How your video might attract the attention of Mojang and/or Microsoft, and how it might influence them.

My video may attract the attention of Mojang and Microsoft as, by playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition, I am essentially advertising the game for the company. As well as this, this video may attract their attention as it is child-friendly and doesn't feature any swearing or violent acts (that Microsoft would be against as they are aware of their young audience.) This video may also influence Microsoft due to my constructive criticism about a glitch which meant that I lost my progress on the game. After watching this video, they may become aware of this problem and try to resolve it to improve the playing experience for their fans.

Video Games & Me

Although I do not currently consider myself a "gamer," I used to play video games over multiple devices when I was younger. As well as playing on my portable DS and smartphone on longer car and plane journeys, I used to play in our living room with my family (normally the Wii) and with friends at their houses (often PlayStation or Xbox.) I also realised that I used to play video games to pass the time, whereas now I have replaced this with social media.

Minecraft Pocket Edition Mission

I had played Minecraft before this lesson on a PC which was very similar to the 'Pocket Edition' that I played on an iPad in the lesson. We had a mission to "build a dwelling that would protect you from the monsters." Although I had managed to build a house but I had lost sight of it when I explored the area, so I took a screenshot of the landscape instead. I think I should've also changed the difficulty level to "peaceful" as I kept getting distracted with aliens and zombies charging at me.

I think one of the main appeals of Minecraft is that it is played alone and lets the player reflect and relax with the gentle, earthy colour scheme of green, brown, grey and blue. I am also aware that the game is available on many different devices, including iPads, some smartphones, PCs and larger games consoles. Due to this I think that it could be played whenever the player wants, whether it be on-the-go or in their houses.

My Breakfast Show Segment

1. Did you fulfill all the content requirements; both in terms of including all the correct features and as well as the actual choices made.
Harvey and I included 10 second clips from both songs that we chose: Ciao Adios by Anne-Marie and Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran. Both songs are by British artists and mainstream tracks. We also played three jingles which we made ourselves by finding audio clips on YouTube and speaking over them as we played them into my phone where we recorded it. Our two news headlines were also topical and relevant to the whole of the Latymer community and we had a short promo for Mr Pashley. Our celebrity gamble segment was upbeat and included some audience interaction from both a phone-in guest and social media responses.

2. Have you nailed the conventions and style of Nick Grimshaw and the Radio 1 Breakfast Show?
There was some banter between Harvey's characters of Dave (the member of the public who called in) and himself as the news reader, which is conventional on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show. Like Grimshaw, I was very enthusiastic and loud and the general show was upbeat and reasonably fast-paced.

3. How well did you manage your running order and timings?
Despite only having one practise take and a very minimalistic script, we managed the running order and timings quite well. Harvey loaded our opening song 'Ciao Adios' and the drumroll sound effect on an iPad and 'Galway Girl' on his phone as I talked. All of the jingles were on my phone and we played them live, according to the running order which we passed between us. To cut down on time, we had a dodgy segment between the celebrity gamble with Dave and the news with Harvey.

Continuity Task Evaluation

This is the first video task that we completed in our media course. The brief was to "produce a story featuring an accident in 6 shots, cut in camera." We would try to communicate a story that makes sense to the audience and create a feeling of continuity from shot to shot.

1. Explain the story of your video

In my video, there are two boys (Andreas and Morgan) playing catch with a tennis ball on a school playground. A girl (myself) walks into the action, gets hit with the tennis ball and gives one of the boys a 'death stare' at the very end.

2. How did you attempt to create 'narrative flow' (continuity)?

We attempted to create continuity by following the 180 degree rule that says that you cannot cross the line of vision between two characters. This is because the viewer's sense of direction in the scene would become confused and they would not be able to make sense of the scene. We also followed the 30 degree rule that says that the camera must move at least 30 degrees (if the same framing is kept) to ensure that there isn't a visible 'jump' in footage. An eyeline match was also needed in our last shot to ensure that the girl was looking in the correct direction and angle to follow the story. However, the most difficult rule to follow with a cut-in-camera task was the match on action. This rule meant that the girl had to be the same distance away from the boys as the shots progressed and the girl walked further towards them, to make the story flow through.

3. Did you achieve full continuity? If not, why not?

I think that we were not entirely successful in creating full continuity as there were a few jumps between shots. For example, the female character was walking in the correct direction between the two male characters playing tennis from shots 2 to 4, but in shot 5 she seemed to change direction. To resolve this continuity issue, we should have placed the camera at more of an angle so that the direction is constant.

However, there was good continuity from shot 5 to 6 because the shot changed from a medium-long shot to a medium close-up so the 30 degree rule was not needed and the shots followed through.

4. In hindsight, what would you do differently to improve the narrative flow of your video and tell your story more efficiently?

A main problem with my video was that the introduction of the female character was delayed through the masking of her face in shot 2 and the backwards tracking shot in shot 3. This built up a great deal of suspense regarding her character, which was impactful but unnecessary to the main story that was being portrayed and therefore didn't reward the audience. I would have also trimmed the establishing shot down because it is too long and could potential bore the audience from the very beginning.