The song we chose to do was "Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machines. The genre of this song was a pop song. Before we decided on this genre and song, we observed various different types of music videos within different genres. And we decided as a group that we would be most comfortable doing a pop genre music video. Good examples of pop videos that we looked at were, "All Time Low"- The Wanted, "You Belong To Me"- Taylor Swift, "Missing You"- The Saturdays. This research allowed us as a group to identify the general conventions within a pop music video. We learnt that Pop music videos have a bit of everything. Most are performance based and narrative based, where the lyric to visual relationship is strong. But then there are a few conceptial pop music videos. Main culprit for these videos would be somebody like Lady GaGa. From this research it gave us a further understanding of what we can do as a group to enhance our own music video and make it look professional and realistic.
Our music video "Dog Days Are Over" we feel that it is a modern day music video, as we tried to capture and integrate typical issues in today's modern society (Our issue being teenage pregnancy).
Some conventions we have used is the combination of color visuals. We have used black and white to signify to the audience that there flashback scenes in the music video, as these are used a lot on music videos now, we decided to use these scenes to tell the narrative section of our music video. Then the other mixture of color has been used for the performance section, as it makes the footage looks visually interesting and also adds more understanding to the music video as it separates the narrative and performance. This follows the general conventions of a music video because it includes a mixture of color visuals to create interesting visuals. The black and white flashback scenes suggests to the audience that her life is falling apart and also the lyrics "Dog Days Are Over" can be decoded by the audience meaning that the bad times are over. So these lyrics aid the visuals to connote to the audience that her life turning bad.
There are various other conventions of a music video we have used, such as the main character being the singer, this song is a solo sung by a female, and our music video follows this convention as she is going through her life and not through the eyes of somebody else, this makes the relationship of the music video to the audience more personal and more realistic, as the music video is all about her. Another convention we have used is authentic lip-synching, this is seen 95% of the time in music videos, this makes the music video look more authentic and professional and then you can also see the emotion that the performer gives to the audience from singing. We feel the mise-en-scene we have used reflects the mood of the music as most of the costuming we use are bright colors, this is to signify to the audience, that she is a pure, young sweetheart and doesn't give the impression that she is a rebellious character. Linking back to before we have used the lots of cross cutting and montage editing to tell the story and let the audience know in a couple of minutes the whole story of what is happening. We also feel the editing fits the pace of our song, we used a variety of length shots to fit the song, because the tempo of this song changes a lot of the time. Our video is a pop genre, and to an certain extent there is no structure to what we can include in a pop video. Where as a hip hop video you would expect a urban background, rapping lyrics etc. Where as in our music video, it gave us an opportunity to experiment with a lot of the different things, one of the conceptual scenes we have used, is the stock motion animation from the toys, and the green screen in which we have used. This gave us an opportunity also to experiment with a lot of different camera shots such as the pan shots, long shots, low angles, high angles etc. This made our music video more interesting by not repeating the same variety of camera shots.
Andrew Goodwin suggested six points in which shows conventions of music videos. The first point is the music video demonstrates the genre characteristics, we feel we have captured this, by using a performance and narrative sections in the music video. The second point suggests that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals again linking back to earlier, "Dog Days Are Over" suggesting that bad times are over, and obviously the end shot of our music video is that she is pregnant and good times are ahead, so there is a lyric and visual relationship. The third point is similar to the second, that the music itself relates the visuals, We feel our music does, as we follow the pace of the song with the editing, and also the music is in a minor key, and we feel that our video reflects the sad mood. The fourth point of Goodwin's theory is that we meet the demands of the record label, we have done this by promoting the artist, by making her look stunning, using lots of close ups and make her look authentic and professional, which appeals to the audience. The fifth feature is that we have intertextual reference, I feel we have included some of this aspect, as the film "Juno" inspired us to create a video which brings up the topic of teenage pregnancy. The last point is that our artist as a voyeuristic image and I feel we have captured this by, giving our artists a variety of costumes, which look sometimes odd and sometimes normal, but we feel this makes her unique and stand out from the crowd. The other conventions that we have used, is using lots and lots of close ups of our star in order to show off our pop star and make her look appealing to the audience. Also singing directly to the camera, this is so that the music video looks legitimate to the audience.
How We Used Media Technologies In Research, Construction, Planning And The Evaluation Stages
We used a different varieties of media technology in the creation and the progression of our media product. Some of the technologies that we used were the internet, final cut express, adobe photoshop, Microsoft publisher, and the sony handheld cameras.
The internet was probably the media technology that we used the most and was probably the most significant and vital as this was the primary source of research for us as a group, and gave us critical ideas in order for us to move further with our project. The research we had to do was to look into other music video directors, and utilizing their ideas and trying to imbed them into our music video. Also we used youtube.com to study and research other music videos similar to our genre, to help us note the general conventions which are used. Also we used the codes and imbedded them onto our blog, to help us further analyze these music videos.
The programs in which we used the most to create our ancillary texts and our digital advertisement pack, was Microsoft publisher and Adobe photoshop. To create the template and draft we used publisher because we knew how to utilize the software and make them to the best of our ability, then we used Adobe photoshop to brush up the products and make it look professional.
The main piece of editing software we used was Final Cut Express, this was a vital piece of software in order to put our music video together. It gave us a variety of tools and editing techniques in which we can use, such as cross dissolves, green screen, stock motion animation. Stock motion animation are still images combined to look like a video sequence and using this software helped make our music video look professional. We also used color corrector and black and white images, this made our music video look more professional. Final Cut Express we feel was a great piece of software and helped us greatly.
When it came to filming our music video, we used sony handheld cameras, the reason why we used these as they were high quality resolution cameras and they were easily accessible and very easy to carry around. We used a tripod in order to help us film our video. This aided the camera to look steady and aid in the resting of camera shots, making the music video look more professional. Also the digital camera allows instant playback for us to check as a group the footage, this is so that we can decided on the spot what we need to re-film.
And the last piece of media technology that we used was blogger.com, this was important as we needed this website in order to upload our media evidence, research and work. Blogger was also a good research tool, as it gave us the opportunity to analyze other peoples work.
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts
To create our Digipak cover and adverts we used a variety of different software in order to do it, we used Microsoft publisher at first and then we edited and finished it up using Adobe Photoshop. The reason why we did this is that none of us had real experience using Photoshop, so we created the basics using the publisher software and once we had done this, we used the photoshop elements and features in order to make our ancillary texts look professional.
Our Digipak title is called "The Beginning", the reason why we called it this is because it signifies to the audience that she is a new act and performer in the music industry. And we also feel that this title relates to the image of the pop star on the Digipak, it is a high contrast picture, with lots of bright lighting. I feel the bright lighting signifies that a new beginning, an obvious example of this case scenario, would be the image of heaven. Also the facial expression of our pop star is that she looks really focused, and this could be decoded by the audience, that she is ready to break free into the music industry and become a star. As a group we stumbled across this idea, we took a lot of different photos of Hannah to see what would look good on a Digipak covers that are being sold in shops.
Our advert uses a variety of different features to try and catch the audiences attention and persuading them to buy the album, we have used the ideas of tour dates, this is a great advertising opportunity to try and persuade people to come and watch our pop star. We also used screenshots of the music video on the advert to signify to the audience which style of genre we are, and to show that our music video looks professional and an idea of what it is about.
We feel our Digipak design and advert meets the style of our genre, which is pop and we feel this is done in various ways. Our cover and advert look very positive and happy, which is the general convention of the pop genre, as pop is intended to target the majority of a young audience and they would expect to see positive images. We have shown this positive image in our ancillary texts in various ways, for example, the clothes in which our pop star is wearing they are white and bright, which is related to light and happiness. Also we have given Hannah an urban image on the back of the CD cover, which is a modern stereotypical image of a teen pop star in the modern society of today, an example of a type of pop star today would be "Pixie Lott".
Our advert would be placed in a magazine like "Smash Hits", which is a pop magazine which is targeted for the younger audience, and this would be a perfect magazine for us to advertise.
In our products we have emphasized the high contrast and white light, this we feel is reflected in the lyrics and our music video, from going to a bad place to somewhere happy an positive.
We have tried to appeal to the audience according to the "Uses of Gratification Theory". We offer the gratification identity because this is a general typical scenario of modern society, teenage pregnancy, so this is something that some of the audience can relate to . And maybe some people can learn from and maybe get advise on if ever in the situation. So our music video educates the audience.
How audience feedback has helped up improve our final media production?
In order to improve our media production we had to obtain various audience feedback in order for us to know as group what improvements and adjustments can be made. We used questionnaires and basic focus groups to find out what our intended audiences preferred genre of music. Then once we had finished our music video we created another focus group to get final feedback on our product.
For our original audience research as said previously we said, we used questionnaires, from this we asked what the preferred type of genre of music is for our intended age group, and what conventions they would expect to see. From feedback we found out that the preferred genre of music is pop and indie. We was pleased when we found this out as pop music is the genre we chose. We also found out that the audience doesn't really have a specific preference for what type of music video it is (i.e narrative, conceptual and performance based). So we tried to implement all three of these into our music video and tried to make our music video as interesting as possible by using a variety of shots, fast paced editing and all of Andrew Goodwin's media theory of the six key music video features.
We also obtained more feedback after we made a first draft rough cut of our music video, and this is just to basically learn about the strengths and weaknesses of our product and what are the main points to consider when improving our video, and they were that the story line didn't necessarily make perfect sense. So our main objective was making it clearer for the audience. Also to improve basic things like lip-synching and some basic continuity editing needed to be addressed. Also from this feedback it enabled us to realize what scenes needed to be taken out of our final product.
After we completed our final music video we created another focus group and asked them a series of questions about our music video.
The way in which we done our audience research about our music video, is by filming a focus group.
And We asked them a series of questions, which are as follows:
1. Did you like our music video and why?, also did you understand the story line and the moral behind it?
http://cbsca2mediagroup2.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-evaluation-part-1.html
2. Did you think our music video had a conventional story line?
http://cbsca2mediagroup2.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-evaluation-part-2.html
3. What did you think of the editing in our music video?
http://cbsca2mediagroup2.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-evaluation-part-3.html
4. What improvements can be made in our music video and did you generally like it, also what did you think of our the editing?
http://cbsca2mediagroup2.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-evaluation-part-4.html
In general the audience feedback has been influential in the process of our music video.
This Prezi document shows a general summary of the key points made within our evaluation
