Summer Project - Zine

I went to a youth workshop during my summer holiday, where I made my first zine. The lady leading the workshop told me zines became very popular in the punk scene in the 1970s, as a way of getting your word out in the world. The most popular was a feminist punk zine called Riot Grrrl in the 1990s. I made a zine about living with an anxiety disorder, called Crooked Glasses, and left some in the youth club where the workshop took place, I found it really fun to construct as you could make it personal and with a quirky design. We also looked at a few other people's zines, and it was great to see everyone's own individual approach to making a zine and their art style.

Music Track Change

I have spent weeks trying to plan and storyboard my original music video idea with the song 'Heaven Help Us'. However, I have deemed my vision too great a challenge for me to achieve to its full potential. Instead, I have started planning for a different song, also by My Chemical Romance titled 'I Never Told You What I Do For A Living'. I have already sent an email seeking permission, and have the storyboard half finished.

The music video idea I have for 'I Never Told You' uses a lot less actors, and a set that is easier to get permission to use, as well as less complex makeup. Despite these alterations, I believe a high grade music video will still be the outcome.

Below is a screenshot of the email I have sent to My Chemical Romance's official website.

Summer Project - Gif

For my second summer project I had a go at making a few gifs with some simple colour and text editing. I have seen many online such as this and this, and thought it would be good to have a try myself. I used KMPlayer to record the frames I needed, and made the edits in Gimp.

The first gif was very simple as all I wanted to do was add a line of text. To do this I opened the text tab in Gimp, types what I wanted it to say, and changed the colour and font. The font is one I figured out how to download from online. However, I added on a single frame (when the singer flashes white) blue text instead of pink, to see the effect that the flash would have. The finished product is shown below, taken from the music video B.F.F.

The second gif was trickier, because I was changing the colour effect as well as adding some text. I had to lower the saturation and lightness, as well as increase the contrast slightly, to each individual frame. There were thirty-four frames in total, and when I watched the playback I noticed three frames were lighter than the rest of the gif because I had forgotten to increase the contrast. I went back and corrected them, then added my signature to the corner of each slide to mark it as mine. The finished product is shown below, taken from the music video Joyriding.

Primary Research - Popularity Of The Supernatural

I made a survey using Typeform.com asking the audience three questions; their age, which supernatural being they prefer, and why. Here is the survey I created, with tick box and long answer questions.

Their age was to see what different generations prefer, and was to help me get more of a connection with my target audience of teenagers.

Their preferred supernatural being and why was to help get an idea of what sort of things I should work into my music video to attract them more.

I put the results into an excel document, pictured below:

I also compiled the results into a tally chart, and found that ghosts and vampires drew on popularity.

Summer Project - Summertime Sadness Short Music Video

As one of my summer projects I decided to record a one minute snippet of a music video for the remix version of the song "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey. It was planned and filmed over the course of four or five days, which is quite rushed.

The idea for the music video was to have a mash of two different story lines. The first would be a boy getting on his bike and cycling away into the night, and the second of a chaffer bug refusing to fly from a person's hand. The meaning behind this was that the bug rejected it's chance of freedom, ending in it inevitably dying at the end of it's life cycle without having taken a chance. The boy was a symbol of our own lives, taking a chance and a break for freedom even if it seems scary.

As I was the main character in my music video, I got my mum and a few friends to help film (shown left). However I did all of the pre and post-production including the storyboard, shot list, and costume design (shown right).





One issue we had with filming was that the natural light faded fast. To get our final shot I had to ask the crew to turn on their phone torches, which worked alright. A second issue was getting the tracking shot of the bikes wheels. To solve this we had one of the film crew sit on a skateboard and roll back as I cycled by.

Here's the final product!

Summer Projects

Over the six week summer holiday I have decided to gain experience and increase my knowledge about media filming and production by doing a range of media projects. Some ideas for the types of projects I may do are:

• Music video (in different styles)
• Short film
• Documentary
• News programme
• Radio play
• Voice over

Product Research - Mama Fan Video

"Mama" is a fan-made music video for a rock song.

MAMA

The opening of the music video begins in black and white with a mid close-up, but the colour fades into the picture as the volume of the music increases. The lip-syncing actress is wearing mostly red, fitting the 'dangerous' vibes that are often found in the rock genre. 

Most of the video is made of jump cuts and mid shots. The camera doesn't move and the actress doesn't move off screen, giving the effect of her being boxed in. Despite this, she still makes the video interesting with the speed of the shots and the various props and makeups she uses. For example it will quickly jump from a shot of her blowing out a lighter to a shot of her licking her lips as blood falls down her chin, then back to her with a clean face and lip-syncing again.

Through the verses and chorus of the song there are no colour effects used, aside from the occasional black and white close-up. When the song hits the bridge at 3:00, everything changes. The amount of shots increase and many different colour effects are used. For example, ghost overlay, reverse, negative, and sepia. This gives the idea of a breakdown into hysteria. 

A final interesting point in the video is at 3:27- half-way through the bridge- when the song suddenly calms. The effect she has used makes the video flicker and vary in saturation, giving the image of an old movie. This fits with the section of the song because it sounds a lot like an old movie or wartime radio broadcast.

Product Response

In this response I have tried to keep the camera in the same position like she has, and use a variety of colour effects.