Noah Carolan A2 Media

This entire A2 project has been heavily reliant on modern technology and practices, many of which weren't even possible 20 years ago. Digital editing, online street views, and small scale storage are all commodities now that hadn't been accomplished in the 1990s. In each stage of production, I used many different technologies. RESEARCH PREVIOUS A-LEVEL VIDEOS Before we started going full into this project, we had a look at some A-Level videos that were made by previous years. These weren't strictly limited to just from our 6th Form, we also had a look at some publicly available videos from other schools as well. When looking at these videos, we were given sheets to fill in where we put down the strengths and weaknesses of each video, and then a score out of 40. This exercise really helped with identifying what we wanted to try and avoid, but also pushed some elements which could be effective in a different context, if we wanted to use them in our own videos....

For this question, I'm going to talk about how my ancillary tasks and music video coincide with each other, and demonstrate clear synergy and a consistent theme between products. To see if the theme was identifiable and easy to link together, I gave people a selection of four screenshots and four posters; one of each category was from my music video, and the rest were from other music videos from other people in Year 13 media. I asked the participants a series of questions and requests involving the screenshots and posters, including; Pick out the screenshot for my music video What makes you think the chosen screenshot is from my video? Pick out the poster for my music video What makes you think the poster is for my video? Would you say both the screenshot and the poster originate from the same music video? If yes to the above, why? Here's a recording of one of my participants, being my sister Martha. She only knew the topic of my music video, and had not seen the m...

TAZMIN LUCAS (via Messenger) - "mate i loved it ahahha" / "i literally cant fault it" / "the camera work was great the editing was interesting" / "it all makes sense and fits with your idea, which is very original" / "its perfect for what you wanted to create and it made me laugh" / "enjoyed it very much well done" ELLY BISHOP - I loved it. I think the camera work and style of the video makes it really fun to watch. The acting was really funny, and the memes that pop up on screen are really well done. They're also gone so fast that it makes you want to watch it again, so that you can catch everything again. Really funny. LILY RAY - I loved the idea - it was so individual and unique and excellently executed! The editing was also very different to anything else with all of the captions, memes and emojis so it made for a very fun video to watch. What i loved especially was the overacting of the characters that particul...

Funny story. As I've been going on, I've been disliking my idea for an All Star music video more and more, and eventually got to the point where I realised that my video wouldn't be as good as I was envisioning it in my head.  So, I decided to go with a new song, and tweak the storyline so that it would fit my new song better.  It's still about Alan Hamlin, and how he deals with his breakup. The breakup was due to (newly renamed girlfriend) Debra getting sick of Alan's obsession with memes. He only owns meme movies like Shrek & Bee Movie, his petname for her is "Dat Boi", and those memes are all he can think about. So when Debra eventually dumps him from memes being more important to Alan than her, he is pretty down. He goes out and remembers the good times, but more importantly...  he thinks of the memes he could make out of the scenario. Classic Alan. They bump into each other while Alan is having an angsty episode, and they're both rat...

My final song choice is "More Than Just Memes" by Elliot Gough. After spending some time working on the All Star idea, I became less and less interested to use it, and found myself falling in some pitfalls that I wanted to avoid; for example, the opening scene being more edgy, which is something I didn't want at any point. In response to this, I decided to change my song to Elliot Gough's "More Than Just Memes". "Dat's vewy nice." The link to my chosen theme of memes is clearer with this song choice, given that it's right in the title. It also allows me to have more fun with the music video, which is something I was aiming for from the beginning. A key difference between the two songs is that More Than Just Memes was written to be a meme deliberately, whereas All Star was written as a song that would be taken seriously; the kind of song you'd hear on the radio. I'm keeping a similar story, about Alan Hamlin dealing with hi...

Nothing has changed for props since my initial planning writeup. For a proplist, please see Post #30.

No changes have been made to costumes and make-up. For the original list, see Post #29.

The only change to the main characters is the character of Lisa, who has had her name changed to "Debra", inspired by the new song change. All other characters are the same.

1) ANY PARTICULAR ALBUM RELEASE POSTERS YOU REMEMBER? - "Not really." 2) HOW IMPORTANT IS A POSTER TO YOU DECIDING WHETHER TO BUY IT? - "Not important at all. I tend not to really see posters, so they don't make a difference to me." 3) IN YOUR OPINION WHAT MAKES A GOOD POSTER? - "Catches your eye, shows you all the information you need, like the artist name and album name. And when the album is being released." 4) HOW MUCH SPACE SHOULD THE ACT NAME AND TRACK NAME TAKE UP? - "I think a sort of equal amount of space. I think it can vary, really. I think it depends on the artist, because if it's a big band like Take That, they'll put their name bigger because they're more well known." 5) SHOULD THE IMAGE BE A PIECE OF ART / DESIGN OR OF THE ACT? DOES THIS DEPEND ON IF THE ACT IS A SOLOIST OR A BAND? - "I think if it's a soloist, it can be just a picture of them, but it depends on how big they are as a performer....

I asked Emily Rogers all these questions, as part of audience research. 1) WHAT ARE SOME CD COVERS YOU REMEMBER? - "Save Rock and Roll" by Fall Out Boy - "American Beauty/American Psycho" by Fall Out Boy - "Vessel" by twenty one pilots - "Crybaby" by Melanie Martinez - "Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die" by Panic! at the Disco - "In Case You Didn't Know" by Olly Murs 2) HOW IMPORTANT IS THE CD COVER TO YOU BUYING IT? - "Wouldn't say it's important to be honest, because I tend to buy albums from bands I know. So it wouldn't really matter what's on the cover." 3) IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT MAKES A GOOD ALBUM COVER? WHAT'LL MAKE IT STAND OUT ON SHELVES?   - "Yeah. It needs to stand out. It has to be unique, not necessarily colourful, because muted ones can stand out too." 4) HOW MUCH SPACE SHOULD THE ACT NAME AND TRACK NAME TAKE UP?   - "Typically, it'd take up qui...

In terms of diegetic sound, the only piece of it will be in the opening scene, before the song starts. When Alan is on the phone, I want to record the real audio from the actor pretending to have a phone call. The other end of the phone call won't be diegetic though, it'll be edited through Audacity and by recording my two other actors separately.  Non-diegetic sound is going to be quite heavy. Ignoring the song itself over the entire music video, I also want to use some audio I captured at a concert I've been to previously. During a lull where the artist had to tune her ukulele, she asked the audience to entertain themselves for "5 seconds". The crowd started singing All Star, to the sarcastic dismay of the artist. Her backing band joined in too, playing music to accompany the crowd's singing. Luckily, I recorded the entire thing, so I can use clips of audio of it for when I want a large crowd singing the song. As mentioned before, the phone call at the b...

COFFEE CUP The same one as in my AS Media film opening! The two are meant to be linked, where the music video ends 5 minutes before the movie intro begins. It'll be made up of my reusable Starbucks travel mug, and using a whiteboard marker to write the name "Alan Hamlin" on it. GUITAR Just a regular ol' guitar. I'm not well versed in guitar makes or anything about them, but from my limited knowledge, I'd guess it'd be a Yamaha make. I may use the one I have at home, which is an actual Yamaha guitar. POSTER To be used in the scene when Alan walks down St Benedicts Street. I'll design it myself in Photoshop, and sticking with the meme theme, I'll use some traits of them. Examples being using Comic Sans as the font, using stock images with the watermarks still there, etc. CONTRACT Again, same deal as the poster. It'll be all written up in Comic Sans font, but on Word instead of Photoshop. I won't put in any ACTUAL contract text...

Settings... yay. The "fun" bit. And by "fun", I mean boring. But it has to be done. COSTA COFFEE The setting for the opening scene, where Alan sits on the phone to his ex. The set-up includes an inside and outside area with tables, chairs, etc. When I thought up the beginning of the music video, that particular coffee shop was exactly what I was envisioning. It's located on White Lion Street, a tangent from the main high street of Norwich. As a precaution, I'll make sure to actually buy something from Costa, so that they can't enforce some rule like "seating only for customers". Ideally, I'd like to spend between 15 and 20 minutes filming the scene here. WATERFRONT, NORWICH The setting for the signing for fans scene. I've been there before, and the outside is usually very quiet during the daytime, when there's no performances going on. Usually, there are different posters for bands and upcoming performances on the walls, ...

The plot has been finalised! Finally! So why don't we run through it, plotbeat by plotbeat? We start off seeing Alan sitting at a table outside a cafe. He's having a phone call, while letting his drink go cold. We can hear a female voice, Lisa, on the other end of the phone, who's trying to gently let Alan know it's over. On her end, Lisa's new boyfriend, Chad, grabs the phone. He shouts down to Alan that "the world is gonna roll him". Furious, Alan hangs up, and leaves the cafe. He walks into a musical instrument shop, looking at a selection of guitars, feeling sad. He remembers how he played guitar for Lisa. He leaves the shop without buying anything, and starts walking down the street. He stops for a second, seeing a poster. It reads "MUSICAL TALENT WANTED!", and then a phone number. Alan considers it, then walks away. A second later, he rips the poster off the wall, and runs home. This is the point where All Star starts playing. Alan ...