Weekly Progress

THIS IS MY WEEKLY PROGRESS FOR OUR MUSIC VIDEO PROJECT

This the table of plans our teacher gave us to keep track of our progress

WEEK 1

With all of us rolling back to school as our second term starts, we are officially introduced to the music video project, where we have to pick a group to be with to create video projet that imitates to that of a music video. Everyone who was in my group last time for the crime documentary (Including me) decided to stick with this group again once more. We then obviously started to do some research on the industry, taking notes/blogs of them. Feels a little bit overwhelming, as we only have seven weeks to get the research and blogwork done, and although that looks long, the 9 weeks of the first term of our final school year felt short - so there's no doubt that finishing everything we have in this term will feel fast, really quick. I am, however, quite excited at the prospect of making a music video, as there's much potential for it.

WEEK 2

Today, my group hastily had to pick a genre, cause we had to even though we didn't do it on time because we wanted to wait for one of our teammates (Gio) who was all the way in Australia and has been there for almost 2 weeks! But Mr told us to pick one anyway cause of the time. We picked pop as it was the easiest option, though RnB is also another good option we considered. We did research for about 30 minutes or so of music videos but I haven't wrote much, but I'll have to do it on my own.

WEEK 3

We continued our Music Video research, and also we finally agreed on a popular song, or at least the musician: Bruno Mars - Leave The Door Open. However, we disagreed at first about what music video and genre to do, particularly KSI - Thick Of IT, but unfortunately (for me) it was a vote of 3-1 againts KSI's new song, which was a funny song in the context of the internet that I wanted to do for my final year here. But Leave The Door Open is a good song regardless, actually I've been listening to it more and more... even if I lost the vote however, the experience of doing it was fun.

WEEK 4

This week we started our Statement of Intent, in which we also, in turn, had to narrow down and finally pick a song; and sadly we didn't get to pick Thick of It by KSI which wouperfect for our last year here, but Bruno Mars' 'Leave The Door Open' was the final option we chose, which is not a bad idea honestly (KSI's song is one I still vastly prefer, however). We also learned about Richard Dyer's Theory of Stardom during class work and theory lessons. We struggled at first on trying to get ideas as to what to put in our Statement of Intent, but we were able to look to our past, concrete examples for Statement of Intents. We also had a problem I trying to get a persona for the music video, but we fixed It regardless by studying/learning more details about the star though some quick research. We also made a cool moodboard to get a general idea of the 'vibe' of our music video, along with starting and making some shot ideas for our storyboard. Now, all we have to do is finish the research.

WEEK 5

We created a moodboard for our music video, to help give a general idea of the 'vibe' of the music video in which we wanted to capture. We then also started our discussion & annotation of the story board. It was fun discussing the moodboard, but the storyboard... man I wish I could be involved more but my teammates wouldn't let me for some reason. I will try to help more with lyrics-scene ideas. Also, we did a screen test with our whole class where we would all line up to sing a kareoke of "Don't Stop Me Now", while our teacher recorded us. This was used for our screen test blog, to evaluate the quality of the actors involved. It was both a fun experience, singing with my classamtes, and also an eye opener to a new song I would obsess over and sing about for days.

WEEK 6

We have started progress on the storyboard. We have also made a film schedule. Also, the screen test was completed. It was quite fun looking back, maybe a bit uncomfortable, too. We completedd the annotations needed o the lyric sheet, mostly. I was tasked to note down the seconds required for each lyric, but it took way too long to do it, more than I thought, then my friend gave me a practical suggestion that helped make things more efficient. The location scout and risk assessment is almost done... all I needed to do was send my classmate a picture of my hosue, both in and out. I don't know how will my parents feel about my friends having to record inside my house, but we'll see, we have plenty of locations anyways so it should be fine. I have made good progress with my bloglist, but with exams coming up and so many tasks piling up, internship being something I have to worry about, it gets easy to lose track of it all, so I gotta stay sharp these next few days & weeks...

SEMESTER 2

WEEK 1

Our first week back, and it was mainly chill, with not much things to expect besides continuing our project. We did/started a little mini-project. Our friend/teammate Gio was absent though, but I doubt it will be long. We just need to complete the mini project and wait for Gio so we can continue working on the bigger project, since as the editor he is our backbone basically.

WEEK 2

We learned about multicamera editing as a 'how to tutorial', it was a mini-project for us to do to practice our video editing skills and cinematography for our actual big project.  We filmed parts of the lyrics for the "Here Comes The Sun" song. We also made a/updated our filming schedule.

WEEK 3

We continued our recording, particularly on the beach. We also started researching into brand and persona, analyzing and coming up with ideas and how 'Jay Muse' should be presented online. We also started on the Digipak research, which is the CD or at least album art for our star/persona, and I was the one working on the blog for it, researching other RnB albums. The persona for the artist however was something we discussed somewhat thoroughly, with us coming to the conclusion of a soft lover boy core kind of star.

WEEK 4

We've finished a major part of our recording that would be overlayed over the scenes of the music video. Two of my classmates made a file production and behind the scenes blog, while I continued and made decent effort with the Digipak Blog. Out video is slowly coming together well, and Mr thought that what we had so far was alright. However we still need to continue and edit the video file and record one last time!

WEEK 5

We started a new thing called "audience feedback" in which we would have to make an online form and send it to our friends and families to get feedback about our persona/star. We also had to continue researching into our own digipak cover and albums and what we should do with it, I'm gonna have to help chip in any of my own research too. We started the file organisation section, as we made a new Google drive file to put all our recordings and respective files in it that we took behind-the-scenes. Speaking of, we also had to start behind-the-scenes photos and recordings that needed to be taken as we continued recording our music videos, so I gotta take note and remember to do that, as the star of our music video, I have to remember to do that. My friend Gio also started the editing process of the music video, so it will be interesting to look forward to his final creation.

WEEK 6

We started the bare minimum for our Critical Self-Reflection, however one problem arise was how my Google Docs was quite unreliable as it kept glitching or having errors, like being too slow to add text or scrolling up and down to different sections of the document. The problem was most likely caused by a combination of both the slow wifi that is shared between multiple people now (unlike last semester where the wifi was seperate among classes and room), AND also one document being shared by an entire class of multiple individual students. I am going to have to finish this work on my own at some point, but I will have to practice consistency with these kinda of things first. Perhaps this could double as both work and a personal life lesson on discipline. School was closed for three days due to a coincidental streak of terrible harsh weather conditions. Although it was fun and refreshing to not have to go though all the extreme effort to go to school and just navigate things within the comfort of my home, it also led me astray from keeping the weekly progress and some work on our project consistent.

WEEK 7

We continued our work. However on Wednesday I had not one, but two mock exams that really tarnihshed my focus on media, but luckily it was only one day and other mocks wouldn't bother me until the week after, so I have more time to focus on Media, but once again I repeat, I have to practice my consistency or otherwise I won't really get much work done, if any.

WEEK 8

We had a mock exam, which was our second one (since we completed our first one the week before), but we also had camping for two days so we weren't in school, so that was 2 days down of any form of Project work. I am gonna have to find a way to balance studying the mock and enjoying camping, as it would require lots of proper management of my own time. 

WEEK 9

In Week 9, we did another mock on Wednesday, with a review of our previous mock before that on Tuesday. Friday we continued working on our project, as I continued working on the Digipak blog on my document. I am almost done with it a I have 3-4 out of 6 albums researched and analyzed. I just need to manage my time to complete it all.

WEEK 10

It is our final submission week/day, and I had to finish all my blogs. I did it from night to morning, but the work that I contributed was the digipak and that's about it, however I have finished everything that I possible can and almost finish everything. I had to use the blog work list to check if everything was finished and done as they should be, and I was able to complete most of my work, but here is to hoping that this final stretch doesn't end with a bad score.

Self-Reflection: I'm gonna be dry and honest; Writing weekly Progress is tedious. I was planning beforehand to write everything for the weekly Progress as I go instead of having to add more things later on, all at once, but procrastination got the best of me. I'm not an enjoyer of having to write big long tedious texts (most of the time) but I hope the weekly Progress I made was detailed enough or had good enough information. Doing this project was DEFINETLY a lesson to me on how to be a worthwhile and useful team member, as although I didn't drag others down, I feel as though I could've helped Gio & Carrick more with them being the pillars of this project. So next time, I'll have to take more initiative as a team member, maybe even act as a leader if others can't be relied on in the current situation or if there's nobody to rely on.