Evaluation Question 2 Victoria

Evaluation – Question 2 Victoria Bray

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

Music Video

We branded our music video by having a colour scheme of bright, bold colours. This is because we found that it was a common aspect within other videos of a similar genre such as Beyoncé’s Countdown video and Lady GaGa’s Telephone video. This is because having a variety of bold, bright colours makes the video eye-catching and memorable. It also portrays the light-hearted feel of the music and aims to have a “happy” effect on viewers, as they tend to be younger and dominantly female who will be drawn to the video with the help of the colouring.

When producing the video, we were inspired by other artists within the pop genre and their music videos. Beyoncé’s Countdown video is a main aspect of inspiration for our music video, this is bacause Beyoncé is a major icon within the pop 
genre. This music video in particular inspires me for the music video in terms of the use of bright colours, variant locations along with costume and make up that you wouldn't necessarily see in everyday life. From watching this video it 
made me realise how many costume and location changes we would have to include in order to get a similar effect that this video has. Katy Perry’s Hot n’ Cold video also inspired myself and the group for our own video. This is again through the bright colour schemes consisting of pinks and blues, as well as the clear, entertaining narrative that runs through it. The video portrays the light-hearted lyrics, which is something we set out to do from the beginning and this video gave us ideas on how to do so. The fact that the music begins and ends with acting helps set out the video with a strong narrative making it easier for younger audiences to understand as the pop genre is listened to by all age groups. We did try this but we felt that we would rather focus on the performance side of the video rather than the narrative.

 Digipack

In terms of the Digipack, we decided to contradict the video with regards to the colour scheme. Though we followed typical conventions of pop music in the video, we felt that the CD would stand out much more among other CDs as it is in black and white with only one colour apparent. We wanted to use the artist’s face as the cover as we would be selling the artist herself as she is the voice. The clean image shows purity and classiness of the artist which is something that the target audience of teen girls can relate to. The inside images also follow the conventions of the front and back covers, each being in black and white but having one aspect in bold purple, this created cohesion within the cover. 

The development of our CD cover began with different images of the artist, we decided which image we liked best for the cover and began to play around with it on PhotoShop, editing out blemishes as well as changing colours and deciding which one fitted best. We wondered what what we should change from black and white, we decided either lips, eyes or her eyebrows. Until deciding on the black and white with the lips in a bright purple colour as we feel directing attention towards the lips helps portray the idea that she is a singer and the mouth should always be the focal point. 

Because we didn’t want to completely disregard the idea of having something else in purple other than her eyes, we decided that we wanted to have her with light purple eyes for one of the inside covers. We felt that it was a powerful image and further shows the artist as different and contraversial. 

With the digipack we felt inspired by the Rolling Stones’ 40 Licks back cover with the way the song names were set out. Though this isnt a pop album we felt it gave the album an 
‘individual’ feel and that she is breaking into something new and different for her genre as she is a daring artist with an edge. We also felt inspired by Adele’s 21 album for the back cover with regards to the image. This gave us the original idea of having a black and white image of the artist on the cover and the layout of the back cover. 

Magazine Advert

When creating the magazine advert, we wanted to follow the conventions of our CD cover to further cohesion through the product. We chose to, again, focus the advert on the artist’s face so we wanted to use another close up image but again in black and white with only the artist’s lips in purple.  We followed conventions of a typical advert for an album with including the artist’s name, the artist’s image, the album name, ratings by other magazines, the production company logo and the iTunes logo to show that it is able to download. 
Again we began with the base image and edited it on the PhotoShop software to make the image clean and to get the correct colouring. We decided to have the image in the centre as it is the main focus of the advert, we want to sell the artist as a person as well as the album. We felt that the second thing to attract the audience’s attention would be the artist’s name so that they will then always associate the image with her name and remember her face when they hear one of her songs on the radio. 
The name of the allbum is obviously another important aspect of the advert. We kept the font of the text to be the same as that of the CD cover to, again give the whole product cohesion.

please see my wix website presentation: 

http://www.wix.com/toribray/youknowjack

Evaluation Question 1 Victoria

Evaluation – Question 1 Victoria Bray

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

In terms of the genre of our music video, as we chose a modern pop song, we decided to have the video following the typical conventions of a video that partners a pop song. We decided that performance would be the strongest aspect of the video, as this is the most common trait in many music videos. Alongside the main aspect of performance, we wanted to include a narrative within the video as it helps portray the story within the song. We used a simple narrative to keep the video interesting  but also not having it be so strong so that it can be watched from half way thorough and still be visually entertaining. With regards to a conceptual element in the video, we chose a twisted, edgy idea with an almost ‘Alice in Wonderland’ like feel to it in terms of the fact that the artist finds herself in a different world where adults are acting like children and there is a teddy-bear tea party and so on. 

With regards to Andrew Goodwin’s analysis from ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (Routledge 1992), he states that the relationship between lyrics and visuals within a music video is illustrative, amplifying or contradicting. I feel that within our music video the relationship is mostly illustrative and amplifying, for example; alongside the lyrics ‘tears falling from my eyes’ is partnered with an image of crying eyes which further illustrates the lyric.

The whole idea of the song being that ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ is clearly amplified by the comnination of strange things and characters within the video. The fact that a clearly grown up woman is sitting at a table having a tea party with odd characters and teddys goes to show that her exterior might appear “perfect” but her mind is coming up with these strange ideas. Goodwin, in his analysis, also talks about the relationship between the music and the visuals and whether they are contradicting, amplifying or illustrative. In our music video, the music is definitely amplified with the visuals.

The video continuously cuts to the beat and within the section where there is a repettitive drum sound, the images are cut directly onto that beat to make the sound even more hard-hitting to viewers. Goodwin also discusses the idea of ‘notion of looking’.

With regards to our music video, due to the audince of teen girls the video does not include a strong sexual image of the artist, though some outfits tend to be quite revealing they are not partnered with sexual movements or expressions, they are clearly set as a fashion statement. Goodwin’s mention of ‘demands of the record label’, though we arent a real record company we knew how we wanted the artist to come across.




We used lots of close ups and shots of the artist so that she becomes a well known face to viewers. Also, the frequent use of shots of the artist performing shows viewers that she is a serious artist who sings well. The close ups of the artist also show the passion and emotion behind what she is singing as she writes the lyrics herself, its real to her and we want the viewers to feel her pain and understand what she is going through.

please see my Wix website presentation: 

http://www.wix.com/toribray/youknowjack

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.