Evaluation

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

We were set the task of creating a music video promo; we chose a genre and researched the typical conventions of a music promo, digipak and magazine advert for a female pop artist’s song. We looked on unsigned.com because that was our brief. We felt that this would be the best decision as we have similar ideas and intentions for the project and so therefore felt we wouldn’t need any extra members. With the lack of a large group we could have used some more camera men as then we could have had a few more shot types.

Music Video

The music promo’s purpose is to advertise the artist to create a relationship between the audience and the artist or band. Some artists use their videos as statements or to put a message across, most create a video to enhance their personalities as a band and how they feel in that specific song. The video will be uploaded on to a variety of multimedia programmes like music channels, YouTube and iTunes to attract the target audience as well as being available in multiple places for it to be played repeatedly. The promo must be creative and suit the artist’s individual characteristics to be able to portray the story of the song correctly.  We looked at a few videos for inspiration as well as for the conventions.  To be able to link to our storyboard of ideas as well we particularly concentrated on music videos which were set at the beach. We found that  One Directions What Make You Beautiful was a good example as it included a summer romance and had a variety of beach singing shots, another useful video was Rihanna’s Only Girl In The World with the close up performance shots. I also quite liked a few conventions that Ellie Goulding uses in her videos like the transitions, or the focused foreground and blurred background in some of the cut-away shots.

Digipak

The Digipak is a CD case which would contain the CD and usually information about the artist. It is meant to be appropriate to the genre and theme of the artist and songs on the album as well as relatable towards the target audience. The Digipak would be a valued edition to collectors as well as the religious fans. The purpose of the Digipak is to promote the album further as well as to corporate the identity and recurring theme of the album. They would also be used to tell the target audiences a bit more information about the band, which could help them become more connected to the music and the overall theme of that particular album. It is also an opportunity to store any additional promotional material like posters, links, opportunities to win tickets and booklets. It is also a chance for it to be noticed by a wider audience and extend their fans. 

Magazine Advert

The advert would be A4 sized, usually including the artist or their specific branding so it is recognisable to their fans as well as being specifically suited to that single or album. It would be designed towards the target audience so it is relevant and appealing as well as being placed in the appropriate genre of magazine. Different categories of magazine fulfil different needs, which are well adapted for their readers’ requirements. We researched into which magazines our target audience popularly purchase.  Advertising is seen as an integral part of magazines. Relevant advertising is valued by readers, and is consumed with interest. Readers screen advertisements in much the same way as they screen the editorial - looking for items that interest, intrigue, catch the eye, entertain or to inform them.

The requirements for a music promo are dependant usually on the target audience and what they would expect to see. In a pop video they usually expect to see the artist performing and telling a story creatively or effectively, with a variety of shots.

Shot Type	Shot Angle	Shot Description	Movements
Establishing	Straight on	To show the character is at the beach on the pier which sets the theme.	A tilt upwards from a birds-eye view of the pier up the walkway.
Mid Shot	Angled to the right	Mid shot of female character stood against the side of the pier. Shows her performance (singing). Her body is facing towards the centre of the pier and her head is turned to look at the camera.	Still
Long shot	Canted angle	Slight high angle looking down on the beach. Shows the girl on the beach dancing with a scarf. It presents the youth and giddiness of a summer romance.	Still
Close-up	Straight on	The performer on the beach, performing to the camera. Close-up to show her emotion about how happy she is.	Still
Establishing/ Mid Shot	Canted angle	This was to silhouette the performer. She was set on the rocks with a slight low angle. The setting showed romance as well as fitting in with the lyrics. This helped fill some instrumental moments.	Still

Shot-reverse-shot

We used shot-reverse-shot to show the audience the relationship between the couple as it reflects the narrative. We chose to shoot it on the pier overlooking the beach as it had good natural lighting as well as the beach in the background shows an amours view. 

Pan

We used a continuous shot which ended in a pan to the right and tilted slightly upwards to face the sun. This was an establishing shot in addition to creating that falling-in-love, dream like sequence. The continuous shot gives the audience time to connect to the fantasy of the teenage romance.

High angle   -     Low angle

 Throughout the video we wanted to use a variety of shot types and angles. To do this made sure we used a range of angles as well. For the image on the right we used a high angled shot which included some of the performance, we chose to have this particular shot as it shows the performers vulnerability. The low angled shot gives the contradicting aspect as it shows her in control; being placed on rocks also gives the "power" image, of her being in control of the relationship. 

Silhouetting 

We decided to shoot the rock sections nearer to the end of the day so we could get the silhouetted effect. The composition for the first shot is that the performer is focused on more so than the background for the audience to concentrate on her rather than what's going on in the background. 

Superimposition 

A frequent effect which is used in pop videos is superimposition, especially when the narration is about romance. The superimposition helps keep the shot changes flowing and links them together additionally to create the dream-like sequence.

 

 

Effects







 

We tried to use a necessary range of effects to accomplish a professional and pop-like look for the video. One of the effects was a blurred image between shots, we found that this worked well and assisted to creating a dream like sequence. Another effect was to some of the silhouetting we adjusted the brightness of that particular shot so that the performer became darker against the light. A different effect we wanted to try and successfully managed was the looking through the telescope lens effect.

To do this we went on to final cut and selected the shot that we wanted. We then chose to use a rounded frame round the edges so that the image was still clear and the audience would recognise it as the view from the telescope.

Costume

 This costume was to get the beach wear look. It consisted of a short white floaty dress; we wanted it white as it shows the innocence of youth. The red baggy cardigan symbolises what a guy’s jacket would look on her and it being red symbolises the love in the song contrasting from the innocence. She didn't wear anything in her hair or on her feet as we wanted a simplistic look, which looked natural.

The second costume we decided to keep the dress on the beach as it linked. We added a green floaty over jacket with sunflowers on to symbolise summer, with a free limitless look. Again keep it simplistic letting her hair be long and so that the wind would just flow through it. The sunflowers also match the nature theme as well as fitting with the mise-en-scene of the shot.

For the night out shots we decided to keep the white theme and this outfit change consisted: White summer top, red hoody, red and cream knitted scarf, black jeans and boots. This look was to show the contrast of daytime to going out at night. we did this by putting her in warmer a costume. This is also similar colour-wise with the first costume as we felt we wanted to keep the colour scheme the same. The scarf also was to add the element of warmth. We used a scarf which was floatier earlier on in the video; this contrasted that as it is a heavier material and shows the change from daytime tonight time.

 

Make Up

 

The song we have chosen is acceptable for the pop genre and once we considered and compared to other pop artists that are similar to ours we decided to conventionally go with including our artist and following the narrative of the lyrics. Pop artists would include the fantasy of how romance should be, which is deemed as appealing to the target audience. We decided that our video should be similar as it has proven to be very successful with the artists that we compared with. We based some of our shots on shots we liked particularly from other videos for example:

Rihanna’s Only Girl In The World inspired us through some of her shot types as they are very similar to the ones that we were looking to include. We felt that adding a shot with the girl using a scarf would be effective and quite playful which, reflects characters persona in this video.  We chose the setting of the beach as similarly in Rihanna’s, the landscape is wide and open creating a sense of freedom as well as fitting in nicely with our nature theme.

We also found shots from Ellie Goulding’s video Burn quite effective. Concentrating on the pop genre for single artists Ellie Goulding is an example of what we are basing our own character on. Instead of having a sunset shot however due to the fact we didn’t have any lights to be able to stop it from silhouetting too much so we used a skyline and natural sunlight. We also felt that keeping a similar setting and location would be more effective throughout the video instead of having it go from the studio to the beach for example.

Again looking at Rihanna’s Only Girl In The World we found that shot types like the single ones of her looking across the fields were simple and looked effective. Rhianna in hers made her background blurred out so that the audience could concentrate fully on her as she is performing. For our shot we didn’t manage to blur it out fully however, we had made our character a lot more focused compared to the background, which seemed as effective.

In the lyrics they mention a boy, so we looked at a range of pop videos which included relationships or that “summer love” that every teenager fantasises about. We discovered One Directions What Makes You Beautiful and found that the two shot of Harry and a girl looked effective especially as it was set on the beach, with the sea behind them and the sun on them. The weather on the day of filming this section was very windy but thankfully still sunny so although we had to wear a jacket it still looked like a summer day.

Pier

Skegness pier at Pleasure beach, a quiet on the coast setting. We were lucky enough to have the whole pier without any other public members as it was closed but the people in charge let us film. We decided that a pier would be a good setting as it looked out to the sea, this would be good for two shots as well as the shots of her looking at the beach when he runs past. The pier was also good as it is seen as quite a romantic and peaceful place to be with someone. It was well light as it was in the direct line of the sunlight so the lighting was effective.

Beach

Pleasure beach is an idilic, spacious setting. We filmed mid week and during the middle of the day, so we got the as much light exposure as possible as well as it being not a very popular day for the public to go to the beach. This was ideal so we didn't have to stop recording or have many interuptions. Although it was quite windy the sun was out and it didn't rain so we were very lucky weather wise. The wind helped to adds the effect pop artists tend to have in their videos for the wind-rushing-through-your-hair look. The mise-en-scene was particularly good as it was mostly clear without many obsticles. We did have to be careful in some shots as there was a wind farm in the sea on one section which didn't look very romantic so we had to anlge some shots to just avoid it.

 

Rocks

The rocks we found on the beach we felt would be an appropriate setting as it linked in with the theme as well as being able to silhouette the performer. In many pop videos, like in Ellie Goulding's Anything Could Happen, the performer is placed on the rocks and moves around a bit. We decided we would try this and as the angle had the sun setting in the background we found this effective silhouetting.

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

The product as a promotional package links together as the theme is continued with nature. Including the same setting with every product so then the consumers would know that they were all linked as well as it not being too complex or confusing. Within this package we have included:

-          Magazine advert  

-          Digipak

-          Music Video Promo

The magazine advert would be advertised in magazines like: Cosmopolitan and Look. Their target audiences are aimed at the same age range as ours. With this in mind we felt that they would be appropriate and it would be result successfully as artists have featured in there as well such as Rihanna and Ellie Goulding.

 

The Digipak we designed we decided to keep with the nature theme and include the images that we took while we were filming Daylight. We thought that this would promote the video as well as link in nicely with the magazine advert.

The Video Promo, based on other female artists and as it was the main product the other products would include elements from it.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During the construction of the promo we consistently asked our peers and teachers to give their opinion on how well a sequence worked to a transition between shots. We first put together a basic shot layout with the order of the shots trimming and swapping some shots as they didn't fit or were too long for the section. We also added the music from the start to make sure we were following the timing and theme so that everything matched correctly. Our next stage was to sync the music to the performer, adding extra shots at different locations to give a variety and keep the audience watching to see what happens.

We used a variety of research to see how we could improve our products we used, Questionnaire’s, Vocal feedback, and comments from social networking sites and comparative work to other similar artists.

Some of the written feedback which we received:

Person One -

I liked the song choice and narrative with Hayden, editing was smooth, some points the lip sync wasn't quite there but almost all of it was there! Good range of camera shots. Could of included more shots of you messing about with Hayden on the beach or in the games building to go with some of the lyrics rather than having most shots of you just lip syncing but over all I like it! good work you!!

Person 2 -

Overall I think it's a really good video. I think that your range from a mid and a long shot were very good but I personally think that there could have been a close up of your lips singing or something (just so you could say that you used a much bigger range of shots) I thought the shot changes were very appropriate for the genre of music you were doing it to. Two more things I would say is that from an acting perspective, you could have made it a bit clearer when you were miming because at some points It was quite obvious that you weren't actually singing. I also think that you could have added in a few extra shots of the scenery but those are only small things. Overall, I think it's a great music video

Person 3 –

First of all the location is amazing especially with the use of the bright sun really captures bronnys facial expressions and her mood I feel I like how you decided to use the beach as well as this is something which some music video uses so you've stuck to the representation of pop her costume is nice as it helps to represent her character and what her mood is even though Hayden is only in a few shots you can still see from the shots that you use that he is the boy that the girl in the shot is thinking about, finally I love the ending shot of the arcade

The comment that we seemed to receive commonly was that we needed more shots of the guy, so we were going to film additional shots however we had limited time and our person couldn't make the days we needed him.  Another improvement which I felt we would have benefited from was the close-up of the lips singing I think this would have been another element that would have helped complete our video and give it that professional look. Looking at the performance I feel that the miming could have been slicker and more convincing however it didn't look too out of place for the genre of our video. We felt afterwards we could have put in a few more scenic shots as the ones we filmed had become out of focus or some the camera steadiness was unstable. 

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

·         Use  of www.unsigned.com – We looked particularly at this site as it is well known to find serious artists who have written their own music and would like to make a career out of it but haven’t been signed just yet. We had to use an unsigned artist so there wouldn’t be any copy write issues, where the artist may think that we were trying to create their song as ours.  
 

·         Contacting our chosen Artist – We emailed our artist asking permission to use their song explaining that we would be doing it only for our A2 level course and that we would not claim that the song is ours.
 

·         Researching – once we had chosen our genre and female artist, we researched into what were the typical conventions for a video. Analysing other artist’s lyrics helped us see the connection to the lyrics the video had, like in Ed Sheeran’s You Need Me I Don’t Need You you can see the relevance of the house that is blown up as he mentions the Brit School at that point of the video. So I then annotated the lyrics for Daylight and both Beth and I decided that they were a summer romance fantasy that most teenage girls would want.
 

·         Technologies – to construct our production we used two different cameras during filming to create a homemade effect as well as professional element. We got this as we wanted footage as if they had filmed some of their day at the beach and then the more advanced shots like on the rocks or by the sand dunes. For the Editing we used iMovie on the Mac as it has a software that is easy to edit with and produces a standard result that we would be aiming for.
 

·         Shooting Skills – I have developed the shooting skills from previous tasks a great deal as I realised that I would need a range of angles, shots and locations to provide an interesting performance. By using a range of angles it gives the video some different perspectives which becomes more realistic as if you are watching them in real person instead of a single head on close-up. With a change of loacations which as relevant to the song or directors idea creates a more interesting watch for the audience as well as showing the beauty of the loactions that we chose. Another reason we used two camera’s so that we could get two angles of each shot and so the editing could run smoothly. I especially realised that we would need to film the performer, performing at each location the full song at least twice so that we had the full song and any gaps that would need filling we could do so as we would have a variety to choose from.
 

·         Editing skills – the syncing of the music to the performer. This can be quite a tricky task as the timing may become distorted when you cut or crop some shots so then you would have to remember to go back and correct that few seconds. The pace of editing would have to keep flowing as well as matching the music and sometimes changing on the beat as that can look quite effective. I also learnt that when a shot is too long the audience become bored and probably would remember it as it wasn’t interesting enough to watch. We added the changing of shots on the beat or certain

·         For the end result we decided we would want to get a varied review from the target audience, luckily our target audience is around our age so we decided that we would post it on YouTube and send the link to Facebook so that our friends of our age would see it and be able to give their opinion.