Exam practise

For my AS media portfolio, I created the pages of a new music magazine called "Techniques". The genre for this magazine was technical equipment and because I was unfamiliar with this genre I had to research it and learn the new codes and conventions of the genre this was crucial to producing a good product. I by researching other magazines of the technical equipment genre.

At AS I researched primary sources: I researched music magazines of all genres, as before starting my media journey I never had really looked at music magazines or even read that many of them so I knew learning the codes and conventions of not just my genre but music magazine as a whole was important. Some of my primary research was more useful than others, one magazine that was useful to me was an issue of Acoustic featuring Gabrielle Aplin in a medium close up as it had a similar style to what I knew I wanted to do keep it simple but visually impressive. By seeing this magazine it enabled me to visual the style I wanted to do and more importantly knew people would like it as my fellow media students around me commented on how nice the magazine looked. One theorist that applied to this photo was Mulvey's male gaze as Gabrielle is looking directly into camera while having her makeup and hair done nicely attracting male attention. I found this to be very useful as it put in my head how a magazine should look and what kind of look the finished product of a technical equipment magazine should look like. This helped my creativity as it made me aware of the codes and conventions of not just the technical equipment genre, but magazines as a whole. I found this research to be very helpful  since I had no prior knowledge, I know that good quality research was essential to helping the creative process of making my magazine. I felt that personally it did help me as it made me aware of certain things I could do to to help appeal to my TA for example.


A2 HERE


In AS I did paper based TA research to people of my demographic which was both genders and 16+. I asked questions like what colours they found appealing, What instruments they liked, What masthead they liked the most and if they liked ad's in magazines for example. I felt I conducted target research very well as it enabled me to gain a clear understanding of what I needed to add to my magazine and what would and wouldn't  appeal to my TA. When I first started media in September I would not of been able to conduct TA research as I would of not been able to decide on what questions to task, but thanks to the journey I went on with media I learnt how to do this effectively by not asking to many open questions for example . I found this successful as it helped me get a sense of what my TA wanted and liked, however one thing I was not so pleased about was the questions I used, I found out quickly that I had used to many open questions and quickly had to much data  to analyse in the set amount of time I had. If I could go back and change the questions I ask i would as I could of found out more information on my TA'a preferences or what people expected out of a magazine that focused on instruments.

A2 HERE

In AS I looked at the codes and conventions of magazines of all musical genre's as at the start of the year I did not know any of them. For each music genre they each had a similar layout but there was subtle differences between all of them. I wanted the pages for my technical equipment magazine to "pop" and look vibrant hence the Andy Warhol theme in some of my  designs especially present in my DPS I made the other pages pop through the colour scheme I choose to use. I created synergy by using the colour blue I picked up in the blouse my model Lauren Sharp was wearing. I realised the range of colours I used made my magazine appeal to both gender's.

At AS I found didn't plan in as great detail as I would of liked. In retrospect I wish I had planned more details specifically in my photos with such details of what I wanted my model to wear for example a colourful blouse ,I wish I had planned more locations as well as most of my photos were from a studio shoot, I also wish I had planned my model's poses more instead of improvising on the spot . In hindsight my product did end up looking good but I feel that if I had planned out the details of my photos would of been better which may of led to me getting a higher grade.

I wish I had planned more for the design and layout of my content's page, I had created had drawn plans on A4 but they were double page, not single page like my finished product and not impressive and missed out many key details such as a basic outline , which you can see in my evolution if my contents page but you can also see how far I have come on my media journey and improved over time.

Planning: A possible location in Ropery Hall

The Ropery hall is in Barton Upon Humber and is located at , Maltkiln Road,North Lincolnshire and  DN18 5JT is it's postcode.

I attend a local theatre company there "Duck egg theatre" and have performed there multiple times, Ropery Hall is a small, community venue with a capacity of around 120. For smaller events the seating is cabaret-style. For all other performances it is theatre-style seating. Now that I have given you a rough idea about its size and how it works, we get to the exciting part the fully operational lighting system.

It can do most of the colours you can think off, which is an advantage as we can play around with the connotations of colours to show emotion in the song we decided to use. From speaking to the previous year's who have made music videos I learnt about how lighting it was one of the more difficult parts of producing the music video, so knowing that the space has a lighting box is defiantly an upside.

Research music video 3: "It's raining men" Geri Halliwell

The single released by Geri Halliwell on April 30th 2001 and marked an important part in her career as the Spice Girls had just broken up. During her time in the group she had become known as "the fat one" of the band. This video's goal was to relaunch Geri's career and change her image from "the fat one" to be known as a somewhat sex symbol with her new body and hair style.

‘It’s raining men’ by Geri Halliwell is in the mainstream pop genre of the music world. Within the music video Geri is seen performing in many locations; this shows that the video is a location performance based video. The music video has some narrative which mirror’s the movie flash dance giving the video intertextuality but never comes back to it.

The music video creates three different representations of the same artist. The first is created in the ballet scene. The fact she is performing ballet makes her seem sophisticated and controlled because these are general connotations of what ballet is. However, she is being watched through the male gaze in the form of the judge (Mulvey’s male gaze) so there is still a sense of sexuality and men lusting over her even in this sophisticated representation which creates the impression she is not as innocent as she seems.

The second representation is based on the Use’s and Gratifications theory, the part about relating to the artist. This is created through Halliwell lying in her house with a dog which helps make her look like a much more, down to earth person and therefore the audience will find it easier to relate to her and would want to consume her media more. However what she is wearing still creates this voyeuristic message from the previous representation.

The stereotypical representation of a pop genre, is dancing, performance, over crowdedness, bright colours and all around positive feel. The music video contains dancing and the performance element which makes it feel more like a pop song. The most common colour's used are reds and yellows, again all really bright which helps to strengthen and emphasise the image of a pop song. 

However, there is some juxtaposition to this. At the beginning of the video, Halliwell is performing a ballet routine, uncommon of the pop music genre and this helps create more sophistication, elegance and in a way a sense of posh to the video and the song which helps it to appeal to a higher class audience. This does however soon into the real song and the pop genre conventions appear which removes the sophistication and elegance because the bright colour's and overly happy dancing do not connote elegance or intelligence.

The visuals and lyrics work well together, some even link. The song is about raining men, the rain part is illustrated within the music video towards the end of the video. The lyric “Raining men” sounds very visually hard to link to the lyrics but in Geri’s video it is handled well. On that lyric a bunch of dancing men flood the room Geri is in resembling how rain come’s in all at once and suddenly.

The editing in this video is done very well, it cuts beat to beat to different shot’s and when this happens it cuts to Geri in different outfits such as yellow hot pants and locations like a tight close up of her running down a hallway or standing near a staircase. This leaves the music video to have a very energetic and vibrant feel as there is always something new to look at and it never sticks to the same shot for too long. At the start during the ballet scene it’s really slow paced, matching the music, but as the music increases in pace so does the cuts of the shots, and in the big chorus at the end it’s very fast paced. The pace increases as the music increases.

Another way the video is made to feel vibrant and energetic is through the colour scheme of the video as it has a very 80’s vibe and you can see the dancer’s in the video wearing vibrant colour's such as yellow and red’s.

This video sells Geri Halliwell very well, It shows off her new body mainly with close ups of her legs, bottom and chest (Over sexualised parts in the media) which was her new image at the time. There are many close ups of her body and face throughout the video to attract the audience (Mainly male – The Male Gaze created by Laura Mulvey). The video also does more than just supply a woman to look at to attract an audience (Which would only attract a young audience) it also is a great use of intertextuality to try and attract an older audience. The video makes connections to two older brands (Fame and Flash dance)  in an attempt to try and make the video more appealing to an older generation as they may be able to recognise these references while younger people may not.

How this influenced my planning
This influenced my planning as it made me aware of how to use intertextuality well and how to create 3 different images for a star at once a useful skill , but apart from that this song is not useful for my planning due to the genre change I am doing indie while this is pop.

Research music video 2: "The Pretender" Foo Fighters

 ‘The Pretender’ is a classic stereotypical rock song, however in parts the video does not convey this same genre due to the clean/clutter free area the video is based in. The song begins with a relatively slow paced guitar introduction, while this is the stereotypical instrument to represent the genre of rock but it is at a much lower volume and lower pace than conventional rock guitar playing which is a lot louder and faster. 
The 2 key instruments that represent rock, the guitar (both electric and bass) and the drums, are shown on a white background. This symbolizes how the genre of rock often stands out when compared to other types of music such as pop for example where no instruments are really shown.

In the music video there are a lot of close ups on the artists, especially on the front man Dave Grohl, who was shown as being very tough, and cool through the camera angels being slightly beneath him to make him seem larger and more powerful. Another reason they do this is because they want the audience to focus mainly on the lead man within the band as he will be the most recognisable so it makes sense to feature shots of him every few seconds. But it also contains a lot of extreme long shots and long shots, the reason for this being is because they want to show off the band playing and show how they are a true rock band. The video was also very stylized, with almost only three colors in the video, red, white and black and a lot of stylish shots such as long panoramic shots of them swooping around the set.

The visuals and lyrics do not match as this video is not narrative it is more performance based like other video's of the rock genre. 

A lot of the cuts happen in time with the music such as a change in the riff of the guitar or a new beat kicking in on the drum, however instead of doing what a lot of music videos do and focusing edit speed on the tempo of the music, this video focused on the intensity of the music, when the music was angrier and more intense with the guitar as loud as possible, the editing was faster with more jump cuts taking place showing of the band and the lead singer and eventually the police men all dressed in black.

The typical characteristics of Rock are themes like toughness, anger and often fighting against ‘the man’ and dominant ideologies and I think that is shown in this music video. With the anger in the music video being shown through the expression of the lead singer, while the theme of the dominant ideology is shown as the police men in riot gear advancing forward.

The costume within the music video is very indie and stereotypical rock clothing. This kind of clothing consist of things like skinny jeans, flannel shirts and Baseball styled tee shirts. For example, within the music video the artists wear black skinny jeans, black and white t-shirt/shirts. But the main man Dave Grohl  is wearing the white t-shirt, whereas the rest of the band wore black shirts. They did this because they want the lead singer to stand out from the rest of the band as he is the main artist in the band and they want the audience to recognise him most.

The lighting within the music video is constantly at a high brightness and fairs into the camera which means that it has the effect of just focusing on one particular object or person, the music video focuses on all things within the scenes.

The two main groups being represented in this music video (police and the rebellious rock group) are cliché in the way that the police are seen to be attempting to stop any form of self-expression in place of anonymity (Where the music video is set with the white room ), the longhaired and loud rock band is seen to be typical but not overly stereotypical due to the clean white surroundings and lack of body art that is commonly thought of alongside the rock genre. The single location used is an old warehouse, which has a clean and bright white floor and wall. On the other side of the room is an unlit wall that acts as a separate location that the police (which were dressed in black representing authority) come from. The lead singer and guitarist, Dave Grohl, show the star image of the group, he is shown as powerful and important through the low camera angels. 

How this music video influenced my creativity

The music influenced my creativity as it made me aware of some thing's that can be done to create a star image that I want to be seen for example crazy which could be done through shaky close up's and intense facial expressions. It has also made me aware that it is possible to communicate certain issues like the repression of creativity.

Research music video 1: "Hopeless Wanderer" Mumford And Sons

The song I have chosen to analyse is Hopeless Wanderer by Mumford and Sons,  An indie band based in England. From the introduction screen here we can guess that the song is going to be based on a older style of music e.g. folk as this older theme will carry on throughout the video as that is the groups star image " a reminder of olden times" . It resembles a cinema roll from the by gone era reminiscent of the days of Charlie Chaplin. It introduces the band and the song that the video is for before we have even seen the band them selves.

The song starts off with a piano riff being played, the video shows this directly linking it to the actual music playing in the video. The shot of the hand playing the piano is framed naturally with the ornate parts of the piano giving it a vintage feel and carries on with this older style as its a grand piano instead of a smaller electrical one.


The song then cuts with a shot of actors (people like Jason Bateman and Ed Helms well known hollywood actors) picking up the bands instruments this is a form of parody as they over exaggerate the bands style and movements to entertain the audience. This is shown in is a long shot and really reflects the genre of music the band plays as you can see how the actors are dressed in an older style of clothing like shirt,tie and waistcoat, as well as the dirt coming off from the road which creates the representation of them traveling far and wide to play their music. The choice of instruments also reflects the genre as in indie folk banjo's and kick drums occur often in music.


This is a long shot as it shows all of the actors and the green landscape with the sun shining in the back ground. The sun shining in the background creates the representation of them being a positive band as light is often associated with positivity and joy, the expression from the actors also creates the idea of them fun and being positive and having alot of chemistry.



In this shot, one of the actors  is following the convention of not singing into cam, this is a convention  of the indie genre as indie is meant to push and challenge conventions instead of following them like other genres like pop.

 The music video then cuts to a change in costume, this again is very similar to the by gone style of fashion present in the other parts of the music video. It is reminiscent of the early carnival's by including this it also changes up the aesthetic of the music video as it provides a contrast of colour from the very green feel before hand to now the red and white.

The music video then made another cut to a barn with light bulbs hanging from the roof, this provides a change another change of location something along with costume changes I have noticed is very common to try and capture the audiences attention.





The exaggerated movement shown in this section of the music video is effective as it serves as entertainment to the audience to try and make the audience laugh, as music video's to hook the audience etheir try to make them laugh, intrest them in a story or offer eye candy.

In the indie folk genre one convention are long aesthetic shots like long shot's of someone playing a guitar with the sunset glaring in the back ground as instead of trying to keep the audiences attention through the "male gaze" or a story they try to use the beauty of the video to get someone to watch it.


How this has influenced my planning and creativity 
This has influenced my planing as it has given me great examples as to how set up my shot's to make them seem aesthetic and how  a opening slate can be used to communicate the feel of a video.

Response to the brief

What are your initial thoughts
My initial thought of reacting to the brief was one of panic as I realised the amount of work that would be needed. Upon further reflection I realised that it was infact very manageable if I managed my time well and kept on top of all the tasks. I am interested to see how the course goes and to see how I develop over time.

Which skills do you think you will need to develop
The skills I feel I will need to develop as the A2 course goes on is my skills at a computer when it comes to editing and having the patience to make sure the editing and any effects that are added work well and fit the video. Other skill's I feel I will need to develop are such things as better control behind a camera and a better understanding of camera shots.

What are you looking forward to the most
I am looking forward to planning out the music video and looking at the lyrics analysing it and deciding what story we are going to tell in the video, as well as the process of story boarding it.

What worries you the most
What worries me the most is having to having to learn to edit, as I have heard how difficult the process of editing can be as well as learning all the skills and tricks to it.

Is there a particular music genre or type of music video that you like? if so name it, embed the music video from youtube and explain why you like it.


I like Arctic Monkey's, when the sun goes down as it tells a story very well through the mise-en-scene, One thing they do which is very impressive is during the more frantic part's of the song they decrease the average shot length to give it that frantic feel. They also undercrank during on of the shots of a car following a taxi to give the impression of traveling another theme I got from this was of drug use as it had a haze kind of effect to it.

Who are you working with? How well do you think you will work together? Skills that your team will bring to the table? 
I am working with Caity Duggan,I think we will get along well together as we think similarly and compliment the way each other works

The Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the three following options:

• A website homepage for a band 
• A digipack for the album's release 
• A magazine advertisement