Abbie Hallam A2 Advanced Porfolio

Hey guys! As you know, we have just finished our final music video, so we gathered fifteen people to watch our video and give us feedback, positives or areas in which we can improve on. We each provided them with a slip, which asked them what rating they would give our video, a positive comment section, an areas for improvement section and any concepts that they could identify in our music video. I will be uploading all these feedback sheets in a different blog post so you can take a read, however, I am going to be giving to a broad overview of the feedback we received as the majority of the comments made on the feedback sheets were very similar to one another. Positive comments: Good mise-en scene (clothing, make-up etc.) Good use of lighting, especially in the lip syncing shots Visual matching with the shots The music video looked professional Good use of light to portray the theme Excellent editing Areas for improvement: A wider variety of shots M...

Hey Guys!  So this post is going to be involving the progress of our CD cover. Currently, me and the rest of my group have been working on our CD front and back cover, as well as the inside booklet. The way in which we edited these is through Adobe Photoshop. It has taken us quite a while to complete what we have done so far, however, we have managed to have help from YouTube tutorials which have been very beneficial for us. We have to complete the actual CD itself and the outside cover for the inside booklet and then we should be done with the CD cover. Our general theme for our artist is black and white. This is demonstrated through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and the artist's website, this is also incorporated into our music video. Therefore we wanted our CD pack to follow the same theme and we think we have done a good job at doing this.   Here are some previews of our CD cover and insert booklet:

Hey Guys! The website for 'DAKOTA' is very near complete. Currently, we are adding the finishing touches to the website to make sure we have added everything, we still need to add some things such as the product details, returns policy, shipping details of the merchandise and the music video itself. The video will be uploaded within the next few days when it has been exported and uploaded to YouTube which will be in the next few days. We finally added the tour dates to the page after a while trying to figure out how to do this. Firstly we had to create a Facebook page for an artist, in which we could add the tour dates through the BandsInTown Manager. This allowed us to link the tour dates between both our website and our Facebook page. We made around 10 tour dates around the UK to make it look more realistic. We also added the album 'PURE HEROINE', using the album cover which we created allowing the fans to either buy the album for £9.99 or each individual song on th...

This is our final day of filming, and it lasted around 45 minutes to an hour. We all made our way to the bridge over towering roads, in which we filmed a time-lapse of the cars passing as it got darker and darker. The time we went was around five to six o'clock, just after the sun was setting to allow for the difference in time within the footage, showing time passing.  For this we just took the DSLR camera and then a tripod, which is essential for this technique because the shot has to be steady all the way through the time-lapse to ensure that there is no movement whatsoever. We set the DSLR setting for "time interval" for 1 second intervals for 480 shots as we calculated this approximately 15 seconds of footage which is what we needed to add to our music video. To ensure that we got the time-lapse we also filmed on Emily's IPhone using the feature 'Time-lapse', just in case the camera footage wasn't the best or something occurred whilst filming with the...

So as you can see from the post below, we have just finished our first draft of our music video. However, we do still need to add some more to our music video such as appropriate effects to the video to make sure all the music video is in sync with the lyrics and the beat. We have also colour corrected the clips (increased/decreased the contrast, exposure etc. where needed), however, we still need to film certain parts of our music video, this is regarding the certain blank spaces that are currently in our video, which includes the clip of the time-lapse. As none of us live close to a busy bridge, it is becoming difficult for us getting round to filming this part of our video due to the location being a little out of range for us, and especially the time that we need to film the time lapse. Additionally, we also need to add more effects to our video to make the mood of the music video more darker and appropriate to the song. However, due to some of the editing already within the ...

Another way we are connecting with the public is through Facebook. Facebook has enabled us to add tour dates, information about the artist and pictures which people may find interesting.  Possibly the biggest shift in music that has come through social media has been through an increased level of interaction between musicians and their fans.   Before artists began embracing social media, music labels carried a huge majority of the power when it came to what music made it into the hands of consumers.Now, the ability to present your music to a wide range of fans is attainable through Facebook and other social platforms. Social media puts an artist's in power when it comes to getting the word out about their live shows, album releases, or merchandise for sale. With the rise of the internet, however, the artist now has a much broader range of tools at their disposal for selling and distributing various types of merchandise. With albums, an artist's no longer need to g...

Hey guys! Another update post of our current filming process. Today, we filmed on the tennis court at school as it was a very nice day to film, compared to last week. We think that this will be our final day filming as we have managed to get all the shots we wanted, and hopefully, none of the shots are out of focus as this was a problem in our AS media project of creating a thriller. However, when watching them back in our editing lesson, we haven't come across any shots which will need to re-filmed. Here are some shots from today!

Hey Guys! We have just now created our twitter page, this can be accessed by the twitter name @ Twitter  is a service for people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent message and on our twitter page we are able to post Tweets, which may contain photos, videos, links or just short bursts of information.  This makes it accessible for our viewers and followers to interact with us on a bigger scale. We thought we would start off with Twitter, and then create other forms of social media such as a Facebook and Instagram. We are currently in the process of creating these three forms of social media. By creating a wide variety of social media, it gives 'Dakota' a wider platform to interact with people and keep people informed on the music video. All three of these pages can be accessed through my blog and each will include exclusive pictures from filming and information on times of release etc. I will be posting once all three of the...