A2 Log Book

Friday 12th June: In today’s lesson our group decided to make a music video based on the musical hairspray. We chose the song ‘You can’t stop the beat’. We planned out what sort of props we would need and what people would be doing what. We also planned a second idea from a different genre of music. We decided on the idea of The Police- Every breath you take. We decided to plan a second idea just in case anything went wrong with the first idea.I am also researching music videos and am going to pick two videos to analyse to gain ideas about what I could include in my own piece of work.

Tuesday 16th June: In today’s lesson, I started to plan out my portfolio of work, it must include some planning and research. To aid in my groups work, we are all analysing music videos. I began to look at the idea of comparing two different videos from either two different decades of from two different music genres. To help with the planning process I have been looking on youtube to generate ideas.

Tuesday 30th June: In today’s lesson I planned out the CD cover for the bands song. We generated names for our band on a online word generator.

Tuesday 7th July: In today’s lesson I finished comparing two CD covers by Lady Gaga and Kelly Clarkson. I analysed the CD covers for common features and conventions of an album cover.

Tuesday 8th September: In today’s lesson we split our group in half, and decided to create two music videos. My group has decided on remaking the video for the band Lemon Demon and their song Word Disassociation. We found the lyrics for the song and are going to act out the lyrics and use pictures to portray the lyrics. We decided to reinvent the band name, so we decided on calling them Evil Banana, a take on the original band name.

Tuesday 22nd September: In today’s lesson we decided on the track list for our CD. The main song on our album is Word Disassociation originally sung by Lemon Demon. As this song is about random words, we decided to use a random word generator online to get the rest of the names of our songs.We also distributed questionnaires and collected a few back. We felt that the questionnaires should not be handed around the common room as everybody would be of a certain age and musical taste. We will use these questionnaires to form part of our preliminary research.

Tuesday 6th October: In today’s lesson I analysed the music questionnaires which we distributed. We handed out fourteen questionnaires and we had ten female responses and four male. From the questionnaires we found out that the most popular choice of music was R&B.Also in today’s lesson I began to analyse two music videos which will form part of my preliminary research.

Friday 9th October: In today’s lesson I analysed my first music video as part of my preliminary research. The video that I analysed was Jay Sean- Down. I analysed the video for; camera techniques, editing, sound, mise- en- scene and special effects. I also researched where the video was filmed, and details about the production of the video.

Tuesday 13th October: In today’s lesson I analysed my second music video. The video I decided to analyse was Jordin Sparks- Battlefield. I analysed the video for; camera techniques, editing, sound, mise- en- scene and special effects. I also researched Jordin Sparks career.

Tuesday 3rd November: In today’s lesson we watched a film called ‘ A matter of Life and Death’ and I then researched it after on IMDB. We watched it and studied it for the use of how gender was portrayed. We did this as practise for our exam on Media and Collective Identity.

Tuesday 10th November: In today’s lesson I watched a film called Trainspotting. It was about drug addicts in Scotland. Again I watched this film and considered key ideas such as how gender stereotypes and social groups were portrayed. After doing this I researched the film on IMDB and made some notes on British Cinema.

Tuesday 17th November: In today’s lesson I began to plan out my music poster, as the second part of my project. I am also going to start planning out my storyboards for when I decide to film. As well as this I re-familiarised myself with the narrative theories, so I can apply these when watching more films from the chosen genre.

Friday 20th November: In today’s lesson I watched a film called the Last King of Scotland, based on the what happened in Uganda under Idi Amin’s rule.

Tuesday 24th November: In today’s lesson I did a write up of the film I watched last week. To do this review I used the IMDB and Wikipedia. I researched the plot of the film, and collected some trivia and some quotes. I also found a movie trailer poster for the film. I am going to use my findings to answer an exam question on Media and Collective Identity, and how this film portrays social groups.

Tuesday 8th December: In today’s lesson I re-wrote my essay on Media and the Collective Identity. I added in some changes which were suggested by Mr butcher. I also intend to finish my storyboards so that I can start some filming just before or after christmas.

Tuesday 12th January: In today’s lesson, I checked that my folder was up to date, for the resubmission of my coursework from AS. I also continued with my storyboards for the A2 part of my course.

Friday 15th January: In today’s lesson me and Tilly decided to rename our song choice, from Word disassociation to a song called Fireflies by owl city. We will keep the original band name called Lemon Demon, as we wanted to keep this aspect of our project. We decided to change the name of the song as after researching A level music videos on youtube we found that they looked better than what we anticipated ours would look like. We have now decided to produce an original video which is completely different to the original bands original video.

Tuesday 19th January: In today’s lesson me and Tilly produced some planning for our new video. We have also began to write a synopsis, and will then make some new storyboards for our film.

Friday 22nd January: In today’s lesson me and Tilly story-boarded our song Fireflies.

Tuesday 26th January: In today’s lesson me and Tilly finished storyboarding for our filming of our song Fireflies. We are planning to have mot of our filming done on Sarurday, and plan to start editing next week.

February: Throughout February our group filmed our media project Fireflies. Also during February we added our filmed work onto the editing software but did not start editing until we finished all of our filming.

March: Throughout March our groups focus was on editing our project. We edited in the software Imovie. The editing process took longer than we expected. At the end of March we began to self evaluate our work, and look at where we can improve next time.

April: Throughout April we have been producing our self evaluation which forms part of our media portfolio. This evaluation contains details about our editing process and our preliminary research which we conducted.

May: This month we are in the midst of finishing our media portfolio by completing essays and refining ancillary texts. This will form our media portfolio for year 13.