Initial research: Choosing the track

Arc Isla- In my heart

The artists own video:

Arc Isla are an unsigned east midland based Indie/ Pop band. Their original video for their song 'In my heart' has a rustic feel to it as if the viewer are looking at old recordings of the band. The video contains footage of the band rehearsing, performing and having fun. 

What I believe the song is about:
I believe the song is about the speaker being deeply in love with someone however their relationship isn't straight forward, despite them being in 'their head' 'their heart' and them 'falling' for them. The persona/voice is torn between leaving their love or staying with them; however it can also be about a breakup as they say 'where do i wanna go now'.

What I would do in the video:
In terms of footage i would take inspiration from the bands own video of the song and use footage of the lead singer and female and put a rustic effect on the video as if the persona is looking back on good memories of them together. This would reflect my interpretation of the song and its lyrics as well as sticking to the bands original ideas and the indie/ pop genre. 

Another piece of footage i would use would be the of the lead singer walking through the streets of London at night, the camera could have a blury focus on the London lights portraying the protagonists confusion reflecting the lyrics 'where do i want to go now".
However the lead singer can also be singing and looking directly into the camera; following Goodwin's theory which will result in the video having a professional look.

From watching the bands original video and other Indie/pop music videos there is often footage of the band performing; so all members are features in the video. This will also allow the audience to feel as if they are at one of their concerts.

In terms of footage I would continue the theme of the protagonist reminiscing on their relationship and would also show footage of the protagonist going through old pictures of them as a couple. I would use Polaroid pictures to continue the rustic feel that the band used in their original video. These pictures could be in the protagonists house, perhaps on their fridge, on their wall or even in a pile.

Collective Identity: representation of youth

PointlessBlog:

Alfie Deyes is an English Blogger known as PointlessBlog who runs the YouTube channels: 

• PointlessBlog 
• PointlessBlogVlogs 
• PointlessBlogGames

Despite this he hasn't uploaded on his main chanel PointlessBlog in over 9 months, he tends to post frequently on his vlogging channel and occasionally on his gaming one.

Since 2014 he has released three books in his Pointless Book series and one as an autobiography: 

• The Pointless Book-  4 September 2014 
• The Pointless Book 2-  26 March 2015 
• The Scrapbook Of My Life-  24 March 2016. In 2017 
• The Pointless Book 3-  13 July 2017

Collective Identity: 

Homepage:

The you tube homepage has a banner at the top with the logo. The logo is simplistic with the simple initials of PointlessBlog in white. However the font has a feminine aspect to it in terms of the swirls. The background colour is a baby blue which is maily masculine however it can also be feminine compared to a darker blue tone.

There are also links to other social media platforms at the top. These are facebook, tumblr and instagram. This allows fans to access his official social media accounts easily and connect with the blogger on different platforms.

The Audience:

The main demographic that are subscribed to PointlessBlog are a younger audience ranging from 12+ to young adults aged 21. This is obvious as the content of his blog is associated with games within this age range. Throughout his videos he often does collaborations with his girlfriend Zoella which attracts more females to his videos as well as his more male based audience. Zoella also confirms his sexuality as a hetrosexual.

About his life.... 

Research: Genre in music video

Different Music Genres: 

Dance Music:

Dance Music conventions:

Dance music is technology-based with the DJ playing an important role in mixing and presenting tracks. It is characterised by:

• four-on-the-floor rhythms
• extensive use of samples and loops
• links to the club scene
• layered textures

The roots of club dance are in 1970s Jamaican dub, Funk, Disco and 1980s European synth-pop.

Artists:

David Guetta

Majour lazer

Martin Garrix

Calvin Harris

DJ snake

Skrillex

Avicii

Disco Music:

Disco first appeared in the early 1970s in the clubs of New York. The most famous club was Studio 54. The first audiences were predominantly gay or black. 

Disco has its musical roots in funk and soul. It was influenced by:

• the groove based drum rhythms and energetic guitar parts of funk
• the orchestral arrangements of soul music

Donna Summer

Chic

Prince

Diana Ross

Target audience:

As dance music is most commonly found on the club scene the main target audience is 16-24 year old's. This is due to age restrictions for clubs varying across the world. In Europe it is typically 16, in the UK it is 18 and in America its 21. 

reflecting on AS production work: the reasearch and planning processes

Research:

The 9 frame analysis research really helped; especially when it came to us adding in our credits to our final product. It enabled us to find out the effects used, the positioning and the timing that they entered the screen which we then incorporated into our own thriller opening.

The production logo research gave us an insight into what professional production logos looked like; this helped when it came to making our own production logo (shadow productions) in terms of the colourings as we found that blue and gold were used a lot.

Our interviews and audience research really helped as it gave us an insight into what out audience liked and disliked in relation to thrillers. When it came to us thinking of our thriller plots and the conventions we intended on using this piece of reaserch enabled us to reflect back on what our target audience expected.

Marauders (Miller, 2016) 

Synopsis: When a bank is hit by a brutal heist, all evidence points to the owner and his high-powered clients. But as a group of FBI agents dig deeper into the case - and the deadly heists continue - it becomes clear that a larger conspiracy is at play.

PLIT (Night Shyamalan, 2017)

Synopsis :Three girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities, and must try and escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.

Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010)

Synopsis: Shutter Island" is the story of two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island's fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane.

This Research allowed me to identify typical plots for various different types of thriller films and I can take this research into consideration when planning my thriller opening with my group.

Planning:

This piece of planning allowed us to finalise our ideas as to our class and answer any queries that our class had on plot. This was useful as out target audience age range was the age of our class mates so we were able to get their opinion on the plot.

Both our storyboard and our animatic enabled us to put our ideas down on paper and visualise what our thriller would look like. The audience feedback also allowed us to work on and improve it before the production and filming stage started.

Reflecting on AS production work: Conventions from real media texts

Below is our picture in picture video of us talking through our conventions in terms of continuity editing for our preliminary and final product.

Reflecting on AS production work: Post Production

The post production process is where our filming was put together and our thriller opening started to take shape through editing; using programs like Final Cut Pro.

Visuals:
Throughout the post production stage we were putting all of our camera footage together. 
We used stabilising affects on certain pieces of footage to make it seem smoother and more professional.
We also blurred certain parts of footage to make them appear out of focus and adjusted the lighting from bright naturalistic day light to a darker fore sinister affect.

Here is a video showing our post production editing stage

Titles and Credits:
Throughout the editing stage on final cut pro we also added in titles and credits as shown below. We decided to make our titles and credits in the bottom right hand corner and through our research in our pre production stage we found that alot of professional films like Gone Girl tend to have there placed here. We also decides to have them fading in slowly so they were not the focus of the viewers attention and it also added a sinister affect. As a group we also decide on a typewrite font to link it to an ongoing investigation.

We added the title of the thriller 'Unmasked'  in the centre of the screen to differentiate from the ordinary credits. 

Audio:
In terms of Sound we created the main soundtrack for the opening on software called garageband; this was because we couldn't find anything that we wanted online so decided to create it ourselves.
However towards the end of the opening there is more of an upbeat sound that we were advised to use during out audience feedback so we sourced it an un-copyright sound track from soundcloud.

In terms of dialogue there wasn't much in the opening and the few lines that were didn't need to be edited and the microphone picked it up clearly.  


Preliminary Vs Final Product:

In out preliminary task we were were pushed for time on editing meaning we were restricted to what we could do with our footage. 
Whereas for our thriller opening we were given a lot more time and were a lot more used to using Final Cut Pro meaning we could edit continuity aspects such as match on action much smoother allowing real events to appear as if they were happening in real time; creating a sense of verisimilitude. Below i have inserted clips to show this. 

Preliminary:

Final Product:

Due to there only being one protagonist at a time on screen in our thriller opening we did not demonstrate the '360 degree rule' or 'shot reverse shot'.

In terms of editing there is also a clear difference in our credits. Our preliminary tasks credits are against a black background and appear in an armature font and transition. However from research we found that a black background was not typically used in thriller openings and more simplistic fonts and transitions are usually used so we incorporated this into our thriller opening which is demonstrated below. 

Preliminary:

Final Product:

Reflecting on AS production work: Use Of Digital Technology

Pre-Production:
During the pre-production process there were many stages that we went through as a group to plan our media product before we could start the production process.

One pre-production process that stood out to be a great use was developing out story board into an animatic. This enabled us to decide the structure of our thriller opening and helped us a huge amount when it came to the production process of filming our thriller; it also allowed us to peactice our editing skills on final cut pro.
In terms of digital technology; our animatic was filmed, edited on final fut pro and and was then uploaded onto you tube which is a social media platform allowing it to be open to the public, that way we could refer to it whenever necessary and also add it into our blogs.

Our Storyboard Animatic

Production:

The production process mainly consisted of filming our thriller opening.

In terms of digital technologies the equipment we used consisted of:

• Cannon DSLR 650 EOS
• Camera lenses
• large tripod
• small tripod
• microphone
• lighting 

Below we analysed the strengths and weaknesses of using the Cannon DSLR 650 EOS.

Post-Production:

The post production process was mainly the editing stage. 

In terms of digital technology we used programs like final cut pro to edit our footage as well as logo maker to make our production logo and and distribution logo. We also added sound which we made ourselves and also sourced from sound cloud; we added titles and credits as well as uploading it onto youtube, a social media platform.

Our Final Thriller opening: