Friday, 3 May 2013

Evaluation

What did you learn from your audience feedback?


Evaluation

How did you use media technologies in the construction of research, planning and evaluation stages?




Thursday, 25 April 2013

Evaluation


In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?



Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Evaluation

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Monday, 22 April 2013

Audience feedbak


In order to gain audience feedback on my music video, we held viewings where I gave out a questionnaires and then held focus groups. In order to gain more audience feedback from our target audience (being young teenage girls) we had to target social networking sites. I posted our music video on Facebook and tweeted about it. We also shared our video through the use of journals and poles on DeviantArt.




Magazine Advertisement

Above is our magazine advertisement for our artist to go into a magazine. We looked through many magazines such as kerrangeand Q to look at examples done. We decided to use bright colours such as pink and green in order to match those in oue music video but these colours also stand out to our target audience reader. Using bright colours also reflects the type of music we are advertising with a cheerful upbeat tempo. We created a variety of images before choosing the final image above because we wanted to explore different ways to make our advertising look pleasing to the reader. We decided to go with the one above and we have layer hearts and flowers onto the picture and we though this sets the atmosphere and mood so the reader can really get a feel of the album we are promoting.

Monday, 8 April 2013

Digipak pieces

Here is the leafet for inside the digipak I created for are advertisment task, I included bright shocking colours mostly shades of pink to attrack our target audience and I aimed for the front cover to be colourful to get seen and noticed more then other would. The colours I used for the digipak matches the mise-en-scene and photos of the shoots and music video to create conitunity throughtout my advanced portfolio. I wanted the artist to look vibrant and glowing so I adjusted the contrast and colours of the photo to make the picture look more inviting. I also made the digipak look realistic by putting a product code on the back of the digipak cover as other digipaks that I looked at all had these.

Here is the template of the final digipak leaflet in order from the left is the middle pull out page, the back cover and the front cover :

Here is the middle of the digipak as you would see if you opened it up:


Here is the CD part of the digipak I created, i wanted it to be simple yet reflect some of the imagery on the cover so i have used the same flower for this. 

Digipak

One of our ancillary tasks we had to create a digipak, so I looked online for a template to help me with the sizes and I found a really useful website that lets you download a template for different sizes : http://visionvangogh.com/pages/CDTemplates/

I when for the six page folder as it is slightly smaller which is good as we are only advertising a single not an album so we only have one song to include.  

To help me with design I also looked at other digipaks out there that are for singles and here are the ones I liked inparticular :





Our Final A2 Advanced Portfolio

This is our final music video 'Chuck Norris' we created for our A2 Advanced Portfolio, it was hard work but great fun, hope you enjoy:

Poffestional Feedback on our Rough Cut

We were lucky enough to have a Skype call with the Music Video Director Terry Hall. Terry Hall has recently directed a music video for Muse - Supremacy and this music video has inspired us lots during editing and filming are music video, as we wanted less static shots and more moving shots which supremacy is the prefect example of. On our Skype call we showed him the rough cut of our music video and he was able to give us professional feedback and advice about our editing process. 


First of all he mentioned he liked the amount and variety of locations we have as he said it kept it interesting for the audience and kept them on there toes. He also especially liked a shot we have in our video of our singers reflection in the water cross cut with her on the bridge. 

We then when onto show him one of our stop motion animations which we planned to use in our music video, he was very help coming up with al sorts of ways in which we could incorporate this into are music video. The suggestions we really liked and are going to use are layering the stop motion animation onto our singer and inverting the colours to add more dimension. We found this Skype chat really helpful and we also had  few questions we liked to ask him, he is shortly going to send us the answers he came up with which will help greatly in further studies.

Stop Motion Animation

We wanted to add stop motion animation for at least a whole chorus but thought it would look weird in one big bulk so decided to split the chorus into two and add them in at different choruses during the video to split up and make the video flow better. I got the challenge of making a stop motion animation for the second half of the last chorus, with the lyric of 
'Swim with sharks just to feel the danger
or flipping the bird to a mean state ranger
No- the dumbest thing I could say, is 'I don't look at you that way'
Yeah the dumbest thing I could do, is say that I didn't love you'

Here was my story board for my stop motion animation and some of the pieces I used to create the real thing :  


My partner also created the first half of the chorus and made it into a YouTube video before adding it to our final portfolio and this is what it looks like:


Friday, 22 February 2013

Filming at Cliveden

Here is a video of our filming at Cliveden Water Garden, we filmed a number of different shots and settings. We are now able to being editing our final piece:

Cliveden Storyboard

 Again with the Cliveden shoot we wanted room for improvisations and ideas when we are on set and editing. So we storyboard are specific shots and area's.  We wanted to get a wide range of different setting and shot for the editing process so we have a wide range to work with. 


Beckonscot Storyboard

Here is our storyboard for Beckonscot:

 When storyboarding and editing we want room for improvisation so we didn't want to storyboard every section of the song. So we storyboarded our specific ideas and specific shots we wanted to film in Beckonscot. 
For example her we have storyboarded our singer by a specific area of the model village. As we wanted to have often visual links to what the lyrics are saying and are shots we have storyboard our singer walking along train tracks as the lyrics sing:

'Its like falling asleep on a railroad track Or baiting Chuck Norris just to make him mad 
Skinny dipping in the pouring rain
Or sending drunk texts to your boss' phone again'. 

Filming Storyboard

In order to start filming our music video we have to create storyboard so we know what we are shooting on site. With our music video we want a vast number of shot to chose from when editing so it fits with the beat of our song, so we want to film the entire song from different angles and areas. 
We have decided to also have foundations shots of our singer so we can add these into editing were ever we see fit. We decided on a close-up of the face and extreme close up on the singers lips as we liked these when researching other pop music video's. 











We also started to storyboard the opening part of our song which has no words. We decided to include an instrument in-keeping with the conventions of a pop music video: 

Film Production Risk Assessments

Here is our risk assessment for Beckonscot, the model village shoot.
Here is our risk assessment for Clivden:


Location Research - Clivden National park

We have researched and contacted both the National trust about Clivden gardens and Beckonscot Model village and gained permission to film in both locations. We have visited the model village to help us with our planning and storyboarding but due to lack of time we could not visit Clivden. However the lady we contacted about filming in Clivden gardens kindly sent us photo's of our two choices so we could finally pick an area we would like to film in. Here is what she sent to us and our thoughts and decisions:

 
We knew due to the season area's of Clivden would not have flowers and could look quite bare. In this photo you see 'The Long Garden' which was an option to film in its current condition. Without the flowers that would be there in summer it looked a bit sad so we thought another place with long lasting greenery would probably make better mise-en-scene. 
This area of Clivden gardens particularly took our liking because of the Japanese hut. We thought we could use many of our ideas for the music video in this area and so this is the area we have choosen to film in. We especially like the fact it have surrounding water and a lake because we could think of many ideas were we wanted to use water.

We also got give a map of the Clivden gardens to help us with our planning, the area circled is the area we have planned to film in:

Location Research - Model Village

We wanted to films some of out music video in Bekonscot, and so we had to make an initial visit to plan our shot and storyboard but also to have a look around. We fell in love with the location on our visit and took loads of photos and video's here is what we found and the shots we particularly liked:









Typical Synopsis

I have taken four different music video's from the genre 'pop' and I am going to write a simple paragraph about them all summarizing  and discussing the themes, conventions and trends I see.  


This video is 'Last Friday Night' by Katy Perry. The main theme of the song is about being young and having fun. The Music video shows a gradual story of what happened to a girl last Friday night and the next morning with a short intro at the beginning. It uses bright neon colours to add a playful and imaginative theme. It has an interactive feel as the video shows the fantasy of a boy at the party so you can see what he thinks. The video cross cuts the morning after with the party according to the lyrics of the song which allows us to really imagine it is a true story. The song often show links with the song and video such as the when the saxophone comes into the music, in the shot it shows a man playing the saxophone at the party. This video really appeals to the target audience because of the use of bright colours and light, also the use of real situations such as they are playing 'just dance' in the video.  



This second music video is 'If You're Not Gonna Move' by Jessie Ware. The main theme of the song is people coming together which reflect the lyrics of the song especially this one 'You'll make me come to you'. This video has a number of setting each revisited a number of times in the video, however they are all outdoors and full of nature. All the scenes have a carefree and non complicated element. There is a great use of light with the sun always shining in each shot reflecting nicely of Jessie. The main focus is on the singer with regular close-ups and no other person in the video this really emphasises the words and beat of the song. The shots are slow moving with flows well with song en-keeping with the slow beat and pace.  


This next song is 'Radioactive' by Rita Ora. This music video is mainly focused on the futuristic theme with lots of computer effects. The mise-en-scene made you think that Rita was in the sky or space giving an imaginative and creative trend.
There is a lot of camera movement in each shot moving with accordance to the beat of the music. They also use colour very well in this music video as they have a theme with colours being the main colours used were blue, red and green; this adds to the futuristic techno feel. This video also shows a number of fashion elements with all the futuristic colours and different outfits, this appeals to the target audience as teenagers are very into following the trend in fashion and Rita Ore could be said to be a fashion icon. 


This music pop music video is 'What About Us' by The Saturdays. In this video the common theme is fun, you seeing various scenario's such as playing pool where it is related to having fun. This also appeals to the target audience because they can relate to these situations and relate to having a good time. They also show fashion in this video as The Saturdays are also fashion icons and in this video they show them going to shopping and trying on clothes, so there target audience being teenage girl can connect with this video. The main focus is again on The Saturdays with many close-ups on each of them singing and mid shot panning through the group this shows versatility through different shots. They use dancing in this video which adds a degree of movement and playfulness, the use of fast changing shot and movement in this video makes it exciting and interesting to the audience. 

Audience Expectations

We spoke to members of out target audience (teenage girls) to evaluate what they would typically expect from a pop music video, here is our responses: 

Nine Frame Analysis

Here is the nine frame analysis of a pop music video called 'Lovebird' by Leona Lewis. I choose this song because our chosen song is about love and this video opening could help us with some storyboarding ideas.  



There is an establishing shot of mise-en-scene so that viewers get a feel of the singers surroundings and really get to know the storyline and the theme of the song, for example the song is about lovebirds and leona is in a bird cage. I notice the light shining directly onto the cage to draw our attention to the main feature. Leona is also holding the bars of the cage almost as if she is trapped and cant get out.


It changes straight into an extreme close up enhancing the detail of the shot allowing us to see the lock on the bird cage. This again gives a clue that Leona is trapped in the cage and gives connotations of what the song lyrics might be.  In both shots now there has been a slight blue tint to the frame, this gives connotations that the song is a slow sad beat with maybe sorrowful lyrics as they have not started yet.  



It switches to a very fast more colourful shot, with Leona in bright pink, happy colours give hope to the song. This shot show more glamour and beauty with jewls and diamonds in a pattern on her face, this could resemble the colours and patterns on the feathers of a bird. This has changed from the dark caged shot we saw before, almost as if whatever was trapped in the cage has been set free. The style of the shot has changed from close-up to mid shot which flows nicely with the beat



We are back to an extreme close up but this time on the Leona's face she is not yet singing. Her eyes gaze from the ground straight into the camera giving a personal effect that the Leona is looking at you. The blue tint to the shot give continuity through the video it also gives the shot a cold and gloomy feeling. She also has shadow of lines running down her face like bars, maybe they represent bars of the bird cage in-keeping with the  lovebird theme, its almost like she is trapped in the cage.  


The shot goes back to a mid shot of the Leona in the cage. This really shows a wide range of shots in the same mise-en-scene so you can almost feel as if you are there yourself. The light coming from behind her really highlights the shape of Leona's face and body. When she starts to sing the light from behind really shows the movement of her lips and so your attention is drawn straight to her.


As leona has started singing the shot goes back to a close up. The lyrics she sings at this point is 'We were birds of a feather
            We were always together' these lyrics really reflects the shot with the horizontal lines reflecting on her face as we said before from the bird cage. Her eye make-up with the long eyelashes with the extended ends could represent the wings or feathers of a bird.


It has now switched back to the very first shot we saw in this music video, the establishing shot it also provides continuity. This could be her to remind us Leona is in a cage trying to get out. Her white shrug in this shot looks like wings of a bird implying that Leona is the bird.



Back to the extreme close up of Leona's face. In the extreme close ups they really show the emotions of Leona when she is singing, in this shot Leona especially looks almost sad and reflective. 


Finally the shot changes from its grey, blue tinge to a bright shot with lots of light and crystals dangling from above. This shot saws the shrug in a clearer light and it does again look more like the wings of a bird in-keeping with the theme of the lovebird. 


Sunday, 27 January 2013

Collage

I have used iconic images from pop music videos which is my choosen genre and created a collage here it is:

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Conventions of a Pop Music Video

I researched the key conventions of a music video and here is what I found:

Camera shots =
Music video's tend to include many long shots, mid shots and close ups, this is to create emphasis artist and there emotions but also the mise-en-scene. Extreme close up are not only to see the emotion on the artists face but to reflect the words of the song with the movement of the lips. 

Camera movements = 
The camera movement in music videos are mostly to follow or trace the artist or band, they can use a wide range to do this such as tilts, panning and tracking shots.

Mise-en-scene =
Mise-en-scene puts importance on the representation of something, it really relies on the genre and mood of the song in the music video. It helps visualize whatever the concept of the music video is. For example visualizing the lyrics, 'Last Friday Night' by Katy Perry is a good example of this as it is about a teenage girl reflecting on her experiences from Friday night which strongly influences the mood of the video. 

Editing =
The pace of the editing fits with the pace of the song. Often transactions between shots are used to create a smooth flow through the video such as dissolve and fade. Jump cuts is a technique use is most updated videos now as it allows a sudden change from one scene to another.

Lighting =
Some music video's use lighting to enhance the artists or bands look by using artificial, but black and white is popular to set the mood it videos e.g. in a sad music video they use black and white to create a dull and sad mood

Award Winning Music Videos

When looking for award winning music video's in the genre pop I came across the MTV Music Video Awards. Most years since 1999 they have had an award named 'Best Pop Video' and I have found a table with the winners and nominees very year, here it is:
YearWinnerOther nominees
1999Ricky Martin — "Livin' la Vida Loca"
2000'N Sync — "Bye Bye Bye"
2001'N Sync — "Pop"
2002No Doubt (featuring Bounty Killer) — "Hey Baby"
2003Justin Timberlake — "Cry Me a River"
2004No Doubt — "It's My Life"
2005Kelly Clarkson — "Since U Been Gone"
2006Pink — "Stupid Girls"
2007No award given
2008Britney Spears — "Piece of Me"
2009Britney Spears — "Womanizer"
2010Lady Gaga — "Bad Romance"
2011Britney Spears — "Till the World Ends"
2012One Direction — "What Makes You Beautiful"
So here is One Directions music video for 'What Makes You Beautiful' which won last year -



It has an upbeat fast tempo so all the shots are fast and catchy. I really like the transaction between shots with transparency and fading in and out of shots. Each star is showcased the perfect amount, with close ups on all of the band individually as well as together; they are showcased really well as a band together always playing and being friendly. You have many visuals that relate to the lyrics in this video such as the girl flicks her hair and looks away in shots. The concept it shown really well with the girl not realising how pretty she is and how much the boys like her.

Here is Britney Spears 'Till the World Ends' which won MTV 'Best Pop Video' in 2011 - 



It is a dance beat so they have used a lot of dancers in this music video, with the shots last very very short and changing mise-en-scene this keeps a fast tempo flowing well with the song. Britney is showcased very well with lots of different types of shots such as panning and extreme close ups. The lyrics to the song relate strongly to the video as it is all about dancing and the whole music video is revolved around dance and feeling the beat. The concept of the music video is if you feel the beat you dance till the world ends, but in the end the world doesn't end it survives.