Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

When making this mass media music video we used many resources that were all open to us to help us achieve a wider understanding and knowledge upon music video and on how to create the best piece we could. The first piece of technology that we were again introduced to from previous years was Blogger. Blogger has always helped when completing the research and planning stage, it gives us a platform in which we can store our work and able to update and add to at any time, this technology has always helped me personally in able to keep up with the kind of things I need to be looking for when creating a project. In this case it helped me analyse music videos and create a better experience when coming to the construction stage of our music video.

Another piece of equipment we used and are used to is the camera that becomes provided for us. These HD cameras are very userful when getting the job done. They shoot in 720p which has a nice high definition which looks good on Youtube and easy to render. We have used these cameras before and were used to them so it allowed us to experiment with more things that we could do with them, such as the focus pull shot that we used in our final product, this was a creative shot that we had never tried before and learnt about on a trip to New York. We found this camera to be very efficient when creating a piece like we did, it helped us create entertaining and inventive shots that we did not know we could do before we filmed this project.

Another camera we used was a DSLR camera when taking pictures for our digipak and magazine advert. This camera had a high quality lens and camera itself which provided us with great quality pictures and variety of angles and zoom which we felt happy with. These kind of quality angles and pictures allowed us to create a almost expertly created image with the editing software we also used, which was adobe photoshop. The photoshop looked professional and had an impact when shown to our audience because it had this feel which made them want to buy the digipak.
Another piece of technology we used was editing software. We used software such as iMovie and Adobe Photoshop. We used iMovie to edit our movie as we felt our music video did not need a professional software to make it look nice, however we did want to put it onto something like sony vegas pro to provide a high definition colour correction. This is a reason why when looking at our  digipak when compared to our music video it has a lot better colour correction because it was edited on adobe photoshop which is a professional software used when editing photos, this is why it ha
s a larger impact upon our audience.

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When creating our first rough cut for our music video we did not know what to expect but wanted to see what our audience thougth about what we had created. The comments were impressed by what we had already achieved but at the same time had some issues with a lot of things that we knew we needed to change. With this first rough cut we had a lot of good comments like "The storyline is clear" or "I liked the focus pull shot"  which helped us learn what our audience wanted to see like more creative shots really appealed to them and making the storyline clear also really helped the impact. This being said they also mentioned that "The camera man can be seen in the guitar" this became a main issue for us because we really didn't want to break continuity so we immediatley went back to editing and changed it so he could not bee seen in the reflection. Another comment was about jump cuts on the female walking out of the house, they felt like "this was confusing to the rest of the narrative" we knew that we needed to cut this if it confused our audience, so we again learnt that our audience enjoyed a clear storyline so the narrative was something we really wanted to focus on for rough cut 2.

For our rough cut 2 we had made changes upon mainly our narrative as this is where we felt most of the problems were and the feedback showed this. This time the comments were a lot more focused upon the performance and the artist, saying that the timing was out and not in sync, this helped us learn that we needed to focus on both areas not just one, the commentss helped us see what we didn't before and gave us an in depth analysis which we needed to focus more upon, so when reaching our rough cut 3 we really wanted to make it as close as we could to our final product to see what kind of comments our audience would give us. When reaching our final rough cut before our final product we really wanted to clench it down to the best we could but at the same time try some things. In our previous rough cut we heard a lot of feedback upon the artist so this was our main focus in this final rough cut, we sorted out all syncing issues firstly and made sure it looked all good and professional but at the same time we looked at some of Josh Records videos and were looking for what we could add, we added this black and white effect upon the artist which Josh Record used in his other music video for 'Bones'. We again showed this to our audience to see how they would react, surprisingly they did not like the colour correction at all, so we had to scrap it and move to one which would more suit our narrative, this showed to us that we made the right decision when trying to create Josh Record in this different style than he is currently placed in.

All in all our audience feedback allowed us to gain a deeper knowledge and conclusion of our rough cuts which ultimately led to the creation of the best final piece that we felt we could of made. The audience feedback helped us so much throughout our editing process when we did not know what more needed to be added and how much better we could make it.

Evaluation Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When we created our main music video we had a clear idea upon where we were going to go with it and what we wanted to create but for our ancillary we did not know what we were going to create. When we look back at our music video we see it has an underlying war theme upon it as seen in the picture. We wanted to take this theme and put it into our ancillary task. We wanted to base our ancillary task upon our music video and link it together, so we focused more on our ancillary after we had created our music video or at least had the material shot.

We did this when going out to take pictures for our magazine and digipak by bringing a commonly known war item a gun, this gun was fake of course for safety issues but it looked realistic and when brought out onto our photos made it seem more war themed because this key item was there. we also used run down and rural areas which were very empty to again keep this theme of war as this has a key connotation to war. As you can see we kept this theme of war between the two photos tasks to make it have some kind of link between them, we did want them to be different but for our audience to understand the theme and to still keep it connected to Josh Record.

Another theme was love in our piece. We showed a connection between our two narrative characters well when creating our music video by making them hug and kiss to instantly show that they are a couple and in love to our audience, we showed intensity in the artist in our ancillary but this does not necessarily link to love. This is a kind of difference we had between them

When comparing our ancillary and main task together we see a combination of material which we wanted to make look professional and well thought through. The images we used for our ancillary were all scouted out location wise and thought through thoroughly into what we wanted our artist to be doing. The same applies to our music video, we thought extensively upon how to create it and make it look as professional as possible. The colour corrections and editing for our ancillary were all done on professional software to really hit that main focus and trying to make it effective to our audience by making the professionality allow it to be want to be bought and used.

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

For our music video we wanted to take ideas from music videos also released by our artist however we had a very limited amount and the ones we did see from our artist Josh Record was really not the kind of style we pictured him in. Due to this we wanted to create Josh Record in a new image which we felt would appeal to a wider audience. The first idea we had is we wanted to make him a singer songwriter genre, to do this we focused on other singer songwriters like Ed Sheeran and Passenger. We looked at specific videos by these artists and see what we could do with them.

The first thing we came across was artist shots that we really liked in the music video by Passenger is the artist shots in the field, we really liked these kind of shots being hidden behind grass and weed, which is what we mimicked in our music video, almost copying this technique allowed us to reach extensive and professional shots. Some more shots that we really liked from this video is the close ups of the guitar, again we copied these onto our music video  because we found them impacting and different than usual expectations, we tried to create different angles however looking down the guitar rather than up in the Passenger video because we found this angle more affective at seeing what is being played.




Another video we looked at extensively this time for our narrative would be "Wake me up when september ends" by Green Day, this video is about a couple where the boy goes to war, which is very similar to our music video, we looked towards this piece for inspiration to our video, in how they created the couples relationship and how they showed him going to war. After analysing this video a lot we felt like it again isn't the kind of route we wanted to create as the montage of there relationship we found to be too difficult to recreate and found to be too common amongst videos so we wanted to get a connection to the audience instantly by using verisimilartude which is a theory about making the piece seem similar to real life, we did this by making it start with a disruption rather than happiness but the disruption gets repaired quickly, this links into the lyrics making it have references that the audience can pick up upon.

Our Final Magazine Advert

Our Final Digipak

Our Final Music Video

Digipak Analysis

This is a digipak by the well known pop artist Rihanna, she uses certain colours and text to appeal to her audience of late teens to early 20 year olds. She firstly does this by the text, it looks professional and more mature when in comparison to s teen star like Jessie J, this kind of style of font looks like it could be used at proffessional events this is how she appeals to her later classy teens, which is a different kind of audience for Rihanna as she is known as a "sex" idol. Breaking on to the point of her being a sex idol she does do this through the colour of red in this piece, the colour red is everywhere and this connotes danger as most commonly seen as this kind of connotation so maybe she is trying to promote herself as kind of an antagonist who goes against the rules which links in to her appealing to late teens as rebellion is most commonly linked to teens.

The roses also have a huge connotation to the artist of Rihanna because there is a well known saying whihc goes "every rose has a thorn" this is commonly used when speaking about a good looking individual in this case it would be Rihanna and it means that there is always some bad in anyone, in this case Rihanna is saying that although she may seem sweet and nice on the outside she has some hidden dark side that she is hiding away.

Other Students Music Video

Genre - The genre of this piece is clear pop, we can tell this by the fast paced cuts and transitions that make it appealing to a younger audience. We can also tell it is pop through the use of many artist shots and the artist being the main part of the narrative which is commenly found in most pop videos as it makes the audience connect with the artist more. Finally the use of close ups make it pop genre as well because pop is all about promoting the artist by doing this through close ups really helps.

Narrative -The narrative although hard to understand sometimes is about a relationship where in which the girl cheats on the main protagonist guy, they showed this through the texts with all the kisses and asking to meet up.

Representation - This video has limited representation as it wasn't clearly thought through and doesn't make sense in areas however the black and white effect has connotations to the past and what has come of their relationship, how it has turned to darkness.

Audience - The audience for this piece is clearly teenagers through the sue of teenage outfits and the whole teenage love and fighting going on. This appeals to this audience because they fele like they can relate to the characters in this piece, mainly the protagonist, if anyone has cheated on them, they feel like they know the pain.

Institution - The institution for this piece is a mass industry as it is quite clear to be a pop video and appeal to a huge audience however the kind of camera and shots use make it seem very low budget and niche although this is something which was not intentional.

Todorovs Theory

Todorov devised a theory upon music videos, focusing upon the narrative of the music video, he believed music video went through 5 stages of a narrative, these are:

Equilibrium - This is when the introduction of the characters and the main themes are shown.
Disruption - This is when some kind of disturbance or a break from the equilibrium norm happens, this is usually when a antagonist is introduced, if there is one.
Recognition - This is when the protagonist or other characters notice the disruption and start to device some kind of way to fix this disruption.
Repair - This is when the execution of the fix happens and nearly always successeds but leads on to everything having some sort of norm.
Equilibrium - This is when it rotates back to the start and has some sort of norm again.

In this video we see the equlibrium being them winning all these medals and being some of the best figure skaters in the world. The disruption would be the guy hurting his ankle and not being able to compete which leads on to the repair being Robbie Williams stepping in and trying to skate really well to win the competition. Then the equilibrium would be them winning the competition and it being back to normal. The protagonist is also the antagonist in this piece being Robbie Williams because he is horrible to his co worker which is the guy skater because Robbie is in love with the girl in this video.

Lyric Analysis and Their Importance

Lyrics are a key component when creating a music video, as they are the whole basis for the video and the meaning, if the video has no meaning to the lyrics then the music video can seem pointless and disinterest audiences. So this being considered for our music video we will need to analyse lyrics and see what kind of connotations we can take from it or literal narrative we can use for our music video. These are the lyrics for my music video:

And so our sun may set, we've been in winter for so long

Don't give up on me yet, I will give you what you deserve

Though our arguments are many, and your eyes are always sore

I promise you we'll get there, this war is almost won

This war is almost won

And lose if you have to

Oh lose if you have to

Cause I've been putting you through this hell for so long

As long this stands your choice my dear, don't lose or we have won

Don't let your heart grow cold, when you go to sleep upset

Grow with me till we're old, we will find a way to heal

The bruises that will appear, from choices long ago

Hold on to our love my dear, don't think it's dead and done

When this war is almost won

And lose if you have to

Oh lose if you have to

Cause I've been putting you this hell for so long

As long this stands your choice my dear, don't lose or we have won

I'm running round in circles drinking whiskey and your wine

To drown the sound of endless questions in your mind

Forget the way I treated you and trust that I will love you better

Give me all your patience, give me time

Give me all your patience, give me time

Give me all your patience, give me time

From the start of the song we see a hidden meaning from the first line "And so our sun may set, we've been in winter for so long" this has a hidden meaning to their relationship it means that the sun setting connotes the spark in their relationship is diminishing and he doesnt her to give up on him as the second line connotes that even though they have had some bad times previously they the good times will come soon is what he is trying to say. "This war is almost won" this connotes the war of their relationship and how he is saying that the that the bad is almost done and it will be good again. "Oh lose if you have to" this connotes the relationship again and he is saying that if you can't do it then you can leave if you must.

Lip Syncing Importance

Lip syncing is extremely important when creating a music video because errors in music videos are a lot more noticeable than on films, so if the song is out of time to the music say if the beat is off or the singing to the camera is off then it can be noticed much easier than anything else because you have the music to show.
A bad example of lip syncing would be this music video: 
In this music video we see the whole lip syncing completely out of time, notice how because of this it distracts away from the video and makes you notice only the bad lip syncing. When we compare a video like that to something that has perfect lip syncing we notice a massive difference. Notice in the song by Pharrell the lip syncing is in time and because of this you do not feel distracted by that and can watch the video and enjoy it. This shows how important lip syncing can be so when I come to making my music video we will make sure in post production to get all the lip syncing, synced up correctly to not let the audience be distracted from our work upon the narrative as well as the artist.

Magazine advert analysis 2

This is a magazine advert for the artist Jessie J. Its target audience is early to mid teens, we can tell this by the kind of 'rebellious' look she portrays in the dark colours and clothing she has on her, these kind of darker colours connote bad and rebel from a teenage perspective, this makes is easy for the artist to connect with her audience if she looks like them, this way it creates this image that the audience know and will follow because of there favourate artist is doing so.

The font is tinted and has a sort of signature style this connotes the signature to the audience making them believe they have some kind of autographed special magazine advert, this makes it seem personal to the audience making it more likely for them to buy it. Another stand out feature is the use of black and white, these two colours are very definable and show two different contrats maybe this connotes her personality and it means that you can either love or hate Jessie J, this is a kind of iconography that the artist wants to portray.

Textual Analysis of The Killers

Genre - The genre of this piece is hard to tell from just looking at it because the way in which the band is using old instruments and dress old as well but the performance makes it look like a kind of rock band due to the kind of lead singer and the bass, guitar and drummer which is very similar to a rock band, also the kind of fast paced shots also connote this rock band.

Narrative - The narrative is visually about a prostitute who is in love with the lead singer but is being forced to be with all these other men, this has hidden connotations to the lead singer and his relationship, this could be about how a woman cheated on him and he is trying to give her attention but she cheats on him and hurts him. However it also may have connotations to him cheating on a woman he was trying to give his attention to but the narrative is open to interpretation maybe this is why I feel it is an effective video.

Representation -  The apple represents love and danger in this piece, we can tell this because the red represents danger and the love is always given when she has the apple. The representations of the harlot prostitutes in this piece are through them being the victims of the antagonist who is the girl with the apple controlling them. The representation of the apple turning green at the end means that the danger is gone and he can't control them anymore.

Audience - The audience of this piece is clearly quite mature people as it has a lot of codes to look at which can be interpreted this kind of knowledge is entertaining for mature audiences that enjoy analysing and finding hidden codes in things. Also it could appeal to the audience of The Killers, the fans to allow them to know more about The Killers.

Institution - The record company clearly have a lot of money on this piece because the way in which it has loads of costumes, props and set which has been brought back in time which is a difficult task to do without a large budget. The probably spent quite a lot because this band is very well known and can make a larger audience and draw in more money from making the video entertaining.

What is a Magazine advert and Digipak?

A magazine advert in terms of music video is a kind of advertising upon a band, song or album inside a magazine. It is usually created to be placed upon a wall to provide remembrance and entertainment to audiences. The way in which the magazine advert is created is by colour and font in certain ways that reach their target audience, for example a hard core rock band making an advert which aim to reach at their hard-core rock fan base, they cant do this by having bright colours and soft text on the advert, they would need something a bit gritty and hard to appeal to that audience unless they are using irony which only happens if the band is extremely known. This is an example of a magazine advert:

A digipak is smilar to a magazine advert as it promotes a song, album or artist but at the same time gives a CD and bonus features usually. A digipak is usually bought by long term fans of an artist or band as they feel like a closer connection with them by getting these added features. A digipak looks similar to album case apart from it it split into three sections with a cover, back cover and a section inbetween them, this is a way in which they promote more features and other stuff by the artist to get across to their audience. A digpak is more expensive but more rewarding to an audience member. An example of a digipak would be this:

Initial Ideas on Our Music Video

These are my initial ideas upon my music video, the ones I am most interested in using will be for genre is Singer Songwriter, i really enjoy this kind of emotional music myself and the way in which certain videos are set. For characters I would like a male protagonist, a female antagonist and a female protagonist so I can have a main focus upon a relationship. In setting I would love for it to be set in a run down place like a building or abandoned warehouse. For content I would like to focus upon some pressing issue aswell as the relationship between two. In storyline I am happy with them all but I would either go for the relationship in war or happy, broken and back together.

Textual Analysis of Ed Sheeran

Genre - The genre of this piece is singer songwriter, this very clear as it has a main focus upon a clear narrative like many singer songwriter music videos. It could also be classified as pop due to the high budget gone into the music video, with her wings and effects used such as the sepia effect. However it goes against both genres in the fact that the artist is very low key in the music video whereas they usually feature quite clearly however in this he only features shortly in the diner.

Narrative - The narrative of this piece is about a girl who is essentially the God of love cupid in Greek mythology and she is running round all these places making people fall in love with each other where all she wants is love herself and the arrow stabbed in her neck connotes that she is dying without love and she needs someone and the final uplifting moment at the end where she falls in love with the police officer coming to inspect her body and she comes back alive to fall in love with him.

Representation -  As general connotations go females are definitely the more dominant characters in this piece as we see the female protagonist in most shots causing happiness to other people and her being the main character causing her to be the most dominant. Homosexuality is represented in a positive way as in the piece they connote men and women in love with each other going against the stereotype of a comical character and instead being the main love in this piece, as we see both and male and a female kissing the same sex. We also see ethnicity shown in a positive light instead of its danger stereotype and in this piece we see a black male being kissed by a white female showing that interracial relationships are normal as well.

Visual Codes -Like said before the arrow stabbed in her neck connotes she is dying of love. Her wings represent that not only is she the God of love in this piece but sometimes women are described as "angels" and this is how they are representing her due to the wings connoting she is an "angel" however she is all alone without anyone to love. Also we see people kissing in a night club connoting that love can also occur in these places.

Audience - The audience to this piece are adults, this can range in age however, as it is dominated by 20-25 year olds however we do see other array of ages such as the two 30 year olds kissing and falling in love, this is to show love is universal. However no younger children or teens are shown so this could just mean that they are not the target audience for this video.

Institution - The institution is a very high budget company, this is quite obvious because the effects and shots used are very technical and high budget and the wings must have been a lot to make and the camera itself is a very high quality camera, this is probably due to his pop genre status, so the high budget keeps it in pop and attracts passive audiences and also actives due to all the hidden codes and connotations.

Music Magazine Advertisement

This is a magazine advertisemeant for the band 'Deaf Havana' it advertises their new album 'Old Souls' we know this from the album being on the center of the page and also the name of the album being dirctly underneath the bands name. The advertisement includes information upon the albums release dates, what main songs will be included on the album such as "Boston Square" and "Mildred" which is what is stated on the page.

It also includes what kind of platforms it will be released upon which is under the "Available on"  writing. This advertisement also includes tour dates for the band and where you can buy the tickets for the tours. This means it is quite clearly trying to mainly promote the band as it includes tour dates, album, songs and the band themselves deature at the top of the page.

This advertisement uses a black and white effect on the band themselves at the top of the page, possibly to connote some mystery about the band and also to make it look more emtionaly. The page then goes into colour of the album cover which is behind the box in the center of the page which is light blue this is to again promote the album, the hue blue may connote again some emotion and light hearted music by the band. Also the child may connote some sort of innocence so it may mean the band is quite again light hearted music rather than heavy metal. The fonts used on the band and album are white possibly to again connote innocence and chilled out music. The advertisement makes you feel chilled out so possibly they may be connoting it to their music or being a complete contrast to their music.

Textual Analysis of Nirvana

Nirvana- Smells Like Teen Spirit

Niravana's song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was released in 1991

Genre- The genre for the band/artist would be a rock/grunge, this is easily known by the band having a stereotypical headbanging drummer shown at the start of the video and also by the rock sounding guitars and performance they put on. The genre for the video is also rock because of the live performance the band are putting on which is generally a convention shown in rock artists to boost their star iconography.

Narrative- The narrative of this piece is set in a school gym, where all the kids start to get more wild and turn the place into a party after listening to the band play their song.

Representation- The teenagers in this piece are represented as the dominant characters as they are the only age to be shown apart from the band and the janitor and there are many of them, so this may represent the bands fans and show what audience they are aiming for. The older generation are shown as comical and silly as we have the janitor who is older sway side to side which looks out of place, possibly to connote that the adults are stupid and not as cool as the teenagers are in the video which may be how many teenagers feel in real life.
 

Visual Codes- Visual codes in this may be the fact that there are many older teenage people in the gym so they are communicating to this audience and through the video.

Audience- The audience in this piece is quite distinctly aimed at older teens with the full audience being consisted of older teens between the ages of 16-18. This point is again backed up by the fact they are playing their music inside a american high school gym connoting the mid to older teens but the fact that the audience seems to be fully older teens, it leads me to believe that is the main target audience. However the fact they have made an older man as the janitor who is also dancing to the music may imply that the band can be enjoyed by people of all ages.
 

Institution- The institution at this stage looks very low budget independent company as the video is set in one place and not much story line has gone into it. It seems like they have gathered a bunch of teenagers and made them go nuts in a school gym over Nirvana playing their song.

Music Poster

This is a poster in the magazine 'Rock Sound' which is a magazine mainly focused upon rock bands. The poster is of the lead singer in the band of Green Day singing on what seems to be live on stage. The lead singer or Billie Joe Armstrong is iconic in the band and many times in the bands music videos will feature at the front of the band, this is good that the poster portrays himself as it will attract fans of the band. The fact he is on stage makes it seem like you are actually watching Green Day play live so it will then attract more people that enjoy going to concerts as it makes you feel like part of something just from looking at the image.

Fonts used in this image are quite bold and stand out so it makes people looking at the poster feel like the band is different or outgoing so this may attract people that enjoy something different. Also the fact that the writing is quite big also makes people think the band is quite big and well known. Yellow is quite a main colour used in this image as the guitar is yellow as well as the "Green Day" writing this again may be because the colour stands out and is quite bold possibly to connote the bands attitude to be quite outgoing. In the middle of the image you can see the iconic logo of the band this is to connote that it is still the same band and there are very big as the amount of guitar pics are many as well as the bands fans. The glowing effect in the top right hand corner makes him seem like he is centre stage and is the most important person there possibly to connote that's how the fans may feel when watching him.