Risk Assessment.

When shooting our music video there are going to be a number of risks involved in doing this. Firstly, when we are shooting our scene on the zebra crossing we are going to have to take extra care and keep a look out and make sure we check for cars driving down the road.
The weather would also be a risk for me and my group when filming as we would need to protect the equipment from water getting inside it and breaking them, but also we would need to protect ourselves. We would make sure it wouldn't get damaged by taking umbrella's with us to cover the equipment and ourselves from the rain. It could also become quite slippery if it rains so we would have to be careful that we don't slip over or ingure ourselves or drop the equipment.
The risk of tripping over parts of equipment in general would be another risk for me and group that we need to be aware of, this could include; the lights in the photography studio, loose or extra wires and leads we have with us.
If we are charging the camera whilst were filming we would need to make sure no body trips over the wire and make it obvious that the wire is there and people need to be careful when stepping near it, to make sure they don't trip and ingure themselves. To make the wire look obvious to others we would need to have someone stood there holding the wire.
Also me and my group filmed in a set of stairs outside. There would be a number of risks involved when filming outside including; we could trip up or down the stairs and because they are concrete stairs it could result in a serious injury. We need to be careful and have make sure we do all we can in order to prevent any damages or injuries.

Anciliary Research.

These images are from the campain 'Got Milk' that is widely shown in many magazines using celeberties to resprent the campaign.


They use many famous celeberties to advertise their milk by wearing a milk moustache that draws an audience into the product they are trying to advertise, and because they are using famous/ well known people it draws the audience into the advert.
I think by using celeberties it is very effective and altogether is a very successful campaign that has attracted a large audience because it is recognised by alot of people and you instantly see what product they are trying to advertise.
Me and my group thought this would be a good idea to consider when designing our advertisement for our new band 'Exculsive'. Instead of advertising the product 'Milk' like the campaign does we thought we would use a similar idea to advertise our song 'Work'. The idea we came up with was to have each girl dressed up in a work outfit such as a receptionist, builder, or policewomen to resprent everyday jobs yet still bring across the message of our new song. Therefore each career and outfit the girls are wearing would relate back to our song and the audience would become familar with the name of our new song.
Our idea is similar to the 'Got Milk' campaign and was inspired by this advertisement because they made their images relate back to their logo in a humurous way and this is the idea we wanted to advertise to draw in our target audience.

Existing Media.

This is a CD cover of 'The Saturday's' album that me and my group found appealing and wanted to focus our CD cover idea with a similar theme. Instead of holding our album cover name on magazines and having each girl holding one we came up with the creative idea to paint the letters on each girl's hand and have the album name shown that way. This image gave us some inspiration to come up with this idea and links us to the band we chose to use to base our song and some ideas on.
As a group we decided to challenge some of the typical conventions you see on this CD cover. Some of the typical conventions we are choosing to challenege are; our outifts may not be as colourful because we have decided to give the girls a edgy rock chick look to them rather than the typical feminine image you would usually see.
By going for a more edgy rock chick look for our girl band we thought it would make our music video and girl band more interesting and appealing. Although we've chose to bring across this type of image we are still going to follow some of the typical conventions by having the girls still looking happy, feminine and seductive. By rather than have them looking innocent and similar to the usual girl band's a audience would expect to see we've decided to take a different approach and challenge the conventions to 'Rock Chick' so the audience will be more drawn into our music video because this is not done often by many artists.

Genre.

The concept of Genre is important when looking into and producing media texts because it makes you look at the codes and conventions used in order to create the genre and the techniques used to make the genre effective. The concept of genre was very useful in helping me and my group to understand the codes and coventions our chosen genre follow so we could create our music video. We decided to challenge some of the typical conventions so it would make our music video more interesting.
Rick Altman disagrees with this concept as he thought that if you follow the typical conventions of a genre everything becomes predictive, viewers will know what to expect and viewers become passive voyeurs meaning that genres are therefore restrictive. Whereas, Andrew Goodwin had a theory which was 'music videos are simply an extention of the lyrics' this theory related to our project because the lyrics of a song tell a story and the video an artist produces is usually about what the story of the song is trying to tell. This is done by acting out the narrative of the story in the video.
Our music video fits in with other music videos as we stuck to using some of the typical conventions of a 'Pop' genre music video and still involves a lot of the elements you would typically see a girl band doing. For example; having a dance rountine in their music video.

This is the final design for our CD cover. After researching into existing media using resources such as the Internet we looked at existing CD covers to create a design for our front cover.

The idea is that each girl poses in a different way with our album name 'EXCULSIVE' painted on our hands, two letters per person in bold black paint. We chose to use the colour black for the paint for the title of the album would look obvious yet appealing to our target audience.

I think that this is a very effective idea because it shows creativity and keeps the CD cover looking effective and appealing.

Genre Theory.

''Media texts rely on audience knowledge of generic codes and conventions in order for them to create meaning.'' Explain how you have used or subverted generic conventions in one of your production pieces.

Question 1: How useful is the concept of genre in understanding your work?
Genre is a set of groups which any meduim may be classified. The codes and conventions of a genre are very important toi follow as they reflect what the genre is about. I think that genre is a very essentional sector to consider when producing a project, because it then the audience can get in the state of mind for the type of film/ music video you are creating. In my A2 production I researched alot into my chosen genre which was 'Pop', by looking in depth at what they would include in order to reflect the genre and estabilish the codes and conventions.
The concept of genre in understanding a piece of work was very useful because it came in handy when I was producing my A2 practical, the aim was to produce a music video that followed a particular genre. The genre me and my group selected was 'Pop' and the song was 'Work' By the Saturdays. The concept of genre in understanding my piece of work as it allowed me to research into similar pieces of work that used the same genre.
Rick Altman disagreed and thought that the concept of genre reduced the artistic ability of a producer as audience will know what to expect when the film/music video has been labelled by a certain genre. Although other theorists had different views, one which I agreed with the most was Richard Maltby as he thought the success relies on predictable elements with slight variation.
In conclusion, I think that genre is the most important element because it helps you predict what the audience is expecting and helps you to create an idea of what the audience would want to see in your project.

Question 2: How can genre be used to understand music videos, and how is this different to genre and (thriller) films?
Genre is an effective technique that catergorises products into a sector, i.e. cheesy music videos would be classed as 'Pop Genre'.

storyboard analysis

We created a storyboard using imovie to see how the shots we were deciding to use worked together. This will now make our filming a lot easier as we have planned out what shots we are going to use. By using imovie is ensured that our shots are working well together and our shots flow smoothly. The storyboard we created worked as a test film for our music video, so then we can develop on our storyboard by adding more shots etc, to make sure our music video is created to the highest standard we can possibly make it. Our storyboard reflects the shots we want to use in our music video and the order we want the shots to be taken in.