Feedback on mock up of magazine advert.

I created a survey on surveymonkey.com to see what the thoughts were on my magazine mock up, so that I could find out if I needed to make any changes to my products and remove or add things. I thought that asking my media teacher to email the link out to all students would be a good idea because this would ensure I got a variety of responses from people of all different backgrounds and opinions, but all a similar age (this is around the age that I am aiming my product at so it will give me an insight into what this age group likes or dislikes about a product).

I then decided to post it to three social media sites (Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter) because I use these quite frequently and a lot of the people that I interact with on them are around the age that I am going to aim my product at so it made sense to post the link on them. I also have a lot of family and family friends on my Facebook, so this will broaden my findings as there will be the views from the young people I have on this website but also some from the older generation.

Mock ups of magazine advert.

I have decided to do mock ups of the magazine advertisement I have to create as part of my coursework as this will help me when creating the final product. This is the first one I have created and I really like how it looks and will only need to change a few things when I create the real one, like the image - I will have to include an image of the artist I am trying to promote.

This is the same as the image above, although I have now included a review of the album as this will illustrate how good the album is and may entice people to buy it. This is a really good promotional technique and is used by a lot of artists to help sell their products as people will believe that a product is worth buying if their is a reliable source that has given it a positive review.

I have then labelled all the parts that are included on this magazine advertisement so that I can look back at the existing products I have analysed and see if I have missed anything off.

This magazine advertisement from Jessie J is the one that I mainly used to get ideas from on how to make my product look because I really like the way it looked. I really love how simple it is and I think this would reflect the artist I have created really well because that is how I am trying to portray her. The product I have created looks really similar to Jessie J's product because of how I placed the image, the text and the record label (although I have put mine on the opposite corner). I also really liked the idea of using a line to separate the text and have used this in my product to underline some text. I simply searched in Google 'fancy lines' and the line I have used is one of the images that came up and I really like how it looks because it gives the product a really professional finish. Two things I have used that Jessie J hasn't is a review from a reliable source and social media icons. I have used the review because this means that people will be more likely to buy the product due to The Times being well-known, and have used social media icons to illustrate how the artist is on all of these websites - if people see this and start following her then this means that if she posts something to promote one of her products (a new album, merchandise etc), people will see it and be more likely to purchase it. On Jessie J's advert she has used an achievement, but this isn't something that I could use on my product because the album is new and so is the artist, so doesn't have any big hits yet or any awards to help promote herself on the advert.

Problems with filming on the 05/03/15.

When I was filming today I had some slight problems and set backs, but I found a way around these and ended up with a successful shoot:

• Booking the room to film - I had planned to book the green room for dinner time so that I could film with Amber and Zoe (this was due to us not having any frees together so this was the only available time to shoot). When I went to go and put my name down for this slot, I found that it had already been booked by another media student so unfortunately was unable to film then. I asked both the actresses if they minded staying behind at college for a little while to get the shots done that I needed and they both agreed, so I put my name on the booking sheet for 4pm onwards as this slot was free. I intended to get 4 shots filmed after college but had fortunately got one done earlier in the day as I was taking some photos of one of the actresses for my photography work, and had around 15 minutes left until she had to go to her next lesson. This saved me some time at the end of the day and allowed me to spend time on getting the other shots that I needed accurate.
• The tripod not being high enough for one of the shots that I needed to film - For one of the shots, I needed the tripod to go quite high because I had to tilt the camera fully so that it faced down. This wouldn't work so I decided that I would film handheld and, from looking back at the footage I got from doing this, I think it has turned out really well. I filmed the shot 3 times so I had options to choose from when editing the clip to go into my music video and have seen that the shots aren't shakey so this was a good thing to come out of the shooting.
• Timing for one of the shots - In one of the shots that I filmed, I needed the actresses to blink in time with the song as I thought that it would look really effective and would make the audience be really impressed because of how professional it looked. This was really difficult to do at first because the song was pretty new to both of them and it took them a few tries to know what the beat was like and when they had to blink. To help them, I signalled in time with the song when I wanted them to blink so that they knew and this made the filming go really well as this made it a lot easier for them.
• The clothing the actresses were wearing - The only clothing that I knew that I wanted the actresses to wear specifically was the pink cardigans I asked them to bring, as this is what they wear in a shot earlier on in the video. This meant that they wore their normal clothes underneath and I didn't think that these matched the song and so decided to slightly change one of the shots. I still kept the shot at the same distance, but all I did was asked them both to turn around so that their backs were to the camera instead of them facing it. I think this will look even better in the music video I am creating because it could symbolise how the artist in my music video is trying to impress the 'popular' girls, but they really aren't different to anyone else and definitely aren't any better.

Filming on the 05/03/15.

At the end of today, I went to ask Ben (the technician we have to help us within the media/film department) if I could borrow a tripod as I needed one to help with filming as this ensures that the shots that are filmed don't shake and also ensures that the camera stays in the same place. This was how I set up my camera on the tripod, but ended up turning off the main light and using the box lights when filming - this was just a quick picture I took whilst I was waiting for my actresses to show up.

This is the actresses in the outfits I asked them to bring. I specifically chose them to wear the same pink cardigan as they had worn in a previous shot in my video because I wanted to illustrate continuity as this is something that is conventional of a music video.

Filming organisation.

As the actresses that are going to appear in my music video have Twitter and regularly check it, I thought that this was an easy way to contact them both at the same time and knew they would receive it fairly quickly and would be able to respond to me if they had any problems with filming. I had already mentioned earlier on in the week to them about filming, but just sent these messages as a reminder.

Choosing different shots whilst editing.

I filmed the video at the top of this post a while back, and had it in my video temporarily until I had the chance to refilm it. When it came to editing, I think that the new video works a lot better than the older one because in the old one the artist slightly smiles near to the end of the clip, which I think makes it look unprofessional and therefore filmed it again and got a better shot. I also refilmed another shot which I think has turned out a lot better than the previous shot I had because the tilt down from the artist's eyes flows a lot better and doesn't shake like the clip before did.

Filming on the 02/03/15

This is how I set up the camera for filming today. I used my iPad to play the song because the volume is quite loud so it made it a lot easier for the artist to hear the lyrics when she was singing along to it. I then used the lighting in the room because I think that lighting makes the product look more professional which is something I am aiming for.