Section 1A of the exam.

How do you plan to use digital technology in the production of your 3 products?

The 3 main digital packages we would use are Final Cut Pro, Quark Express and Photoshop.

For our film, we would use Final Cut Pro to piece all of our work together. It would be used for our videos to do the lip syncing with the soundtrack. We would be using the blade tools to cut the videos apart, and using other tools and effects such as using black and white shading, slow motion and using it to for our video transitions.

We will need to use a digital camera to take photos- such as behind the scene shots as well as a doing a photo shoot to take pictures for our Digipak. This will obviously have a clear link to our advertisement to the actual music video. We also need a video camera, tripod and a light box to achieve a 'professional' look for our music video.

For our Advertisement we would be using Photoshop, which is a image manipulation package. It is widely used internationally to achieve many different looks. It can emphasise shadows, lighting and colours. We can change the photo by doing a variety of effects and even alter the photo itself. Example of effects we could do is like a graphic designing, Pop Art style effect or even put the lead singer into a completely different background.

For our Digipak, we would also use Photoshop with the same process as the Advertisement, but we would be using Quark Express which is a publishing package- it focuses on the layout and the packaging of items- such as a CD cover. We can import the design from Photoshop into Quark Express to make our Digipak.

We would use the Internet extensively for Blogger and Youtube. We would carry on searching existing music videos for ideas of their shots and editing and look at artists that we are inspired by. When we finish with our music video we would upload it into Vimeo.

How have you used conventions from real media text in your planning?

We were inspired by artists such as Mark Ronson, The Kooks and Gossip- which is mainly based on indie pop genre.  It is very modern, funky and original in their dress sense, style and music.

For our costume, we were inspired by artists such as 'Lily Allen' and 'The Tin Tins' who also fit in the indie pop genre too. Their dress is very different and abstract- we would be following their dress sense by wearing colourful clothing and accessories. Big sunglasses, dresses worn with converses and bold colours are common within the genre of indie pop- especially among the female artists.

Our chosen artist and soundtrack is Marina and the Diamonds- Oh No!

Her video is very upbeat and funky- there is snappy video transitions and cartoon effects added on to the video which give it a comic style look. The video has action and quick cuts which goes with the beat. There is variety of camera shots- such as close ups, long shots, mid shots, birds eye view and panning.

The conventions which are quite obvious such as dancing shown throughout the video. There are also other backing dancers shown and comical acting throughout the whole video.

For the Advertisement and the Digipak, it has obvious links to the actual video- the Digipak itself has a colourful background and the lead singer has a cartoon effect.

What have you learned about research and planning a production, compared to AS?

We have learned that organisation, preparation and time management is vital to the music video production, compared to the thriller trailer. It has become much more demanding to meet deadlines and being focused in every lesson is to be expected. We had to quickly settle in with our new group members and consistently work in a team when planning and brainstorming ideas.

Compared to last year where we focused on making up an new idea, this year we instead focus on existing ideas and incorporate into our brainstorming and final idea.

As the blog is a by product of itself, it would have to be engaging to read and interactively stimulating. In addition, new tasks are required to do for this advanced portfolio such as doing mood boards, animatic storyboarding and more independent research. All of these tasks will help with the development for the music video as it creates new ideas and insights which will hopefully make the final product into a good standard.