Evaluation

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenged forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout the whole process from planning to constructing our music video, my main ideas and inspirations developed from four different music videos (two of which are British singles). These useful products of media influenced me to duplicate specific shots which were either suitable for our concept/genre or be influenced by a certain style from the mise-en-scene. 

For example, our concept came from the video of famous British Pop band Sugababes - About you Now, which used the simple storyline of a male and a female on a journey to a meeting point. However, we had decided to twist the concept where there was a narrative situation behind the action which the audience understand through the lyrics and camerawork.

Due to Embedding disabled by request, I have posted the link via YouTube ; Sugababes - About you Now http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sugababes+-+about+you+now+&aq=f

Another visual aspect that caught our eyes was certain location areas which they had chosen which were famous attraction sites in London e.g. near The Gerkin. Therefore we had chosen various areas on a Bus Tour map to shoot in our video which tells the audience that '...even with typical/popular surroundings, a British music video can still look professional.'

In terms of mise-en-scene, the British pop video uses props or specific street surroundings such as construction cones, stairs and a car for stunts. We also wanted to think outside the box so we created a simple stunt to descend the staircases which was a slide down the banister and a hop of the stairs. For health and safety reasons, we did not want to take chances and approach an impossible stunt. For these ideas, match cut edits, worms eye shot and long to close up shots were necessary and imaginative. Even though you hardly see match cut edits used in a music video, it worked effectively throughout our productive work likewise with our inspirational music video.

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Eminem - Love the Way you Lie

For our romance scene, famous American rapper Eminem's - Love the way you Lie video came to our head as there is a strong passion between both actors within the first 20 seconds of this video. One of my favourite shots was the Bird's eye shot of the couple lying in bed together. It was an unusual shot that shows that followed onto a close-up shot which shows the audience the love or even the sexual attraction between them. Likewise, we decided to attempt this shot simply by standing above on a bed. Fortunately, it was effective and suited the functions of a professional British Music Video.

For our male artist 'Y.Shocker,' we were keen on the idea of a skyline behind him which is where the recent British music video Tinie Tempah - Written in the Stars where the artist himself stands on the roof of a building. We had found it hard to find a building that had a suitable roof but once again for health and safety reasons, climbing onto an actual unknown building was not a chance we wanted to take. So, we filmed our artist's section on a bridge infront of buildings as we had to compromise with little time.

One thing that I did like was the worm's eye shots under the audience and the sky was the surroundings. Young rappers have the idea of 'the sky is the limit' which follows this statement fully. This shot also allowed our male artist to make eye connection with the audience and this lighting gave visual glow to his appearance which I had admired.

For particular lighting, I felt that Justin Timberlake - I'm lovin it video used a deep dark glow of blue to the video which made it look more urban. The one thing I did particularly admire was the whole idea that everyone in the surroundings acted normal as though it was an ordinary day where people are shopping. I had wanted my video to look like that!

Due to embedded disabled by request : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg7a5e4_pa4&ob=av2em

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Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement?

I think that my successful music video links to my successfull ancillary texts as they both look professional and stand out to he audience. There is an obvious link between the Digipak and the Advertisement as they both use the same photo of the artist which is basically to promote the album. I wanted to make this photo a signature pose that the artists does which is recognizable amongst the audience. My advertisement suits the mainstream type of music of today where I can see the advertisement in a local magazine such as 'Now' or 'Look' where for example there are page spreads advertising the lastest album from artists such as Taio Cruz and Tinie Tempah. There is also a link between the companies published which is EMI Records and Inkerupt Records. Similarly, the font used in the advertisement stating "Lure of my Memories" is the same font used in the tracks list of the actual album. This is what makes them combined.

Unfortunately there is no link between the album and the music video as what I had produced was the album made up of 11 tracks so therefore I did not need to use a screen shot of my male artist in the video. If I had produced a single to promote the single 'Never be you Woman' then I would have used a screen shot to show the audience that the music video is part of it's execution to the single CD. However, the photos used in the actual digipak are noticable where an audiene will recognize this artist in future videos or advertisements.

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Question 3: How did you use the media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The equipment which were given for our project were state of the art video cameras along with top-lights (which enabled us to shoot at twilight without affective the lighting), digital cameras (which we used for our research of locations and moodboards) and SD memory cards which allowed us to save our work and edit using Final cut pro. Even though these resources were for our production, these pieces of equipment were a joy to use as you would discover new techniques (such as a specific button on the handheld camera that would enable sharp focused footage) that could make our music video even more effective.

 

 

During our process of planning and research, a number of websites were used such as YouTube.com , Google.com , Vimeo.com , Facebook.com and Blogger.com. These particular sites helped us to gain ideas and think about the type of audience we wanted to attract.

With the most famous search engines 'Google,' this allowed us to search for the visual appearances of Bridges in London which we had planned to use for our meeting point. Maps on google allowed us to find easy and accesible routes to a specific location which was also part of our planning task. 

Especially for our animatic storyboard, Google images helped us to visually draw some of the shots we wanted to use in our project. For example. for our romance scene, we needed a photo of a woman whispering in her love's ear of which we found the template of on Google for a rough idea. Below you will see how Google images had been interpreted through our drawings to mock up our storyboard.

I personally think Vimeo helped me to imagine and decide how I wanted our music video to look. Watching the previous student's work on this website allowed me to notice not only disadvantages of specific techniques used (such as Green Screen and choices of songs) but even advantages where they have chosen a good location or used the right mise-en-scene to suit the genre.

Looking at our own music video one month after it's execution, I can observe the little mistakes I had made or errors in the editing but I do not regret them (nobody's work is perfect). Although our video has not recieved any views, likes or comments, I think it is a strong piece of work that suits the mainstream music of today.

The No.1 website for viewing videos helped us analyze shots that we wanted to duplicate. Our inspirations came from music videos which we had viewed several times on YouTube and this even allowed us to embed these videos onto our blogs for research and planning. I would also say that thanks to this website, I could take screen shots of particular ideas once again to post onto this blog.

When we did decide on 3 final song choices as a team, we observed the original music video many times to gather a bubble of ideas where it would not duplicate the original idea. I remember myself watching the music video of our song choice Wiley - Never be your Woman (which I had never seen before) and my first viewing I watched all the action carefully whereas on my second viewing, I closed my ideas and interpreted my own version of camerawork and edits in my head.

All my execution of research were published onto Blogger where I could express my opinions and ideas that I wanted to achieve. In some cases, it did help me to come to a decision of song choice and to view all of my ideas as a whole on a screen and view how my work would look from the audience's point of view.

I used Blogger to upload all my work where my teachers could comment and  observe my strengths, weaknesses and my progress through my project. This was also an oppurtunity to view other people's work for rough ideas and for comparison.  

Since we did not arrange a meeting to take photos of our male artist's which would be used for our Digipak and ancillary products, Facebook was a big help to us as we individually had chosen which photos were effective from his profle pictures Album. As you could see, there was one photo which was popular amongst the group (as seen below). This access to our male artist's photos gave us a wide choice of different styles of photos and also experiment on how they would look on a dikipak using a particular programme.

To create my advertisement, I had mainly used Photoshop which is a programme specialised in Graphics and media products. Looking at the large photo of our artist above and the one below, you can see there is a difference between the lighting used. However, this photo was a duplicate of my front panel from my CD Digipak. I also used a combination of 3 different fonts to create my advertisement which I had also adjusted into different sizes.

Moreover, for the construction of my Digipak, using Photoshop again was easier as I have previously designed my own CD covers using a similar graphic design programme called Photoimpact. Experimenting with different tools allowed me to change the colour correction of a particular picutre using a tool that adjusts the colour variation to any of my choice e.g. less saturation makes the photo less bold. This programme also allowed me to move my objects freely into any place on the screen and experiment with over 20 different tools that could dramatically change either the focus or colour saturation of my digipak.

To edit my music video, Final Cut Pro was an excellent programme that allowed me to place all my clips into a box and even rename which I then would cut and transfer onto the timeline. Even the razor tool was a great way to cut this footage at a speciic second that you wanted. With this easy layout, it was a great way to put together my video and edit in a good style and on beat to the sound of the music.

I did experiment with particular effects such as Green Screen where we tried to have our female actress standing in the middle of the road and the cars around her ascending 100x faster than the footage. With this idea we had to film our actress in front of a large green sheet of card (remembering that she must wear inary colours to the sheet) and transfered this footage onto Final Cut Pro. Unfourtunately we did trial and error to complete this idea but we ddi not like the green glow line around our actress' figure which made it unprofessional. In order to overcome this idea, we had to come up with a different way we could attempt this strategy.

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Question 4: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 NOTE: I had many faults with uploading my voice over and interviews from the audience feedback so I typed out a translation of what was said:

I had interviewed 2 fellow media students who viewed my music video as the Green Screening and this is what they had to say;

Interviewer: 'So what did you like about our music video?'
Catherine: ' Well I liked the song choice, it was very good which probrably made the editing on beat easier for you. It was really classy aswell because as a female singer you stood there and sang powerful doing what girls do [giggles]. And improvements, I can't think of one off the top of my head but I think the video was great ! [laughs]

Interviewer: ' Is there anything you liked about the video?'

Estephanie: 'I think the way you portrayed the artist was well, the song choice and lip-syncing was really good too.

Interviewer: ' Do you think there was any downfalls ?'

Estephanie: ' Mmmm probrably there should of been more action especially for the song words.'

So what have I learnt from this audience feedback?

' I've learnt quite alot I'd say but not especially a bit chunk from the audience but all the feedback I'm guessing was posistive, stuff like "it was a great video, it looked really real and they could see it on MTV Hits" and things like that. They said they loved the concept of it. I got a lot of posistive feedback especially after the cinema screening which I did not record. Ermmm I wouldn't say I've learnt much from it but it's a thing where either the audience love it or they hate it, it's a simple thing! Well I also learnt that if you produce the good work, you get the good feedback and I produced good work and got back good feedback. I haven't had much negative feedback and I could see all the downfalls of the vieo while I watched it because I edited it. But I wouldn't say there was much wrong with it.' 

In summary, what have you learnt from the whole journey ?

'Okay so what have I learnt from this whole process? What can I say it's been a journey, I've enjoyed it, I've hated it, so many mixed emotions and so many ups and downs. It's been an adventure. Well wat I would say that from the beginning, it was a good group but there was always that one person who was lazy or did not turn up to meetings or even didn't turn up to shootings. And that would always degrade the group and increase the amount of work we had to do hence why in my blogs alot of our stuff and shootings were very late and a last minute thing. What I must say is that, when you're in a group of people, you need to learn to work together.
With my group, we were all friends, we weren't incredibly close btu we would only meet in during lessons when we actually needed to meet up out of lessons. I felt I was the only person who would have to call them up and say; "We need to meet at this place, we need to discuss and plan." No one really pulled their weight as much as me because I was the most motivated and this my grade where I didn't have time to mess about. A good thing about the group was that everyone did pitch in their own ideas
. Little ideas where I did put my trust in them and didn't feel I had to do it all by myself which I did feel like in the beginning and it all paid off. This had helped me realise that not only in school you're gonna find this, in any workplace you will have to work together as a team. I also learnt what it takes to make a music video, everything you need to do and even the actual stress you go through and after all this I actually WANT to make more videos. It had been fun and a great experience ! '