How Beyoncé and Stuart Hall inspired my production

In this growing world of media, there are plenty of products that share a sense of similarity in one way or another. The video that my partner and I have been working on is amongst this 'clique' as the artist is a female R&B musician, much like the likes of Beyoncé. My partner and I looked at some videos and understood that there are certain conventions from them that we can include in our own work. Below is what we found in one of Beyoncé's productions:

Broken-Hearted Girl

The style of music video that this production has is both narrative and performance, which is exactly what our video is. Another similarity that the two production share is the fact that both of the videos tell the tale of a lover that is hurt by her ex-boyfriend, and the audience are enabled the opportunity to see the point of the view of the female's side. What I liked the most about this idea is that it plays with Stuart Hall's idea of different readings. The dominant reading is that the female is the one that has been played by her ex boyfriend and that she is the one that the audience must feel empathy towards. This is conveyed through her being the one singing and her being the one thinking of the times that the two of them spent together. Something that I noticed in this video is that there is very minimal chance for the consumers to understand what the other half of the situation (the man) is feeling. What I understand is that Beyoncé's team wants her to be an independent female that is representative of many women in today's world (see: 'Run The World (Girls)' music video). With this representation needing to be showcased, the lack of other POV's enabled her to be the dominant viewpoint in the video. What I would like to do with my project is have the dominant reading highlight how the female artist is the one in the right position so that her authority (as spoken about in the treatment) can be connoted through the amount of power that she holds. However, in order to get more people talking about the video, including more layers to the video can allow this to happen. The way that I plan on doing this is by including the opposing side (the male in the relationship) displaying his emotions about the situation. Nonetheless, although the guy will have more of a viewpoint, this does not mean that he gets to overtake the female, particularly in terms of the dominant reading. The artist will be singing throughout and will constantly be showcasing her feelings towards the situation, but I will slot in a few moments where her ex can be seen as upset. I will incorporate this by including a voiceover at the start of the couple fighting and the artist not listening to the guy's justification, as well as having a very small moment where he thinks about the good times that they had together. With this incorporated into the production, it leaves room for the consumers to ponder about whether the guy is right, the girl is right, or whether they are both on an equal playing field. This will then hopefully create a bit of hype through word of mouth so that the artist can be more noticed by the public.

Blog Reflection - Week 12

Unfortunately, in terms of filming, this week did not go as planned. Our actor playing the ex-lover could not show up for his own personal reasons so the flashback scenes were not shot. The stage scenes were also altered a little as our background singers could not make it either, for similar reasons to our ex-lover actor. However, we had a backup plan and that was to just record the scene with just our artist. This looked quite nice as the camera did not have to focus on so many people, and only had one character to look at. This caused more flexibility in terms of moving the camera, which made filming run smoothly and on time.

A negative side of this was that because we only had an hour to use the stage, we were quite rushed in time. At points our artist would get distracted or we would be interrupted by staff members coming in and out. This took away some of our time. However, when it came to editing, my partner and I made sure that these shots were quite good, so, with this in mind, we slowed down the shots so that they were both long enough for the specified time within the song and looked aesthetically pleasing. We were very pleased with this decision as it looked very flowing the rest of the video and did not look out of place at all.

Call Sheet 5

Date and time: 

- 19/11/13 at 14:10

Location:

- School Stage

Script scene no.s:

- 54-63, 65-66, 68-69, 71-75 & 78-79.

Contributors:

- Jalbby Johnson  

Crew:

- Rianne Selina & Abir Mohammad 

Equipment:

- Camera, SD card, tripod, phone (for music), lights and stage.

Costume:

- Black and white dress, black heels, two gold necklaces, smokey eyes (black and silver eyeshadow) and fuchsia lipstick.

Travel Arrangements: 

- None

Blog Reflection - Week 11

This week we worked on filming and editing our music video. We managed to film all of the green screen scenes, which were done twice this week. Hopefully with this we can now edit most of our music video as these are the most important scenes of the video at this point. So far we have tried to adapt the green screen we recorded with the way that we planned to have it in the video.

Unfortunately the background image at this point does not look as realistic as we planned – this may be because of the fact that the green screen is not of the quality that we need. With inspiration from Ciara’s “Like A Boy” video we expected a slightly less professional version of that. Unfortunately with the lights causing shadows and the green screen not being big enough to record the entirety of our artist’s body, we were very limited. At the moment we are using a green screen background that we are not completely pleased with, but we plan on working with it further.

On the bright side, our music video currently cuts on the beat of the song, which means that we are heading in the right direction as this is a key aspect of every music video. Also, the shots that we do have, including the green screen, are very good, with good framing and acting, making it a good video to watch – hopefully!

Next week we plan on recording the shots on the stage as well as some scenes with our artist’s ex-lover that she speaks about in the video. With these shots, the video can be near completion. Also, we hope to fix our green screen problem as we do not want a ‘cheap’ look, which it currently holds.

Call Sheet 4

Date and time: 

- 14/11/13 at 15:20

Location:

- Media Department (green screen)

Script scene no.s:

- 1-2, 5-10, 14 - 21, 25 - 31, 36 - 44, 48 - 52, 75 - 76, 79 – 81 (repeat Tuesday with a different outfit).

Contributors:

- Jalbby Johnson  

Crew:

- Rianne Selina & Abir Mohammad 

Equipment:

- Camera, SD card, tripod, phone/computer (for music), lights and green screen.

Costume:

- Thin black top, blue jeans, black heels, two gold necklaces, smokey eyes (black and silver eyeshadow) and fuchsia lipstick.

Travel Arrangements: 

- None

Call Sheet 3

Date and time: 

- 12/11/13 at 15:20

Location:

- Media Department (green screen)

Script scene no.s:

- 1-2, 5-10, 14 - 21, 25 - 31, 36 - 44, 48 - 52, 75 - 76, 79 - 81.

Contributors:

- Jalbby Johnson  

Crew:

- Rianne Selina & Abir Mohammad 

Equipment:

- Camera, SD card, tripod, phone (for music), lights and green screen.

Costume:

- Short black and white dress, black heels, two gold necklaces, smokey eyes (black and silver eyeshadow) and fuchsia lipstick.

Travel Arrangements: 

- None

Blog Reflection - Week 10

This week my partner and I finalised all of our pre-production work. We managed to finish it to a quality that we were both quite fond of.

The digipak and magazine advertisement flatplans were the last pieces that we had left to do. This took quite a long time as we aimed for them to be of the quality that we initially wanted. We tried to include the conventions that we previously studied and incorporate them in our designs as we aimed for them to be as realistic as possible.

Also, my partner and I recorded a full scene for our music video. We came up with a new location that can be seen in the location recci; it is in the corner of a music studio, where we used the sound proof material as a backdrop for our performer. We believe that this would be a great way to have a performance section in an area that not many people will use as it is not a common area that we have seen. Most of the time we have found green screens (due to their flexibility) and although we are using this, we have added this extra scene as it presents an even greater look to it that many may not have.

Overall this week has been good as we have finally closed the door on pre production and have already gotten to a good start on our actual production.

Next week we plan on shooting the entire green screen scene as well as the photoshoot, which can hopefully speed up the time we have in production, meaning we can focus more on the pre production stage of editing.

Magazine Flatplan

In order to promote our artist's new album, my partner and I have created a magazine advertisement so that consumers of the magazine that this poster is inside can look at it. This will be great as visuals are very important in magazines as people tend to view them for the aesthetic culture of it. We have tried to have our design as quite eye catching in terms of what the audience can denote from it. This will allow our audience to see it in a more attractive light, and potentially be more fond of the product as it has a pleasing visual.

Digipak Flatplan

A digipak flatplan was made so that my partner and I had an idea for our initial plan. We intend to go on to a photoshoot with our artist so that we can take plenty of different photographs to choose from. This may result in us deciding that another route would be better, but as for now we will be sticking to our current plan until we find something we prefer. This flatplan can be seen below, and you may notice our use of repetitive colours with purple (royal representation), red (intimate representation) and black (smart representation). These all compile to create a particularly outstanding portrayal of our artist as it makes her seem sophisticated, feminine and powerful. Also, the stances that she has are quite strong in themselves as she is either standing upright (like a sophisticated person would) or looking away from the audience (something else has captured her attention - dominant). We have chosen this route as it is something that creates a personality, and this is the exact personality that we aim to achieve. The digipak flatplan can be seen below:

Call Sheet 2

Date and time: 

- 06/11/13 at 11:45

Location:

- Music Department

Script scene no.s:

- Back up scenes (not on the script, but our other locations were not available so we decided to use another room for new potential space).

Contributors:

- Jalbby Johnson  

Crew:

- Rianne Selina & Abir Mohammad 

Equipment:

- Camera, SD card, tripod, phone (for music)

Costume:

- Black V cut shirt, black leggings, black heels, two gold necklaces, smokey eyes (black and silver eyeshadow) and fuchsia lipstick.

Travel Arrangements: 

- None

Call Sheet 1

Date and time: 

- 05/11/13 at 14:10

Location:

- Music Department

Script scene no.s:

- Back up scenes (not on the script, but our other locations were not available so we decided to use another room for new potential space).

Contributors:

- Jalbby Johnson  

Crew:

- Rianne Selina & Abir Mohammad 

Equipment:

- Camera, SD card, tripod, phone (for music)

Costume:

- Black V cut shirt, black leggings, black heels, two gold necklaces, smokey eyes (black and silver eyeshadow) and fuchsia lipstick.

Travel Arrangements: 

- None

Blog Reflection - Week 9

This week, on the blog, not a lot had been posted. We managed to complete our location recci after checking out our locations. This allowed us to know what places we could use and we could present it to anybody that viewed it, which is useful for future references. We went to many different parks such as St. Chad's, Goodmayes, South Park and more, as well as cinemas in both Romford and Ilford. This gave us a variety of choices, enabling us to pick the perfect location.

Unfortunately we were unable to film scenes as our actors were attached to other commitments such as their own school work as well as being too far at certain points of the week.

Overall this week was decent as we got to understand what our locations were and we were aware of more than we were previously. But in terms of actual filming, this week was not so good. From this we have learnt to organise in a better fashion as different people have certain commitments that they cannot drop at the last minute, so we need to focus on being quicker to organise filming sessions.