My Final Post!

So I thought I would do a round up of everything I have learnt and done over the last year doing media.
I have loved the course and making our music video has been so much fun, I have loved having the opportunity to be really creative with something, my blog has given me the chance to write up about the continuous progress I have been making this year and it has been good to be able to look back and see how my ideas have developed and eventually created our final music video, which I couldn't be more happy about.
I am so glad that I decided to do media as a subject for my A-levels, it has made me realise what I want to go on to study at university and for a future job.
Overall I am very happy with all of my work from this year, including my music video, digi pack and the magazine advertisement that I have made over the last few months and I'm sad that the course is finishing!

Question four:

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

Media Evaluation

Question three:

3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

On Thursday 7th April, we hosted a film showing evening. This showing displayed all of our productions across AS and A2. I enjoyed seeing the year 12's productions and giving them audience feedback as I felt that they're films were some of the best as they were an assortment of all different genres not just horror/thriller. we tried to get as much audience feedback as possible by giving the audience response sheets to fill out, and set up response booths so after the showcase was over they could give us some verbal feedback that we could film on our flip cameras it was good to receive some feedback from other students and teachers.

I found this a great opportunity to show off our productions what we had been working on for the past year Here is what we found from our audience feedback:


- 'different camera angles and good song choice'


-'costume was appropriate for the genre and the forwarding and rewinding effect looked really good'


-'video fits well with the genre'


- these are all the feedback sheets that were filled in for us

These are some of the other things people had said about our music video:

" Fits with music genre - Excellent"
"Loved all the different shots"
"Video went well with the song choice"
"Favourite part, the ending scene"
"Good effects and camera angles"
"Great lighting"
"Good use of different camera angles"
"Good locations, which matched song choice"
"White background was very effective"
"Fast pace shots worked well"
"Good use of rewinding effect"
"Good lip syncing"
"Fun video, matches song"
"Fantastic costumes, and locations"
"Great range of shots"
"very funny/cute"
"Excellent split screens"
"Funny/well edited"
"Creative use of props/costumes'
Use of props connect with the lyrics"
"Fantastic camera angles"
Great variety, fits with genre"
"Quirky and enjoyable because of the location changes"
"Upbeat got me grooving in my seat"
"Creative and effective ending"

From looking at all the feedback that we have gained. We have learnt that, our audience really liked our use of props and costumes, because they related to our song and our pop genre. By also gaining audience feedback during the production of our music video, allowed us to be able to change things to improve the final version of our music video, which meant that in the end our product was more of what our target audience wanted. We learnt that our audience wanted fast pace editing and short quick shots, so the video was eye catching and for us to include locations that they could relate to, so our music video should be realistic. In the feedback we gained after our music video had been shown at the showcase evening in school, we learnt that our audience found our video really fun and quirky , which is the image we wanted to create for our artist in our music video.

Question two

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and auxiliary tasks?

Question 2

Question one:

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

We adopted many aspect of real media ranging from music videos to advertisements. Our video consists of shot angles, themes and techniques from different real media products, that we adapted to suit our music video, however some features are very similar and almost inter textual.


We have used a similar image to this one from Pink's video to 'Raise your glass' that represents WW1 pro women propaganda, we have used this to show a strong power characteristic in women in today's society. We discovered Pink's video after we had already used this image in our video and therefore we were able to further developour initial idea by using a poster in the background to reinforce the image that we were trying to create. Pink's image and message she portrays to the audience is similar to that of our character Bailey, which is the empowerment of women.




We decided to develop our idea's by juxtapose the image's we have created in our video by creating a contrasting message in our video. We used camera angle's to represent objectifying women, we used a tilt shot from her legs to her face. We developed this idea after watching the video to 'Frim Fram Sauce' by The Nat King Cole Trio. This is to mock men objectifying women where as in the 'Frim Fram Sauce' video there the tilt shot has no relevance to the song other than just having the image of a woman's body in it.




We used a humorous element through out our video by developing ideas we have seen in videos such as 'We 'no speak Americano'. we have used an idea from the this music video to create the ending of our music video we decided to end it with the female protagonist chasing the male with a shoe. We edited in an old movie style effect (spehia with vertical scratches and dots). The 'We 'no speak Americano' music video also shows the convetional chasing of another character portrayed in old comedies. We thought this was effective in our video.





However we have also challenged the conventions of a pop music video by our video being simple in comparison to most music video's which are bright, colourful and extravagant in their locations, props and use of costume and make up, we used realistic locations, props and costumes to relate more with our target audience. We also challenged by not including a dance routine where as most music video's have backing dancers and full routines.

First draft of magazine advert

This is what I had initially started doing. I created my magazine advertisement using the software of photo shop, and also paint. I decided to use an image that I had taken from our music video because I thought that the image really representedhow are artist could be realtable to her audience through creating a realistic image of her, I didn't want to use an image that looked too flashy, but I did want my artist to be in the advertisement. Having the artist in the advertisement of an album is something typical to do within a pop genre because they like to show off the image of the artist.
I got the idea of how to lay out my own advertisement by looking at other artists magazine advertisements, I had chosen the colours by looking at my digi pack, I wanted to use the same colour tones so as my artist was more easily recognisable to her audience through using the same colours to represent her through promotional aspects.

Music Magazines

Conventions of a promotional advert

some of The typical conventions that you would see on a magazine advert are for an album would be the following:

- Ratings / opinions / reviews
- The band name
- Tour date details
- Album artwork
- Website details
- I-tunes/ play.com etc Adverts
- Singles (taken from)
- Album Name
- Record Label
- Nominations and awards


This is an example of an advert in Q magazine for Marina and the diamonds, it has most of the conventions I have previously mentioned such as the band name, featuring songs, album name, review quotes/opinions, album artwork, and the website for the band.

Questions on my digi pack

I have posted this small questionnaire on facebook for a few people to answer, which will hopefully provide me with some useful feedback.
I have asked the following questions.

1: does it fit with a pop genre?
2:do you think the album name and artist name are well suited to a pop genre?
3:is there a good enough use of colour?
4:do you think the track list suits the album?
5:are there any improvements you could think of that would make it even better suited to the artist I have created and the pop music genre?

Album and song advertising

looking through popular music distribution sights such as amazon.co.uk and HMV, has made me realise all the diverse ways songs and albums are advertised and sold to audiences. Advertising through as many ways as possible are important to sell songs, albums are advertised though all types of media, such as tv, internet, and magazines. I have particularly been looking at a music related website and magazine top of the pops, and also itunes which is an international music download site that is constantly updating on music events and chart news, seeing that a song is number one in the charts may encourage people to buy it, so it is a really important part of the advertising, where as the top of the pops web page is telling audiences about the artists as well as their music which again helps with advertising because it gets people feeling more involved with what their favourite artist is doing.

Draft of Music video

This is a draft of our music video so far, we have some editing things still to do such as adding in split screens which we are going to do on final cut pro in the next couple of weeks, but so far we are really happy with what we have edited.

My Digi pack final

Digi pack cover so far

So far I have edited a picture I have taken for my Digi pack cover and I really like what ive done so far, I have edited in the police line up background and all I have left to do it write on the album and artist name on the sheet on white card that she is holding, this was to represent the board that crimanls hold up when they have photographs done in front of the line up, but i've done it in a more cheeky way to represent what the album is going to be like.

Feedback

This is some audience feedback we have managed to film, this has helped us because it gave us some feedback on our first bit of editing.

Another controversial video

This new music video by Pink, who is the second artist we have looked to for inspiration for when we started creating our video and digi packs, this new video is really touching and again standing up for women, in the respect that no one should ever feel demeaned by others or feel unimportant because everyone is perfect in their own ways, i think this is a very powerful video, for obvious reasons once you have watch it but I think it is defiantly going to be classed as controversial in the world of music just because it isn't showing glamour and perfection in an obvious way it probably wont be classed as 'correct' but I say well done P!ink for creating another amazing video to make women feel confident about who they are.

Draft of back cover

digi pack

Women in music videos

I have just been watching a programme on BB3 called Music, Money and hip hop honeys. Which talks about if the women in music videos are take advantage of, and just used as sexual images, but also how the women in the music videos enjoy what they do, and how they aspire to be in the big hip hop music videos and they dont care what they do to get there, they will go to extremes such as breast implants and bum implants just to look like the best, and for someone to look at them and think thats the girl I want in my video.
However this does effect the girls that dont want a part in this because it sets a steryotypical view in mens heads of the fact that this must be how girls behave, wanting to show off whetever skin they can and doing loads of dirty dancing.
The realism is that you dont want personality in a music video, people look for big bums and big boobs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x1wz7

Really good effects

I love some of the effects in this video, such as at 2:50 into the song, Lily Allen is pushing 'card board cut outs' of the girls over, but I think it looks really good how they have the girls looking as if they are on pieces of card and then the either fall forward or bend over as Lily Allen either folds them over or pushes them over.
I also really like the camera angle at 2:30 into the video, where he is standing closer to the camera and Lily Allen is a bit further back, this is something I would want to try and recreate in our music video.

Inspiration

This example of an as coursework media video has given us some ideas for some camera angles we want to try and recreate when we film our last scene.
Two minutes into the video, there is a camera angle where the girl in the video walks over the camera and then the camera follows her so the angle is the upside down once she has walked over the top of the camera.
We were thinking about how we would do this and what we have thought is if someone lays down on the floor holding the camera on one side and then doing a pan across as she walks over the top and the over to the other side.
However we would adapt it to fit with our video, so we would have the girl in our video skipping towards and over the camera.

Album Title

We have decided that as our album name we will use one of the names of the tracks we have made up, just becase most pop albums normally take the name of their album from one of their album tracks.
We have decided to call our album 'Not so pretty in pink' because we think it fits perfectly with the image of the album and the feminist feel of it and we want this message to be shown through every inch of the digi pack.

Filming

Last Thursday we continued filming for our music video, we filmed in two locations, the photography studio in school which is the location we are using to do editing for our split screens and point of view shots, after uploading what we filmed it looked really good and we cant wait to start using final cut pro to unleash our editing ideas on.
The second location we went to on Thursday was the Kings Head Pub around the corner from school, we were really lucky to be allowed in there to film and all the staff in the pub were really nice and helpful, and we were even allowed to film from behind the bar! We were a bit doubtful about how the lighting would look once we uploaded because it was quite dark, but surprisingly the quality of what we filmed looked really good and we are all really happy with what we have done so far.
This leaves us with one more location to film in, which is Enfield playing fields and then we can start on our editing.

Album track list ideas

1.Knock 'em out
2.Not so pretty in pink
3.The Sailor
4.it's not me (it's you)
5.Barbie vs Ken
6.Late nights and glitter
7.Don't dress me up
8.How I rock
9.Leave with me
10.Get drinking
11.London town girl
12.When I getta rocking
13.Louder
14.In the bar
15.Money please

My Digi Pack Ideas

I have been thinking about the picture on the front of my digi pack and have got my main inspiration from a photo shoot Lady Gaga has done for her single paparazzi.
The idea of having a police line up as the background, and then having the 'artist' of our single on the front pulling a really cheeky face and holding up a white piece of card with the album title on it and her name.
This idea has come from our use of the whole feminist ideas, and including the WW1 we can do it women's posters, and how all the women got arrested during the suffragette movement protesting for women's rights, and i thought having her standing in front of a line up background would be quite symbolic, but then contrasting this with using a lot of red in the make up and clothing, such as having her wearing bright red lipstick and having red bows in her hair.

Narrative

A narrative is a story that is created in a constructive format (as a work of speech, literature, pictures, song, motion pictures, television, video games, theatre, musical theatre, or dance) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events.
For general purposes in semiotics and literary theory, a "narrative" is a story or part of a story. It may be spoken, written or imagined, and it will have one or more points of view representing some or all of the participants or observers. In stories told orally, there is a person telling the story, a narrator whom the audience can see and/or hear, who adds layers of meaning to the text non-verbally. The narrator also has the opportunity to monitor the audience's response to the story and modify the manner of the telling to clarify content or enhance listener interest. This is distinguishable from the written form in which the author must gauge the readers' likely reactions when they are decoding the text and make a final choice of words in the hope of achieving the desired response.
Whatever the form, the content may concern real-world people and events; this is termed "personal experience narrative". When the content is fictional, different conventions apply. The text projects a narrative voice, but the narrator belongs to an invented or imaginary world, not the real one. The narrator may be one of the characters in the story. Roland Barthes describes such characters as "paper beings", and fiction comprises their narratives of personal experience as created by the author. When their thoughts are included, this is termed internal focalisation: when each character's mind focuses on a particular event, the text reflects his or her reactions.

My digi pack idea

This is the plan i have written down for my Digi pack idea, it is just describing the front cover of the four sided Digi pack i am going to have, I have decided to include the 'artist' of our single on the front cover of the Digi pack because this is what most pop albums have, the background is going to be a police line up, due to being relevant to our feminist approach, and how all the suffragettes got arrested in the late 19th century for protesting for women's rights.
I then want to contrast this with the colours I include in the make up and clothing of the artist in the picture, such as red because it is a very provocative colour, related to sexuality a lot.