Question 2

Question Two: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts (the magazine advertisement and CD digipak)?

For this question we decided to do a video podcast to mkae our answer more interesting instead of it being in the form of an essay.

(You will need to turn the volume up fully to be able to hear the answer to the question)

Here is our video we hope you like it.

Again we had problems whilst uploding the video and had to put it directly onto our you tube account, so you will have to follow the link to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6S9gjGhGg

Here is the essay we wrote for this question and use in the video.

-For our coursework we had to plan and construct a music video with a song our choice. After completing the product we also had to construct a digipak which contains the front and back covers with the two CD inserts as well as a magazine advertisement.

-We believe our combination of the main product and the ancillary texts are very effective as we spent a lot of time perfecting our products as well as doing vast amounts of research and taking a few lessons to plan each product which enabled us to make them of good quality.

-After much research into our chosen genre which can be seen in our ‘Research for music Video’(Monday 27th Sept) post. This helped us to come up with ideas and enabled us to pick our song carefully, and helped us to choose ideas and make us thinks about all the codes and conventions of Pop videos.

-We also researched a lot before planning our CD covers which can be seen in our ‘Research for Print Based Items (CD Cover)’(Sunday the 21st of Nov) post. This was very useful as after researching into, we came we many ideas for our CD covers as looking at similar ones gave us an idea of how ours should look like.

- The products also complement each other as we have used our favourite shot from the video which for our front CD cover and magazine advertisement. We used the shot as we believe that the mise en scene and how the shot is framed makes it look very professional. The font on the front cover is also shown on the magazine advertisement, which helps to keep the theme for the artists name and the song title. For the magazine advertisement we used realistic reviews from real music reviewers (Q magazine and Radio 1) as well as showing where it can be bought from (iTunes and Play.com) this helps to make it look quite effective as it looks professional and something that could be seen in a magazine.

- The front and back cover as well as the CD covers have a running theme as we used different shots from our narrative in which where filmed at Reddish Vale. Our front cover is the shot of the protagonist writing in the book on the grassy area for the second bridge part of the song. The back cover is the last shot in the video in which the protagonist is walking away from the camera. The insert is our establishing shot with added effects to make it more interesting. By using these shots it keeps to the theme and makes the CD covers look bright with the lighting and the costume combined with that makes it look like it would be a summer CD which would make the audience think is it an upbeat easy listening CD.

- As the magazine and CD digipak are very similar it would help to attract the target audience as they would look at the advert and think that the CD is good with it’s reviews and summer feel, then when they go to buy the product they will see the same image and font and instantly recognise it as the Natasha Bedingfield product, by keeping the items similar it would make it easy to sell the products.

-By keeping certain themes though out the combination it helps the finished products to become more effective as they are closely linked with one another which makes them easily recognisable. Keeping the same font style and pictures for all the products is a reason why the ancillary texts is so effective and enables all the products to have a good end result. The main reason why our products is so effective is because we thought about using a theme throughout the whole construction process. Doing the research has helped to make sure we followed the various codes and conventions of pop videos as well as the conventions for the ancillary texts. But by also making it have unusual qualities that wouldn’t often be seen within these videos like the amount of effects we use. By following all these points it helped to make our combination of products very effective, and very professional as it keeps a themes’ which links to all the different products and makes it recognisable instead of having a music video which is bright and connotes romance then having a dark digipak/magazine advertisement. I am please with all our finished products and by taking the time to plan research and construct each one it has enabled us to make quality effective work.

Question 3

First part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_W52HKKf0

Second part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TGEgePIR-A

(Whilst watching these videos you need to have it the volume on the videos turned up fully to be able to fully hear the replies from each individual)

For our audience feedback we asked a few or our peers to watch our finished video product and ask them about it. We thought about doing a questionnaire but decided it would be more interesting we if ask them questions and set up a camcorder to record there thoughts about the it. The video is in two parts as we had various technical problems and was unable to edit them together but the footage is still very helpful and it has given us lots of information to help us complete this question. Below i am going to give each question we asked and talk about what the audience thought after doing that for all the questions i am going to say what we have learnt form it. We had to redo question two again as we got interrupted so question two stars in the second video.

Question One: What did you like about our video?

One person said they liked the narrative and how it flowed together and he liked the use of jump cuts at the start. Another said that they liked the performance and location as it was very upbeat and bright and they believed that it works with the video as they thought it was a powerful song so the elements work well. Another of our peers said they liked the use of stop motion for the 'From My heart flow' section, and she also liked how we spelt out the 'D E F' and 'A D D' with rocks.

Question Two: What would you improve about our video?

One peer said that we needed more shot variety for example different angles or different types of performance. Another said that the performer should of moved more instead of standing in one place. Another one said that we should of added more location variety and they said that adding one more would of made it more interesting.

Question Three: Do you think it follows the conventions of Pop video? e.g the use of medium and close up shots, the use of performance and narrative and varied costume and location.

One person responded with the fact they think the video follows the conventions is that the video just concentrates on the artist as she is the bulk of the performance as she is the 'meat' of the video. Another person said that it does follow the conventions as the song fits in really well with the video which makes it look professional. They refer to the notebook where it says 'I love you' four times they all think that it looks that something that could be seen in a Pop video, as well as the costume as you could imagine it in a Natasha Bedingfield video.

Question Four: With the other products (Digipak and magazine advertisement) after watching the video do you think it works together and is quite effective?

They all agreed and one person said that it is very effective as we used the same images and same style of fonts for the video, CD cover and advertisement. And by looking at the advertisement you can tell that it is advertising the other products as they are all linked.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After watching the video we have learnt quite a bit from our audience feedback. We have learnt that our target audience likes our video and likes the techniques we have used such as the stop motion for the 'From My Heart Flow' section. As well as that they liked the jump cut at the beginning of the video which occurs after the titles. The audience also liked the spelling of 'D E F' with rocks, which is really good to know as that means we have made our video interesting and the audience likes all of the aspects of the video that we do. By adding them in our video it has made it become more interesting as our target audience and they have even said that is does look professional. Our audience feedback has also told us that we do follow the conventions just like we though it did. By having a performance and narrative it has shown that we have followed the conventions really well as the audience though that it worked well for our video and they can see aspects of our performance and narrative in actual videos. Using the notebook for the 'I love you' bit written out also helped it to follow the conventions as they believed that it would be something seen in a Pop video. Another thing the audience said it help make the video look professional is that the performer is the 'meat' of the video which is always the case in Pop videos as well as the performer being the bulk of the video and she is the focus so from this we can understand the audience is paying attention to her which would help them to become familiar with her and her other products. I am really pleased that the audience like our video and it has many positive points about it. They gave a few negative points about the video such as that we should of added more performance and got Lucy to have moved more during performance as well as using more shot variety. We were able to change this as now the 'Getting off my stage' section shows the performer moving a lot more then falling onto the ground, so that criticism helped us to improve the video and enabled us to make that verse more dramatic as the performer falls to the floor at the end of the verse to show that she has given up. Another poi tn they gave about the video is that we should of used another location instead of the performance the field area and the recording studio we tried to do this but couldn't think of what part of the song we would fit it too as we only use the location for the bridge part of the song, we added a different type of green screen to it for the performance but were unable to make a new location for the video. After watching the 'what would you improve...' question we realised that they audience didn't have a lot to say about what they didn't like which has pleased us greatly as we can safely say we have made a good quality music video as they were not any major issues with our video form our peers. We also asked them a question about the effectiveness of our finished music video with the digipak and the advertisement. They told us that is all looks very effective as we have used the same images and the same font styles, for example our favourite shot in the video it used for the front of the CD as well as the magazine advertisement and the same font style as the front CD cover it used for the magazine advertisement which helps to link them all which mean they are easily recognisable. This is important to know we have realised all our products work well together and are of a good quality standard. The audience feedback has told us a lot about our video and we have found that we have done it very well, we believe that the reason our video has become so good and has been effective for the audience which we believe it was down to research and planning so i am glad our overall media products are good pieces of work.

Director's Commentary

Question 1

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

Our music video uses various conventions of real media products. Whilst researching our chosen genre we came across various videos, two by our chosen artist and one by a similar artist, in our post Research for Music Video on Monday the 27th of September we mentioned about how the various videos gave ideas to use for our own. So using similar things to those videos enables us to stick to these conventions. We have used a range of artist and videos for our examples with this question as we believe showing a variety gives clearer indication of when we are following the conventions and when we are developing them or challenging them in anyway.

Pop videos often use the format of part performance and narrative which we followed in our own product, artist like Natasha Bedingfield use this convention such Dido, Pink and Kelly Clarkson.

Kelly Clarkson follows the convention of the combination of narrative and performance in all of her videos and the split between the two is usually more or less equal. With the performance always being a band behind setup with microphone, guitars and drum kit. These screen grabs are from the song 'Breakaway'







Pink uses this convention in most of her songs but doesn't follow it for every one. She usually has more narrative than performance and doesn't always have the band type set up in the performance part. Pink is an usually Pop star as she wears dark costume which mainly consists of the colour black and has a disjunctive narrative.





From the screen grabs from our video you can see that we follow the convention combination of performance and narrative parts in the song. Our narrative is about the protagonist trying to write a song in the various locations the performance is expressing her feelings about it. We follow this conventions quite well and by doing do helps the audience to recognise our product as a Pop video.





The real music video of 'These Words' have varied costume and location which we also followed. In post Comparison of the Real Music Video to our Finished Product, Monday 6th December we have spoke about all the different costume and location changes in which we illustrated the different location and costume of both videos with the use of screen shots and put a description underneath the screen grabs to describe what we have done.

Example of varied location and costume in the real video.

Example of varied location and costume in our finished product.




After looking at the various other Pop videos we realised location and costume change is quite common and Pop artists such as Dido and Pink also use these conventions which makes the video quite interesting.


These are screen grabs from Dido's music video of White Flag these help to show the convention really well as the location and costume has changed so drastically you can see this as in one shot the protagonist is dressed in a track-suit jacket in a bedroom whereas in the other she is changed a lot more feminine and has an entourage which connotes fame.




These are examples from Pink video of Don't Let Me Get Me, here we can also see the convention quite well as the contrast goes form her looking dressed up back stage to being dressed in a cheer leading outfit which shows that the location is at a high school.







The establishing shot of the location or an object also seems to be another convention as all the Pop videos we have looked at use this idea of having a shot of the location or an object before cutting to the protagonist in the narrative or the performance.



For example....

Kelly Clarkson uses an establishing shot of a stereo playing her song before cutting to the performance.


In Dido's music video White Flag it's an establishing shot which uses the camera to dd the effect that the sing is spinning whilst getting bigger. This could be used to illustrate that she is loosing control which is what the song seems to be about.

This establishing shot for Pink's Just Like A Pill video shows the logo of Pink which seems to have been hand written. This establishing shot is good as having it helps to get people familiar with Pink as an artist, before cutting to her shot on the floor.



Our establishing shot is of the location which is used at the start of the song, the titles roles before cutting to the jump cut technique. After looking at how other artists use this convention it confirmed that we were also using it in the correct way.

Our media product also differs from the conventions of real music videos. I believe that our video challenges these by the amount of techniques that we use such as stop motion, jump cuts, green screen and speeding parts of the song up.

A technique we have used which challenges the convention of Pop videos is the use of jump cut at the beginning of our video just after the establishing shot and the 'Hip hop beat' part which follows the protagonist into the recording studio. Developing and challenging the conventions is an important thing to have done with our video because if it followed the conventions completely and didn't do things that other videos don't do we wouldn't make it stand out for the audience and it wouldn't of made it individual as we wouldn't have all our interesting techniques which we use.

From all the videos we have looked at it seems that they don't use all the techniques we do they use fast cutting between the different shots and locations and also they use different camera angles such as canted, high and low angled shots, like it is seen in Dido's video White flag.

We used stop motion for the section of the song 'Waste bin full of paper' in which we build up a pile of paper on a surface, this challenges the conventions of Pop videos as research into the genre has shown that videos don't have cutaways of stop motion so we decided to use it has it added an unusual quality to our video as it's not usually something you would see and it would interest the audience as it isn't like every other music video.

These screen grabs show our stop motion technique.

Usually the performance in Pop videos is either set on a stage with a microphone and a band set up and doesn't have many effects, or the performance is medium and close ups in one location. We challenge this convention as we use effects in our performance as well as having two costume changes during the performance. In our real video we used a stoplight with a subtle shade of pink for the majority of the performance whilst using the costume from the bridge part of the narrative.

When it gets to the 'Getting off my stage' piece the background is black with the performer being quite bright in a different set of clothes as we believed that we should change the costume for such a dramatic piece of the song as the pink feminine dress wouldn't look right for the piece.



We develop the conventions when we use the notebook some Pop videos we have looked at use writing on the screen to emphasize a point where as we have used a note book and seen the protagonist writing in the book or used stop motion to stop what is being written for the audience to see. The real these words video uses a note book at the end of the video that is one of the ideas we really liked so as well as doing a over the shoulder shot of the protagonist we have developed what Natasha Bedingfield does as we use cutaways to show pieces of the book.

Over the shoulder shot.

Cutaway.

I believe that we have a well balanced music video as it follows some conventions really well which enables the audience to watch it and realise that is it a Pop video as well as having some creativity in it which would make people watch it and think how different ours is from others which would hopefully make them to like it a lot more

Question Four

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

Construction

In the construction stage we used alot of different techniques to make our overall video. We learnt to use the recording equpiment such as the camcorder and tri-pod which enabled us to sucessfully shoot different shots that arn't shaking or on a wrogn angle. To make the video we used final cut pro on the Mac computers which helped us to edit our music video. We cna two screens instead of one whilst making the video which was quite helpful so we could have the video taking up a whole screen whilst having the timeline and the footage files on the other which helped to make this be more clear for us as it is not as cluttered as it would be if it was all piled on one screen havign two screens helped to make it easier for us to find the different types of footgae we need.

Screen Shot One

In our video we had to add text for titles, and the parts in the video where 'from my heart flow' and 'I love you' appear. this screen grab shows the different ways in which we could edit the text such as what we want the word to say in the text box, what font we want the text to be, and things like the style whether we want it in bold or not and the colour of the font we want to use.
The second screen grab shows how we edited the text to get our effect of having 'I Love You' shown in three different sizes whihc come up as it is said in the song.

Screen Shot Two


This is a screen grab to show how we exported our video which enabled us to put it onto the blog so we could copare it with the rela music video. We had to export it out of final cut pro in an mp4 format and had to save it as another file in our folder so it would work fine after beign exported..


Screen Shot Three



This screen grab shows how we used another effect on final cut pro. We had to change the speed so the part of the song which has the protagonist writing 'I love you' four times in the book fits in withthe song. We used this effect so the words are speeded up and appear as each line is sang in the song. In this screen shot we are also showing which part of the time line we hightlighted to do this effect, we changed the speed of the song from 100% which is the normal speed to 836% which gave us the speed we want.

Screen Grab Four

This shot shows how we edited our perfomance from the white background to having the spotlight with a subtle shade of pink. The screen grab shows how we moved the spotlight and the box above it has the type of effects you can have one each spotlight. We decided to use a subtle shade of pink to conote romance as the song is quite romantic what we didnt want was a bright pink as it should be more too girly and make the video look less proffesional as it would be bright pink. We had to do this for every individual perfomance piece in the video in a program called.......................................................................

Screen Shot Five

This is a shot of the control board in the media production editing suite. We used this board so that we could switch between each of the cameras which we set up in medium close up and long shot. The live showed the camera which camera was on and preview showed the other cameras this helped us to set the shots up so they were the setups at the distance we wanted.

Media Suite One

This is a shot the equipment in the media production suite, we sat infront of the board and used a program called tri-caster to set up the green screen effects which were the black stage effect for the 'getting of my stage' and the white background for the rest fo the perfomacne piece. We used the headphones so that we could keep check on the lip-syncing of Lucy with the song was perfect we could do this as the music could be heard through the headphones with the use of the mircophones next to the spekaer sytem we set up to play the song.

Media Suite Two

This is a shot to show the camera we used in the editing suite and the green screen it which it projects the image on. The camera has a green circle around it which projects the image onto the green screen when turned on with the use of the tri-caster program. We used the green screen for the perfomace piece we got Lucy to stand infront of it and when she started to perform we then projected the image which we wanted behind her so it appeared on the tri-caster equipment when recording it.

Research

We used different types of media technologies when researching this video. We used the blog as a major part of research as it helped us to gather our ideas with thinggs such as the production treatment. We used video websites such as Muzu and Youtube to help us when looking at music video's of similar artist and genre, which helped us to understand what we needed to include to make it look like a prossessional music video.

Planning

We made an animatic storyboard, to show our planning of the music video. We made the storybaord into an animatic video we placed the music in the video and cut the different shots in time with the music to show what we are going to do with each shot. We made a directors comentary of the animatic video and instead of usuing the music we had a comentary to show eahc of the shots and went into detail about how we were going to do them for example we spoke about using stop motion for the 'waste bin full of paper' part of the song.

Evaluation

For the evaluation we will be using media technologies such as a dircetors comentary to talk about our overall video in this we will talk about eahc shot why we did each shot and the different techniques we used such as the stop motion and cutting to the beat of the song. We will also talk about loctaion, costume and what effects we added to the various shots. We hope to video each member of the group so they can discuss there view of our finshed mucis video and the ancillary texts(Magazine advert and the Digi-Pack) which will help us with our second question of how effective do we think our products are, refering to the music video, CD Digi-Pack and the Magazine advert is.

Magazine Advertisement for Digipak

We have made various changes to get our final magazine advertisement, we have gone through four different drafts to get to our completed version. Here we will show each draft and explain what we have changed to improve it and make it more professional.

Draft One

This CD cover is quite empty and doesnt include a lot of imformation as we left out where the CD can be bought and whether or not it can be downloaded. The date of release doesn't stand out that much so it will have to be moved fruther up the picture to catch the eye of the target audience. We used the same font style for the title and album name as we did for our CD cover .

Draft Two

Here we have included the website address and where it is avalible to download are at the bottom as that is where they are ususally situated on posters. We moved the reviews up more so we could move the release date and changed the text to black and centered it above the picture as we believed it would help it to stand out more. We also got rid of the word "Our" from the release date as the adverts we looked at just told the date that the alubm comes out on.

Draft Three

Now that we have done this draft our poster is starting to look more professional, here we have only included one hit single so we could add the logos of places you could download the CD from iTunes and Play.com, whilst leaving the website address at the bottom. We left the hit single of 'these words' on as it is the song we used to make our music video so we thought that it would be the most apropriate song choice. We placed our logos on an angle under one another to make it look neat and tidy it helps the poster to look more interesting.

Draft Four

After showing our picture to some of our peers they said that we should mention that the product is available for CD and download so we decided so add it above the release date. Now that we have made all of the changes to our CD cover, we believe that it is now finished to a good standard and looks quite professional and are happy to use it as a finished product.

Shots we did not use.

This post has alust of shots we have taken with the camcorder but were left out of the final product under each picture i will explain why we did not use them.



Shot one





This shot was not included during our stop motion technique in the brigde part of the song, as it is a long shot and we wanted a medium/close ups shot for this this. Another negative thing about this shot is it the fact that Lucy's elbow can be seen and if this was included in our final product it would look less professional.


Shot Two



This shot was not included in our final product as it was too blurry and on an angle and half of the letter 'e' was missing. If we used it i believe that it would lower the quality of our work.


Shot Three



This shot is to far away for an over the shoulder shot as Lucy's hair is in the way and you can not see the writing, and as this is the chrous part of the song it would of made the narrative unclear as the audience would be unable to see what is going on.



Shot Four







We could not use this shot as Lucy is turned slighty and is not looking staright at the camera, so the shot wouldnt look right as in perfomers in Pop videos are always looking straight on at the camera.

Shot Six


This i would say is an extreme long shot of Lucy but eventho the shot is well framed it would cause a continuity error if used in our final piece as the costume has changes form what was in the pervious shot . By having the protagonist wear a jumper it would make the video less consistent and also it wouldnt be following what we said in our production treatment as the costume is meant to be feminine and casual and having the protagonist wear it wouldnt help us to do that.



This shot has the same problems as the previous one, it is a noticable continuity error that would make our video look very unprofessional.




This is a well framed shot but the problem with it is that it is too far away and would make what was happening less clear then the medium shot we have taken of this, another problem with this is that there is litter in the shot that we didnt notice till after this was taken so by using this shot the litter could take away the focus of the protagonist,

Comparison of the Real Music Video to our own Finshed Product

Here we are going to compare and contrast our own music video to the real one, we are going to use screen grabs from both videos so we can talk about the main differences and similarities.

Effects.

Shot has natural lighting and looks like it hasn't had many effects added onto it which is a contrast form our performance.

Shot of the performance with the green screen that has been edited with a pale shade of pink.

In the real video all the lighting seems to be natural and green screen looks like it hasn't been used which is very different to ours as the performance part of the song is made with green scene with added affects to get the pink spotlight which can be seen on the shot above. An effect which we both have used is the stop motion technique in the real video they use in the part which says' read some Byron Shelly and Keats' but instead we used the different poems by the poets appearing on one another when it says there name in the song. It is also used in the real video when is says 'you know i had some studio time booked' they use the technique to move chairs in different places. Where we use the stop motion technique is different to the real video as we use it for 'waste bin full of paper' whereas in the real video they just use fast cutting, when we use the technique for 'from my heart flow' that is a slow bit in the real one . Another effect that we use which isn't in the video is the effect of changing the speed to make a section faster we used this for chorus of 'i love you' four times in our video i got Lucy to write it in a book which is different to the real one as for that bit in the video it is fast cutting between all the different locations.

Location and Costume
Example one different location with a different costume for the song uses stop motion here.

Example two different location where the stop motion is used.

Example three of a tracking shot with different location and costume.

Example One

Green screen of the 'getting off my stage' used different costume then the dress as it was to bright for such a dramatic piece of the video.

Example two the costume and location of the narrative part of the video.


Example three shows Lucy in the recording studio a different costume is used again as the narrative one wouldn't look right in such a casual environment.



Our music video is quite similar to the real one in the sense that we both have a number of varied locations, the screen grabs you can see our examples of our varied location and Natasha Bedingfield's varied location, another thing we kept similar is that we changed costume with the location. Even tho we have changed the costume what makes our video different is that we haven't used as many locations so we don't have as many costume changes although where we are using green scene we have two different costume for different parts. Whereas the real video has around seven different locations and costumes. In the real video the locations seem to be round an empty house or in the garden or by the beach so i fell that her locations all have a similar theme where as our ones are very different as the bridge part is filmed in the open we also use a recording studio as well as using the media production suite for the green scene parts.


Cutting to the beat.

'A'

'D'

'D'

'A'

'D'

'D'

As you can see form the real video's screen garb to our own we have done it in the same way but changed how we show it. In the real music video the camera zooms in to focus on the flowers as she cuts there heads of to the beat of 'ADD'. Where as In our video the camera moves out to the beat of 'ADD'. This bit is very similar to the real video as we explained in our research we liked this bit and was going to do something similar. We decided to insert shots of rocks instead of the protagonist as we though it would fit in with the natural them which we use in the narrative.

As you can see from all the different example's given our video is quite different from the real one but we do have some similar qualities, like the use of stop motion or cutting to the beat. A big difference with the two videos is that the real one is all performance with lip syncing throughout where as with our we have the narrative to show that she is trying to write a song and use the recording studio to emphasize the verse of 'you know i had some studio time booked'.



Comparison Overall
I believe that our video uses a lot more technical effects then the real one video, as we use things like stop motion and changing the speed as well of using green screen and adding the effects of a pale shade of pink. I like the idea of the fast cutting between the different location in the real video but it wouldn't of suited ours as much as we didn't use as many locations like or and we like the fact our video cuts between performance and narrative as it makes the video interesting. The real video doesn't seem to have as much of a narrative of ours but the real one keeps the audiences attention as it never stays on the same shot for to long the real video is mostly performance. I think that the two video's our quite similar as the lip syncing in both is really effective and they both cut to the beat quite well, the main difference is that we use more techniques. Both videos are bright and only go dark for the verse of 'I'm getting of my stage' this part of the video needs to be darker as the protagonist has finally realised she can't do anything more she is stuck and people are starting to notice so the scene is quite dramatic.