Lip Sync Task

The lip sync task consisted of my class splitting into two groups in order for us to shoot at the same time and to get more footage with the time that we had. There were various different roles that we switched up every couple of takes, so that everyone had a chance to try everything. The roles were: being the actor, cameraman, playback, floor manager and pulling the dolly. The song that we had set up was called All About That Bass by Megan Trainor. The song was a well known pop song which made it more fun for us to sing along to and dance to. There were 3 different sets, one was in front of a plain blue wall, in front of a fire place and sofa. This task was very useful as it gave me a taste of what we are going to do for our A2 coursework and it helped me learn new skills such as using the digital clapper and editing to the beat which will be useful for our music video coursework. As soon as each of us had done each position on the shoot we headed to edit the video individually. First, I sorted the clips into bins on Adobe Premiere Pro in order to make the process more simple and clear. After this I started to cut the clips at the exact place where the song started in order to match it with the miming on screen. I labelled each of the clips with colour to know which clip was which set. Then I started the editing process by inputing the footage to check if it fits and I used some of the cross cut rules to help and guide me. When I was done, I deleted the audio off of the footage and put the Megan Trainor song over the whole video. Overall, I found this task really helpful as it made me try a lot more new techniques and processes that I did not experience during the shooting/editing process of my AS Thriller.

Madonna - Like A Prayer

Themes:


Controversy 

The video portrayed Madonna's relationship with Christianity and faith, this was shown through the narrative but is also questionable. Throughout the video Madonna's clothing implies her sexual image as being quite direct and makes her image look less religious. At first, the video implies that Madonna's relationship with the black religious figure is purely based on worship, however, when they kiss the theme of the video is changed instantly. The lyrics throughout the video has a lot of different sexual connotations which implement the relationship that she has in the video with the religious figure.


Religion

The whole video is based on religion, hence the name of the song being ' Like a Prayer '. Despite the typical church connotations, the audience is shown a black Mary and Jesus figure which links to the black gospel choir. This is done in order to criticize the prejudice society by making black versions of religious ideological figures. In the video Madonna wears a cross in order to emphasize her faith in Christianity.

White Superiority / Racism

The story shows how a black man is being accused of beating and abusing a woman even though he was actually the only person who was trying to help her. The smugness of the white male emphasizes the way that stereotypes are being depicted in the video. The whites are being depicted negatively which immediately makes the audience sympathize with the black man who was arrested for no reason.

Narrative and Performance

The burning cross immediately creates controversy as Madonna is burning an extremely influential religious icon. This creative choice was very risky as many religious people might find the video offensive and disrespectful towards their religion, therefore, it makes us think about the ethics behind it. However, in the end this is all resolved because the curtains go down and the audience are presented with the idea that it was only a narrative.

Creating a website

Below is a link to the website that I made for a very well known artist named Justin Bieber.

http://dashakoenig88.wix.com/justinbieber



Below is his actual site:

http://www.justinbiebermusic.com/

Pick two album album covers that feature the artist, analyze and compare

Snoop Dogg is an American rapper from Long Beach, California. We can clearly see that in this album cover his image is more synthetic than organic, according to Keith Negus' theory about the ideologies of the music industry. He is making clear eye contact with the audience, there is also a very subtle fish eye effect which helps portray Snoop Dogg as being even larger than he actually is and it also creates such an effect makes it look like everything is revolving around him. You could say that by looking at what Snoop Dogg is wearing, he subverts to the whole 'gangsta' stereotype which would be baggy jeans, large shirts and etc. Although, the background very obviously fits with the theme of rap music with the groups of people divided into gangs with their pimped up cars. The colour emphasized is blue and it brings quite a cool tone to the image and suggests masculine power.

Mumford and Sons are a indie folk band that have originated from the United Kingdom that started off by conquering pubs and small concerts nationally, and now they have spread more across the globe. Their music is organic and it brings a very natural tone to it. As we can see in the photo of their album cover above, you can see that they are a very home based band that don't want to loose their spark of traditionalism and even just who they are. There is a clear emphasise on the band sitting on the bench, although the setting is a pub/old vintage store that has a lot of people doing their own things.The whole meaning behind the effect of making the people in the background look like they are moving suggests that there is a lot of caos happening in the world but the band still stick to their natural, harmonic selves.