In my group I worked alongside Fatima Adam and Elizabeth Ann Robinson. Our project was to make a music video to the song, ‘I Will Wait for You’ by a female solo singer named Erica Shine. Myself and Fatima did all of the filming for the outdoor scenes in our video, whilst Elizabeth did the vast majority of the editing as she couldn’t make it to the filming shoots. For our ancillary tasks, Fatima and I worked solely on the album cover, back page, and middle pages; whilst Elizabeth worked on our magazine advertisement for the album.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The Genre of our music video and ancillary tasks is a female solo pop artist, trying to portray to the audience a ‘clean-cut’ image, in which the artist appears young, fresh, sweet and innocent. This is a typical convention for this type of genre, and we haven’t challenged the common aspects used in this respect, as we have also intended to create this image, as it was the look that we wanted to push to the audience for our artist. We have used lots of different shots in our video to establish our artist, and our costume for our artist helps to put across the right image. This is all part of our mise on scene, and the fact that there is snowy scenery helps to create the ‘fresh’ and ‘clean’ look. Here are some of our shots of the artist:
This is a close up shot. As you an see, we
have used mise en scene to our advantage
and our artist does not wear over-powering
make-up for the video, and wearing a
Extreme long shot
Over the shoulder shot/POV
Medium shot.
All of these different shots do not really challenge the forms and conventions of real media products, however, our video consisted of two different locations, and our other location was quite creative. I was quite skeptical about this to begin with as it was an idea to have my face, as the artist, singing through a photo frame, and I thought it may have been too random for our piece, which has quite a mellow, sad feeling to it. However, when the video came together I feel it fitted in really well as in our video; we fitted in some flashbacks of the past relationship the artist is singing about, and these photographic flashbacks linked into the photo frame idea. This made our video more interesting and one persons comment within our target audience of 15-25 year olds, said it was very creative and worked really well. This type of shot also helps our video in challenging the typical conventions of a music video. Here is a still shot of one of the flashbacks and of the photo frame idea that links to it:
The photo frame idea
The Genre of our music video and ancillary tasks is a female solo pop artist, trying to portray to the audience a ‘clean-cut’ image, in which the artist appears young, fresh, sweet and innocent. This is a typical convention for this type of genre, and we haven’t challenged the common aspects used in this respect, as we have also intended to create this image, as it was the look that we wanted to push to the audience for our artist. We have used lots of different shots in our video to establish our artist, and our costume for our artist helps to put across the right image. This is all part of our mise on scene, and the fact that there is snowy scenery helps to create the ‘fresh’ and ‘clean’ look. Here are some of our shots of the artist:
This is a close up shot. As you an see, wehave used mise en scene to our advantage
and our artist does not wear over-powering
make-up for the video, and wearing a
flowery scarf helps to put across the ‘innocent’ and quite ‘girly’ image that artists such as Taylor Swift often portray within the music industry. We have also used shots such as long and medium shots too to show our artist as music videos tend not to stick to the same shots all the time so that the audience doesn’t get bored. Here are some other shots we have used:
Extreme long shot
Over the shoulder shot/POV
Medium shot.
All of these different shots do not really challenge the forms and conventions of real media products, however, our video consisted of two different locations, and our other location was quite creative. I was quite skeptical about this to begin with as it was an idea to have my face, as the artist, singing through a photo frame, and I thought it may have been too random for our piece, which has quite a mellow, sad feeling to it. However, when the video came together I feel it fitted in really well as in our video; we fitted in some flashbacks of the past relationship the artist is singing about, and these photographic flashbacks linked into the photo frame idea. This made our video more interesting and one persons comment within our target audience of 15-25 year olds, said it was very creative and worked really well. This type of shot also helps our video in challenging the typical conventions of a music video. Here is a still shot of one of the flashbacks and of the photo frame idea that links to it:
Flash back of happier times.
The photo frame ideaBy including shots such as these, we are aiming at keeping the audience interested in the video and, offering them something different from what they would normally be used to watching.
In my research I mentioned Taylor Swift's song 'White Horse'. The link below enables you to watch this video to see how we have incorporated this style into our video, but with our own unique twist to make our product challenge the conventions of a real music product.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Xr-JFLxik
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I feel we have stuck to the genre well, whilst adding our own twist to it with the close up of the artist in the photo frame. Our ancillary tasks, I feel worked really well and established our creativity and design to express our brand image. From our audience feedback, you can see that our audience thought that our front cover was simple, yet effective, which is what we was hoping to achieve. The use of the spotlight, in which I moved around and changed the size of etc, was used to focus on our artist, and I put an effect on the edges to make them appear gradually darker and darker in order to make the colours worn by the artist stand out more. Below is one of Taylor Swifts some album covers. Taylor Swifts brand image is very similar to one in which we were trying to establish in our work. This album cover is like ours in many ways, as the hair of the artist is quite flowing and we also have a clear shot of the young, female artist.
Here is a shot of our album cover:
In my research I mentioned Taylor Swift's song 'White Horse'. The link below enables you to watch this video to see how we have incorporated this style into our video, but with our own unique twist to make our product challenge the conventions of a real music product.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Xr-JFLxik
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I feel we have stuck to the genre well, whilst adding our own twist to it with the close up of the artist in the photo frame. Our ancillary tasks, I feel worked really well and established our creativity and design to express our brand image. From our audience feedback, you can see that our audience thought that our front cover was simple, yet effective, which is what we was hoping to achieve. The use of the spotlight, in which I moved around and changed the size of etc, was used to focus on our artist, and I put an effect on the edges to make them appear gradually darker and darker in order to make the colours worn by the artist stand out more. Below is one of Taylor Swifts some album covers. Taylor Swifts brand image is very similar to one in which we were trying to establish in our work. This album cover is like ours in many ways, as the hair of the artist is quite flowing and we also have a clear shot of the young, female artist.
Here is a shot of our album cover:
As you can see we are trying to create a similar ideology for our audience. We want to create the ideology for the audience that our artist is a young, fresh, female artist with a unique style. We are trying to achieve the 'uniqueness' by making our picture quite quirky by having the artist as if they are lead down with the spotlight on them.
Also, we included a lyrics page, a middle page and a back page.
Throughout all of these we had a continuous theme of colours, which consisted of red, black, and white. We also used our logo, which was simple and elegant. It was the name of our artist in the font, ‘renaissance’. It looked like this:
This logo helps to establish our brand image as it is repeated throughout our products. i feel through mise en scene, in our ancillary tasks, and in our video we have created a donminant ideology and a clear brand image for our artist successfully, in that she appears feminine, young and fresh.
Record labels such as Universal help to promote many various artists, and are extremely successful in doing so. They also include artists who have quite a ‘pop’ type of sound, therefore I feel they could be suitable for our artist and brand image in order to create a successful artist. I feel our main product works well along side our ancillary tasks as both help to astablich the genre and create a certain image, without contadicting each other in any way.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
In our audience feedback, we asked males and females throughout our main target audience of 16-25 year olds various questions about our music video and ancillary tasks. This age range was our target audience as it is proven that this group is the people that spend the most money on music products, which would therefore make our product a lot more profitable if we where to distribute it. Our secondary audience was 25-35 year olds. Our main target would be females, as they are more likely to buy the type of product that our brand is, however we did ask a varied audience for a wider opinion on our product. When creating our products, we thought about how we would try to match the audience's characteristics of the music genre we chose to work on, with the characteristics of our desired purchasers should we sell this product in real life. This is the demographics and psychogrphics of our audience. When looking at theories such as Maslows theory, we incorporated this into our product, focusing on things such as the social, self actualisation, and phsycological needs of our audience. As our target audience would be mainly young females aged 16-25, our song could relate to their needs of self identity, focusing on relationships etc, and they can relate to our artist and find a sense of escapism as they would feel that they have someone relating to them. This preserves a sense of 'social identity', according to Maslows theory, and so we can connect to the audience's feelings and can link to a sense of creativity through music.
Everyone who took part in our feedback thought that we had established our genre well and promoted our artist effectively in both our video, and our ancillary tasks. In the video, most people felt it was creative and different, especially breaking away from the usual music videos with our photo frame element. We had mixed opinions surrounding this idea; with some saying it was too ‘random’ when switching from the snowy scenes and others thinking it was extremely well thought up and a more interesting element to our video, that helped to brake away from the regular boundaries. However, everyone who participated did understand why it was there and where it linked in with the flashback images. Some people felt that the flow of our video could be a little slow placed at time, with certain shots being held on for a slightly bit longer than they thought it should have been. One person also commented saying that we could have varied our flashback images, and could have maybe had a few more photographs rather than repeating some; however they did comment on the colour grading of the flashbacks, and said that the black and white effect was a good idea to establish the images as past tense. Everyone who took part in our questionnaires believed that it had the main elements of a music video, and was like a typical music video in many ways, switching to and from all the different shots and showing the artist in different images and sceneries.
Our target audience also completed questionnaires for our ancillary tasks. They felt that the magazine advertisement ‘well placed’. They said that the images and the writing complemented each other by their placing as they worked really well together. Everyone said the same for our album pages too, saying they the pictures where well placed, with one person making a particular reference to the middle page, saying that they like the way lots of different pictures where all put together on the one page. Some people mentioned the boldness of our images, as they felt it showed our artist really well. They did say we could use a variety of more colours though, and a wider variety of costumes for the audience. Everybody felt that our brand was well presented through our products, creating the image we hoped to achieve for our artist and genre.
Record labels such as Universal help to promote many various artists, and are extremely successful in doing so. They also include artists who have quite a ‘pop’ type of sound, therefore I feel they could be suitable for our artist and brand image in order to create a successful artist. I feel our main product works well along side our ancillary tasks as both help to astablich the genre and create a certain image, without contadicting each other in any way.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
In our audience feedback, we asked males and females throughout our main target audience of 16-25 year olds various questions about our music video and ancillary tasks. This age range was our target audience as it is proven that this group is the people that spend the most money on music products, which would therefore make our product a lot more profitable if we where to distribute it. Our secondary audience was 25-35 year olds. Our main target would be females, as they are more likely to buy the type of product that our brand is, however we did ask a varied audience for a wider opinion on our product. When creating our products, we thought about how we would try to match the audience's characteristics of the music genre we chose to work on, with the characteristics of our desired purchasers should we sell this product in real life. This is the demographics and psychogrphics of our audience. When looking at theories such as Maslows theory, we incorporated this into our product, focusing on things such as the social, self actualisation, and phsycological needs of our audience. As our target audience would be mainly young females aged 16-25, our song could relate to their needs of self identity, focusing on relationships etc, and they can relate to our artist and find a sense of escapism as they would feel that they have someone relating to them. This preserves a sense of 'social identity', according to Maslows theory, and so we can connect to the audience's feelings and can link to a sense of creativity through music.
Everyone who took part in our feedback thought that we had established our genre well and promoted our artist effectively in both our video, and our ancillary tasks. In the video, most people felt it was creative and different, especially breaking away from the usual music videos with our photo frame element. We had mixed opinions surrounding this idea; with some saying it was too ‘random’ when switching from the snowy scenes and others thinking it was extremely well thought up and a more interesting element to our video, that helped to brake away from the regular boundaries. However, everyone who participated did understand why it was there and where it linked in with the flashback images. Some people felt that the flow of our video could be a little slow placed at time, with certain shots being held on for a slightly bit longer than they thought it should have been. One person also commented saying that we could have varied our flashback images, and could have maybe had a few more photographs rather than repeating some; however they did comment on the colour grading of the flashbacks, and said that the black and white effect was a good idea to establish the images as past tense. Everyone who took part in our questionnaires believed that it had the main elements of a music video, and was like a typical music video in many ways, switching to and from all the different shots and showing the artist in different images and sceneries.
Our target audience also completed questionnaires for our ancillary tasks. They felt that the magazine advertisement ‘well placed’. They said that the images and the writing complemented each other by their placing as they worked really well together. Everyone said the same for our album pages too, saying they the pictures where well placed, with one person making a particular reference to the middle page, saying that they like the way lots of different pictures where all put together on the one page. Some people mentioned the boldness of our images, as they felt it showed our artist really well. They did say we could use a variety of more colours though, and a wider variety of costumes for the audience. Everybody felt that our brand was well presented through our products, creating the image we hoped to achieve for our artist and genre.
Here is how one person answered some of the questions on thir questionnare:
Video questionnaire:
Do you think the product is typical of music videos? If so in what ways is it similar?
Yes I think it is a typical music video as it shows the artist and the video represents the words of the song.
Does anything make it different or stand out from the typical? How?
I think that the photo frame image is a unique style.
Does it work? How?
Yes because it fits in with the flashbacks (photographs)
Name two interesting elements.
The photo frame and the snow scenery.
Do you think the video fits well with the song?
Yes as the song is quite sad and the video matches the mood of the song.
Do you think the pace of the video is typical of this kind of product?
Yes, most parts as it changes shots and images regularly.
How do you think it can be improved?
I think that sometimes the shots can be left too long and can feel slightly repetative. also the flash backs could be varied more as some are the same.
Ancillary task questions:
Do you think the product is typical of magazines and album covers? if so in what ways is it similar?
I think that they are typical becasue they clearly promote the artists style.
Does anything make it different or and stand out from the typical? How?
I think the middle page is creative and stands out as all the photographs are put together in a creative style.
Does it work? Why?
Yes. It clearly establishes artist and style.
Name 2 interesting elements from the ancillary tasks.
Bold cover, easily identify the artist.
Lyrics page to get to know the song.
Could the product be stronger? If so, how?
I feel it is already a strong product but could maybe vary colours and costumes more.
Can you sum up the brand image of this album in a short sentence?
Female solo artist, unique and own individual sound.
Do you think the album cover fits in with the brand image of the video?
Yes. Young female artist showing emotion through song and images etc.
Would you be tempted to buy this album?
I would have to hear more songs but I would be attracted to look at the album cover and images as they are catchy.
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Reasearch: For the research part of our project, we used several different sources. We used the internet to look at different images and different videos for some inspiration on our genre. We also researched certain artists who fitted into this genre by using 'google' to find different informative websites. We also found out about the artist who sings the song we based our video on by using the internet. For our anllary task research, we looked at different real life magazine adverts and album covers etc. This helped to enhance our ideas for our own project.
Planning: We all worked together to plan various things for our product. Fist of all we had to plan our initial idea for our video on a story board. Although our ideas where refined to be made more suitable for our genre and in our opinion, made better, we all put together to make our intitiall thoughts. We had to plan and think about what type of song we was looking for and what mood we wanted our video to create towards the audience. Our whole video would then represent this ideology. We then had to decide on filming dates that where suitable for our group. Our first filming date was during the Christmas break on 3rd January, in which we had to make a list of all props that we would need etc as to not forget anything once it got to the day. We then filmed again on the 20th January within college time. Again we had to arrage what props we would need, in this case, the photo frame.
For our ancillary tasks we all sketched an ideo for the front cover etc of the album, and all made a sketch of the magazine advert. Our best ideas where then put into practise as we planned for our photos for these tasks. We wanted to clearly establish our artist, getting inspiration from albums such as these Leona Lewis albums
Construction: For the construction of our product, we had to begin with the filming of our video. I could not actually film any of the video itself as I was starring as the artist in the video, however, I did still learn how to use the video camera as I thought it would be helpful for me to recap on the skils that I learnt last year in my AS media studies. For the filming aspect of our product, we used a video camera; our tape, batteries, a tripod, and the connector used to keep the camera on the tripod in a stable position. We then used the AppleMac computers to go on 'final cut express', 'photoshop' and 'indesign' to create our video and ancillary tasks for real as finished products.
We had to use many different elements of photoshop for our music video, such as colour grading etc. This helps to make the image look more attractive and to stand out as a more 'eye-catching' piece. Also for the black and white images, we had to use the desaturate tool and make them look different to the rest of the video. We had to take out the sound from our original recording as then the artist would be miming to the underscoring sound of the real song. When using photoshop and indesign for our ancillary tasks, we has to use the pen tool to cut out various images, and to make the image more clear around the hair of the artist etc. We had to change the lighting on our front cover to make the edges dark, and we varied the light used the 'spotlight' to enhance the focus on the artist. When using these different softwares, I feel that I started to learn alot more about photoshop and indesign as I had never used them before, however as I hadn't used final cut express until this year either, I found that slightly more difficult, and do feel I would have liked to spend abit more time on there to get used to it a little more. However, from when I did go on it, eventhough I struggled getting to grips with it, I did like the way it was set up even if I did find it a little daunting at times.
Indesign
Photoshop
Final cut express
We had to use many different elements of photoshop for our music video, such as colour grading etc. This helps to make the image look more attractive and to stand out as a more 'eye-catching' piece. Also for the black and white images, we had to use the desaturate tool and make them look different to the rest of the video. We had to take out the sound from our original recording as then the artist would be miming to the underscoring sound of the real song. When using photoshop and indesign for our ancillary tasks, we has to use the pen tool to cut out various images, and to make the image more clear around the hair of the artist etc. We had to change the lighting on our front cover to make the edges dark, and we varied the light used the 'spotlight' to enhance the focus on the artist. When using these different softwares, I feel that I started to learn alot more about photoshop and indesign as I had never used them before, however as I hadn't used final cut express until this year either, I found that slightly more difficult, and do feel I would have liked to spend abit more time on there to get used to it a little more. However, from when I did go on it, eventhough I struggled getting to grips with it, I did like the way it was set up even if I did find it a little daunting at times.
Indesign
Photoshop
Final cut expressOur song was found on a copyright free music website, which includes many unsigned artists, and our logo font 'rennaisance' was found on the website http://www.dafont.com/, which consists of many different style of fonts to choose from. We have continually put our progress onto the blogger website, which has tracked our project ideas from beginning to end.
Summary
Overall, I feel that our product worked really well. I think that although we had some difficulties in some areas from time time we all worked well as a team to distribute the work that needed to be done, and have achieved an effective, well established product.
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