Ed Sheeran- Research and Understanding task

Ed Sheeran has become the nations new favourite artist for his music genre of Acoustic/folk music. 

Ed Sheeran is a very minimalistic artist that focuses more onto his music than his appearance. He uses little editing. For example in 'The A team' The only obvious edit is that the camera screen is in black and white. It is a simple yet eye catching way of making a music video seem more sensitive and possibly not very upbeat, something that has a meaning. 
There is an actress played as a 'crack whore' in his video which gives a story behind his song, which gives the audience members a more thoughtful view on the song, that it is relevant and shows meaning to hat he is singing. 
Keeping the video minimal in ed sheerans video is emphasised through the use of a handheld camera which is easily available commercially. It gives the viewer an idea of the camera representing following her life and possibly seeing reasons why in the past that she died. 

The set is usually in an actual place, not a set which makes Ed seem like an artist that wants the video to possibly be more realistic to his fans. In his video 'Drunk' he is performing in his video but it doesn't change the fact that it is in another realistic setting. It seems like it is in his apartment as he has his cat and sits down with a beer which is a typically routine action when you have just returned from somewhere and want to relax. The camera shots in his videos are nothing out of the ordinary, rather wide shots to give the viewer a clear idea of what is actually happening in the clip.

Overall the reputation of Ed Sheeran is particularly good, and he has had no other newspaper stories than the fact that he has made so much progress over the past few years from no one knowing him and how he has now conquered America. 

Research and Understanding task

Rihanna is an artist that uses a variety of genres within her music. Her main genres are R&B, POP, REGGAE, HIP HOP and DANCE. She swings towards the more mainstream side of music.

Overall, Rihanna is represented as a modern type of artist that tends to break the rules and do her own thing. She stands out considerably due to her use of sexual dances and lyrics which give the audience an idea that she has rather a lot of sex appeal. 

In the video 'Under my umbrella' it particularly caught my eye. There are so many ways in which the video especially represents Rihanna as sexy and powerful. The video has a dark background with lots of edited in rain into all the shots. It's subtly noticeable however doesn't draw too much attention as Rihanna is the character that is watched the most. Also the editing is rather clever because when Rihanna is lip syncing, the screen is blurred in and out to draw yet more attention to her. Further on into the song the editing because more focused on screen as it looked like Rihanna was dodging the raindrops. The fact that she successfully dodged them may give us an indication that the rain in the video could be associated with upset and the fact that she isn't getting wet could give us an indication that she is a strong enough woman. I noticed that the screen was blurred out and then in when she was bending down which is almost teasing the audience as she looks directly at the camera which shows more sex appeal.  The cutting rate in the music video was quite fast and has many different shots inbetween major shots, which portrays her to have two sides to her, and GOOD girl and BAD which reflects the Album name. 

Her costume is definitely what stands out most in the video and in all of her videos, she wears tight clothing to fit around her skinny yet curvy body. The tight, revealing PVC/leather short flared dress shows off her tiny figure which she struts around in wanting all eyes on her. The fact that the majority of the time she is looking at the camera shows that she isn't at all shy and it makes it a more personal relationship between the artist and the audience member. This song is part of her album called 'Good girl gone bad' which may give us an indication that this is one of her most provocative/ sexual songs that she had produced yet.As we go though the video, it turns into a more sensual one as she has less clothes on, fishnet tights and her hair all out of her face revealing her even more. Her prop was the umbrella which was relevant to the video. The prop gets used more sexually as we go through the video which she uses to dance with until the end.  She also moved/danced to the beat of the song which is a very mainstream route to go down- as she tends to produce music that goes into the charts, this particular action works well for Rihanna. 

Rihanna is quite a talked about artist for good and bad reasons. There have been stories that she has been involved with drugs like Marijuana and Cocaine. Photos have been leaked of her doing so and in her tweets (as i follow her) she refers to weed constantly. Her 'code' is the set of numbers 420 which is an obvious link to marijuana. 

My blog Heading

To improve the appearance of my blog i have made a heading using the website- www.dafont.com. I have used this website in my previous years coursework and for our preliminary CD cover. It is extremely useful as it has a variety of different fonts available for everyone to use so i found one called ' venus furs', which also makes my blog look more professional. 

Task One- Essay question

During my time studying media i have think that i have progressed in many different ways. I would say that my best points are good teamwork, i can be put into any group and work efficiently and sensibly when studying. My group in year 12 was a good decision as all of our work was divided up fairly, no one was left out and no one was made to do the majority of the work and i think that our coursework grades reflected that as we just got on with it and all the hard work has paid off.
Another one of my best points is good communication between groups as everyone knew what was happening, whether we were changing filming days or who was going to research what.
-One of my bad points was that sometimes i didn't know how to improve the quality of my posts as i would have to extend them further which was a weakness for me. Hopefully i will pick up that skill working on my A2 coursework blog and achieve as high a coursework grade as last year.
Another bad point was that when it came to filming, we tended to drag it on a bit in the sense that we would change the filming day until later in the week for example, and also on some occasions we were slightly organised when filming and we would have to make ideas up on the spot, although sometimes you get new ideas anyway, however we made up a lot off the top of our heads for which shots to do or where to position the shot. 

   In the two practical tasks I have recently learnt that i am now able to use different programmes on the computer, for example i had never even heard of final cut express before taking media studies as an A-level subject, so for me to go from not knowing the programme to picking up various skills during editing lessons on the Macs is a massive confidence boost which not only have i just picked up but in future will be able to use these skills. Blogger was also new to me. I really enjoy adding new posts to my blog as it is an interactive way of learning/ finding out new things which makes it a hell of a lot easier to upload information and quickly. I felt like blogger was a particular strength for me as i took to it well and was rather organised when adding new posts. 
I was never into using handheld digital cameras but now i am able to use one with no problems at all, and can use a tripod and attach the camera to it. All these technical items sound so easy to use but when it comes down to it there are some things that need to be learnt. 
I have also leant that it's not just how much you film, theres a lot more to it. You have to make sure you get the shots correctly so getting angles of the camera right and making sure you have a variety of different shots to make the clip more interesting. For example we added in a cross cut which was actually one of the highlights of our last opening to our thriller film. 

With the research and planning it is a much more important process than we originally thought. Gathering all the relevant information was vital in making sure that we ticked all the boxes for what target audiences preferred etc. This made us choose our target audiences much more carefully and it was an interesting insight in seeing what people actually wanted to see in a thriller movie of their choice and what they didn't want to see- we did this through interviews and a lot of on line research.