Music Video Evaluation

Evaluation

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

During our research and planning process we had a look at various professional music videos that belong to our genre. We analysed ‘inside my love’ by delilah. Throughout this video we see a relationship between the lyrics and visuals. An example of this is when we hear ‘two strangers just meeting, barely touching eachother’ and we see two people on the screen slowly making their way towards eachother. We also see examples of close ups of the artists face and long shots of the male character and the artist dancing together. Another music video we analysed was ‘born to die’ by Lana del rey.  We see a relationship between the lyrics and visuals and the music and visuals during this video. An illustration of this is when the musics tempo speeds up so do the visuals. The lyrics of this song are parallel to the images in the video. An example of this is when we hear ‘lets go get high’ and we see the artist smoking marajuana.  For the duration of the narrative scenes in this video, we see the use of a dark colour palette, these scenes are all set at night time and sometimes inside a car creating a dark atmosphere right the way through. The artist in the video shows she is fashionable and is dressed in stylish clothing in both the narrative and concept scenes of the video. Direct address is also used a lot, but only in the concept scenes, this is where the artist sings directly in to the camera. All these conventions conform to the codes and conventions of alternative pop as well as Goodwin’s theory. This also illustrates that both music videos have similarities in terms of their genre conventions.

Throughout the production of our music video we decided to conform to these codes and conventions. We thought that conforming instead of challenging them would make it more clear to the audience what genre our video belongs to and to make our video engaging to our target audience. During the editing stage of our video we used slow motion editing, an example of this is at the beginning where the female character pushes past the male character which we slowed down to show its the end of the scene, we continued with this pattern throughout. Another example of editing which we used a lot in our video were jumpcuts, you also see many examples of jumpcuts in our genre of music. An example of a jump cut we used at the beginning of our video is where it quickly jumps from 3 different shots of the artist, we did this so each jump would be in time with the beat of the music. During the filming stage of our video we used many close ups throughout, an illustration of this is during the forest scene with the artist, there is a jumpcut from a medium shot to a close up of the artists face whilst she is singing. We used a dark colour palette during one of the last scenes of our music video, this is where we see the female character and male character cross eachothers path in the street at night. This is how we conformed to all the codes and conventions of the alternative pop genre.

 

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 

 

When thinking about creating a magazine advert and digipak we NEEDED to think how we could relate it to our media product... So that our Target audience could see a connection between our promotional package and our final music product! We looked at professional promotional packages like Rihanna's album 'Talk That Talk' to get a realistic idea of how to attract our target audience. And magazine adverts from the famous pop icons Jessie J and Delilah, this was really helpful because we could see how our specific genre illustrated their work and information creatively. After analysing professional texts we came up with an idea... We decided to use the main 'artist' of our media product, Mimi, to be the main object or focus  of our ancillary texts. As our music product has a urban and current feel to it we decided to take photographs of our street scene to portray Mimi's urban look. We thought this would make our ancillary texts far more effective and stand out to consumers as they could see the link between the music product and promotional package.

We started with the magazine advert and after analysing professional work we had an idea on how we wanted to edit the image. Working with the video theme as well as appealing to our target audience. As you can see from our final magazine advert cover that we used Photoshop to emphasise the lip colour so the audience's eyes were drawn to that particular part of her face.We also made Mimi another layer in her image to give off a 3D effect and we then used filter gallery to give the background an edgy/urban look. We wanted the digipak to have the same pattern and link to the media product and magazine advert. We did this again by manipulating the image of Mimi, for example, we used the burn tool on Photoshop to enhance the darkness of her mascara and deep coloured eyes. Again, we used filter gallery on each cover of the digipak to make the background have a edgy look to it.Our media product and ancillary texts have a significant connection which illustrates effectiveness and a key pattern.

Overall, we believe that each element has a connection and individually would be recognised as the same promotional package. Consumers would be able to relate to each product highlighting that we have used a continuous pattern and theme throughout the production of our ancillary texts and our overall music product.

3.       What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Throughout the production of our music video we gained a lot of audience feedback from our peers and our teacher. We needed this feedback in order to gain constructive criticism so that we could improve and make amendments to our work, and also to gain positive feedback to understand what we have done well. We created a pitch presentation to show our peers our initial ideas for our music video, including examples of the codes and conventions of our genre, our ideas for locations and characters and the type of music video we aim to produce. We then gained constructive criticism in order to improve our ideas and change certain things which would make our video more productive. One of the main things we needed to focus on after gaining the criticism was whether or not our type of video was going to be concept based or narrative based. This helped us greatly as we then realised this was a big part in the production of our music video as we could not create a story board if we were not sure what type of music video we were going to produce. We also found out from our criticism that we needed to decide who exactly was going to cast in our music video. This was very important for the productivity of our music video as we needed to make sure that our cast were available when we were so that we did not fall behind in the filming part of the production. As well as constructive feedback, we also gained positive feedback from our audience. It was clear to the audience that we had a great understanding of the codes and conventions of our chosen genre of alternative pop, which was good so that we could choose to conform or challenge these conventions in our own music video. After the filming process was finished, we then moved on to the editing stage of the production where we then created a one minute rough cut of our music video. We then gained constructive and positive feedback from our peers which helped us a lot as we still had time to make any changes if we needed to in order to make sure our video was at the highest level it could be. One of the constructive criticisms we gained was that the lighting in the kitchen scene was a little too dark. This was good for us to know as it then gave us an opportunity to adjust it using colour correction on final cut before producing the final product. The audience also commented on the lip sync at the beginning of the video, saying that it could be slightly clearer. Taking this comment on board we then went back to our editing stage and as a group decided to use different footage that worked better in terms of lip syncing. We also gained a lot of positive feedback from our audience, and they especially liked the way in which we used slow motion editing throughout the music video, showing a pattern. This was one of our aims as slow motion editing is used in many alternative pop music videos, and so we wanted to make it clear that we conformed to this convention. We also gained many positive comments about the mise en scene in our video, as the audience thought it was very effective and helped show the genre of the music as we used stylish clothing, urban locations and bold, unique make up. Our teacher also provided us with both positive and constructive feedback throughout the whole process, which was extremely useful to us as we could change and adjust things in our music video in order to make it as good as we could.

4.       How did you use media technolgies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages we used many different media technologies. For the planning and research stages we used the internet in order to research into our chosen genre of alternative pop. Youtube was a very useful website in which we used so that we could look at other music videos within our genre so that we could distinguish the certain codes and conventions used throughout the videos, so that we could either chose to challenge or conform them in our own production. In order to conduct our research and planning we used two different computers; Apple MAC and a DELL PC. We found that the apple macs were faster than the DELL PC’s, and had a few more facillities such as Final Cut and Garage Band. We used broadband internet in order to use the internet to gain information. During the construction stage of the production, as a group we used many different media technologies, ranging from a camera to FinalCut. In order to film our music video, we used a video camera and a tripod. We needed a tripod in order to make sure our shots were still and not wobbling, which gave our video a much more professional look to it. We also had to take still pictures throughout the construction stage to show the locations where we filmed, and pictures for our magazine advert and digipaks. We made sure we took lots of photos so that we had a wide variety of photographs that we could use for our ancillary task. As a group we felt very confident using the equiptment as we had had previous experience using it whilst filming for our thriller at AS level, and also as we conducted test shots using the camera before we filmed our final music video. After we had finished filming, we then moved onto the editing stage where we used Final Cut in order to produce our music video. This allowed us to add many effects, such as slow motion, speeding the shot up, colour correcting and adding credits. This was very important to our video so that we could make it eye catching and interesting for the audience, and also so that we could conform to certain conventions of alternative pop music videos, such as the slow motion editing.  We also had to import our music onto Final Cut so that we could match the lip sync to the lyrics of the song.  After we had completed the construction of our music video, we moved on to the ancillary task. During this stage we had to analyse magazine adverts and digipaks from our chosen genre. In order to do this we had to use the internet to find examples, and then we anaylsed them on blogger. We had to do this so that we had ideas on how to make our own magazine advert and digipak. We then created a practice magazine advert using photoshop. As we had not used Photoshop before we did not feel 100% confident, and this is why we had to create practices before we made the final one. We used many tools such as the polygon lasso tool in order to draw around the artist in the photo so that we could manipulate the background using the filter gallery. After we had edited the photograph, we then added the text needed on a magazine advert, for example the artists name, album name and when the album is released. We then created our practice digipak, again using photoshop. We had to create three separate sides of the digipak, so that we had a front cover, middle and a back cover. We wanted our digi pak and magazine advert to have a similarity, so we used the filter gallery again to edit the background, and keep the artist clear in the foreground so that she would stand out. We did the same for the other pieces of the digipak, creating a pattern throughout by using the same kind of background. We then added elements such as a track list, a barcode, and the company logo to make it look like a real digipak. After creating the practices, we felt a lot more confident in using the technology, so we went on to creating the final magazine advert and final digipak.

Final Magazine Advert

Final DigiPak

Practice Digi Pak

Before creating our final digi pak for our music video project we created a practice digi pak in order to get ideas for what we wanted on our final digi pak. We needed to create 3 different sides; the front, middle and back cover. We decided on three different photos in which we thought related to our genre of alternative pop and our chosen song. We wanted the front cover of the digipak to be simple and eye catching, so we used a simple photo of the artist standing against a wall which is also featured in our video. We then used the polygon lasso tool in order to draw around the artist to make her different and stand out from the rest of the photo. We then used the filter gallery to change the background of the digipak and give it a unique effect. We then added text and chose a colour and font which would stand out. For the middle of our digipak we used a different photo of the artist and did the same thing to it as the front cover, but using a different effect. We then cut a circle out of the background in order to make it look like a disc. For the back cover of the digipak  we used a picture where you can clearly see the artist and the background. We did the same thing to the back cover in order to create a pattern. After we added the effects we wanted, we inserted vital features such as a track list, logo, website and barcode. 

Practice Magazine Advert

In order to create our practice magazine advert we used Photoshop. We chose a picture which we took whilst filming our music video that we thought would stand out as a magazine advert, and is also similar to other alternative pop magazine adverts which we analysed for example, Delilah and Jessie J. We then used the dodge tool and the burn tool in order to highlight features such as her eyes, mouth and earrings. We wanted her lips to stand out in the photo, so we made these a brighter colour and defined them. We also then used the dodge tool in order to eliminate blemishes on the photograph. We had an idea to create a diamond shape around the artist to make her stand out, which also links to her earrings. We did this by using the polygon lasso tool to draw around the artist and create the diamond shape. Once we had done this we then used the filter gallery to make the background different to the artist herself and the diamond shape. We tested out several filters but decided on one that works with the rest of the photo. The final part of our practice magazine advert was adding the text. Firstly we added the artists name in big writing at the top of the magazine to make it stand out. Underneath that we added the album name, and then details about when the album is released etc. By creating a practice magazine advert it gave us confidence to create our final magazine advert.

Key Elements of a Digi Pak

TEXT

Name of the band/ artist:

The name of the artist is clearly displayed on the CD. On the front cover 'R' is emphasised highlighting the artist Rihanna. The rest of the digipak does not display her name however, there are bold images of the artists highlighting the fact that the consumers buying the album should know who she is anyway.

Name of the album:

The name of the album is shown on the bottom on the front cover in black font, even though it is not the main feature of the front cover it still stands out. On the disc itself the name of the album is very eye grabbing and is very clear to the consumer. Inside the digipak the name of the album is also shown cleary and the continuous theme of the name of the album being the title of a newspaper attracts the audience more.

Track listing:

The track list is shown on the back of the album in red which stands out as the main colour theme of the digipak is black and white. However, it is in a small size font but this has been comprimised by the red colour font.

Bonus Material:

The bonus material is included with the track listing highlighting the featuring tracks.

Recording information, producer, where it was recorded and when.

Who wrote the songs:

The recording information is shown on the disc itself in a newspaper format including who the executive producer is and co-executive producer etc. Although it is not clear from the image the disc also includes information about the album, following who wrote the songs and where it was recorded.

PICTORIAL

Pictures of the band/ artist:

Images of the artist 'Rihanna' are shown in all parts of the digipak and they each show a powerful image showing the style of the artist for example her being a fashion icon. What's more, the images show off Rihanna's sexual appeal which links to her style of music and independant personality.

Logo:

The logo of Rihanna's record label is shown on the back cover of the album in a small image and shown on the disc its self. However, it is not shown on the unfolds, they are simply the image of the artist.

Barcode:

The barcode is shown on the back cover of the album where you would normally find a barcode label.

DESIGN

Colour and style to fit:

The colour theme of the digipak is simply black and white with some of the text shown in red which allows the important information e.g. the tracking list to stand out. There is a continuous theme of a newspaper article which is used on the digipak the album name being the article title and Rihanna herself being the main feature of the article. This is a great idea to grab the audiences attention and for consumers to purchased the album.

Artists genre:

The images of Rihanna emphasise her individuality and show her sexual appeal which are key codes and conventions of the genre pop.

Unfolds:

The unfolds display Rihanna herself, being the main factor of the digipak it highlights that the album is all about her as there is no other images or texts.