Photos

For one of our shots we are planning to have our artist looking through some old-fashioned photos. To do this I used the app Hipstamatic on my iPhone, which takes photos with a vintage camera effect. Here we took lots of photos of 'Ruby' and 'Ken' in London, to make it look like they have been on lots of dates. I also took some photos of other footage on our computer screen to show variety in the photos.

Filming in London

Today we managed to get our filming in London done. We had to go to three different locations, and we were really tired by the end of the day. We first went to Brixton, however we found that it wasn't really the kind of area that we were comfortable filming in, especially in the market as everyone started glaring at us when we took out the camera. We did get a few shots done in an alleyway next to the O2 Arena in Brixton, which we will definately use for our production, and we also got a few graffiti shots, however when we were filming this there was a woman nearby having a very loud, sweary conversation on her phone, which was a bit awkward filming wise, as we were trying not to laugh.

As Brixton wasn't as successful as we'd hoped, we went to our next location after lunch, which was Southbank. This was far more effective for graffiti shots, however the main graffiti area was the skate park and lots of people we skating so we didn't want to get in the way. Instead we decided to do some more walking shots, so we found lots of interesting backgrounds and filmed those. I also had the idea, when we were by big ben, to do some vintage-looking shots on my phone of Alice, the Ken doll and famous London locations. I used the app Hipstamatic to make these, and I later got them printed off at Boots. We decided we could use these in a shot that is similar to the concept of the Cher Lloyd 'Want U Back' video, which is the singer looking at photographs of her and her boyfriend.

Finally we did some filming in the tube, at the end of an escalator. This shot was quite difficult to co ordinate, as Alice had to go up and down the escalator two or three times and we didn't want to annoy anyone on the tube.

Overall we didn't get quite as much footage as we'd hoped for, but we did come up with some new ideas and took advantage of our locations.

Nicki Minaj - Stupid Hoe

This is the video for Singer Nicki Minaj's newest single, Stupid Hoe. It's hard to know where to begin with this female representation, but the use of the derogatory term 'hoe' in the title might give viewers a clue about the level of sexism in this video. The fact that it is used by a woman, as well, is possibly even worse than if it were used by a man as it shows conflict between women (in terms of the conflict vs. unity theory). The song is about Nicki's 'rap nemesis' L'il Kim, which again shows a childish and slightly pathetic attack on a fellow female with probably equal levels of talent, money and fame. The director, Hype Williams, is well known for being the director for videos such as Beyonce's 'Videophone' and Kanye West's 'Gold Digger', both examples of videos that very much focus on the male gaze, and feature women in skimpy outfits. Hype also has connections to the porn industry, having photographed Kim Kardashian for Playboy magazine.

One of the first shots of Nicki herself is her holding a seemingly impossible pose, that looks a bit like a dancer in a musical box. This links to the previous shot of her dancers playing with a skipping rope, showing there are a lot of childish references in the video. Other examples include her holding a 'barbie' logo, wearing a pink party dress and holding a lollipop, and the constant focus on her eyes. This shows her as 'innocent' despite her provocative dancing, and shows her as easy to manipulate, and the focus on her eyes makes her seem doll-like, again as innocent. Many of her poses are also held very still, which again make her seem like a doll. This shows her as having not much of a mind for herself, and instead complying to male's fantasies and desires, going against her obvious talent in rapping, and making it overshadowed by her representation. This could conform to the idea that men don't like a talented woman, as they feel threatened, so they promote her sexuality to make them feel more comfortable.

Another theme in the video is Nicki being 'caged', and transforming into an animal. This is again derogatory and shows her as merely a pet, and not a human with her own mind. The dancing on all fours in the cage also shows her as some kind of slave to men, again conforming to the submissive role females often take in videos of this genre.

Finally, the use of editing is very successful in portraying Minaj as some kind of unhinged schizophrenic, for example the very fast-paced shots that almost look as if they're showing two shots at once, as well as the incredibly creepy enlargement of  her eyes when she is standing on the oversized chair. This again adds to her image of submission, and shows males that she is easy to manipulate, adding a perverted side to this image of childlike innocence.

Overall, the video is a good example of how negatively women are portrayed in the media, and how, under the pretence of post-feminism, artists like Nicki Minaj are used in this way to sell records and increase video views on Vevo and YouTube.

Final Digipak design

Here is my final design for my digipak! The top half is the outside cover and the bottom half is the inside. The bottom right is where the CD would go, and the image printed on it would fit in to the background. I boosted the colour on the photos because I wanted the Digipak to be more vibrant and stand out, and as the theme for our artist is quite bold and stylish anyway I thought this would fit. I also used a brick background, as we use one in the video to put our scrabble pieces on, so it also fits with the music video.

Overall I'm really pleased with how this turned out, and I think it works well with the genre.

More Digipak designs

Yesterday I took a few more picture of the same background I used for the main photo, and I got home and had another play around with the look of the digipak.




















It's still not finished, as this is definitely not the font I'm using and I still need to do the inside of the case. However, I think this works a lot better as a cover compared to my first design. I'm also not sure about the edge of my case, as I think that using more brick wall looks a little bit busy. What I might do instead is maybe photograph a bit of the dress Alice is wearing in the photo and use that instead.

I also need to work out how to put writing down the edge in a vertical way, and I will probably not use this colour font. The background is hard to work with when it comes to font, as there are lots of different colours and tones going on.

I'm also not sure what to call the album. I know it's doesn't really matter, as it's more about the design, but I want to use something that goes with the theme of the digipak and the video. I might use one of the song titles as an album name, as I know this conforms to my brand, and I think 'London Boots' might be a good title, as we have lots of shots of London in the video, and the picture looks like it was taken in the city.

Alexandra Palace footage

This is a summary of our trip to Alexandra Palace, along with some of our footage.

Ally Pally filming

Today we braved the bitter weather and went to film at Alexandra Palace in Muswell Hill. It was a brilliant location, as there are lots of different bits to it, such as a skate park, a play area, a lake, and of course the amazing views of London from the top of the hill.

We also filmed in the skate park, which had some nice colourful graffiti. We got most of the shots we wanted, but it was pretty embarrassing as there was a guy filming a little kid rapping at the same time. Also, we decided to leave one shot in there until later, because they were filming right in front of it, but when we came back the staff had closed the skate area, because it was all icy and too dangerous to try skating in. We were pretty annoyed, but it was just a shot of some graffiti that we can get when we go to London, so it's not too much of a problem.

                                     

This was the bit of graffiti we wanted to film in front of. Oh well.

We wanted to film on some of these slopes, but it was so icy Alice couldn't get up there and we didn't want her to hurt herself (look at us, considering health and safety!).

And this was one of the shots we used with Alice lip synching. She actually sang along, to make it look more realistic, but she made us sing with her so it was less embarrassing for her. Things we do for media.

Anyway, it was a pretty successful day of filming, and we got almost everything done we needed to. once we'd finished we went to the cafe and got some hot chocolate to warm up, and then went home. We think we now have around 40-50% of our filming done, which isn't a bad figure to be working with.

First Digipak design

I've put a couple of the digipak pictures on photoshop next to each other, and here we have my first digipak design. Although I like both images individually, I feel that they don't work together well and don't look like part of the same CD cover, as the colours and themes are too different.

Because of this, I decided that maybe if I changed the colours, I would have a more cohesive-looking digipak, which would still work with the theme. I gave it a go:

As you can see, this worked a lot better than the original, as the colours are similar. However, I still don't think it looks like a proper CD case, and I do really like the bright colours of the original. Because of this, I am considering reshooting the song contents and having it on the same background as the photo. The only problem with this is that the wall is part of the school building, so I don't really want to get caught writing on it. What might work better is if I take a picture of the blank wall and type over it. This would also be easier as it means that the font on the front of the case will be the same as the menu typeface.

I'm still thinking about what the inside will look like, but I want it to have a similar brick wall theme, because I think it looks really professional and is featured in our music video.

Digipak Song List

 Today I took the photos for the song list on my Digipak. I wanted to have a chalkboard theme to it, so I wrote the song names out on a chalkboard. I thought that pink was a good colour choice for the writing, because it fits in well with our star's colourful image.

Here are some photos of the setup:

And here is the final photo, which I will crop and straighten accordingly:

Useful Articles

Here are some useful articles to do with the theory side of media. I'll be updating this as I find more articles so I'll have one handy place to keep them all when it comes to revision.

This article is very useful as it has a lot to do with the future of British film.

Digipak pictures

As part of our Digipak project we need some photos of Alice as our 'star', so we took a few today just around the school. As I take photography A-Level we thought it was probably best for me to take the photos.

I might not necessarily use any of these photos, but it was good to see some ideas come out, and Alice and Valentina might want to use some of them. We had quite a good idea of having the last ones with Alice shouting, and maybe adding the album name as a speech bubble. Also, the ones against the brick wall would be good, as part of our scrabble-spelling-out-lyrics shots features a brick background on a piece of paper. Also it fits in quite well with our London based theme. The blue dress against the orange background is also quite eye catching and would make a good album cover.