PoMo+MVid IN TV/FILM CULTURE

Its not just MVids that steal from (or intertextually reference if you prefer!) film/TV; it works the other way round too. One of the early signs of MTV moving away from a daily diet of MVids was the show Beavis and Butt-head, here enjoying the 'cymbalism' in Nirvana's iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit...

If you're unfamiliar with this show, try http://ultimateclassicrock.com/top-beavis-and-butthead-classic-rock-song-commentaries/ for 10 egs!
This rather mean portrayal of the rock fan as empty-headed moron would also find its way into film, with Wayne's World featuring a pair of yokels fronting their own no-budget cable TV review show; here they review Nirvana's gloriously surreal Heart Shaped Box...

They would also create parodies of videos, such as this one of REM's classic Everybody Hurts...


When talking about TV/film in 2011, it makes sense to consider the web as part of this picture, and fan-vids are part of this postmodern mash-up process; here's a fan-vid of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit where the audio is a fan's band and the footage is B+B edited as if performing...

M.LANG: Focus on singer; CCTV style

The drummer's face is less important than his instrumental prowess. Note too the low-key lighting, customary for rock/Indie (glossy, high-key for pop)

Its one of the most immediately apparent Cs+Cs of m.vids: the focus on the lead singer, through frequency of shots plus framing. The Evanescence What You Want (embedded below, but you can also watch it sans ads at http://loudwire.com/amy-lee-interview-evanescence-return/) is a classic example:

Whilst we get a few shots (MS through to LS) interspersed of band members, often at high angles which obscure their faces and put the focus on their instruments, we never go more than a few seconds without seeing the singer, Amy Lee. She is mainly shown in CU to MS, though some LS included to highlight the band and the excited crowd, a key ingredient in many performance-centred vids.

Predominately CUs to MS of the singer, tho' some LS/MLS are framed to show aud/band

Fans + band both in shot, tho' note the central framing of Lee

The focus-on-singer is taken further by having the singer perform the fictional or dramatic role which we crosscut to; she's running (note the use of coloured contacts as a small but key component of mise-en-scene: this carries connotations of animal/beast, or supernatural) ... and that's pretty much it! This being an emo/goth/metal/Christian metal (there is debate over label applies!) band, moody night-time urban settings, including a bridge (connotations of depression, the suicide impulse?) are used. The band's music is mournful but aggressive, and many commentators would note that many forms of rock music carry out a cathartic function by speaking directly to (especially) teen/youth audiences about tough times and experiences; general alientaion, but doing so in a musical format that enables a physical release of pent-up emotions, and a sense of fellow-feeling/not being alone.

THEORY LINK: The Uses + Gratifications model; especially relevant to discussions of Audience

Band branding is a matter of balance though: a band who are exclusively linked to the image of a singer may suffer issues of credibility. So, while the looks and body of Amy Lee are clearly strongly highlighted throughout this vid, we do, towards the end, see the other band members briefly enter this fictional part of the vid (whether concept or narrative I couldn't say without studying the lyrics).

These sequences are linked by helicopter shots of a city at night: connotations of Gotham City?!

Another band whose vids showcase this tension between highlighting the most marketable component of the band whilst striving for the credibility so critical within the broad rock and Indie genres: Guns 'n' Roses. At their 80s/90s peak, every band member was world-famous, but now its become the sole property of the original singer, W. Axl Rose. Its fascinating to see how 'the band' came back into focus over the years as the marketeers tried to balance out the need to foreground Rose with the need to convince fans that this was a tight unit, a credible, authentic band. One of the iconic images of their ealrier period was of guitarist Slash guitar soloing on a mountain top, seen through a helicopter shot, part of what was then the most expensive music video ever made, November Rain - their videos had to reflect the exceptional fame and standing of the band members, not just the singer.

Heteronormative: crude male gaze

G'n'R are also a useful example of the second point: how 'looking' is handled in vids. Mostly we see a very direct gaze to camera, part of the mode of address making a direct link to the audience. But we also see this notion of looking deconstructed, often in quite a postmodern fashion. G'n'R's Welcome to the Jungle vid features Axl Rose playing himself getting off a bus in LA as a straw-chewing hick (reflecting his actual backstory) ... but he stops to look in the window of a TV store, where every TV is playing a video of ... Axl Rose, performing with G'n'R!

Thats Axl on the TVs...and Slash the passed-out bum outside!

Here, with the Evanescnce vid, we see another very common meme employed: much of the footage of Amy Lee running is distorted and rendered as CCTV. This clearly signifies the zeitgesit: 'we' (in the West) are accustomed to being tracked by cameras in much of our daily lives (there is CCTV in F6, the F-Hall etc!). This device carries connotations of criminality: through Crimewatch and the likes we associate CCTV with criminal behaviour. If you watch Misfits you'll have seen this used. BUT ... aren't there also connotations of the singer's feeling of claustophobia and pursuit at the hands of the very fans being targeted with this video?
ALWAYS  look out for and give consideration to the use of looking/gaze in any vid, including your own!!!

Here's an interesting example of how a vid can be used to signify the personal disclocation of a singer, through the prism of Beavis and Butthead...

CULTURE: high v popular - opera

I mentioned this today; the binary opposition of 'high' and 'popular' culture, and the very many values attached to this notion. Opera, classical music, Shakespeare = high culture; music video, pop, graphic novels = popular culture.

We'll explore the postmodern arguments, and Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, around this. You could independently read the ideas of the likes of John Storey on this too.

This is the article I mentioned from The Guardian, at a time when controversy over public funding of opera venues was high: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/27/falling-out-of-love-opera

COMPANY BLOGS: Style notes

Just been looking at one example of a newly launched company blog; some quick pointers:  

look at it as an actual record co/music vid producer blog, not a student blog, and write accordingly; ie add text gadget under blog title where you say '[company name] is a music video production company launched in late 2011 by [names] Our first commission is to create a new music video for [artist/track], and you can follow the story of [company name]'s first production right here, including exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and occasional vodcasts!'

BRAND IT - create a company logo, no matter how simple, and use the template tool in the blog's settings to add this as a background to your blog

INDUSTRY: Big4 almost Big3 - EMI sale

The last British giant, EMI, has been in the hands of private equity companies for some time, and has been effectively for sale for a while now, the private investors having bought it at what now seems an obviously inflated price just as the music industry began to feel the financial impact of digitisation.

This article contains a useful update on all this.
So, will the Big Four become the Big Three?

-------------------------------------------------------

A little bit of theory: Chomsky's propaganda model includes as one of the five filters 'concentration of ownership, while Ben Badikian has written about the negative impact of monopoly (a topic we'll explore for the exam Media Regulation topic) in his classic book The Media Monopoly (now renamed The New Media Monopoly)

Leading corporations own the leading news media and their advertisers subsidize most of the rest. They decide what news and entertainment will be made available to the country; they have direct influence on the country's laws by making the majority of the massive campaign contributions that go to favored politicians; their lobbyists are permanent fixtures in legislatures.
This inevitably raises suspicions of overt conspiracy. But there is none. Instead, there is something more insidious: a system of shared values within contemporary American corporate culture and corporations' power to extend that culture to the American people, inappropriate as it may be. (excerpt from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Afterword_Bagdikian.html)

AUDIENCE: Posthumous releases

Rap artists such as 2Pac and Biggie Smalls are 2 striking examples of growing, but already long-established trend for the music industry to release 'new' material after a singer/artist's death; Elvis' estate continues to mushroom with endless 'new' releases and compilations 34 years after his death, while Bob Marley and Jim Morrison continue to successfully sell truckloads of albums. Then we have the anniversary re-packaging of Nirvana's Nevermind which has been all over the media in October 2011.

Back catalogue is big business, but so is creating new albums from demos and rehearsal material, which has happened with The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to take two examples.
These are just my own examples; read more in the article below from http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/oct/31/amy-winehouse-posthumous-album

Bottom line: the artists aren't available for filming any new video material any more than they are for your productions, another useful point to raise to argue the case that yours is a realistic, 'real-world' production.

Amy Winehouse is the latest to give us songs from beyond the grave

The secret of posthumous albums is to allow the departed artist some dignity – but unfortunately that doesn't always happen

• 
• • Dorian Lynskey Monday 31 October 2011



Amy Winehouse … recent songs have been padded out with covers and alternate takes.




The mystery of how much music Amy Winehouse managed to record in the five years between Back to Black and her untimely death looks to have been solved by the tracklisting of her "new" album Lioness. A handful of recent songs have been padded out with cover versions, alternate takes and unreleased songs stretching back to 2002. Of necessity it's a thing of threads and patches.

CD/MAG AD: Editionalising

Just as we saw with DVDs last year (initial vanilla releases followed by special/collector's/ultimate editions; unrated version; director's cut), albums - especially best ofs - are increasingly sold in mutltiple versions. There's an example below, starting with a digipak and working up to a CD+DVDs set.

This is something you can be thinking of as you begin to think about the digipak + mag ad. The JoyDiv team from last year won plaudits from the exam board for adding a limited edition vinyl edition; you could consider this, or a 'bonus live DVD', without taking too much more time.
Other than researching examples of both digipaks and mag ads, the key to these is thinking of imagery early that you could then be photographing while out on your filming shoots (or even practice run-throughs), though you might also opt for a more abstract look. Just remember, your Eval has a Q about the links between your 3 texts.

Source for following article: http://loudwire.com/rammstein-made-in-germany-retrospective/

Rammstein ‘Made in Germany 1995 – 2011′ Retrospective Drops December 6

by: Amy Sciarretto 29.10.11

Rammstein are Germany’s most famous purveyors of subversive, industrial aggro and they are about to make fans incredibly happy, thanks to a career retrospective, dubbed ‘Made in Germany 1995-2011.’ The release is set to drop on Dec. 6 via Vagrant Records.

The retrospective will be made available in three different configurations, so you can choose according to your level of fandom for this enigmatic band, known for playing with fire and engaging in simulated homoerotic activity on stage.

The standard edition will feature the ‘Best Of’ album as a CD digipak, while the special edition will add the ‘Best Of’ remix album to the standard edition. If that doesn’t satisfy your hankering for noisy Teutonic rock, then you’ll want to seek out the super deluxe edition, which include the ‘Best Of’ album and the ‘Best Of’ remixes, along with three DVDs.

The DVDs will be comprised of the band’s full video catalog and all previously available “Making Of” videos, along with eight previously unreleased “Making Of” videos. The super deluxe edition will be encased in -what else?- a steel box and will come with a 240-page booklet. It’s an exclusive piece, as only 1200 copies will be made available in the US. Hello, collector’s item!

As if all of this wasn’t enough, all the songs and videos have been specifically remastered for this particular release.

The retrospective isn’t all that’s going on in the Rammstein camp right now. Rammstein’s new single ‘Mein Land’ is set to drop on Nov. 11. It will be available as a four-track set via iTunes, and will include an unreleased track, ‘Vergiss Uns Nicht,’ as well as remixes from BossHoss and Mogwai. It will also be accompanied by the Jonas Akerlund-directed video for the single. The video premieres on the band’s website on Nov. 11. So mark your calendars, stat!

M.LANG INDIE: Jesus + Mary Chain

A band notorious for its fraternal flare-ups (the brothers in the band were reknowned for fighting on stage), but also an obstinate attitude towards pop (they were seen as noise-smiths rather than tune-smiths) the Jesus and Mary Chain naturally didn't produce straightforward commercial videos.

Here's examples from classic J+MC tracks which exuded Indie attitude, by which I mean...

• low-key, naturalistic lighting (practical as much as aesthetic: low budget!)
• some strange, elliptical framing
• whip pans that lead to ... nothing!
• distorted footage
• performance which is so wan, exuding such froideur, its the antithesis of the exciting, energising rock performance we're so used to seeing
• the lipsynching in particular is reluctantly done, but shots of drumming and guitar playing also slowed down to be out of synch with the music
• just like Iron Maiden on the German Top of the Pops back in the 80s (when the band swapped intruments repeatedly, making a mockery of the miming) these vids stand as an uneasy compromise: marketing and commercial returns seem like a dirty word to Indie bands and fans BUT the band's record co needs the vids to sell records and the band to raise their profile + build their fanbase
• this reluctant, contrary attitude is also where the Pixies' Velouria single-shot vid arose from
• neither are so surreal as to be not be recognisable as m.vids tho: we see many of the standard signifiers of performance (some focus on singer, MS/MCUs of playing instruments, reasonable pace of editing), its just that the delivery is alien to the hyped up norm

J+MC vids on YouTube.

JUST LIKE HONEY


HAPPY WHEN IT RAINS


APRIL SKIES


HEAD ON

DIGIPAK CONCEPT: Judas Priest eg

Your digipak is for an album.
That means you have to create a tracklisting and briefly justify it.

Singles and best ofs are common, but with some bands with extensive back catalogues other 'themes' are used - the ballads, heaviest of, etc. Here's an interesting take from a UK metal band thats been going for around 40 years (and are bigger in the US than they are here, which is typical for successful UK metal bands), and recently featured on the final of American Idol, demonstrating their mainstream pull.

Judas Priest asked members of a wide range of bands to pick their favourite Priest tracks and used their selections to create a Chosen Few compilation, as detailed below.

You need to start thinking about the digipak and mag ad early - you must take separate photographs and not rely on screengrabs!!!

German metal band The Scorpions are another useful example: they've released a comp of their ballads, their rockier material, and a compilation of both!

 Here's UK sleaze metal outfit Dogs D'Amour striving to avoid the 'best of' label, and working with the fact that they didn't have many 'hits'!

Finally, US funk-matallers Faith No More, reformed to play Download in 2011, with an alternative to their Is This It? The Best Of album.

The following is quoted from http://loudwire.com/judas-priest-rob-halford-ian-hill-interview-chosen-few-upcoming-album/

One interesting aspect about your new compilation ‘The Chosen Few’ is that artists from completely different backgrounds picked some of the same tracks. David Coverdale from Whitesnake and Randy Blythe from Lamb of God both picked ‘The Green Manalishi.’ Klaus Meine from Scorpions and Corey Taylor from Slipknot both picked “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’.” Were you surprised by the unlikely pairings?

Halford: Yeah, absolutely surprised. We had no idea what anyone was going to pick, did we Ian?

Hill: No, it was totally up to them. It’s our only compilation album where we had absolutely no control whatsoever of what’s going on it.

Halford: It’s great that you should marry the guys together though. That Klaus from Scorpions and Corey from Slipknot should both like that particular track and say what they’ve said about particular songs that they enjoy from Priest. It really shows you the way that metal has this amazing generational crossover to two totally different worlds.

Members of Black Sabbath and Metallica were among the acts that chose the tracks for ‘The Chosen Few.’ What songs would you choose from those three acts if you were helping to put together a similar compilation for them?

Halford: For Black Sabbath, I’d probably pick ‘Black Sabbath,’ because that’s like the most evil song ever written. For Metallica, I’d probably pick ‘Blackened.’ I’m into old school Metallica personally and old school Sabbath.

Hill: It’s funny; I’d have to go listen to the albums again. There’s always a hidden gem somewhere. You always pick out, “Oh yeah, I used to love listening to that,” and then you tend to discard the rest of the album as time goes on. We’ve been doing albums now for 30 or 40 years and even with our songs I forget what the hell we’ve done on our albums, so I’d have to look back and listen to them all again and see if there are any hidden gems in there before I just blurt out what I’ve been listening to for the last 30 years.

Both 2011 compilations ‘Single Cuts’ and ‘The Chosen Few’ only cover your work until the early ‘90s; do you feel like this represents your career in the right way or do you feel that some of your later material should have been included?

Halford: I think it’s just a fun retrospective. You can’t do it all in one go, it’s impossible. I think you just have to look at the moment that you’re working with. Maybe there’ll be a ‘Chosen Few 2’ or ‘Chosen Few 3.’

Hill: The other thing is that there was a gap there where Rob wasn’t with us and the two albums we’ve done since Rob’s return are still very, very familiar and very fresh. In a lot of cases they haven’t sunk in yet – the great songs off the last two albums. They haven’t gotten established yet, so that’s maybe one of the reasons.

It seems like when you’re around for such a long time it’s hard for the new stuff to really sink in with the fans.

Halford: That’s the way it goes, yeah.

Hill: Of course, as far as singles are concerned, we haven’t had any singles off the last two albums. [Laughs]

Halford: We’ve never been a singles band. We love our label to death, Sony. That’s why we thought why do you want to do this? They said, “Well we did release single tracks to promote the records, particularly in America, some of which did really well, some of which just filtered through to introduce the new release.” We had no idea that our label had done so much. It was just the idea that we were going to do the ‘Single Cuts.’

When you’ve been together for 40 years, that’s what bands do now. It’s time to reminisce about your life in music and to put together these box sets that you may or may not choose to add to your collection. Some fans just want to go from studio album to studio album and don’t want the box sets, but pretty much all of the Priest fans are like, “Give me it all, I want everything! I want the lot. I want to put my ‘Singles Cuts’ next to my ‘Metalogy,’ I want to put that next to my remasters.”

Hill: It’s a good concept though; you’ve now got the singles out. I’d be great if they then go for the Judas Priest production pieces and then the heavier songs or the faster songs. You can pick out any little area of heavy metal, which is immense really and we’ve done a lot of all of it over the years.

GENRE: Gregorian Chants/Metal mash

AC/DC's Hells Bells as Gregorian chants... click on the pic for info on a good eg of postmodern hybridity:

Fisheye + pomo eg: Monster Magnet's Powertrip

Good eg of fisheye at work in this 1998 vid, but also highly postmodern: signifiers of 70s glam as well as modern bling-based R+B and the pimp posturings of many rappers

This is meant to juxtapose the band as authentic but with a sense of humour.

For me it actually screams insincerity - a corporate poodle using a glammed-up, high budget vid to promote the brand message that they're above ... glammed up, high budget vids

Another reading in this - the women sat around the floor seem to me to form an intertextual reference to the classic Electric Ladyland album cover (Jimi Hendrix Experience) from 1968, which I won't embed (for obvious reasons if you're familiar with it)

Anti-X Factor FB Campaign: Nirvana for Xmas no.1

SamB raised this, and I'm sure many of you are aware of the 2009 campaign which successfully propelled the industrial metal group Rage Against the Machine to the no.1 spot instead of whatever dreck won Cowell's show that year. Not just any band, this was one with a distinct history of radical, counter-hegemonic lyrics and actions, including various campaigns
My interest was briefly drawn again last year when it was proposed that the avant-garde composer John Cage's piece which consisted of silence (conductor's baton raised and orchestra putting instruments down the only sound if I remember right) for 4mins be the anti-Xfactor single. Now that would have

GENRE/AUD/NEW MEDIA: Pomo/Hybridity: the Re:Generation project

Here's a project that puts hybridity at the centre, bringing togther 5 DJs with a range of genres (eg dubstep's Skrillex with classic rock band The Doors):

Visit the website at http://www.regenerationmusicproject.com/

You should swiftly notice the Hyundai branding; music + vids are increasingly used for branding exercises which are much more subtle than straight ads. The brand message is that Hyundai is cutting edge, defies barriers and categories; is timeless.

Here's how the Music Guardian reported the story:

Skrillex to reopen the Doors

Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek says the divisive dubstep star will work with the band as part of a new music documentary

• Sean Michaels
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 10.55 BST
• Article history



Break on through … Skrillex teams up with the Doors




The "most hated man in dubstep" is helping to reopen the Doors. Skrillex will produce "the first new Doors track of the 21st century", according to keyboardist Ray Manzarek, as part of a new documentary.
"Basically, it's a variation on Milestones by Miles Davis," Manzarek told Rolling Stone magazine. "If I do say so myself, sounds fucking great, hot as hell." Forty years after the death of Jim Morrison, Manzarek returned to the studio with Robby Krieger and John Densmore. The Doors had been assigned to work with Skrillex, real name Sonny Moore, as part of the forthcoming documentary RE:GENERATION. "[Sonny] plays his beat, all he had to do was play the one thing," Manzarek said. "I listened to it and I said, 'Holy shit, that's strong.'"
RE:GENERATION is directed by Amir Bar-Lev, who helmed 2007's My Kid Could Paint That and a 2010 documentary on Pat Tillman. Produced in association with the Grammys, it unites artists with unexpected producers: Crystal Method recorded with Martha Reeves, Erykah Badu with Mark Ronson, while Nas and DJ Premier teamed up with the Berklee College of Music Orchestra.
Not every team-up went smoothly. Eectronic act Pretty Lights were sent to Nashville to work with country artists LeAnn Rimes and Ralph Stanley. "When Ralph showed up, I tried to tell him what I wanted to do and his response was, 'I think we'll just do it my way,'" said Pretty Lights' Derek Vincent Smith.
RE:GENERATION will be released to coincide with the 2012 Grammy awards on 12 February.

Group pic/info on blogs

A perfect example of what you're aiming to do below: the blogs/YouTube channels of the others in the group AND the company blog all clearly highlighted, and a nice touch of making the pic link to a post on the group.

I've seen one example of pointless 'info' such as nicknames; a bit more maturity should be shown - keep details to your media attributes, which can include past work, festival success, and music tastes, film/TV tastes if you think its relevant (ie this influences your work/ideas). If you're assigning roles (may be more than one for each person), detail what this actually means/entails.

Company blogs

A really simple job but one which showcases your use of new media technologies, and also links to how you've gone about attracting an audience: setting up a separate blog for your production company.

Here's the JoyDiv blog from last year (also linked through their QR Code): http://newtransmissionrecords.blogspot.com/

Note the branding! This can be largely a place where you copy in podcasts + behind-the-scenes vodcasts, but also build up to release. A good place for a poll too!

QR Codes

We looked at how the JoyDiv group used these last year: when scanned using a smartphone, the browser is directed to the link programmed within the QRCode, in this case their production company blog.
Here's Callum's post on this (and the accompanying vid, embedded below; there can be a place for humour on your blog, and this is a good example of appropriate use of that)

Student-led lessons from Week8

To be clear on what the thinking is with these...
You hear the phrase 'student voice' used frequently within school, though there has been much debate over the realities and extent of this. Partially with the sort of experiences you'll have at university in mind (seminars and other sessions which might be student led), but also reflecting the positive impression you've made as a cohort,

Blog schedule for end of this week (21st)

BY THE END OF WEEK 7 (17-21ST October) you should have blogged on:

THE COURSEWORK TASK

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

HOMEWORK FOR FRI 21ST (13C) or THURS 20TH OCT

List the 10 most useful things you’ve learned to date, and …
The 3 things you’d most like to learn now about music vids

SCHEDULE THROUGH TO FEB 2012 COMPLETION

I'll issue a more detailed outline shortly, but look through this: each group will be leading a lesson on one of the themes highlighted through weeks 8-13, so 1st come 1st served in terms of choice.

This schedule is designed to enable, indeed encourage, working ahead.

Groups can divide + then share posts; use initials (or ALL) at start of each post to denote the author.

The themes are chosen not just with marks for R+P in mind, but also Section A of your exam; if you're rusty on what DCRUP + MANGeR denote, look back at your course outline (and I suggest you add this info to a post so you can always swiftly check...). If you make notes on each of these (separate sheet of paper or even unpublished blog post) as you go you'll find exam prep much, much easier - but also be looking ahead to the Eval, where many still throw away marks from bad timing. You can pre-write/plan a good deal of this.

Use http://prodeval.blogspot.com/ to help with forward planning (and working on your group's themed lesson)

See http://musividz.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-schedule-for-end-of-this-week-21st.html for details on what should be on your blog for the end of this week/half-term.

WEEK 8 (B  31st Oct to 4th Nov): MEDIA LANGUAGE [13A: GinaJess; 13C: n/a]

Act History: superb eg + showcase work

There were some excellent posts on this last year you can look at, but also Rob's on the history of Muse is exemplary. Very well detailed, with a blend of his own words and quotations (which are clearly identified), well presented with illustrative imagery and embedded vids.
I've had emails asking about use of Wikis, which this post largely relies on.
Basically - its okay to use Wikis as the primary resource for SOME posts, but if your blog continually relies on this you are showing weak research skills. Do general googling, try Amazon book searches (and use the 'Look Inside' to access some sample pages) in conjunction with google books (again, you can read some sample pages), newspaper searches (eg Guardian), magazines, blogs etc You could also do a quick index search of Lib/F6 books.
If you want to make it clear not just to me but to the exam board how wide your research has been, start a Links List called Sources Used For Research. Put a link and description in for every source you use (so Amazon links for books). This would overlap with more specific Links Lists but:

make it easy for credit to be awarded for your work; make the evidence very easy to spot. 

When I'm justifying my marks to the exam board I have to write detailed summaries; use what you learned from marking 2011 blogs to put the evidence of your work (not just research but ticking every box - aud research/feedback, drafting etc) in a prominent space.
Imagine you're an examiner with 300 blogs to mark - which is the approx number many will be assigned. Now imagine marking two blogs: one has used links lists/summary posts to summarise work, learning and blog content, handily fitting in with the assessment criteria. This blog can be skimmed through and marks verified quickly. But a second blog hasn't done this; an hour later, after you've trawled through just some of the posts looking for evidence of excellence/proficiency etc on each criteria you think its a borderline case, but thankfully you're feeling so happy at having to spend all this time that naturally you'll award the most positive mark...

Mon 10th Oct - FINAL POINTERS!

You may be reading this while final files are being gathered in, or before the lesson - do re-read the earlier very detailed posts.

You have 2mins to pitch (this will be strict to ensure time for feedback).
You will then have a 2min Q+A (time may be reduced if we're slow to get started). EVERYONE will have to ask a question about at least one presentation - here's some sample Qs you could consider (but also respond directly to the contents of the pitch and your own thoughts!):

• how did Britney/MiniVid/class vid influence planning? did these create any ideas for editing FX for example that you haven't yet outlined?
• do you think there’s enough variety to sustain aud interest over repeated viewings?
• what would constitute the ‘shooting appropriate material’ from markscheme?
• any factors which would problematize reshoots?; have you applied any lessons/learning from your AS experience?
• what further decisions do you need to take at this stage? 
• what’s been the biggest single leap you’ve made since starting to think of + research/plan ideas?   [this could be a difficult one to answer under time pressure!]
• in one sentence, what makes you think this will be THE best project/why should others work with you on this?)

Take any remaining time to gather your thoughts, read through notes, and really try hard to maximise the eyeball time with your audience.
Remember, your task is sell your idea and persuade others to work with you!

If YouTube blocks an upload: VIMEO it

...but do provide a title for pity's sake!
In most cases, when YouTube matches audio tracks to its database it will force ads onto the page, with revenues from these shared with the copyright-holder. YouTube has signed up the major record labels to a deal along these lines.
Sometimes, you'll simply see your upload blocked (or audio disabled).
If that happens, switch to plan B: vimeo.com. Its not used by the industry, but rather artists, and is nowhere near the scale nor influence of YouTube, so isn't really a suitable alternative in general for a Media student. BUT, when you have to (and its not blocked at school, although it flags up broadly identical concerns to YouTube), use Vimeo!!!
Here's Conor/Rich's (untitled?! come on guys!!) edit:

Untitled from Conor O'Loughlin on Vimeo.

Evidencing DRAFTING tip: Use shot-in-shot

As we did with the BritVid, a nice way to help evidence your drafting work (ie, re-edits) is to include a shot-in-shot alongside your changed version. Here's an example from a Latymer group;

Single take videos

LINKED POSTS: http://musividz.blogspot.com/2010/11/artist1-pixies.html 

http://musividz.blogspot.com/2011/06/greatest-single-take-video-ever.html http://musividz.blogspot.com/2012/02/one-shot-vids.html Streets anti-vid 

I mentioned this today, and George asked about the example I gave. You can find it in this post: http://musividz.blogspot.com/2011/06/greatest-single-take-video-ever.html

As I mention in this, and the 'streets anti-vid' post, when you're in groups you should think of some fun 'alternate' video/s you can do for your track, real lo-fi fan-vid style. This idea has been used by bands as big as U2 (with the 3 vids for 'One'!)

I'll trust GeorgeG will mention this post in the next lesson...

RobS helpfully came up with another eg, Coldplay's Yellow (11.2m views at time of writing!)