Playing with Photoshop

In preperation for the making f my Digipack, I have been playing around with the Photoshop software. I have looked through the picture I have taken of the girls, and narrowed it down to my 3 favourite pictures. This is the first one which I plan to use as the album cover:

                                                                    Original Picture

Photoshop Design

If you look closely, you can see some obvious, and some subtle changes to the original picture. As there are originally a lot of colours and vibrancy in the image, I didn't want to make too many obvious changes as I feel that what I need is already there. What I find is most noticable is the saturation of the picture. I have, ever so subtly, made the whole image more vivid in colour. I have also made each one's eyes more blue, and made the white around the eye stand out. Also, I have used the 'smudge' tool to blend in their skin tones, and hide away any blemishes they may have. This gives them a subtle 'airbrush' look. I have changed the colours of their lips in accordance to their personalities. For example: Rosie (far left) lips are very red. This is to emphasise her pale complextion and dark hair, covering the very sterotypical image. Also, the red scard she has on brings out the redness in her lips. Sophie (second left) is the one girl I haven't changed the colour of her lips as I feel that they already have a nice pink tone, which suits the natural colour of her skin. This also highlighs how she may be portrayed as a slightly quieter character as she looks very natural. Beth (middle) I have made look very fresh-looking. Her lips are a peachy colour which I have changed, which I think brings out the colour in her eyes. I really like how she has the hood of her coat up, empahsising that she is the more dominant girl, being lead singer of the band, almost looking quite 'fierce'. I really like the colour of the fur in her hood as its similar to her hair, giving her a more dramatic look. Ellen (second right) I have made very little changes to. I have slightly changed the colour of her lips as I didn't want to take too much focus away from her as a whole. I think her main focus is the big lepord print coat, and how the colour of her hair brings that out. Grainne (far right) I have again, made very little changes to as I feel she didn't need as many, as her outfit is showing us that she is the miore mature one, possibly older one too. This is evident in the coat she wears, and also the leather gloves. I have made her lips a slightly lighter shade as I wanted her to look quite natural.

Overall, I feel that this was a successful photoshop creation, and I will continue to play around with more tools in the next 2 pictures for the Digipack.

Examples of Digipacks

Here is an example of an Enter Shikari Digipack that I have photographed:

For my Digipack, I think I will use this as a template design to create mine. After playing around with photoshop, I have realised that It will be difficult in terms of making the main photo in the shape of a square to fit the front cover. I am afraid that If i crop the picture, I will lose the proportion of each of the girls.So I am thinking of making something similar to this, a 6 paneled cardboard design. I really like how they have just one photo that spreads across 3 panels on the inside of the Digipack. For my Digipack, I would use one photo and spread it out.

Digipack

Digipacks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipacks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that hold the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD - the plastic part is simply attached to the paper background. Here is a typical example of what a Digipack template looks like:

I will use this template, and others to determine how I will create my own digipack. After sketching and planning my digipack, It should look something like this:

                                                                          

Audience Feedback

After showing to my class the 3rd draft of my music video, I received some feeback from a few people, suggesting what could be improved/if it was a success/what they liked best etc. Here are some of the responses I received from them:
Louis:
Charlotte, you could try and add some effects in the music video to keep the audience interested throughout the music video. However, the lip-syncing has been really well edited, also you have shooted a good range of close-ups, and a good use of scenery.
Kim:
Really nice use of shots, portraying some really good emotions of the band that makes the audience relate to the mood of the song. However, you could change some colours in your editing, by simply adjusting the tone to make it less obvious that you shot the scenes on different days, because I think the sunlight in some scenes gives that away. Also, the camera quality is noticable because you have filmed using two different cameras. But other than that, this is a really good music video, and I would deffinately watch it all the way through.
Tom:
Really good location in the establishing shot. Really liked the use of performance where they all sing together (for example, when we see them all together on the hill singing the chorus), and other scenes where they're not together, singing their own parts of the chorus. Enjoyed how we see the girls singing, then the scene changes to the 5 of them posing into the camera - (good use of research as many artists tend to use this technique). And finally, I really enjoyed hoiw the girls sang with not only emotion, but action in-keeping with the lyrics of the song.
Dasha:
Charlotte this is a really convincing video! However I think you should look into adding more effects, colour changes etc. Also maybe think about quicker cuts towards the end of the music video, or when the music changes.

Since receiving this useful feedback from different audiences, I will look to improve the changes of my video so far. This task has really helped me and will hopefully improve the video I have produced.

The Saturdays - (Shoot 3)

This is the 3rd shoot of the music video. I was hoping that It would be the final shoot, but after editing I have realised I will need to shoot a few more scenes to complete the music video. I have also come to the decid=sion to cut the end of the song by around 40 seconds. This is because I felt that the song 'dragged' on to much, and the repeatative lyrics were unnecassary. Here is the 3rd shoot to the video:

Charlotte 2nd cut from Caroline Birks on Vimeo.

Narrative?

During the process of filming and editing, I have decided to not rule out the possibility of Narrative, as a way of keeping the audience 'on their toes'.
Last Friday, one of the girls (Sophie) came round to my house in order to film. It was only Sophie who came to make up for the time we lost as she missed the last shoot we did. I filmed a variety of scenes, including her singing the chorus 4 times, in different areas outside, and shots of her close-up, side on etc. I then thought about bringing in aspects of narrative, yet I was limited as I have previously shot most of the music video. However, I knew it wouldn't hurt to experiment with it. I used a photograph of my and my boyfriend, and had Sophie holding the photo, and singing into it "baby and all i know, is what matters most". I filmed this by positioning the camera over her shoulder, from a height to show the side of her face and the picture.
I then went back to class a few days later to continue with the editing process, but as I thought, the clip looks slightly out of place as there is no narrative previous to that. This is the clip I shot of Sophie:

charlotte narrative from Caroline Birks on Vimeo.

Editing (so far...)

This is the progress of my editing so far. I feel happy with how its going, and look forward to this following Saturday (21st) to film the third (and hopefully final) shoot involving the filming. Until then, I feel that I can no longer edit anymore until I upload my next set of clips. I am also enjoying the software in which we have been editing with. Once I have all of my scenes imported and edited in the timeline, I then plan on playing around with certain effects to make sure the lighting is sorted. Here is the editing of the music video so far:

Charlotte 1st cut from Caroline Birks on Vimeo.

Representation

We can say that all media are forms of representation. The people who are involved in making the representation are all governed by their own beliefs, values and attitudes. Most media products reporoduce dominant ideologies in the way that they represent the world, which has led to many complaining that they are misinterpreted in the media.

Gender
There are many different sterotypes of gender across different genres. I have done my own research into the symbol of the 'hero' character in films/tv shows, and what they represent as a character. Research suggests that Heroes have to be: intelligent, strong, resilent, selfless, caring, charismatic, reliable and inspiring. A Hero can be a simple sterotype, and as an audience, we recognise the hero. We see hero's in films like Gangster movies, Westerns, Action adventures and Spy films. Films like these show the individualistic battles over pride, honour and territory. Films make it seem normal for men to be heroic, brave, strong, individualistic etc, yet it is niot normal for a woman to be like this. However, music videos representation of gender seems to be polarized - men are aggresive whilst women are passive, men are portrayed as wanting to have sex with women whilst women are portrayed as sex objects, with emphasis on physical appearance.

Laura Mulveys Male Gaze
Mulvey suggested that women in film are represented as 'objects', images with visual and erotic impact, which she termed their 'to-be-looked-at-ness'. This  representation of women becomes evident in Christina Aguilera's 'Dirrty' music video:

In this music video, women are represented through the intra-diegetic gaze - when one character in the texts looks/gazes at another character in the text. Through the process of identification, this may lead to the spectator's gaze also. "Dirrty" creates a space in which feminine representations of sexual desire, vanity and prowess can be expressed. Christina calls upon her "girls" to crash the male dominated sphere of social inhibition to "make some noise". This dialectic process is symbolized in the opening sequence in which close up shots of Redman's rapping mouth are parallel edited with shots of Chrstina's own mouth as she introduces the song. We see continuous close-up shots of different parts of her body, limited clothing and outfit changes. The concept of this music video is how women are dominant of men, and it is the men we see gazing at the women, which also makes us, the audience, encouraged to look at Christina. As she is let out of the cage an onto the boxing ring, we get a sense that she is being percieved almost like a wild animal, being freed as the crowd roars in awe of her. However, there has been much controversy with this music video, as it is quite explicit, unsuitable for daytime TV.

Another example of gender representation is Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Ooo. This video is very sterotypically protraying gender. I watched this video in order to compare to The Saturdays different videos. I could tell that these two girl groups are very different. In the early days of Girls Aloud, their music videos were very much fixated on the male gaze, close-ups of lips, stomache, legs, eyes etc. In this particualr video we see the girls driving fast cars, looking very glamorous. The roles have reversed from men driving fast cars to women. This video is very different to the music video that I have planned for my filming. The girls in my video will not be portrayed as sex objects, or for any voyeristic pleasure, as The Saturdays music videos in general are not like that. However they do fixate on the looks of each girl, which is what I will focus on in my filming.

Saturday 14th January - (Shoot 2)

Last Saturday, I had organised for the girls to come round to my house for the 2nd shoot of filming. Unfortunately, one of the girls (Sophie) couldn'r make it that day due to other commitments, so my filming became limited. This Saturday I mainly focused on each individual, shooting scenes of them on their own in different areas of the field. Although I got a lot of filming done, I didn't feel it was as successful at the first shoot (jan 7th) because one of the girls was absent. However, I did manage to film all the scenes were the girls are signing individually, and I filmed more scenes of them singing the chorus. Also, I found this 2nd shoot was far more frustrating than the first due to the girls being unorganised and messing around! I understood that it was very cold out, and probably boring for them when I filmed each of them individually, but the less organised we all are, the longer it will take to film. Therefore, I am hoping that this following Saturday (21st) will be a success and we can finish all of the filming.
I'm going to edit some more before this weekend and make a note of how many more clips I am going to need.

Editing

Here are some print screens of the process of my editing (shoot 1). As you can see these are the early stages of my work:

This is just basic rough editing so far. As you can see, I only have basic clips on my timeline, yet I will progress and develop the clips later on in the course of editing. I have a range of special effects I plan to use, as the lighting on the majority of the clips are all quite different. This was mainly due to the sunlight we had on the day, especially as most of the scenes I filmed concerntrated on wooded areas, where the trees were blocking the sunlight. So far I have filming my first shoot. The next shoot will take place on Saturday 14th.

Making the Music Video

On Saturday 7th January, I began my first shoot of filming. The girls and I headed out to the field to film for the music video. We started filming at 9am, and decided to finish around 11:30-12pm as one of the girls had other commitments. A lot of work was involved as its a rather large location, and this involved a lot of walking. After the giggle were out of the way, the project became much more serious, and the girls did truly their best to co-operate with me. So far, I would say half-three quarters of the music video is completed. The following Saturday (14th) will be the next - and hopefully - final shoot. Here are some of the many pictures one of the girls took of me filming the 'making' of the music video:

This was one of the very first clips of Beth, singing the beginning of the song.

This clip is of Grainne - she starts off the song as she sings the first verse, followed by Ellen (below).

Here, I had adjusted the tripod and camera, producing a low angle shot of Beth at the top of a hill, beginning the chorus.

Here, I filmed each of the girl individually singing the chorus, so when it comes to editting, I can pick and chose who sings what, and where.

This clip is of Sophie, singing one of the verses in the song. I filmed her sitting down, showing the audience that each band member is different.

This clip is of all the girls together singing the chorus. Again, I plan to pick and chose where abouts this will fit best when I begin editting.

This picture here is one of my favourites. I am considering to use this for the DIGI pack.

Here, Grainne is singing one of the choruses. Notice how each shot is in different locations. Sophie is standing next to me holding the portable speakers.

Notice how I am lifting the camera and the tripod - I found this easier in some scenes to control, depending on the close-up I was filming. This here is of Rosie singing a short verse.

Risk Assessment

MEDIA STUDIES  RISK ASSESSMENT FORM

Generic headings are presented to ensure consistent safety practices. They are not definitive. Other potential hazards must be included and assessed.

ACTIVITY:                Theatre Trip

	HAZARD	A Severity	B Likelihood	Risk rating
1	Running away from Camera	6	2	12
2	Sitting in a tree	6	2	12
3	Standing on a gate	6	2	12
4	Sitting on broken branches of trees	0	2	0
5	Equipment to and from locations	6	2	12
6	Wet/slippery ground	6	2	12
7	Medical Emergency	6	2	12
8
10

RISK RATING

Severity (A) multiplied by Likelihood (B) gives a Risk Rating between 0 and 100.

A)        Severity:                     Fatality (Fa)               10        Major injury (Ma)      8

                                    Minor injury (Mi)       6          Damage property     4

                                    No injury (No)           0

B)        Likelihood:                Probable (Pr)                        10        Occasional (Oc)       7

                                                Improbable (Im)        2

Risk ratings up to 40 need attention, but generally not urgently.

Risk ratings between 40 and 70 will require action, with urgency dependant upon where in the range they lie.

Risk ratings above 70 will require urgent action. Work will almost certainly have to stop until risks are reduced to an acceptable level.

MANAGEMENT ACTION – CONTROL MEASURES AND PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED

In order to remove or minimise risks, all personnel involved in the activity should adopt the control measures and precautions listed below. If already in place, they should be re-assessed to ensure continuing effectiveness.

HAZARD	CONTROL MEASURE PRECAUTIONS	Completed ü
1.	Hold equipment properly/ make sure there is nothing in the way of the person running	Yes
2.	Check for strength of the branches to make sure the person will not fall	Yes
3.	Make sure the gate is stable/shoes of the person are not slippery/ someone around to support if she fell.	Yes
4.	Make sure no sharp part of  the tree are sticking out/check if the branches are stable to sit on	Yes
5.	Make sure equipment is packed up and put away properly going to and from locations.	Yes
6.	Tread carefully through the field as the ground may be wet and slippery/stick to the pathway	Yes
7.	Make sure no one has any allergies that might affect us filming e.g. asthma.	Yes
8.
9.
10.

The above assessment is valid as at the date below. Should the activity change substantially, a further assessment will be required.

Compliance with the control measures and precautions should be monitored at all times.

ASSESSOR: Charlotte Woodward

DATE:­­­­­­­­­ 4/1/12