Amy Hall Y13 A2 Advanced Portfolio

Today we gained a new group member! Eleanor Watson-Green claims to bring excellent filming skills along with a fresh perspective on our original ideas; she has reviewed our pitch ideas and we will include her in our pitch video later on. Me and Jess are looking forward to working with someone new who is full of enthusiasm and creativity.

Below is a textual analysis of Taylor Swift's new video 'Look What You Made Me Do'. To complete this analysis I used my knowledge on camera shots, angles and movements, mise-en-scene and editing along with an article written by  The Guardian  about the decoding of the signs in the video.

Me and Jess aimed to re-create an iconic CD cover from a well established artist, to do this we had to use Photo-Shop in order to incorporate and develop some of our editing skills. We referred to an article named  'Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Album Covers'  for inspiration, from looking through these we discovered certain characteristics that we liked the look of and so we looked separately for black and white, emotional covers. Eventually we decided on a cover by Adele, we used '21' as we thought that this one carried the most emotion through facial expression. Below is the original above our version, Jess looked the most like Adele out of the two of us and so here they are:

Below are a range of photos all taken with a different style and mood in mind. All have been taken in front of a consistent background and all have given us ideas for what we may like when it come to the real things. It was a lot of fun to take these shots as it wasn't serious and all they are are ideas and practice! These two are our broody and hard shots.  This is cool Amy. Creepy Amy.   Dull Jess. Group shot. Happy Amy.  Jess just chilling.  Sad Jess. Scowl Jess.  Shy Amy. Spooky Amy. Jess yawning. Dark Amy.

Below is a prezi of a few media theorists who will be key in my exam next year. I have included a summary of the ideas of each theorist as well as some of my own views.

As a group we explored different types of genre and sub-genres to investigate how genres are born and evolve. The ones that most interested me were 'New Romantics' and 'Reggaeton' because the artists who create this type of music, 'New Romantics', include David Bowie, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and artists like Enrique I glesias and Daddy Yankee belong in the 'Reggeaton' genre and these are popular and well established artists. I didn't know that their music belonged in these sub-genres and that's why I found these the most interesting. Below is a textual analysis of the sub genre 'New Romantics', I chose this genre because most of the songs belonging to it are classics from the 1980's and 90's and therefore are well known and enjoyable.

You can tell that her genre is pop - The close up of her face shows that the record label have found that her looks are a selling point, the use of font is also fun.   Indie  - A niche audience and so a niche from cover, it is quite usual of indie bands not to have the artist appearing on the front cover they're marking themselves as different, saying that it's not about us, it's about the music.   House/dance - Both the album cover and the type of music is different, again, a niche cover appealing to a niche audience, the music itself relies on electronics therefore a cartoon looking cover fits, the artists' looks are not made to be selling point.   Is genre a problem? Do artists have to behave and look a certain way? Rap - gangster but not in real life - many artists tend to act a certain way due to pressure, but they don't particularly want to.   Can they change image/genre or do they...

Here is our final 1 minute re-creation to Paramore - 'Hard Times', we hope you enjoy the video!

Here is the link to mine and Jess' storyboard for 'Hard Times', our 1 minute re-creation music video. Enjoy! 'Hard Times' Storyboard

This website was made using 'Wix', the finished product contains band pictures, music, and our video. The link is below along with a few images to give you a small insight into our site. 'Cool Kidz' website As well as our main site, we are on multiple social media platforms to help boost our publicity. We found that one of the most popular ways that artists use to talk about their new upcoming events is social media, and it proves quite successful. We are available on  Twitter : Instagram : And Snapchat:

After looking at previous A-Level work and professional CD covers, me and Jess decided it would be a good idea to have a go at creating our own in order to increase the amount of merchandise we had which would also change how we promoted our video. McFly's album cover uses bright colours but not in a way that they stand out too much and take over, they're there to make sure people see who the artist is but they also don't want the picture to take over. Eminem's album cover has a cartoon look about it and we liked that. W e also liked how James Blunt and Michael Jackson took the use of bright colours one step further by using a sort of galaxy look by having little specs of white like stars and having all of the colours blend. We started by opening Photoshop and downloaded a template that had been previously made so that we could make the front and back cover the correct size to fit in the case. We wanted to have a colourful and eye catching b...

To help with the publicity of our band, we wanted to create something that people would be able to remember them by so we decided that we wanted to create a motif of an image that people would see and instantly think of 'Cool Kidz'. This would also appear on CD covers and merchandise etc. so we wanted to make it as bold as we could. We tested a few different designs as we weren't sure if we wanted to incorporate the bands name or if we just wanted a logo. Below are a few designs. (We used a graphics tab to create the logos) We liked this design as it used the band name but also has our own twist on it. The hand written style gave it a unique, cool look and we liked the way the diamonds replaced the 'O's as this also made the name less plain. We then wanted to try doing the same writing effect but change the images replacing the O's, so below are some examples of this. As we were undecided at the start of this process as to whether we wanted to use ...

The first step me and Jess made towards our 1 minute music video was creating a simple planning sheet where we could brainstorm our first ideas of the video would look like and include. When thinking of band names, me and Jess found it quite difficult to find something that wasn't too cheesy or too serious. In the end we found a band name generator in which we input some basic information about our band, like names and words best used to describe the type of music, etc. and the website came up with a list of potential names that would suit our band like 'Summer Nights' and 'Running Wild'. We eventually decided on 'Cool Kidz' as we thought this describes our band members and the type of music we would create perfectly. Below is a screengrab of the name generator we used: (We used this Band Name Generator )

Below is our 30 second recreation of the popular summer song of 2013 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams. For this task we were to study the original music video to find out about how the pacing, staging, lighting and other aspects can be used to create a music video that perfectly matches the song. Here is the original music video. You can see how we followed the structure of this by using short clips of dancing and singing in various locations which in effect showed that happiness and laughter spreads - I believe that this was the message that Pharrell wanted to create in this particular video. We also mimicked the pacing as we used fast cuts; each clip had little screen time which kept up with the beat and tone of the song.

This is a textual analysis of 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams in preparation for my recreation of this music video! I also analysed it in relation to Hall's Reception Theory and Media 2.0 and explained how this had an effect on the success it had.

Below is the official music video for George Michael's 'Different Corner'.

Below is my textual analysis of an iconic music video from before I was born. I chose Michael Jackson's 'Dirty Diana' as he was a global superstar during the 80's and 90's. Whilst analysing this music video, I compared it to Andrew Goodwin's 6 features of a music video and found that it fit in all 6 so thought it was a perfect music video!

Below is my version of the storyboard of 'Californication' by Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I created this from watching the music video, each frame represents a musical bar (4 counts per bar). The music video is very fast paced and the band used a video game to keep this pace up. The start of the song is slower and quieter than the chorus and this is demonstrated in the video as at the start there is a zoom out to the logo of the band from a birds eye view of the street, as the drums are added, a player selection appears giving a brief overview of each member of the band and finally as the band start to sing, the game begins and the characters move quickly from scene to scene.         Here is the official music video for 'Californication' by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.   

Welcome to my Y13 A2 blog! As a huge part of my coursework this year I will be required to create a promotional package for the release of an album; this is to include a one minute promo for a music video along with two of the following three options: - a website homepage for the band - a CD inlay for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package) - a magazine advert for the digipack I am really looking forward to these tasks as I have a huge passion for music together with film making and the above 'to do's' will allow me to delve deeper into the music industry and what's involved in the making of a successful music video!