Brooke Pollock A2 Advanced Portfolio

Hi everyone, so here goes this is the end! After two hard years of sweat and blood, the media coursework has came to an end! There is to be no more researching and planning, updating you all, editing productions we are creating,and  filming endlessly to get the correct shots because from this point on A2 media coursework is finished! You heard correctly, it's finished! I believe I have came so far since the beginning of the AS course, considering I had never edited any type of footage before, or used any software which we are lucky to have, I would say i have progressed massively and I am so pleased with myself and my team, and how we have developed over the two year period. I have worked with Sav and Eloise during both my AS and A2 productions and I believe we all bring different techniques and talents in order for us to work so well together, when looking back at AS it's hard to believe how far we have came (give our thriller another watch I dare you) within media and how ...

This is my media evaluation Question 4 on 'How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?' by clicking this  Link  it will take you to my Gliffy where you will be able to explore the technologies used to create a media product. Below is a sneak preview on how my Gliffy looks:

Q3 what have you learned from your audience feedback from _brookepollock

I have created a table of some of the feedback which we received during our written feedback session with the whole class. A lot of the areas for improvements are the same, and mainly focus on camera work which I do agree after watching the music video back numerous times we may have benefited from a slightly wider variety of shots and ensuring all the shots were fully focused before we completed filming for the final time. However, our music video does follow the conventions of the pop genre with the shots we used so I do believe it works with the genre we achieved. In terms of the positive comments everyone seemed to like the editing techniques and effects which we used and we didn't score below a 3/5 stars which I am pleased with.

Andrew goodwin theory from _brookepollock

We have finally finished our music video, which as you know we did to 'Breathe Me' by Sia, however Savannah our artist recreated it. The SaltSisters worked hard along with Savannah to achieve the look she wanted. The genre we went for was a combination of pop and indie, which I believe combined and worked well in the music video. I am going to upload the video for you all to see, so feel free to comment and give us any feedback, as audience feedback is key to growing and improving in this industry! As always the products never turn out as you picture them in your head, things go wrong, some things work better than others and you generate new ideas and play with different effects along the way. The shot list doesn't look extremely accurate now, however sticking to the original plan completely would be boring and we wouldn't have created the music video we have today if that was the case.We have conducted this task to the best of our ability and believe we have came ou...

Cd album from _brookepollock

Our website is now published! You are now able to access Savannah's website through one simple click on this link: savannahsaltt.wixsite.com/mysite The website had 8 features which you are now able to access to learn more about Savannah and what she has to offer, including tour dates and merchandise exclusive to the website for a limited amount of time. Creating and using your own website is an important part of promotion for a musician. I am now going to be talking about the reasons why having a website for an artist is such an important feature. Having a website creates a sense of professionalism. The website is a place for us to keep contact information, basic information about Savannah and the type of things she has to offer. Essentially, it is a one-stop way for others to get to know Savannah, and get in contact with her team. Having a website with all of this information on it shows others that we are serious about her music. The website will also allo...

Ideas for distributing my production a2 from _brookepollock

Conventions of indie pop from _brookepollock

Hi guys! We have recently joined Instagram to further adapt to our fan base for our artists, and constantly let it grow. I have researched some statistics for you to see, Instagram has massively grown over the years and these statistics prove that marketing on Instagram is a smart move: Instagram has over 500 million active monthly users Instagram users have shared over 40 billion photos to date and share an average of 95 million photos and videos per day. The amount of users which Instagram has enables us to reach a huge audience with our artists and products, allowing the growth of each artist to take their own pathway on social media. It allows us to reach a new audience in a way that the audience wants to be marketed to, using visuals and short messages. Instagram pictures provide a collage, giving the audience a much richer insight into the story of our artist 'Savannah' and also our company itself 'SaltSisters'. Instagram enables us to promote everyt...

  Hello everyone, you can now follow us on our twitter page @Saltsisters11. We have purposely made our twitter and Instagram usernames the same, this is a marketing ploy in order for our customers to have much easier access to our original pages, in order to keep up to date on the important information of new upcoming artists and new song releases. Did you know that social media marketing has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marking? Or that 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form? No Matter what you sell or who you sell it to, using social media as a marketing tool can help you grow your brand/company. Whys is social media important? It is seen that a brand doesn't really exist online if you're not represented across all social channels, and regularly interacting with followers, and journalists who cover the industry you're in, in this scenario the music industry. This is why we are going to be using our twitter to target, re-target and ...

Hey guys! Today I am going to focus on the marketing of our company. Marketing is a very important aspect. Promotional strategies and marketing go hand in hand. Marketing our company and artists will involve different aspects of manufacturing, promoting and selling the artists and our company products to the target market. In order to benefit from audiences to the best we can, we have to first of all understand the target market we are entering. Having a solid and well-thought-out marketing plan can help you identify gaps in the music industry and provide feasible solutions for your clients. Understanding what our customers want and are missing is essential in the business. The 4 P's are the most important  part in the marketing process: Product - The product is going to be our artist herself, Sav (played by Eloise) and the album/music she creates. In many ways this can be seen as not only providing a product for consumers, but also a service, Music i...

We are currently in the process of editing our music video, we are getting to the final stages and want to ensure that we can add all the finishing touches which we would like to make it look professional. I have been researching glitch effects as we believe this will look good in order to emphasis the contrasts between the distressed and normal shots. By placing a glitch between the two different emotions it would really portray to the audience the different emotions 'Savannah' feels, therefore we are going to test it out during out next editing session, and well I suppose, you'll either see if it works or not during the big reveal.

Hi guys, so today we filmed for the second time, it is not half term so we thought today would be the perfect opportunity to have a productive day with no distractions, today we filmed at Eloise's house, we chose this location due to the fact she has a spare bedroom, which is currently being redecorated so the floor was stripped to the original wooden floorboards, which was the effect we had wanted in the first place, and also it had a dark purple wall. This meant that we would be able to do the green screen effect, without the actual green screen. We filmed for around 4 hours from 10am-2pm, and we had a very productive day. This time we did have to book out the equipment, where we used a DSLR and a Tripod, the rest we had access to ourselves, such as the chair and the clothes which Eloise was going to be wearing, for these shots we went for two different looks, one was a distressed and upset look, where she wore a hoodie, with her hair up and make-up smudged, and the second look...

I have created a moodboard of my ideas, concepts and feelings towards what I imagine our music video and the genre we have chosen to entail. I made the moodboard into video format for you all to enjoy and get the gist of my ideas.

This approach focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition, this means that a text is not simply passively accepted by an audience, but viewers interpret meanings due to their own cultural background and life experiences. Stuart Hall stressed the role of social positioning in the interpretation of mass media texts by different social groups. The dominant reading means that the viewer fully accepts the text code. The negotiates reading means the viewer partly accepts the text code and broadly accepts the preferred reading.  The oppositional refers to the reader whos social situation places them in a direct oppositional relation to the dominant code. In our music production we aim to encode the video with the preferred meaning of being able to get through hard situations with independence and not relying on anyone else for happiness, however some viewers may reject this dominant message and take it as something other than how we intended.

 We have created merchandise which will be available for sale on our website, I shall publish the website address later down the line. Selling merchandise online is a golden opportunity, especially because our fans are drawn towards 'Savannah' through the social media platforms which we use. Merchandise is another source of revenue, it allows us to build up and advertise our artist Savannah through the promotion on the merchandise. Merchandise for artists is extremely important, this is because the music is closely tied to an individuals identity which links with the type of things they wear. Creating merchandise such as hoodies, and perfumes allow the fans of 'Savannah' to align themselves to part of a greater subculture and identify each other as fans. The age of digital piracy has meant that music has become, for many independent artists just like 'Savannah', an automatic loss that’s ‘given away’ to promote gigs, tours, festivals, which is why having me...

Sgt pepper analysis from _brookepollock

Today was our first day of filming for our music video, we designated the first day of filming to shoot the polaroid's, and we decided as a group that the location for these shots would be Matlock Bath. We spent approximately 3 hours at this location, from 12pm-4pm. From this we managed to shoot a range of burst shots from many different angles and background locations in order to provide us with a wide range to chose from when putting them into the music video. Due to the fact these shots needed to be bursts, in order to capture every movement, we used my Iphone to take the pictures, this meant we didn't need to hire any equipment. In terms of props we just needed the artist in day to day clothes, which was pretty simple, Eloise wore a dress, coat, and hat, portraying herself as the average young woman walking through an every day environment. Here is what we managed to film/capture: We got 15 burst shots in total, these all conducted of approximately 150 photos in each sh...

As the a large majority of our music video project is going to be conducted using a green screen effect, we thought it would be best to do a practice piece, this enables us to analyse what went well, what we need to use, and what works well when using and editing with the green screen. A green screen  is an integral part of the special effects process known formally as Chromakey. Chromakeying, sometimes known as color keying, is the process of singling out a particular color in an electronic image/footage and then using computer software to make that color transparent, which then enables us to add a background of our choice. The effect we are going for in the main task is a greyscale, shabby background in order to set the mood of the music video. However as this is our practice we just selected an average background to play with. I learnt how to do this task by watching some simple YouTube clips on green screening with Premier Pro, which is the software which we use to edit...

For our music video one of the biggest parts of the project is conducted with a green screen effect. I had never tried this before, however a lot of editing techniques are self taught and learnt along the way. Which is why I took it upon myself to use the resources I have with YouTube to conduct my own research prior to our editing of the music video. This means that taking these measures will allow a much smoother editing process as I have already learnt the basics of editing the background with a green screen, and even if need be I know I have a reliable resource which I can always revert back to which will help us along the way if we were to have any queries or issues. The use of the green screen when editing isn't actually as hard as I first suspected, the background can be changed in a few simple steps, and once the first try is out of the way it appears even easier. The more you practice the easier it becomes. I will upload the prac...

A shot list is a full log of all the shots you want to include in the music video production; essentially it is a checklist filled with minute details that will give a sense of direction and efficiency towards the music video. It’s essential to take into consideration the following elements when producing the shot list: Artists/individuals in the shot Type of shot Camera movement Major actions Important objects The grand purpose of the shot list is to make sure that every part of the music video is assigned a shot. We have a set criteria of what we need to film, so we create shots, interpreting the story visually with the camera. Another process we could have gone for in this preproduction stage is the storyboard in order to direct the music video The story board is a collection of images that showcases the angle and type of every shot, as well as which characters and objects are in the frame. The storyboard is impor...

Iconic music video from _brookepollock

I have recently conducted a risk assessment consisting of all the possible risks which may occur through the filming process of our music video. A risk assessment is a systematic process of evaluating the potential risks which may be involved in the project we are undertaking. The risks range from 'remote' to 'likely' chance of effecting the individual who will be participating in this section of the project, some may seem extreme however we have to take everything into consideration when covering the back of our company for our reputation. There are two parts to the risk assessment we have conducted, the first side consisting of a checklist with any possible hazards which may have even a slight list of occurring, these come under the 'remote' chance of happening category The back of the risk assessment shows the three main hazards which have the 'likely' chance of them occurring. As I've stated we have to take extreme precaution when underg...

Above i have attached a copy of the email i sent to the record company in order to gain copyright permission to use the song 'Breathe Me' by Sia, in our music production, I have done this to ensure there are no Copyright issues, and we avoid any legal issues, later down the line when we have finished our A2 music production.