Question 4

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

Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Looking back onto our music video I was proud of our outcome but also have a few tweaks i would change if i had to re do it again. Realising this by getting some positive and negative comments, doing another focus group we let them watch the video and gave them some questions to answer which we had some great positive below is some postive things they liked about our video:

However it is good to see what they wanted more of and could of improved, watching back on the focus group they dicussed how you would have to watch the whole video in order to understand the story line. Also include some more characters with some more scenes showing teenagers having more of a party with the glitter being protrayed as drugs. This shows me now what i would change, i do agree adding more characters such as the generation guy having more fashion involved of different generations, as i love that shot of him.

Question 2

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


How have you created a “brand identity” across your music video, digipak and advert? Similar images, colours, wording, style etc?

How do you think your digipak design will “sell” the song / album to the audience?

How do you think your advert will “sell” the digipak to the audience?

What elements of your advert and digipak communicate the genre of the music video and the style of the band?

Whilst answering this question you must use screen grabs / images from your products to show the clear links, and analyse how they will appeal to an audience. You could even complete a radial analysis of the digipak and advert to show the appeal in more detail.

Question 1

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

Product use, it was marketable between the ages 12-25 (our target audience), we had a time frame usage with was conventional, but it could not have been if we wanted to add more clips in but sticking to our time usage kept the audience inganged in our music video. We had no use of abstract animation in the final cut as it would take away from the music video.

Our location was based in Uk with commercial use, using four main locations such as the forest, Camden, studio (green room) and train station. Using our transitions fades in and fade out helped build up the tention creating an unkown of what "Alice will do next". Our conventional use of the camera were shots like pan, tracking, extreme close up and some medium shots. Through the video we had one topic focusing on our two main characters one been protaginist (Roger) and antaginist (Lucy) as she is taking substances, however her characters changes as we carrying on watching the film. Looking at the fashion aspect we kept in sync with the current trends as our lead singer wears a snap back hat which is a new trend, the tight shirt and skinny pants. Including the leather jacket which our "Alice" wears as she is in camden so does our generation guy, looking at hair colours again both of them with the extreme blonde/red hair.

The video could also been seen as a quick 30 second advert advertising the artist and their upcoming album, with close up shots in our video also could be used in posters and album covers, however we didnt want to include this in our digipak as we took strong images of Roger and we had him doing different poses. The impact of the story can currently affect someone who is going through the same thing or could teach people what other people are going through, if we get that aim across than its a sucessfull video.

Development, it was a multicultral cast which everyone can watch the video and have their own relation to it. Its in sync with culture today, seen adaptable to the present day. Having an audience who can relate is what we wanted to ahieve through the progression of the story could be showing someones day to day life, in a happy way as a pro, but as a con some audience may not feel acceptance. Challenging the genre and story was another hurdle to jump as we made sure it was portraying them in a positive way, however we did challenge this by not making this video all about love and heartbreak but more about a reality of whats happening around us with the new generation. although showing a sterotype of what teenagers are getting up too, challenging the idealogy.

Also taking a risk by having our video in colour and black and white which could of clashed and taken the focus away, however it worked well as it showed the Roger telling the story and Lucy showing whats happening to her. With sound it worked well as the genre is in date with what people are listening to now, and it challenges as the music doesnt have the verses,chrous than verses, it takes breaks to enter another beat but fits in well. Using alot of colour correction to make an impact on our shots to highlight different scenes and show differnce between the two characters. Some videos used more than one camera which works well as you ca get one shot from different angles, however we dicided to use one as we only had two cast members and using one camera to focus on them.

Focus group after filming

Questions For Focus Group

Roger Dos Santos- Stay Awake

1) Initial reactions to our music video?

2) Did you want to watch it all?

3) What kept you entertained?

4) Where the effects appropriate or too much?

5) What do you think our video is about?

6) Do you think our artist was believable?

7) do you feel the video related to the song itself

8) What would you rate our music video (out of 10) and why?

9) Did the video appeal to you as our target audience?

10) What was your most interesting, favourite shot?

11) What would you improve or change about our video?

Watch the video for answers from our focus group.

Our Final Outcome of the video

Digipak Advert

Creating this poster on photoshop we decided to include majority of images that represent Alice in the wonderland, with this we achieved it using a series of layers. They represent our theme and also to show our main lead singer and how we can advertise him to our target audience. We also added Facebook, HMV and MTV logos to our audience as they can find our more information, this shows that we are keeping up to date with modern technology (web 2.0).  Using an image of Roger making eye contact shows the bold strong singer and how he is portraying his role of a champion. It took us a while to come up with this poster as our first test was using bold colours and adding more shapes, we then decided that it would not be as effective as using the black background. Another test we done was having just the clock with no image of Roger but then thought that our audience might not be interested in just seeing a clock and might not understand with the artist is not involved, as for new viewers they wouldn't understand without seeing the artist. 

Digipak Poster

This digipak shows Roger in black and white which represents his strong character in his music video. Having his facial expressions bold can represent his album name 'Champion', it wouldn't be appropriate if he was smiling and had bright colours. Choosing the green represents the forest and how she is going into the wonderland, the blue represents Alice and so therefore using these colours can help our target audience understand. Having Lucy and Roger put together can show the relationship and then again adding our two main colours of blue and green. The font helps outline Roger album and that in fact he is at his goal of being a champion. Showing originality as when we done our research we didn't come across anything like this, therefore as a group we were happy with our outcome. Having Alice running in our image outlines the 'Alice in wonderland' and from the song "Did we chase the rabbit into wonderland" leaving the viewer unknown of where she is going.

Editing our Film

Alice vs Lucy

Glitter Shot

Camden Part Two

Filming Roger Again

Camden Part One

 

Walking by we were trying to figure out what else would relate to our theme, going up to Camden was a really good idea and we captured different stores, people on the street and also different stuff people hand made and hang up. We came across this guy who we thought was perfect for our beginining. The lucky thing is that he let us film as he was advertsing for another shop, we panned from the bottom up and once we got back from Camdem we loaded it up and it worked well with the lyrics generation as this quick shot can relate to some of our targeted audience.

Filming Roger Green Room

This shot shows how we started in the green room and this was a shot we wanted to use when starting our music video as it is a great opening shot to begin as the music has a few beats introduction.

After doing the green room we put all our Roger shots in black and white as we discussed Roger will be in Black and white as seen, it looks much effective.

Having him throw a fist made the video effective as he is relating to the lyrics and showing power, we done a few takes of this to get it to where we thought it worked well, we tried from the side but ended up with him making eye contact as it leaves the audience unease.

An idea

Today me and james thought we would do an animination of the word generation going round on a white screen adding a rabbit at in the middle, it tooks us two hours to do as we had to take pictures of each letter. We thought it would work well but in the end we came to a decsion not to use this as it was a strong enough clip compared to our other shots that we have

First Location

With Lucy's (Alice) shots we wanted to begin filming in the forest and show how she is entering another world of her own and how she is starting to feel unease about herself. This is a tracking shot we wanted to show of lucy. The colours work well together as her dress stands out and the forest is left to be natural.

In the forest we wanted a hole where we can put 'Alice' we came across this hole and thought it would be a great idea, lying on the ground to capture this works well. 

This scene was when we told Lucy to become crazy as we wanted to show how "Alice" is getting taken over by her substance and it goes well with the beat. Doing this in the forest works well as she's stood in nature whilst the forest is calm she is not.

This day worked well for us as the weather was on our side so we managed to capture this beautiful shot of the sun coming through the trees to show day of time as we shot this in the morning and how Lucy wakes up.

Example using Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin theory relates to our video as Eminem uses specific conventions of comedy which he is known to use in the majority of his videos, which the audience will understand and can easily relate to as they will recognize who the celebrities are being portrayed either in a good way or bad way. Eminem uses his own conventions as he carries on with using different celebrities but carrying on as a flow of different series that can relate to the era. This video will fall under comedy category. The lyrics do link in with the visuals, for example when he mentions Kim Kardashian, he highlights her assets which got her famous which his audience will already know her background story and could find this funny as his exaggerated her body. There is a link between the speed of the music and editing, as the chorus is a slower paste and shows him dancing about in each shot, as he begins rapping the shots become faster and he has more dramatic actions. This video features intertextual references as it includes a variety of different media basing it on celebrities who have an impact in 2009 which their career pathways.

entertainment is shown in this music video through many ways but i think the main way that it is shown is comedy with many many references to different films/programs/celebs:

dukes of hazard, Jessica Simpson

American TV show, rock of love

guitar hero

star trek, spok

Kim Kardashian

Lindsay Lohan, Sam

transformers the movie

Ellen, American chat show

the seal of the state of Alaska

Britney Speares

Vegas

psycho, Jessica Alba

Elvis Presley

Amy Winehouse in jail

planet woman

the target audience of this music video i think is teenagers , whom young male teenagers

working with the uses and gratifications theory i think there it only really two points the of this theory that fit in with this video and they are, entertainment this is shown through the comedy part of the video. the other point is escapism this is shown through the video building a comedy world that the audience can escape to.

Props List

List of people involved

Filming/Editing/Set/Costume: (Above)


Featuring in Video:
- Lead Singer Male - Roger Dos Santos
- Lead Female playing as Alice - Lucy Hyner
- Group of Teenagers: Louise Ashena, Lauren Williams, Leigh O'Leary, Jazmine Sines, Michael Kealy, Chidi Abraham, Daniella Murdoch, Charlie Holt, Tommy Bowdery, Sam Goodman, Sam Ibraham, Emma Howard, Chloe Bradshaw, Katie Thompson, Charlie Allison, Scott Middleton, Scott Robe, Kamilla Mcdonald, Kieran Wright. These people will be included in our house party scenes where it will take place at Lucys house. 

Analysis of digipaks

With this digipak (Above) you can see how the artist is shown throughout the digipak and that the theme stays the same, the writing is all the same font and so is the artist with the face-paint. They have also included a quote from the artist and information about the songs.

Comparing to the other digipak, this one (above) has the band spread out and showing them more naturalistic than posing for a camera face on. The cd has their band name instead of another picture but still blends in well with the band. The set out is targeted towards their audience showing how their also spend their free time.

Digipak is a patented style of compact disc or DVD packaging, and is a registered trademark of AGI Media, a MeadWestvaco, Inc. resource, which acquired the original trademark holder, IMPAC Group, Inc., in 2000. MeadWestvaco licensed the name and designs to manufacturers around the world.

Above is a template of a digipak and how you would want the layout and design to be like, most artist always include some lyrics inside and all the people invovled in making the songs. They normally have their images on the front and back. Above is some examples of artist digipaks.

Equipment List

Planning

Characters:
Choosing to do our music video Example - Stay awake, deciding on who should be our lead singer and what other characters should be invovled. As a group we decided to use Roger Dos Santos (Pupil from our school) he fitted best to sing for our video, he already does music and knows how to become a certain character we needed him to be for this type of music video. The theme became all about Alice in the wounderland and how we can portray her through this music video and inlcude a new generation to the story of how alice can be stuck in her own world, one of our members in the group Lucy Hyner became another actor in our music video. We than decided these were our main two characters.
Costume:
Wanting Roger in Black and white throughout the music video it was best decided that he would be dressed in a plain grey t-shirt and black skinny jeans with a snapback hat to represent his album cover called "The league of a Champion". With Alice we wanted her in the blue and white dress throughout the video but she would be in colour adding different accessories each time we film.
Locations:
With Roger the location will be held in the green room, With Lucy (Alice) our first location will be in the forest in Belmont where we can shoot her going crazy and walking down into the forest. Another location we want to film in is in Camden Town as it fits right in with our theme.

Conventions of music videos

Music coventions in indie/Rock

- the band is normally shown throughout the video, set up in a  stage,/could                                                    be performing for crowd.  

- Use of extreme close up and long shots

- Dark locations

- Face paint

- Some use of special effects

some examples such as : kiss, Kings of leon, You me at six, Blink 182

Music conventions in Hip Hop videos

- Locations tend to be shot at a house party, club or basement.

- Use of alcohol normally a known brand such as Crystal 

- Clothing, brand names such as Gucci 

- Expensive cars and houses, sometimes yachts are used

- Attractive girls normally dressed to challenege idelogy of woman

- Long camera shots to show money, close up to show expensive jewellery and assets that artist may have

- Rarely follows story line but genre instead

- Artist(s) usually included in the video

Examples such as: J cole, Drake, Lil wayne, 50 cent, Ice T, Snopp dogg and Dr Dre

Music convention in Pop Videos

- Bright colours

- Close up used to show a happy cheerfull emotions

- Exteme close to show purity and innocence of the artist, usally fully clothed

- Aim towards teenage audience

- Upbeat, includes teenagers too
Examples such as: Justin beiber, Brittney Spears, Hannah Montanna, Katy perry and Michael Jackson

Music industry

The music industry highlights the business side of making a music video and what it takes to have a hit. Making a music video you have to have everything organised from having sound check, costumes, props and equipment needed. In the studio they record a version that is played through a PA speaker system while the band play along with live instruments. Without that it's hard to sync it all up.A couple of directors use tricks like playing the song and having the band play at double speed, then slowing it down to normal speed and fitting it with the studio version of the song. For example Mariah Carey's video 'Touch my body' was played at double speed when making the video and the artist has to sing whithin the speed. Record lables play a big part in promoting your music video, even better they decide whether sign you for a single or multi-album deal. The label acts as an investor in your project, paying for your studio time to record your tracks until sales begin for income to come back to them. The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) pays royalty shares on copies of your track, meaning that the more units you sell the greater it will be. The purpose of having a music video is that the artist is promoting their songs for them to get ratings in the chart and become a number one hit, its helps an artist send a message across and gain more fans.

Categories Of Music Videos

Three Types:

Performance based video, includes the artist/band. Its one of the easiest to do as you can budget well when filming this, depending on how you pick your location. A great example of a performance based video is a band called "You me at six- kiss and tell". This has shots that don't relate to the lyrics and how they perform in a house party.

 Narrative based video, a narrative based music video contains mostly footage that attempts to tell a story through the moving image. Usually involving actors, the story is sometimes linked to the lyrical content of the song, but this isn’t always the case. A good example is a band called "The script- Man who cant be moved", the artist is shown sitting on the corner and showing how he is waiting for that someone to come along and how he has press coming to see him not moving, however they do cut scenes and show the band performing in a car park.

Concept Based Video-This is a style of music video that is based around a single concept or idea. These types of videos tend to be fairly unusual or utilize a particular editing or filming technique. It’s not often you get a purely conceptual music video as the commercial world demands things to be a bit more accessible. An example would be "Rihanna- who's that chick" which shows a morning and evening film put together.

Laura Mulvey Theory

The male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. For example the woman in a music video can be filmed walking across but captured in a sexual way that pleases the male. Having the woman symbolized as objects and creating more excitement to the video for the targeted audience. Some may argue that having the woman dressed seductively sends a wrong message for example feminists would argue against portraying woman is such a way.

Mulvey identifies three "looks" or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women.

1) The first is perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character.

2) The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen.

3) The third "look" joins the first two looks together: it is the male audience members perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film.

Focus group before filming

Questionnaire results

Having a look back at my results, i found out that the majority of people like Rock/Indie music and how the narrative plays a big part in the music video and also relating the lyrics and target audience. This questionnaire did help me find out that people do prefer colour in their music videos so i can take that away with me when we begin to film and know what our targeted audience want.