Storyboard Reflection

After completing the music video we looked through our storyboard again to compare the differences between our original plan and our actual music video.

In the end our video was nothing like our plan as we had no car scene nor a stage scene this was due to not having access to a car to film the car scenes and not being able to use the drama studio for the stage scene, so we couldn't use that.

Despite not shooting the autumn section in our intended location we were still able to shoot it in the forest at college, we also used more locations than we had planned.

We also had to replace all the outside dancers and group members with hope so we could film more effectively during lessons, and therefore film more things that we needed to film. 

Despite not following our plan i think our video turned out better than if we had followed our original plan.

Mercury Music Awards

I think James Blake is a Soulful artist.  I believe this because of the way the shadow hides half of his face and he looks like he is staring into the distance and is deep in thought. This gives him a mysterious look as well as the fact that he is wearing dark clothes. He has cool hair that looks like a birds nest. His nose has extra meaning because it is as if he is also frowning and thinking about soulful things. Because the image is set out side, and because it is set in autumn, James Blake has a hoboish aura, which makes it seem like he is getting his ideas from his outdoor surroundings. 

James Blake James Blake Lindisfarne

The characteristics of the video are based around a narrative with James Blake singing to the camera through part of it. This meets the needs of the record label because there a lots of close ups of the artist. This also has characteristics of the soulful genre because he is singing directly to the audience and shows he is speaking his mind. He is wistful.

James Blake was born in London in 1989. He specializes in electronic, soulful, dubstep. He studied popular music at Goldsmiths university in London with Katy B.

Blake debuted collaboration with Bon Iver called "Fall Creek Boys Choir" on BBC Radio 1 at 7:30pm GMT on 24 August 2011. His self-titled album, James Blake, reached number 9 in the UK album charts and number 1 in Belgium. 

VMA awards

Best Pop Video

Katy Perry – Last Friday Night

We choose Last Friday Night because it was our overall favourite of the five we watched, this was because the video had a central storyline which kept it interesting and provided a reason to keep watching. The lyrics closely matched the visuals for example, at the beginning of the video the lyrics describe waking up with a hangover not remembering much from the night before, which is shown through some photos that were posted online this is also voyeurism as it shows elements of the party before you see the full details. There is many close-ups of the artist to advertise the artist and her work, the video also contained a wii with just dance which helps advertise the game and also contained cameos of Rebecca Black and people from Glee which would help attract a wider audience.

The editing in the music video was quite fast paced continuity editing because it followed the story. It also switches between past and present, before and after the party. The titles at the start make it feel like a film or TV programme and advertise Katy Perry and her record label. In the video there is a lot of zoom and panning shots to show you lots of details of the props used etc. They use over the shoulder shots so that Katy Perry is always in the frame. When Katy Perry is dressed up to look like a nerd they film her with high angle shots to make her look inferior, whereas after her makeover they use lots of low angle shots to make her look superior, they also dress her in lots of very bright neon colours to make sure the viewers attention is always on her. The video is very colourful and bright which shows the liveliness of the pop genre, the dancing that is featured also helps this.

We both like this because it’s a new take on a Music Video, it makes it feel like a film and also it’s just funny. 

independant evaluation

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

All three of our media products use the forms and conventions of real media products, with the music video challenging the conventions in a few areas. For the ancillary products, we met the codes and conventions of real media media products pretty well in my opinion. We included images in both the magazine advert and the digipak which both have links with the music video. Although the images are from a seperate shoot from the music video, they both include the recurrent themes of leaves and Autumn in general as well as both having Hope, the main singer in our video, as the centre of focus for our audience. For both of the ancillary products, we included all of the relevant information such as record label, and the address for the artists website. For the magazine advert, we included a list of locations for a UK tour and included a track listing on the back of the digipak. On both of these products, we used bright colours that stand out so that they catch the audiences attention and makes them want to either buy our digipak, or see Autumn on tour. As previously mentioned, the main product challenged a few of the conventions of real music videos but generally conformed with them. The area where we didn't follow the codes and conventions was that we only had one singer in the group rather than all of the group singing which is common in most girl bands. Because we only had one person singing throughout, the focus was primarily on her, representing that she is the lead of the group. We met the conventions of the music video for the other parts, by including a dance routine which is a main feature in many pop songs featuring girl groups. We also met many of the features outlined in Goodwin's theory. We had a lot of close ups the artist singing which met the requirements of the record label. We also had links between the lyrics and the visuals, as part of our feedback states that Hope's body language was negative, in relation to the negative lyrics of the song. There was also a link between the audio and the visuals as the group were dancing along with the music with Hope also singing along to the song. We managed to include the feel of voyeurism in our music video by the way that the artist was singing directly to the camera, as if she was singing to the audience.




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

I think that the combination of our 3 products was very good, with all 3 linked because of a few recurrent themes. Because Hope is the main image of all of the products, our audience would be able to recognise that they are all from the same artist. On a smaller scale, the use of leaves in all three shows that they are all linked together. Although they are not as prominent as the other features, you can see that they are all from the same product range, rather than products from different albums or something. The use of leaves also has a link with the name of the artist 'Autumn' as they are a feature associated with that season, as are the colours of the leaves, being red, orange and brown. By using these bright colours, we felt that we would be able to attract our audience to our product. Also, because all this was done in Autumn, an were to be released at the same time, our audience would be able to link with the images because they would be experiencing the same things as it is based around the same season.




3.What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

A lot was learnt through the various stages of feedback. We recieved lots of positivity as well as some good pointers that we should improve for the final product. The main pieces of feedback we had was regarding the rough cut. Because we had trouble organising all of the people involved in the music video, we had to rethink our whole video and instead use a member of our group as the singer rather than someone who wasn't in our lesson. This allowed us to shoot footage during the lesson time rather than having to use our free time and have trouble getting everybody that we needed at the same time. Overall, the feedback helped a lot because it allowed us to refocus our attention and make significant changes to our work so that we could come up with the final product.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used a wide variety of technology when making our music video. We mainly used blogger to evaluate any research that we carried out as well as other computer programmes for the editing of our final product and ancillart products. We used photoshop to edit our magazine advert and digipak and to add all the features that we needed like the record label details and extra information for our bonus content and tour dates. Final Cut Express was a main piece of equipment that we need to use for our music video and our directors commentary. We also used it for getting screen grabs for our ancillary products. I think that we used the equipment to a high standard using a lot of the feautres available.

Director's Commentary Final

Hopes Evaluation

For our A2 media coursework we made a music video for a girl bands Pop song (The Saturdays). We filmed it with one girl singing with dance routine and back-up dancers.

Our music video uses forms and conventions of real media products. As it is a young female singer the conventions would be very similar to those of a girl band. We included lots of costume changes and scene changes; this meets the genre conventions of pop. The dance routine meets the conventions of young female pop artists. Take Beyonce or Lady Gaga for instance, they always have a dance routine in their music videos. Conventions were also met through the costume choices for the dance routine: the girls were wearing typically voyeuristic clothing which was quite tight and revealing.

We challenged the conventions through the costumes worn throughout the music video. Typically in female music videos the artists always wears voyeuristic clothing however throughout most of the video (other than the dance performance) she did not wear voyeuristic clothing.

The digipak meets the expected conventions in many ways including the positioning of the artist, on the front cover in the middle – this makes her the centre of attention and draws they eye immediately to her. The artists name is positioned directly under her in such a way that she appears to be sitting on it – this also makes her as a brand stand out to the audience because it is all so connected. We also included the DVD logo, a bar code, a website address, and a myspace address.

For our magazine Ad we also met all of the conventions. We included a close-up photo of the artist, the artists name, album name, tour dates, website address, itunes logo, star ratings from popular magazines, and a quote from a girl band saying ‘Album of the year’ to show that it is recognised within the music industry.

I think that the combination of the main product and the ancillary texts were very effective. From the name of the artist, to the scenes in the music video, and the designs of the ancillary texts (digipak and magazine ad) there was a clear theme used throughout. Nature. We did a couple of shots in the woods which were filled with leaves, because its Autumn (which was also the name we chose to give the artist). We chose to carry the theme of leaves throughout all of our products. For the digipak we used a photo of the artist sitting in a tree surrounded by leaves; on the back we put the songs, and extras all in three leafs.

Directors Commentary Script

We have decided that there are two ways for us to show our director's commentary. The first choice is to talk over the video, allowing us to reference to what is going on at that moment in time. The other choice is to film us talking about the project, with the media products we will be referencing, being shown on screen in a corner so that the audience will know what area we will be talking about. We think that the first option would be harder to do, as we would need to record a continuous clip to keep in time with the music video. There are also certain time constraints when we will be talking over the music video since it is only around 3 minutes long. Because of this, and because of the added features that can be included in the second option, we think it would be a better idea to use this as the basic format for our director's commentary.

Commentary Key
Ashley
Hope
Michael

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

challenged the conventions in terms of non-voyeuristic clothing during the verses and having a single singer rather than the whole girl group.
followed conventions by having a dance routine as well as multiple close-ups and various costumes changes.
for the magazine advert and the digipak we followed the conventions of a real set of ancillary products, by having a relating background image and a recurring theme throughout

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

talk about recurring theme of autumn and the leaf motif and having hope as the main feature
talk about inclusion of tour dates and bonus content for audience interaction
bright colours to attract attention

Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Rough cut - eye opening - Examples
Realised what was wrong
Final cut - largely positive and encouraging - Examples

Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research and planning and evaluation stages?

talk about HD cameras - how we used them - why
final cut - how - why
photoshop - how - why

Independant Evaluation

1. I think our music video challenged the conventions of real music products to some degree as our video ended up being almost like a vlog with the head and upper body framing that was used during the close-ups. Apart from this our video used the conventions of a girl group pop song despite our video only having the one artist. For our ancillary products we used bright colours that would be similar to the pop genre. We also included images of our artist which helped match the genre. During our research we analysed various videos of the pop group, The Saturdays, and had planned to use this as full inspiration, almost mimicking the styling of their videos. Although we didn't use the full styling, we did get the idea of running with the autumnal theme for one of their videos.

2. I believe that our video works well with our digipak and magazine advert because they have a very clear crossover theme of autumn with parts of the video being shot in a forest location. The forest theme was also used for our digipak as the photo we used for our wrap-around cover was shot in the same location as the video. The track listing and the bonus content on the back were placed in the outline of leaves as we thought this was a good motif to follow through with into our magazine ad. Along with this we placed the tour dates on a pile of leaves and then created the background to match this by making the background full of leaves in black and white. Using the leaf motif throughout our products allows them to work together really effectively as a promotional package. Due to the bright colours and simplicity of the design I believe it would be very efective at attracting the target audience.

3. Throughout the production of our product, we have had many stages of feedback which have allowed our products to progress and improve. The feedback we had received on our pitch was that we should use the same girls throughtout the video to prevent alienation and to have back-up locations as well. Our rough cut was put together quite hastily as we found we needed a complete overhaul of our plan as it was no longer feasible to do what we wished to do. Due to this feedback was more negative then we would've liked but we also received positive feedback on what we wanted to keep in. We took in the feedback when we reshot for our final cut. Due to this the final cut feedback was a lot more favourable and showed us what we had done well which was primarily good lip-syncing, the dance routine and good variation of shots and locations.

4. We used a variety of technologies during the whole production of our video. During the research and planning process we used blogger to demonstrate our whole thought process and to catalogue the reasearch we had done to garner inspiration. For the actual filming and editing of our video we used a HD camera, to make sure the raw video was of the highest possible quality. Final cut was also use to allow us semi-professional techniques to make our video as good as possible. For our ancillary products we used photoshop to create them and a stills camera to take the photos. Having access to all this technology allowed us full creative roaming and didn't limit our creativity in any way.

All in all I'm really happy with how our video and ancillary products came out. They could be improved with more time but in the time frame we had I believe we created the best video and ancillary products we could.