Question 4 Evaluation Emily Phillips

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


Our first stage of the production process was to make sure way we had an efficient way to record our progress throughout the production and so we created a blog on blogger.com as group. This proved to be extremely useful as each post was shown clearly and was easy to label so that each member of the group knew what posts were theirs. It also kept all the stages together on our own website that was easy to access at anytime and at any computer so we could work towards the project as individuals as well as a team.


The next stage was to research; before making decisions on the type of genre we wanted for our music video or what song we wanted to use we wanted to make sure we looked at as many options as possible. Due to our own preferences as a group we knew that our final music video had to be with the pop genre as this was the music we listened to the most and were most familiar with.


We therefore thought that the best way to gain inspiration for choosing a song would be to look at what was popular in the charts at the time. The websites we mainly used for this was the official MTV website and youtube. In this case, you tube proved to be more useful as as well as showing the music video, it also had lists of other videos either by the same artist or in the same genre which gave us a wider range of videos to look at.


After the research was done and we had gathered as much information as possible about different artists and their music videos, we used a website called wordle that was a creative way to present some of our ideas.


Thorough research and organised presentation of ideas allowed us to them begin the filming process; in regards to the hardware used, a modern HD Video Recorder. The HD effect meant that all the footage that we wanted to shoot would have a crystal clear image of the highest quality. The new camera was also equipped with many effects that we could experiment with whist filming; this included what the right white balance looked like, what images looked the best in focus, and how far could we zoom in/out to create as many different angles as possible. The camera was accompanied at all times by a tri-pod that made our shots of a high quality as the camera was always aligned correctly. To make the picture even better on screen we were lucky enough to get a hold of some professional filming lights. These lights proved to be crucial to the filming process and contributed incredibly to the quality of the shots. Not only did they allow the artist to be clearer in the shots, they created interesting and bold effects, particularly when the light were in front of the camera in dark surroundings (the garage shot shown below).

Once we had all our footage, we used final cut express to edit our video, being a alien program to all team members, we experimented with cutting to the beat of a song using final cut’s marker technique an the Razor Tool icon. We also experimented with the effects that this program provided such as the fading technique or changing the tempo of a shot.


When creating our ancillary texts, photoshop proved to be the most successful, I personally found it difficult to understand at first however after watching some tutorials and a few cases of trial and error, the CD managed to look effective and professional. Although not mentioned to our team member who posed for the photo, the airbrush tool was very useful because from a production company’s point of view, the representation of the artist had to be clear without blemishes in order to be seen as an idol. Also, the colour change tool was very useful as it allowed us to make our ancillary texts look professional and effective.

The skills that I have acquired through the entire process I would have liked to already have had at the beginning, particularly with final cut express and photoshop as the process would have been quicker and easier, allowing me time to experiment further even though I am extremely happy with our final outcome.


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Question 3 Evaluation Emily Phillips

3.What have you learned from your audience feedback?


Although Laura Mulvey’s “Male Gaze” theory states how company’s assume the audience to be heterosexual males that pressure the sexual objectification of women, we thought less of the way she looked and more about what she represented. We therefore concluded that our target audience would be 17 year old girls with interests such as fashion, music and socialising with her friends. We decided that someone with interests such as these would be likely to listen to the pop music genre; a girl is also more likely to enjoy the music of our chosen artist and buy the album as our target was to make her easy to relate to for this chosen audience.


Research before filming led us to a website called BARB. This website provides weekly UK audience figures for all UK television channels. This gave us an idea of what music channels were the most popular and who had the largest audience

From BARB we discovered that Viva was the most popular music channel as it reaches the largest audience numbers than any other well-known music channel. This is mainly due to it’s accessibility on free view and also because it shows the most popular music of variant genres. We feel that as a music company, we would want our video to be shown and viewed by many on this channel because of its high ratings as well as its large audience figures.


The audience feedback stage proved to be extremely useful not only to our final products, but to the way I worked with my group as a team; very often we found ourselves having different opinions when it came to the editing process of our music video: we all had different shots that we liked the most and could not agree on how often these shots should appear in the music video. When choosing the shot types and angles that we felt would fit nicely into our video, the audience feedback allowed us to truly see what shots worked best and whereabouts they should be placed in the music video. We found ourselves sometimes relying on the opinions of others whenever our group could not agree as the answers from our audience often steered towards one idea that they felt was the strongest and would allow our music video to be successful.


The audience’s feedback also proved to be very constructive in which it allowed to help us to greatly improve our work throughout the whole process. During the planning stage we conveyed our ideas to our classmates, the feedback they gave to us provided some inspiration for new ideas that would help to make our music video more exciting and interesting. At the early stages of the production process we constructed a survey that allowed us to organise our feedback successfully so that whenever we were stuck at an idea, we could look to see if there were possible ways to develop this idea. This also helped when it came to possible costume and make-up ideas where people with different tastes and styles all came together to help create many looks for the characters in the music video and also helped us come up with some ideas for the music video settings.


 The main thing I learned about having audience feedback is how easy it is to miss tiny mistakes. When editing our music video, we did not notice occasional moments where the lip movement was out of sync this was mainly because we were watching it repeatedly without looking for any mistakes. However, as soon as it was pointed out from our audience, the mistakes became more obvious and recognisable to us therefore allowing our music video to seem as authentic as possible. This was also the case when it came to editing the poster and CD covers on photoshop; when a change to the face on the cover didnt look realistic, we had to ask other opinions of those who had not seen the photo before it was edited as we felt we were at a disadvantage knowing what the original looked like. We felt that the audience feedback even helped to speed the editing process up as the group were not at a constant debate.




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Question 2 Evaluation Emily Phillips

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

When making the ancillary texts, we thought mostly about Richard Dyre’s “Star Theory”; we had to think about how the artist would want to be represented, what ideology they would want to create for themselves and what kind of relationship they want with their fans. We knew that we had to have a strong link between what we produced and so we used the lyrics to help us with our ideas.

The lyrics mainly express the feeling of great regret, and with the feeling of regret comes confusion and questions: why did I say what I said? What was going through my head at the time? What can I now say to make things right again? We wanted to show this mainly in the music video in which we added a quirky conceptual idea into the music video. The music video is filled with different, characters that show strange actions that convey the strange happenings occurring in the artist’s mind; throughout the video, mimes, ballerinas and violinists appear randomly to convey this confusion. The deep regret she feels takes her back to her childhood before she made such a mistake; this is shown through the tea party scene. The scene reflects the feeling of wanting to turn back time and start over but in an over exaggerated, twisted way, making it the most important part of the music video.


The poster


Every music production company would want their artist to stand out from the others to sell more records and earn the company a lot of money. In order to gain awareness of the artist’s upcoming album, advertising is crucial.


We called the album contractions because this linked well into the message of the song. Dyre’s “Star Theory” also states how artists want to be seen as normal people and so by having a title like contradictions, it shows her portraying herself as a vulnerable young woman who has made, and is still making mistakes like any other person.


For the poster we wanted to focus on the artist being easy to relate to and so by having her hair tied away from her face shows this “bareness” of her identity; because she is showing her vulnerability as a normal person. We decided to make the image black and white as it gives off the idea that the emotions she is burdened with are timeless and can happen to anyone at any time.


However, again thinking about the demands of a record company we did want this poster to stand out and to we made her lips a light purple. We chose the lips as the lyrics from “Nobody’s Perfect” reflect that it was what came from her lips that started so may problems for her. It was also the chance to create the artist’s ideology.




The Inside Covers


In order to link the poster with the CD handout we thought that a persistent colour scheme the colours that we used alone would be therefore be recognisable and immediately associated with the album and the work of the artist.



The crucial tea party scene enabled us to create an effective link between the main music video and the CD cover. The images behind the CD and in between the front and back cover shows sections taken from the table at the twisted, surreal tea party shown in the music video. Inside the tea cups are lipsticks instead of tea, a reflection of the mad confusion going on in the artist’s mind over what has happened but it also reflects he artist wanting to better herself after what has happened. Using the same effect as the poster, we made the image black and white and made the object needing the focus purple. By making the lipsticks purple we have made yet another link to the artist’s mouth; the route of her problems and her message of the album.

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Question 1 Evaluation Emily Phillips

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

Before we produced our media product, we considered Andrew Goodwin’s “Dancing in the Distraction Factory” (Routledge 1992) and the theories it explored. One of Goodwin’s theories state that all music videos demonstrate genre characteristics meaning that one could associate the music video with its genre without even listening to the music.


We thought about what area of a typical pop music video we should focus on and with the help from many different pop icons and their music videos such as Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” and Katy Perry’s “Waking up in Vegas” we discovered that that most pop genre music videos mainly consist of a performance and a narrative.

We chose “Nobody’s Perfect” by Jessie J, a typical song of the pop genre which allowed us to easily include the discovered pop characteristics into our music video. When thinking about the narrative of the music video, we listened to the lyrics; the song had a definite narrative about a girl who has lost a close friend because of something she said and how she regrets saying it. 


Another theory from Goodwin’s analysis states that there is a relationship between lyrics, narrative and visuals within a music video which is illustrative, amplified or contradictory. In our music video we have tried to illustrate this narrative throughout the music video; in many shots, her friend that was standing next to her would suddenly disappear and she found herself unhappy and alone. Another shot shows how we have amplified some of the lyrics in which alongside the lyrics ‘tears falling from my eyes’, a shot of crying eyes with fully ruined eye make-up is shown.This allowed our video to conform with a typical pop music video in which the narrative was both illustrated and amplified.

The music video also consisted of many performance shots, when filming we had to consider Goodwin’s theory of how the record company label would include the need for close-ups but we also had to consider Laura Mulvey’s “The Male Gaze”; in a typical female pop video, the artist shows herself as an object with flirtatious looks into the camera or the positioning of their body as the audience positioning is assumed to be a heterosexual man. Many shots, therefore, have these close ups of her face and also costumes that show off the artist as a figure of sexual objectification. However, the costumes also relate to Richard Dyer’s “Star Theory” in which the artist or “star” wants to align themselves with ideology; in this case the modern, quirky clothing that she wears throughout the video associates her with the pop genre but also gives her a unique style.

One aspect of our media video almost challenges a certain characteristic of what the audience would typically see for the pop genre; there are very few music videos that also contain a conceptual idea as well as a narrative/performance, particularly from a female pop artist. When looking at Goodwin’s analysis and thinking about the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, we decided to create an idea of a grown young woman re-living her childhood in a twisted yet quirky way. We developed this through the setting of the video and the props used. The majority of the shots were filmed in an old victorian house that resembled a child’s playhouse, creating the idea that this artist is happier pretending and playing tea parties because the reality would bring her back to deep regret she feels.

Therefore, when looking at our finished music video, all aspects of our music video conforms with the main characteristics of a pop genre music video, we have added our own little twist to make it stand out.




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Adele 21

 In order to gain as much inspiration as possible for our music video, we looked at a large range of album covers together as well as doing a detailed analysis individually, picking out different features from each one that we liked and could experiment with when it came to designing our album cover.

Below and to the left is the album front and back cover of Adele's 21. The main feature of this album that we liked was its simplicity. It allowed Adele's expressive face to stand out and be the focus of the album.

We then thought that we would try a similar pose with Aisha. We took a couple of photos where her face was the main focus and showed her character. Below were the two that we thought were the best.









The one here shown on the left we thought showed her fun, silly side. The little hints of light colour represented her personality and natural ability to stand out.





















This picture was my personal favourite and though linked better with the song. She looks like she is in deep thought and also has a saddened look about her. The black and white effect to show her as a timeless artist with feelings that are felt by anyone ant anytime, making her a easy person to relate to.

Final CD Front and Back Cover

CD inside

This is our final inside CD cover. We took images from the video within the tea party scene and edited them to be black and white with the purple colour on the lipsticks to create continuty with the rest of the CD covers and the album's poster image.

We also zoomed in on a pictutre we originally had of our artist and changed the colouing to an enhnced black and white image. After a discussion on what to make purple, either the nose piercing, her eyelashes or her eyes we decided that eyes would make a bigger impact being a different colour.

As we were having the CDs over the images, they blocked out the pictures which we felt was a shame so we decided to present the inside covers with the discs being transparent as well as the solid CDs so people can get an idea of the image beneath the CD.

FINAL POSTER

This is our final poster to advertise our albm. This would be likely to appear in music magazines, possibly some gossip magazines as well as a poster on bus stops and in train stations etc.

We created the image to, again, create continuity between the products of the album and used smilar colouring for the text on the poster as we did for the track names on the CD cover.

We included our production company "YouKnowJack"'s logo, as well as the iTunes logo to show that it is available to download as this is the most popular way of purchasing music right now.

Using the artist as the centeral focus of the poster as this is an eye-catching image that is likely to stick in the minds of those who look at it which makes it memorable for them to want to then purchase the album.

The use of the star-ratings shows that various magazines and newspapers enjoy the album, therefore sending the message that if you read this magazine and they like it, youre likely to enjoy it too.

Keeping the background simple as plain black makes viewers only focus on the necessary information.

Audience Feedback

We showed a number of people our almost finalized music video and asked them to truthfully comment on what they liked, didn't like and what we could improve on. Below are some comments.

• Good variation of shots / Creative costume and makeup / Interesting location - GARAGE!!!  
• Change color of font on album 
• Performance was strong
• Make up and lip art worked well and was effective
• Close ups worked well - looked good
• Nice use of lighting and colouring
• Good locations/backdrops
• liked the variety of costume and make up
• Performance worked well
• Shot variety
• Lip syncing looked professional.

From these comments we will be able to make appropriate changes to our video and focus more on the things that worked well for the video.
        

VIDEO

Here is our Final Music video.

Editing Practice

This is the picture we chose to have as our CD cover. We felt that her expression showed herself as a vulnerable young girl that people could relate to. When designing the poster we wanted bright, bold colours that would allow our album to stand out however we wanted to stick to one particular colour scheme so that all the pictures from the album would look like they link together. We knew we wanted the background completely solid black with a black and white image to match the back cover. We then thought we should make one facial feature stand out from the others; as the album was called contradictions, and the single expressed how she said something she regretted, we thought that making the lips stand out would suit the album's message the best.


The image above shows some stages of the editing process. The original image showed that there was hair over her neck so we wanted to edit that out as a cleaner image would look better. We also managed to even out her complexion and made the lips fuller.
We feel that from this the image is smoother and cleaner and is now easier to work with.


This was an experiment with different lip colour as we felt that red did not suit this quirky artist's image. But with the pink it seemed to be too childish. Instead we chose to use a purple that was a similar colour to the purple in the back cover's text. This creates continuity throughout the CD cover.

Pictures from Final Shot

These are still images from our last filming day. We shots the tea party scene and close up on the singers face, as well as the ballet dancer dancing.

The images below show how we set out the tea party. We used a tea cup set but added lipsticks in random places, this makes the image more interesting and quirky; which matches the theme we were aiming for for our film.

We have used cakes and sandwiches to make it feel like
a real tea party setting. We had a teddy bear sitting on a chair with a butterfly mask on. The reason for this is that is the teddy bear reflects childhood memories whilst the butterfly mask adds depth and a more twisted version of the bear.

Filming Day 6

This day we decided to finalise the narrative and film the teddy bear tea party. We included the main artist and other characters such as the violinist and the ballerina. We placed the table with empty tea pots and cups so the idea of a child's tea party is correctly sohwn. We also had cakes and fancy bits on the table to show that its a tea party. We decided to be different and edgy and we randomly placed lipsticks of variant colours around the table of cakes and tea, we felt that this would give the idea that things are wrong and not as they should be. Aslo, this idea of the edgyness helps portray our genre of modern pop music. We put teddy bears around the table with the characters to further show the idea of child hood and imagination. One shot consists of having the lead girl playing and pouring tea for the friend she has wronged and then she is doing the same thing again but her friend is gone, to symbolise that things arent as they were.
We introduced the character of the imperfect ballerina on this day as well. She was dressed in traditional ballerina clothes (being ballet shoes, a tutu etc.) but her hair was big and messy and her movements were stumbly and she kept falling.
We also re did a shot of the singer singing the song in a big close up from face-on as when we did our audience feedback we were told the angle the other one was shot at wasn't effective enough.

LOGO

Above shows our company logo,when designing this logo we had to think about how we would want to be seen as a record company. We wanted to go against the typical logos seen on the back of CD covers so that it was easily recognisable. We feel we have achieved this by adding a bit of colour in the boy's hair and also by giving him quite a funny facial expression. Our company was named after a friend of ours (Jack) who is a big fan of music and is also very entertaining to be around; we wanted to show how our company has a passion for music and therefore dedicates itself to providing musical entertainment for the public.

Discovering the possible back cover

This is a photograph that we took during our second day of filming with no intention of using it for any ancillary texts. However, when we looked at it more closely we liked the black and white colouring; it was simple and yet gave a classical feel to the image. We also thought that this effect allowed Aisha's (or Jessie J's) eyes to stand out. The image also has a subtle blur giving a dream-like feel to the photograph.

We decided that this photo could be quite effective with experimentation on photoshop.

Filming Day 5

Within this day of filming we did another lip syncing session in a dfferent outfit and location.
We had the singer dressed in a sexier costume, with a bra top and silky skirt. This was filmed on the stairs of the house as the deep red of the carpet made the peachness of the skirt really stand out and framed the artist nicely.

Filming Day 4

This was a quick filming day as we didnt have much time so we decided to do the close up shots of the crying eyes and the lips singing along to the song.
The eyes were all black make up running down like she had been crying to show the idea of sadness within the video as she has lost a friend.
The lips were inspired by Jessie J's use of lip art within her other videos so we dcided to try and make the lips sand out using bright lip colour and try to use some jewels.

CD Advert Analysis

This advert was chosen as Madonna is a major pop music artist.

The main image focuses on the artist and is also the cover of the album its promoting.

The image is clearly inspired by Andy Worhol’s pop art images but it’s replaced with her image. This helps portray the generic conventions as both aspects of pop – music and art – are combined for the woman who is one of the biggest names within the genre.

Her look is also based on the original image of Marilyn Monroe, hence the beauty mark and hair style. This is because Marilyn is an icon among many women and as women and girls are Madonna’s main audience, they will be drawn to this image as they could feel that the artist could inspire them and become a modern icon.

The artist’s name is clearly stated in black and white capitals along the top of the advert, this is one of the main parts that viewers’ eyes will be drawn to as it states, in an obvious way, who’s album its promoting.

Her expression looks to be sad or tired, this could be taken to show that she is empty and there’s nothing behind the art itself. This is controversial as pop artists seem to show a happy expression alongside their cheerful/light-hearted lyrics.

The writing on the advert almost frames the face, further portraying the idea that the album is a ‘work of art.’

The common colours being bright, yellow, pink, blue and red show the conventions of pop as bright colours are fun to look at, tend to give a happy emotion and are extremely eye-catching.

It advertises the CD to be purchased in a variety of ways. It shows that the hard copy of the CD can be purchased as well as the downloadable version on iTunes as this is the most popular way of buying music recently. It finally says that the album is available on 2 DVDs so that audiences can view and hear the album in a completely different way.

At the bottom, in smaller print, it stated the songs that are included on the CD. These are her most popular songs and ones that will be well known by a majority of people. These are placed on the advert to be a main selling point of the album instead of the artist herself.

Filming Day 3

On this filming day we wanted to introduce the other characters so we decided to film the scene when there is a violinist and the mime that copies her.
for this we decided to dress the violinist in all black, long elegant clothes so she would to fit into a chorus of classical insturments and the black makes the viewers focus on the music rather than the outfit. Her make-up was more extravagant to modernise the look with darker cheeks and highlighted features.
The mime was dressed in black and white top under a black jacket as these are the common colours worn by mimes. The make up on him was white face paint with black tears coming down his face as we wanted to show different emotions in obvious ways in the video to further show the twisted idea of it.
The colours worn by the characters consisting of black and white works well against the background of the bright green of the hedge and really makes the characters stand out so the audeince are only looking at the characters.

Pictures

Born This Way Album Analysis