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Q1
In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge forms of real media products?
during the production and making of my music video I came across many different aspects that could be challenged or incorporated into my final piece. We researched different conventions of other music videos and researched facts, figures, and products that we could potentially take ideas from. When looking through this research we decided to look at certain aspects to make it easier for us to pick out key ideas and themes. These were:
Certain links between the visual context and the lyrics of the songs Direct links between the music and the visual context Conventions of the pop genre (special effects, Different gazes used within the music video (male / female gaze or other views) How the artist is portrayed to their target audience? Performance / Narrative / Concept based music videos
Throughout our research we found many examples of these concepts and saw a correlation of the same ideas in different pop music videos. From our research we ensured that we incorporated these into our video to ensure that the product we offer is of the same quality as established artists.
Q1
Certain links between the visual context and the lyrics of the songs
The video that we thought really highlighted the lyrics running parallel to the visual context was Pixie Lott Its all about tonight. We came across this video during our initial research of pop artists, which we recognised the pattern between certain shots and the lyrics.
Before the lyrics in the song even begin, we see shots of her that suggests she is going on a night out. Images such as her looking into the camera with heavy eye make up and the city mis en scene suggests a party lifestyle.
The song begins with I bought a new pair of shoes and the shot is of her walking in heels, her bare leg is showing to suggest that she is on an night out. This shot brings energy as the beat of the song matches up with her walk. Having a link between the audio and visual not only helps push the narrative forward but also enables the viewers to have a personal invitation into the video, by understanding exactly what the artist means. This is something that is used consistently throughout many pop videos, so it was something that I used within my pop music video; you will see the following examples
Certain links between the visual context and the lyrics of the songs After acknowledging the clear links between the audio and visual
context, I was adamant that I would fit the conventions of the pop genre, this is made clear within the first few shots. The lyrics of the song are But I gotta let it go and during the course of this line the images flick from the young girl walking alone, to them as a couple and then back to her being alone to symbolize her letting go. The blink effect used in the video gives the impression of her remembering what happened when they were together and ends when she is alone. The clothing she is wearing when with her boyfriend is different to that when she is alone which suggests that this was a different time.
Here is another example of where we linked the lyrics with the visual, the lyrics of the song were As your shadow crosses mine. We begun with a shadow in the right and using cross dissolve transitions used three shots to show it crossing over the artist
This I found really interesting as I gathered that it is not only important to express the meaning of the song but to also express the meaning of the artist, in doing so people will recognize songs with certain artists. There are contextual meanings behind each shot rather than just imaging lyrics, this really develops the narrative within the music video..
After looking at a number of videos we saw the regular use of the split screen effect. This is something that I really wanted to incorporate into our video as it had been done by many artists and can deepen the narrative for the audience. An example of a good use of split screen is in Destinys Child Emotions, where each split screen depicts his other life, as the narrative continues we then begin to see the destruction of each life in the different thirds of the screen. This use of split screen really shows the different points of view, which is what we wanted to show. However we incurred a problem during the editing of our film, out of all our group there was nobody who was familiar to Final Cut Pro, the editing software that enables us to have this effect, although my decision would have been to continue with final cut pro, where eventually we would have familiarize ourselves with the software, a group decision meant that we changed to iMovie 09, this software does not allow split screen but instead can only place a shot on to another shot, which ended up looking like a box in the corner of the screen. Due to lack of time we had to continue with iMovie 09 and instead of using this convention we challenged it and put a cross dissolve effect to obtain a close effect as split screen, we lengthened out the shots so that they overlap each other, giving a dream effect.
Going
Here we used similar shots however have also developed them by adding a reverse effect. By doing this we are interacting with the audience and giving them an insight to the actual song and the point of view of the person holding the camera. As there are only ever 2 characters in the music video we assume that it is her boyfriend filming, this gives the effect of a home video and a more personal touch compared to an ordinary acting shot. I think that we successfully managed to incorporate this into our video as it definitely gave the effect of a home video, and in doing so we made this more interactive and put across the boyfriends point of view.
We tried to include a lot of these effects as we only had the iMovie 09 software to use that limited our use of special effects. By including many of these I thought that it may look better even without the use of Final Cut Pro. Successfully we managed to include many cross dissolve effects by layering the transition onto the shot and lengthening the transition to make it last longer. We cross dissolved three continuous shots to make it seem as she is looking back on a bad memory, we then added an effect on the shot to further imprint the memory effect. You can see from the images that the transition rolls over 3 different shots, the lighting is dark to represent a dark time however I think that it could have been improved with better camera quality and lighting.
Different gazes and how they are represented to their target audience
There are many examples that show the different gazes, both the male gaze and the female gaze. The likes of Justin Bieber use the female gaze to his advantage and sell records. He knows his target audience is young women who adore him and therefore plays on this by making videos of him looking into the camera, holding eye contact with the person watching the video. Other Artists such as Rihanna use their body and image to sell records, the male and female gaze is used in many of Rihanna videos as Men want her and Women want to be her. She uses explicit scenes and dresses provocatively to catch the audiences attention. Here we tried to change her image compared to the rest of the video to make her seem more sexy. We wanted to attract the male gaze within the video as well as the digipak. I believe we achieved this as she is wearing little shorts and a small top which is similar to that of Rihanna. We used this particular convention of her videos, as Rihanna is a sex symbol and obviously works well.
How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts ?
I t seemed as though according to our research, that we had judged Rihannas intentions when creating this video, and rather creating something that is seen as sexually explicit and inappropriate she had touched on a much greater subject. We therefore decided that we wanted to continue with this aspect and include the themes that she wanted to target in the original
One of the big things for me, I always want to help young women and give them insight into life experiences
Something which could have been linked more effectively was the Single name and the album cover, many album covers mention the most popular single on the album and we could have put featuring the hit single We Found Love however we looked at a number of different pop album covers and found this not to be a convention of the pop genre and so therefore did not put this forward. By following the conventions of the pop genre we were making our product as successful as possible and ensured that we fit our genre.
We linked the competition entry to the album cover as we thought that this could potentially entice fans into buying the album. Something which we did however fail to mention was the freepost envelope, we also did not arrange other methods of entry as many people would ignore the ticket if it means sending it off. In todays generation with the online age many people prefer to enter competitions over the internet as they cannot incur charges and find it a lot less hassle doing this with the click of a button.
The red scenes are always during the performance based aspects of the video and this is to really highlight the link between our main product and our ancillary texts.
Red is a very seductive colour and is normally associated with lust and fire, its important to understand this when we consider the idea of increasing the age of Jayme-Lees target audience. We wanted to link this adult and seductive look with the branding of her album and album cover, we included red and dark colours throughout the music video and then further onto the digipak. It gives the idea of a more adult feel and pushes it away from the younger target audience. We tried to include dark scenes during the down times within the relationship however the colour scheme did not always match because certain things were not red. E.g. Pink dressing gown. This link could have been initiated within the music video a bit more to really link the two.
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2)
-Make the bath scene longer - Improve the lip syncing -Try and delete repetitive shots - Shot where she is banging on the door needs to be one shot as you can see the difference in lighting.
Our target audience suggested that the first image that we thought of would not be suitable as this does not suit the black, white and red theme and they said although it is a good picture because the lighting is good that we should reconsider our album cover. We then sat and took more pictures with a basic background. We then edited the lips so that it does fit the colour scheme, and we then chose image number 2 as out final picture.
From our pre production research we were confident of our choice of genre and decided that during the production of our video we were going to include different lighting and colours to appeal to our target audience.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Blogger
Throughout the process of our final A Level year we used a blog to track and keep up to date with work. In our previous year we simply printed out our research on A4 pages, very few pieces of research were done and compared to this year I found it quite daunting. When the year began it was hard to grasp the layout and format of the blog, which is why not many posts were posted in the early stages of the year. However as the year went on I got the hang of it and ended up using embed codes, html formats and different layouts to depict the format that I wanted. The best thing that i found with the blogger was -Interaction with people that are not bias towards you -Have access to other peoples pages all over the world - My blog has so far had audiences from all over the world from Russia to the United States Having a blog makes life a lot simpler as it allows all our research and planning and evaluation stages to all be complete at one place. On the blog you can label everything which groups it together and makes it a lot easier to view and navigate around. The layout of your blog can be adapted according to the look that you want to go for. I used the blog to not only put my research on but to also embed YouTube videos that allowed my whole group to access, this interactivity is what helped me with lots of different and varied posts.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Number of page views I currently have on my blog, shows my interaction and the interest of other people.
This is the video bar that shows recent and popular YouTube videos.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Here is an embedded YouTube video, the video is of Michael Weschs Web 2.0
I have also used an online presentation software prezzi.com to create my presentation for web 2.0, I think this is a great way to show Web 2.0, the interaction with this website is all because of Web 2.0. I also embedded a YouTube video into the presentation which further imprints the idea of interaction within websites. Using the website helped me create presentations online, it makes it a lot easier and already has set formats. The disadvantage to this website is that it makes you develop a full and detailed presentation, for one that is simple it is near impossible to use. You are unable to embed the presentation without completing all the stages. This makes it very time consuming, and unable to use if you only have a simple presentation. I was however impressed on the level of interaction compared to Microsoft presentation software, it enabled me to upload a YouTube video which enhanced the interaction even more.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During our research we used YouTube to look at a variety of different music videos that helped us to decide on a certain genre. Once we had begun the construction of our video we looked at the original and thought what we could do differently. YouTube statistics allowed us to conduct secondary research about the target audience of the original Rihanna video. The statistics showed that
At the beginning of the year I did not know the extent tha YouTube could do., the statistics channel of each YouTube video enable the viewer to see the amount of views and the whereabouts of this view, this was used during the production as this is something that we used t challenge the conventions of Jayme-Lees image. We used YouTube statistics to back up our idea of pushing Jayme-Lees image away from the younger generation. YouTube also helped during our initial research as it linked similar videos with others, which gave us a much wider range to look at and potentially use.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Another technology that I used throughout the development of our Digipak was an app called Instagram. Instagram is an app that edits photos by clicking a button. It gives you different effects that you can wash the photo with, you can crop, flip, rotate or edit the contrast and saturation. Instagram is similar to twitter however rather than tweeting you upload pictures and can follow people all over the world, the more likes you get on your photos the more popular you profile will be. Instagram encourages a citizen photographer nowadays you do not have to own an amazing camera to take amazing photos, an iphone camera and a good app will give you some of the highest quality pictures.
This picture was edited using Instagram, many of the pictures in our digipak were edited using Instagram
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the development and the production of my music video we used the software iMovie 09 rather than final cut pro as my group found this a lot easier to use. The downfall to this software was the limited effects that we could use and I personally would have preferred to have edited on Final Cut Pro as it ended up being me that edited anyway. This is an example of iMovie 09, we used this software to include effects such as cross dissolve and added transitions to create a blink effect. This is shown when she is walking on her own and the effect is used to show her moving further away from the camera
Sony Bloggie
We also used a digital camera and video camera to put together all our shots, the sony bloggie I will list the advantages and disadvantages to the camera that we used Advantages -Lightweight and therefore is portable, and easy when travelling to different locations -Uncomplicated and easy to use even without reading the manual, this is good as I am not very literate with manuals. -Negatives - Image quality was quite poor and was quite blurry at times -The lightweight camera did not give it stability and therefore maintaining a still shot was quite difficult
Even though we changed the settings to the highest quality and 24 optical zoom we still found the images grainy and unclear, in certain lights the camera would not function and we found this quite difficult to work with.
All in all my media experience was a good one, I learnt so much about new and different ways to publish texts, I learnt about how to embed codes using html which was something very alien to me at first. Regarding the filming, we learnt how to stabilize an image and understood which lighting is best to use. If I could change certain aspects of my production then it would be Edit on Final Cut Pro to include effects that make the video look more professional Re film certain scenes Put me behind the camera rather than in front