Practice Piece: Album Cover

Creating my album cover was the first time I had used Photoshop. As I did not feel entirely confident with the software, I decided to keep my practice album cover rather simple.

To keep continuity between my music video and my album cover, I decided to have the cover as the actress who played the lead singer in my music video. The similarities between these are firstly the actress but also the string lights that appear in the back ground of the video and on the band homepage.

I could not decide between black and white or colour, however, I believe both give the album a look that matches the genre.

If I had been more familiar with Photoshop, then I would have sharpened and brightened the colour to add a more ''pop'' feel to the album cover.

Practice Piece: Paramore Website

As part of my digi-pack, I decided to create the homepage for my band, Paramore. The homepage of my website includes a gallery, news section and direct links to social media and album purchases.


I thoroughly enjoyed creating this webpage as it allowed me to be creative and choose the design and content myself which helped me to understand the importance of the layout and the ease of access to each page linked to the site.




http://paramoremedia2.weebly.com/

Practice Piece: Still Into You By Paramore

Here is my practice music video to the song ''Still Into You'' by Paramore. I really enjoyed filming and editing this piece alone as it means i can have full creative ownership over my final edit and that i can juggle my own ideas to fit the musics genre. 

For my coursework, i am considering doing a song of a similar genre to this as i found it very simple and fun to come up with ideas to fit to the bars of the song.

Practice Piece: Song Choice

For my practice peace, I have decided to do a music video for Paramore's ''Still Into You''. I chose this song because it fun and has a fast beat in which i can edit to which will help me develop this skill for my coursework piece.

I also think that this song is ideal to practice making a music video for as it would be difficult to replicate which removes the temptation to copy the original music video. I feel that using this song would give me a lot of options for content for the music video. 

Recreation Task: Pharrell Williams - Happy

Our version of Pharrell Williams ''Happy'' is inspired by the original music video seen on the post above. The idea of this video is different people looking happy and dancing around in different locations. Due to time limits, Oliver and I filmed all of our footage at school or at home. We managed to recreate the notion of different locations, merely by changing angles of shots once we had run out of classrooms and corridors to dance in. 

I enjoyed creating this task as it has benefited me highly and has given me a sense of what it will be like to do my actual A2 music video coursework. This task allowed me to think of how things fit to the beat and adapt to the quick cuts that were not appropriate for the thriller task of last year. 

Textual Analysis: Happy By Pharrell Williams

Pharrell Williams became known for his ''catchy'' song ''Happy'' in 2014. Not only did Pharrell rule the charts, he also created one of the biggest creations of cross media convergence of its time.

Alongside the release of his single, Pharrell Williams also released a 24 hour version of his music video, which showed different clips depending on the time zone/location in which you clicked the link. This 24 hour music video aired at the Buenos Aires Film Festival, showing how a mass market product can appeal to a niche audience. To date, the video has 668million views on YouTube.  The exchange of the 24 hour music video was widely encouraged by Pharrell and his team, along with the encouragement of fans recreating their own version of the ''Happy'' music video, with the original text symbols and ideas from the original music video.

This promotion allowed ''Happy'' to become much more known, with fans from around the globe creating their own ''Happy'' music videos with the tagline, ''We Are Happy From...''. Many examples of exchange have come from places such as Japan, America, Mongolia, Australia, Unibas and many other locations.
Many of the videos were very professional and received many views themselves.

Continuing it's promotion and viral spread, the audio became the soundtrack to the children's film, ''Despicable Me'', creating another link between the single and other media texts. An example of this is the featuring of the films ''Minion'' characters in the music video to the single.

The popularity of the music video comes down to it's simplicity. The video was directed by a French production team, known as ''We Are From LA''. The simplicity of the video was also translated into the hardware used to create it as all the shots were merely filmed with a steady cam. Both the team and Pharrell Williams can be responsible for the changing nature of copyright infringements due to their encouragement for others to use the track to express themselves.

The success of the music video led to it winning many awards at the Grammy's.

Introduction...

For my A2 Media Studies course, I will be expected to make a music video for my coursework piece. Along with this music video, I will be expected to create promotional aspects, such as CD cover and a magazine page/ website to promote the band. 

I am really looking forward to creating my own music video due to the fact that music is a strong hobby of mine and is something I enjoy and can often relate to well. Using my skills from last year, I am also expecting that my media product will be more advanced than AS and will be suitable for its purpose. 

For my A2 project, I am considering working alone. Although I enjoyed working as a group last year, I feel that allowing myself to have creative ownership over my product will mean that I can learn more from myself and further enhance my skills.