Evaluation - Advanced Portfolio

Fatima Adam


Evaluation
Erica Shine - I Will Wait For You

For our project we decided to produce a music video. There was three of us who worked on this project, I worked alongside Grace Rewaj and Elizabeth Ann Robinson. We managed to split the work evenly between us so that each of us could participate in every part of the project. Therefore I contributed to all areas of the project which was the filming, the editing which was mostly done by Elizabeth as she was unavailable for the filming days however we did do a fair share amount of work in this, I also took the pictures for the ancillary task, and worked alongside Grace Rewaj to make the 4 sided Album cover whilst Elizabeth Ann Robinson made the magazine cover. Our target audience was from 15-25yrs olds who would watch this music video, however we do feel that it the video would be watched by an older group over 25yrs. This product would appeal to them because it is modern and it is based on a female singer songwriter, who is singing about how someone within that age range might feel.

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

The genre for our music video is female singer/songwriter, our main aim was to focus on the her throughout the video to introduce the audience to the new artist. It was vital to use the typical elements for this genre in order to call her a female singer/songwriter and also not to loose our objective."Genre is created through repetition and recognition leading to anticipation and expectation." (G.Burton 2000) For our video we used different locations, we had the park/woods scene where we used the snow to our advantage to add effect to the video, we had the flashbacks of the images of the couple and flashbacks of videos of the couple, the different weathers shows that it was throughout a period of time which is what the song is about, and finally we had a photo frame scene which the artist sang through, this was a very unique idea as it is rarely used in other videos. We wanted to test the typical elements without changing the whole purpose of the video, at first we felt that the frame may not work, but gradually as the editing was completed we agreed that the photo frame fit in well with the rest of the video. "Unexpected and the familiar" (G.Burton) which is exactly what we did with the typical locations such as the park and the woods, but added our own twist to it with the photo frame and the flashbacks I think our innovations were likely to prove successful as it is still familiar enough, as not to frighten the audience away but different enough to offer the audience something new. overall the feedback we got from our audience was mainly positive, which shows that our music video worked well as a whole. Andrew Goodwin a media theorist has identified a number of key features in a music video they are:
- A relationship between the lyrics and visuals,
- A relationship between the music and visuals,
- Genre related style and iconography present,
- Multiple close ups of main artist or vocalist.
Furthermore I believe that our music video meets all the key features as it is a well established Music video.

Here are a couple of inspirational videos and images from existing female artists;

Leona Lewis
Taylor Swift
Pixie Lott

 They're all the main focus of their album.

Alesha Dixon - To Love Again

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

Our brand image is simple yet fresh and elegant which is a great way of describing our artist. The logo we decided to use was our artists name 'Erica Shine' we used the renaissance font which is very stylish. We kept it simple because we felt that after taking a risk with the photo frame, for our ancillary task we would use our artist as the main focus to introduce her to the audience, so for our album cover and magazine adverts we used images of her throughout instead of other distractions. We have maintained a brand image across the product firstly for our album cover we edited and used a spotlight on our artist to make her the main focus and everything else around her dull which foreshadows the meaning of the song as it is about waiting for that special person. For the back cover we used black and a peach colour which shows a bit of happiness and sadness in one we also had a hand clock put on the back of the cover, the connotations for this was 'I will wait for you' which is the name of the song. For our magazine cover we used the opposite we decided to keep that bright and simple. We took many pictures which we then dedicated a whole page in the album to Erica Shine.

This is our brand image...

The kind of media institution that may distribute our media product could be any of 'the big four' they are the big music companies around the world. I think the kind that may distribute ours would be EMI. The EMI Group (Electric & Musical Industries Ltd.) is a British music company. It is the fourth-largest business group, making it one of the "big four" record companies. Branding is a very powerful component for a company. The brand must have a logo to make branding easier and more possible. The consumers decide if they will buy a product or use a service based on how they view the brand. The brand itself tells us or let us imagine how good or bad the product is. All that brand promotion and advertising really do tell us how great a brand can be. Once a customer likes your brand they will definitely come back for repeated services or products.

We got feedback from our audience on our brand image:

Can you sum up the brand image of this album in one word?
•Elegant
•Stylish
•Graceful

Do you think the album cover fits in with the brand image of the video?
•Yes
•Yes
•No

Media Powerpoint

View more presentations from fatima.

I used Slideshare to present my ancillary task i think this is a great way to present the images of the album cover and the magazine cover.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our main audience is ages from 15-25. This is because the artist is a female singer/songwriter who is also young. Furthermore young people listen to music the most of there time downloading or buying songs.UK Music is pleased to present the results of its annual academic survey investigating the music consumption behaviour and experience of young people aged 15-25. Carried out in spring 2009 by the University Of Hertfordshire, the online survey was completed by more than 1,800 young people throughout the UK. Statistics have shown "Music remains the most valued form of entertainment" - Evidence of the value of TSL

"Ownership of music is hugely important" - Evidence of the value of downloaded music
"61% said they download music using P2P networks or torrent trackers" - Evidence that young people don't want to pay for music.
Our secondary audience may be people from the ages of 26- 30 yrs.

This is the feedback we got back on our music video and ancillary task from people aged 15-25:

Music Video Feedback

Do you think the product is typical of a music video?
• Yes
• Yes
• No
• Yes
• Yes

Does anything make it different or does it stand out from the typical? How?
• It stands out from the typical because of the photo frame.
• It is different because the snow effect and photo frame is very rare
• The pace is typical and it works well with the song, but the photo frame isn’t it stands out than the rest
• The snow effect makes it different
• The photo frame makes it different because it isn’t common to find that in music videos.

Does it work?
• Yes because it tells a story within the video.
• Yes
• Yes
• Yes
• No.

Name two interesting elements from the video?
• The flashbacks, the snow effect
• Flashbacks, Frame
• Frame, Location
• Flashbacks, Location
• Flashbacks, Location

Do you think the video fits well with the song?
• Yes
• Yes
• No
• Yes
• Yes

Do you think the pace of the video is typical of this kind of product?
• Yes. Because it is a slow song the slow pace works well with it
• I think the pace of the video is typical of this kind of product as they are both slow
• I think the pace of the video could have been a bit quicker however I do feel that everything else in the video fit well together
• Because the song is slow the pace of the video works well with it
• Yes the pace works well together

How do you think the video can be improved?
•I think it all fits well and no improvement is needed
•More scene variation
•Overall I think it was a great product
•Overall it worked well together
•Less of the frame scene

Ancillary Task Feedback

Do you think the product are typical of magazines and album covers/if so in what ways is it similar?
•Yes because it is simple like the artist
•Yes because the content is the same as what you would get on a normal album or magazine
•It is typical

Does anything make it different or does it stand out from the typical?How?
•Yes. The font is very elegant
•The colour scheme is not typical according to the artist in this video as the front cover is dark
•Yes.The front cover shows that the artist is the main focus

Does it work?
Yes
Yes
Yes

Name two interesting elements from the ancillary tasks?
•The colour scheme and font
•The pictures and font
•The layout and Pictures

Could this product be stronger? If so how?
•Yes. More colour
•No
•No

Can you sum up the brand image of this album in one word?
•Elegant
•Stylish
•Graceful

Do you think the album cover fits in with the brand image of the video?
•Yes
•Yes
•No

Would you be tempted to buy this album?
•Yes
•Yes
•Yes

90% said that they would be tempted to buy the album
10% said they wouldn't the statistics show that many people would want to buy the album.









To gather our information from our target audience we gave out questionnaires. We used blogger to display our feedback and other research. And we used Microsoft Excel to present our information.

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

For our planning we sketched out our storyboard from this we then used a video camera to film it and Imovie to create an animatic storyboard, after that we uploaded it onto our blog. We each drew our own album covers and magazine covers for our ancillary task and put our best ideas forward onto our final product. We also put our song 'I Will Wait For You' on our blog by using Imovie. We also planned out a schedule for when we would start filming outside of college time which we did on the 3rd of January 2010 and 20th January 2010.

Research

For our research we used the Internet and additional sources such as books to gather information on music videos, we researched about branding and other existing artists which we were inspired by, we also researched on genres, institution, our target audience which would best suit this product, camera angles, cinematography, narrative etc

Construction

Firstly we began by filming, for this we used a video camera, a tripod, batteries, a tape, and a stills camera to take the pictures for the flashbacks. I took still pictures of the flashbacks, and a clip of the artist and the male which was used in our video also as a flashback. On the 3rd of January 2010 we did more filming, I filmed our artist (Grace Rewaj) as Erica Shine for three hours constant in the snow which we used to our advantage, we filmed most of it in the park and the woods. We then had another day which was the 20th of January 2010 which we filmed in college, this is when we did the photo frame scene and took more pictures of our artist for our ancillary task. We used a apple mac computer which I was familiar with because I had used it for my AS coursework therefore I was familiar with the features on it, the softwares I was not so familiar with were final cut express, Indesign, and Photoshop however as began using them i began knowing how to cut between scenes in final cut express how to use colour grade and add transitions in between each scene in order to make it flow, I also learnt how to link the music with the clips at the correct times. With final cut express it was very challenging and at times I felt that as i was editing it I made a couple of mistakes but as I started using it continually i got used to it and was able to edit it without making any mistakes. Overall i enjoyed using final cut express as it was a challenge and it was something new that turned out to make our video quite appealing. With Photoshop and Indesign as I played around with it using the different effects I became more confident in them both. We chose our music from a copyright website where music was free to download and use. We also got our font from a website because we wanted it to look different and unique (http://www.dafont.com/). Overall blogger was very useful as we were able to put all the information that we gathered onto here so it was easy to visualise.

These are a couple of the shots from the music video:

   

     

  This is an image that was used in the video of the couple. (Flashback)

These are the technologies that were used to film and edit our media project with:

Apple Mac Computer

Tripod

Stills Camera

Camcorder

There wer many advantages and disadvantages to using the technologies and softwares:
Advantages
- Very easy to handle
- We were able to take it to many locations
- Long last on battery life


Disadvantages
- Tripod wasn't very effective
- Final cut express was difficult to use at first
- Photoshop was also a little difficult to use at first



and these are the softwares we used to produce the whole music video along with the album cover and magazine cover:

This is Final Cut Express we used this software to edit and complete our music video.

We used Photoshop to make any adjustments to the magazine and album cover.

And Finally we used inDesign to create the magazine and album cover.











Conclusion

In conclusion I feel that our product turned out well, we were able to edit it well and get the music to flow with the video along with the ancillary task, which we were able to achieve what we wanted by making the artist the protagonist, however even though there were a couple of downs with the final cut express we got used to it and in the end we were able to pull it all together. Overall I feel that my fair contributions in everything has made me confident in this area as I was able to gain skills and improve on them.