Production Plan

Location: Lydia’s House – Lydia’s room mise-en-scene of a teenage girls bedroom.

Equipment needed: video camera, tripod, change of outfits for Alicia Baldwin including: geek glasses, big white signed tshirt, checkered pjs, pen and paper.

Actor: Alicia Baldwin

Time/Date to start filming: Sunday 7th October at 7.00pm – 

Deconstruction and Reconstruction of a Media Text

Taylor Swift: You Belong With Me - this is the one of the songs we have created a storyboard for. We are going to take 30 seconds from the official video and try and recreate it. This will give an idea of how to create a music video and represent the codes and conventions of this genre. The genre for this is contry-pop. The target audience for this genre and video imparticular is young female as the song is quite girlie and cheesy and therefore catchy.

Job Roles:
Cast: Alicia Baldwin as Taylor Swift
Robert Gibbs as Lucas Till

Director: Lois England and Alicia Baldwin

Producer: Megan Coggin

Camera/Editor: Lydia Barrett and Sophie Marshall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKAaKwX5aA

Skills Development Essay

In my first year of Media Studies I studied the codes and conventions of different film trailers, of a number of different genres, what they had in common and what they did differently, I looked at what worked best and decided on which genre I found most interesting. My chosen genre was horror. I researched a number of different horror films, my favourite being Prom Night and I initially decided to make my film trailer similar to this, however after later research I decided a trailer similar to Paranormal Activity would be a good idea as the home movie idea was easy to create and ver effective. In addition to the film trailer I also made 3 posters, one main poster and two teaser posters. I again had to do a lot of research into posters, looking at what must be included and also what to exclude from teaser posters to ensure I didn’t put too much information on mine, as teaser posters don’t give much away. I used Photoshop to edit my film posters, toying with colour photos and black and white. I found Photoshop a great program to use as although it is quite complicated, there is so much you can change and manipulate when using it. All images and film had to be original and produced by myself and my partner.

I studied the genre horror, I noticed a lot of extreme close ups were used to show and emphasise the fear of the protagonist, I also liked the feature used in a lot of horror films where the camera is hand held, to create a home movie feel and make the film feel more realistic, so I used this in my trailer. I noticed the editing was fast and the shots were quick, which created tension. I didn’t use any speech and used ‘dark’ music to create an atmosphere.

I had never previously used any of the equipment, such as cameras, Photoshop or the Adobe Elements which I used to edit my trailer, so I initially struggled. So to practice using the equipment and to become comfortable with it, I made a short film with little planning just to learn how to use the camera, when doing this I realised what I could do to make the filming better, I tried lots of shots with the tripod but soon realised that handheld shots would be better for my genre. I also had a brief go at editing the film; this allowed me to learn my way around Adobe Elements.

On my posters I used a lot of black and red, as they have a lot of connotations which fit the horror genre. Red is associated with danger and black is associated with death and evil also with the unknown...very fitting for my genre. I edited one of my posters so that it was black and white and just red eyes glaring out, which I felt gave it a spooky, horror feel and really stood out. Photoshop allowed me to do this. I edited the look of the model used with many tools, I used the spot removal tool to clear the face of blemishes along with a merge tool, I made my models face flawless, however I edited the picture to make her eyes red, to signify the horror genre.

When filming my trailer, I used lots of extreme close ups to show the fear of my characters, I also used long shots as I wanted to show my characters running away as it makes the order wonder what they’re running from. I didn’t use any dialect in my trailer, just scary music and screaming, typical of a horror genre. I feel the lack of dialect created mystery and wondering in the trailer, leaving enough unanswered questions to encourage people to go see the film however I feel I included enough narrative to make the film look appealing. I used a lot of fast editing and short clips to create tension, my trailer was non linear and didn’t give away the story line, it just hinted at it.

I tried to make my trailer seem realistic by using certain techniques to create a home video feel, similar to that in paranormal activity, I also looked at settings used frequently in horror genre’s such as castles and old houses however I didn’t think these would be very easy to gain access to so decided to use a wood as it would be easy to find one appropriate and if I needed to re-film shots I could when I pleased. A lot of my shots were of the floor while running and shots of characters running from behind, also hearing creepy noises and lots of heavy breathing, I found these to be regularly used in horror films. The editing was reasonably easy I did lots of cutting scenes, so it was quite jumpy.

I used audience feedback to help me improve and adjust what I had created to make it even better. I decided after a few people commented on it to make my trailer start off slightly slower paced and speed up. I also was told that ending with something jumping out or scaring the audience would be a good idea so I took this into consideration and tried to create the desired effect to the best of my ability. I was assured my trailer fitted the genre entirely and the conventions were all covered.

I feel the skills and knowledge I developed in my first year of media studies can be used this year in my music video. The skills I acquired I believe can be improved to make this year’s course work better, doing a video last year I believe has given me an advantage this year as I will have the confidence to create a more challenging video than I maybe would have if I did not have previous experience. I feel the skills I acquired on Photoshop although hard were very beneficial.

The Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

- a website homepage for the band
- a cover for its release as part of a digipack (cd/dvd package)
- a magazine advert for the digipak (cd/dvd package)