Henley's Evaluation

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

Our music video uses several of the same conventions which are used in real pop rock media products. From looking at, and analysing professional music video’s including some of P!nk’s other videos, we chose specific conventions in which we wished to include within our music video. Our music video explores some of Goodwin’s theory as we linked our lyrics with the visuals in our video. Examples of this include “There’s a ring around my finger…” we had a clip of myself removing a ring from my finger, and “I pray to God you’re not a heartbreaker…” we had a clip of our main character Evalene placing both her hands together in front of her heart to portray a praying motion.
Genre characteristics also played a big part in our music video. The specific traits relating to our genre of pop-rock included Evalene’s bright, girly make-up, the use of the guitar and a mixture of bright and dimly lit surroundings. P!nk is portrayed as an independent feisty female and this can be seen in her previous music videos. We tried to create the same level of feistiness within our video by getting the main actress to show emotion whilst singing, and she did this quite well through facial expressions and hand gestures. The structure of our music video is fragmented as we show several clips of events that happened in the past, in our case, the ‘flashbacks’ which we purposely made black and white so that it was clear to the audience that these occurrences happened in the past.

These conventions include the make-up for the main character and also the styling and outfit choices. We chose to focus on the eye make-up specifically, and the main character Evalene wore hot pink eye shadow so that it would be eye-catching to the audience. From the very beginning of our ancillary task, we all had a clear idea of how we wanted the CD cover and magazine advert to look like. We all wanted to stick with a pink theme throughout our project as the artist who sang our chosen song is 'P!nk'. 

Another convention that is widely used for advertising purposes within the pop rock genre is photographs. We took several photographs of Evalene; the girl who lip sang for us in the music video, so that we could choose 3 to use for the front and back covers of the DigiPak and also the main image for the magazine advert. We managed to edit our images using PhotoShop and add our bright pink text onto the images. We also altered the font and developed the overall images by experimenting and applying different effects onto the text and also the photos.

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

I think the combination of both our music video and our ancillary texts are really effective as they compliment each other and our conventions are portrayed clearly throughout both. Our main theme of the colour pink is clearly displayed within the music video through Evalene's eye shadow and also the top she is wearing. We chose to focus on our theme of the colour pink as that is the stage name of the artist who sang the song in which we produced a music video for. From watching several of P!nk’s music videos, we all noticed that she always had an element of pink within the video, whether it be nail varnish, hair, clothes, shoes or backdrops. The soles of Evalene’s shoes were a light pink colour and we enhanced the colour on Photoshop and this can be seen on the back cover of our DigiPak. We felt this was an effective thing to do and it really stood out from the back cover. By clearly portraying the colour pink throughout our entire project I believe it gives the audience a clearer understanding that the artist we are producing for is ‘P!nk’.
The outfit we had Evalene wear portrayed a girly yet edgy side.

She wore dark jeans with a bright pink top, and a black and white coat over the top as it was quite cold the second time we filmed! When it came to producing our ancillary texts, we weren’t too sure which font to use as there were several possibilities. We wanted something bold and edgy to stand out, but it also had to be quite soft to reflect the femininity of the artist and the album. For the front of the digipak we chose a font which had a bubbly effect, and we made the lettering bright pink with a black outline, and then blurred the edges of the letters slightly to give it a softer feel. Once we had finished our ancillary texts we went back to the front cover and decided to change the font again as it looked quite childish and not very professional. In the end we chose a simple font and selected the ‘bold’ option to make it stand out from the background image. We used the colours black, pink and white for the fonts on our magazine advert and digipak.

We have used the same image throughout our ancillary texts; however we manipulated the photo in different ways to give each cover an interesting, eye catching look. For the album we chose to have the images on the front and back in black and white, with an element of pink; so in our case, pink eye shadow and the sole of the shoe to be pink. We also used bright pink wording to make the cover stand out. For the magazine advert we decided to use a photo in colour, although we still manipulated it a bit by adding an effect and using the sharpening tool to brighten and sharpen some areas of the image. I am really happy with our final album cover and magazine advert as I think they are very aesthetically pleasing and look professional.

3.   What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From all of the feedback we have received throughout our project, we have learnt a lot as a team. First of all we had some feedback from our class mates about our pitch presentation; our initial idea for our music video. All three of us had a clear idea of what we hoped our music video would look like when it was complete, so our pitch presentation was quite detailed from the beginning.

Our fellow classmates picked up on this in the feedback saying how it was clear we knew what we wanted to do and had thought about elements of the music video in depth. One of the main elements in which we had thought about in depth for our music video was the flashback scenes and flashboards with lyrics. After analysing the music video for ‘7 Things’ by Miley Cyrus we really liked the idea of having some scenes showing the lyrics to the song. We chose some of our favourite lines from the song ‘Heartbreaker’ including ‘I won’t be leaving here alive…’ and ‘What if I’m falling for a heartbreaker?’ as these lyrics stood out the most to us and we believe they send a strong message to the audience. We then wrote these lines onto A3 size pieces of cartridge card and added a love heart shape in the corner of the page. We all felt that the scenes we filmed of the flashboards looked really professional and the flashboards are personally my favourite element of the music video because it breaks the lip syncing scenes up and I feel it ties in really well with the pop-rock theme.

Next we had the feedback for our original rough cut. We were told that our camera work was quite wobbly so to improve this, when we filmed our real music video we ensured we used a tripod. Our class mates also felt that the introduction guitar clip was too long, so we broke it up a bit by placing a clip of our main character Evalene in between the guitar clip. We were given feedback for our music video, and were advised to re-film the lip syncing scenes, which we did the very next day. We were also told to include more camera shots from different angles which were something we ensured we filmed plenty of when re-filmed the lip syncing scenes. We also got a couple of our friends to watch our music video and give us some feedback as to what we could change to improve the overall video and a couple of them said that they would like to see more effects being used. After hearing this we all watched our video over, adding more effects to a few of the camera shots.

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

Throughout our entire music video project we used several media technologies. During the construction of our music video we used a Canon camera, tripod, digital camera and also a Blackberry smart phone. After completing our test shots using the camera and tripod we found it fairly easy to work the camera when it came to filming our scenes. When it came to editing our music video we used various programmes on the computer. We used Final Cut Pro to edit the scenes we had filmed and to produce our music video. We also used Final Cut to add the special effects such as black and white, and the fade in and fade out transitions.

We used QuickTime to covert our music video into a file that was compatible with YouTube. YouTube is another media technology which we used throughout our entire project for research, inspiration and to upload our music video to the internet for others to see. We also used Photoshop to manipulate our images and to create our effective album cover and magazine advert. It took a while to get used to Photoshop and to understand how to work the software as we hadn’t used it before and it got quite confusing at times, however we got there eventually and produced some good quality ancillary texts! We also used iTunes to upload our chosen song to Final Cut Pro. We have documented our entire project on Blogger. Everything we have researched, created and produced has gone onto our blog as a way of presenting our project.

During the stages of research we used the PC’s and the internet to find all of the information we needed such as typical conventions of a pop-rock music video, and also some information about the artist ‘P!nk’ to help us with the certain conventions we had in mind. Planning our music video was something in which we all found quite easy as the three of us had very similar ideas as to what we wanted to include within our music video. We drew a storyboard including detailed annotations to show what we specifically wished to include within our pop-rock video.

Magazine Advert

This is our final magazine advert for our artist's album. We used the colour pink again as the main colour in order to continue the theme of pink we have chosen. We have chosen to have bold text to make the information stand out.

In order to produce our magazine advert, we firstly started off with the main background. We used the same image of our singer as the DigiPak cover. We decided to do this as we think having the same image would keep the DigiPak and magazine advert consistent. However, unlike our DigiPak cover, we chose to keep the image on the magazine advert in colour. We then played around with the effects of the image and decided that the chosen effect looked best. This was the brush strokes tool which makes the image look slightly cartoon like. This links back with our initial advert research as we found that Gwen Stefani, also in the Pop Rock genre, used a similar effect on the advert for her album 'Love. Angel. Music. Baby.' where the main image is slightly blurred and looks cartoon like.

In order to create the artist's name 'P!NK" we used the basic text tool and changed the font to Impact to keep the font consistent with our DigiPak. We then played around the colours of the text and found that having the text in pink would make the advert too over powering with the colour of pink. Therefore, we changed the text to white and added a ink outline by using the stroke tool. We also used the bevel and emboss tool in order to make the text stand out and appeared slightly 3D.

We decided to have the album title 'Heartbreaker' running down the right hand side. This allowed us to fill the gap down the side as it was just background on the main image. Again, we used bevel and emboss in order to make the text stand out. We also used the stroke tool again to create a pink outline on the black text.

We added the infomation at the bottom by using the basic text tool. We chose to use the colour pink for this writing as black or white text wouldn't stand out as much on the image as her coat is black and white. We decide to again have a black outline around the text to enhance the information. We changed the colour of the text "OUT NOW!" to white in order to help it stand out from the rest of the information. This is because this piece of infomation is more likely to catch people's eyes when they see the advert.

Finally, we incorporated our album cover we had created into the bottom right hand corner. This is because we found many artists do this on their magazine adverts and we thought it looked more professional. We wanted to include the album cover to link our product together and also give the audience more information on the product being advertised. We used the drop shadow tool on the image of our album cover to create darkness around the image to help it stand out more. Again, we used the bevel and emboss tool on the image to make it more prominant and stand out.

We think the overall product is eye catching and would be appealing to our target audience due to the colour scheme and the appearance of the advert. We also think that the advert is consistent with our music video and DigiPak due to themes such as the images used, the font and the colour pink.

Final DigiPak

Part 2 of digipak on photoshop

In this hour we decided to give photoshop another go and we were more successful this time as we had help from our media teacher. We wanted to try and make the image that we had black and white and we were successful up to a certain point as we wanted part of the image to remain the original colour. We achieved this by some help from our media teacher and when our media teacher had left us we had continued to make the picture black and white and saved the image we then decided we wanted to make the whole image black and white but before we could do that there was an unexpected virus on the computer shutting down all the previous work we had done.

Once we had uploaded the saved image on photoshop again we couldn't remember what tools we had use to make the image black and white and after a while we found what we were looking for but instead not the image turning black and white it began turning black and we had to undo the image a couple of times. By the end of this session we had still not figured out how to turn the rest of the image black and white and had decided that on the next lesson we would take notes from our media\ teacher on how to use photoshop and the tools.

Part 1 of digipak on photoshop

In this hour we decided to choose an image on one of our main actress for our magazine cover. We had already had an image of what we wanted the magazine cover to look like the problem was how we could put it down on photoshop.

We first decided to get ourselves reacquainted with photoshop as our first time on photoshop was a couple of weeks before and we had already forgotten the basics of photoshop. As a group we tried to figure out how to upload an image as a background and how we could get a layer added to the picture; we had finally managed this but unfortunately nothing would happen when we wanted to add or take out a specific part of the image. We then decided to start from afresh and try again this was probably the third time we were trying this and we finally uploaded an image and were able to cut out a certain piece of the image but unfortunately we were unable to add another image on top of the background image.

Intial Sketch Ideas For Magazine Ad

 For our ideas regarding the magazine ad we had decided that we wanted the image to be subtle but eye catching to our target audience. By doing this we decided to use one image which was easy as well as simple this was easy to photoshop and change the image.

We decided to put a picture of the main lip syncer as our magazine advert and we decided to put it in black and white. With this we had used the theme of p!nk through out of it.

Intial Sketch Ideas For Digi Pak

Our initial ideas for our digipak were very simple as we knew what we wanted and how we wanted it to come across to our target audience.

As a group we decided to go for a very subtle but eye-catching picture which portrayed emotion that could be related to from our target audience. Below is the image that we started to go on and from there we wanted to start developing it by adding small colour changes etc.

Feedback Of Final Music Video

As we had to re do our music video because there were some scenes were we had to re film because it did not look that good. We then got a few people to look at the music video and we came back with some positive and negative feedback.

Positive feedback
they were able to understand the concept
they liked the flashbacks
the flash boards were a great idea and in time with the music

Negative feedback
The lip synced needed more emotion to be portrayed
If you had more time there should be more camera angle and shots.

Timeline for Production

03/10/2011 - Started shot list
05/10/2011 - Completed shot list
10/10/2011 - Planned when we were going to film. Filmed test shots
11/10/2011 - Filmed the flashboard scenes for our music video
12/10/2011 - Cut test shots, uploaded flashboard shots to final cut
14/10/2011 - Filmed burning of the photo and lip syncing for our music video
17/10/2011 - Cut and edited the test shots, filmed the petals falling and uploaded the lip syncing scenes to the Mac

16/11/2011 - refilmed the lip sycning scenes

Re-editing of Lip Syncing

Once we had re-filmed all of the lip syncing scenes, we all sat down and started to re-edit our music video again. As we deleted each of the old lip syncing scenes from our completed music video, the remaining clips seemed to move to the right slightly causing our entire music video to be out of time with the audio. We spent a couple of hours editing the whole thing and trying to get it all back in time however this was proving quite difficult, so we decided to go back to our original complete music video and insert a few of the new lip syncing scenes where the old lip syncing scenes were. 


As we already knew, editing is a long process and we managed to finish editing our music video completely for the second time, within two hours.


From day one, we have all experienced some difficulty with an element of making a music video. Every time we had difficulty we managed to sort it out and correct our mistakes. We have all learnt a lot more about the process of producing and editing a music video and feel as though we have created our music video to the best of our ability. 

Re-filming of Lip Syncing

After watching our final video, we received some feedback. We weren't too happy with the predicted grade that we were given so we decided to re-film our main character Evalene lip syncing. As soon as we had all made the decision to re-film, we all sat down together and wrote a list specifying what it was we wanted to achieve whilst re-filming. We found that writing a list of what we specifically wanted to have within our music video made it a lot easier when it came to re-editing our video.

The next day we all went back to the location where we originally filmed the lip syncing scenes and we got Evalene to lip sync to the entire song 3 times from different angles. Using different camera angles will add variety to our music video. 

We all found it quite difficult the second time round, especially as the weather was different so we were worried that when it came to re-editing, it wouldn't make sense. First time around it was sunny and warm, and we re-filmed it was extremely windy and cold. In order to get a decent camera angle from above, Henley held the camera on the tripod whilst standing on top of a log. We found it hard to keep the camera steady due to strong winds...and standing on top of a log! 

We also got Evalene to climb into a tree and sit on a branch so that we could get a shot of her from below. This proved quite difficult too as we couldn't always see what she was singing. Luckily we managed to film everything we needed to within an hour. 

Pop Rock Album DigiPak Analysis

Another part of our ancillary task is to analyse a CD of the same genre to the one we are currently studying and producing a music video for. As our chosen genre is Pop Rock, I am going to analyse the Pop Rock album entitled ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ by Miley Cyrus.

The name of the artist is clearly displayed across the centre of the album cover in large gold letters. The album title is written just below the artists name in the same gold letters however slightly smaller. The track listing is displayed on the back of the album in large bold white letters and takes up the majority of the space on the back cover.

Within the wording on the actual CD-ROM, it states that if you insert the CD disk into your hard drive, you can access bonus material from the album. Miley Cyrus’ official website is stated on the back of the CD case along with the record label that produced the album.

The credits, recording information, song producers and lyricists for each song can be found inside the information booklet that comes with the album. There are four images of Miley Cyrus throughout the accompanying booklet along with a page dedicated to credits, another for special thanks and several pages with the lyrics to each song printed on them.

The barcode is displayed on the back cover of the CD case and the CD logo is located on the spine of the case. The colour theme throughout the entire album of black, white, gold and purple reflects the genre of pop rock. The CD case is a basic case which opens up to reveal the booklet on the left hand side and the CD on the right hand side.

Magazine Advert Analysis Of Pop Rock Genre

As part of our ancillary task we have to analyse a magazine advert for an album of the same genre in which our project is based around. I have chosen to analyse Lady Gaga’s pop rock album entitled ‘The Fame Monster’. As you can see, the main image used for the magazine advert is the same image that has been used for the album cover. The artists name is displayed in large bold letters at the very top of the advert, and directly below is the album title. Two images of the artist have been used for the magazine advert. The two images match the theme which has been used throughout the advert; black and white. As well as being known all over the world for her music, Lady Gaga is also well known for her weird and wonderful styling including hair, make-up and outfit choices. As you can see from the images she has opted for two different hair styles in different colours, subtle make-up in one image and bold in the other, a unique outfit for the left hand side image and a plain outfit for the image on the right hand side of the advert. The magazine advert background is black and all the wording is white in a basic bold font. The advert tells the audience a couple of the songs which are featured on the album, those being ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Telephone’ featuring Beyonce. It also states the release date of the album; November 23^rd. Lady Gaga’s official website is listed towards the bottom of the advert and it is a great way of getting fans to view her website in order to find out more about the artist and the album.

Finally, at the very bottom, the audience can see the name of the record label that produced Lady Gaga’s album; in this case the label being ‘Streamline Records’. I feel as though this magazine advert advertises Lady Gaga’s album effectively due to the boldness of the artwork and fonts. I also like the simplicity of using black and white and think this is another element in which attracts the audience’s eye.

Final - Actors

Our final music video features five actors altogether. These are the actors and our reasons for choosing these actors.


Our lead role was the main lip syncing female. This part was played by Evalene. We decided to use her as our lip syncing role as she was willing to do this role. We thought her appearance would also fit in with our genre of music and lyrics that were sung. 

Our couples used in the flashback scenes were made up of Nikki and Daniel. This was a good pair to use as they are currently a couple so they would have a natural connection. Again, their appearance fitted in with our genre of music. They were also willing to play these roles and to do what was asked of them.


We also used two members from our group in our music video in the flashboard scenes. Jemma and Henley were the two teenagers holding and ripping the flashboards. We used them due to the fact they were able to film when we needed and were willing to do what was required for the music video. They also both fit in with the genre of music and the general story line of female heartbreak for the music video.

Final - Shots

The music for our music video genre is pop and listening to our music the first time we realised that the music is upbeat fast but aslo the lyrics to the song has a lot of emotion parts, so we need to have some shots that that can show a heartbreak and  shots that can portray a romantic time.

The shots we have decided on are : -

1. Close Up
2. Wide Shot
3. Long Shot
4. Mid Shot
5. Extreme Close Up
6. Two Shot

The Reasons behind the shots above is that we can show a part of a break up and some flashbacks of what it was like when there was a couple in love. Abovw is an image from our music video of a two shot as below is an image of a mid shot.

Final Ideas - Make Up

When we all sat down and discussed how we wanted the make-up to look in the music video we all had a clear idea of focusing on the theme pink. The first time we filmed our lip syncing scenes Evalene was wearing purple eyeshadow and a purple hoodie under her coat. We didnt mind that she wasnt wearing pink, as we knew that we would include the colour pink somewhere else within our music video. Once we'd received our feedback for our music video, and we'd made a list of the elements we specifically wanted whilst filming the second time round, for example the different camera angles, we decided to have Evalene wearing a pink top with pink eyeshadow.

Henley and Jemma also appeared in the music video as the two girls ripping the flashboards. We decided, as they werent the main characters, for them to just have basic natural make-up so that the focus was just on the ripping of the flashboards and the emotions in which they portrayed through their emotions and facial expresions. Another thing that we did to fit within our pink theme, was have Jemma and Henley to have pink nails. It's small things like this that we feel emphasise our pink theme.

Final Ideas - Colour Pink

For the whole of our music video the theme and colour is based around the colour pink. In our shot list we knew that there were 21 different shots and we knew that a majority of the shots would need the colour pink in them. Our main portrayal of the colour pink is when we have lip syncing in our music video. As you can see below the actress in the image is wearing pink eye shadow and is also wearing a pink top. The reason for having such a vibrant colour was due to the fact that in the artist P!nk's music video her reoccurring theme is the colour pink so we had to following this theme for the audience to recognise that this is P!nk's music video.

Final Mise En Scene

Our location for our music video was split into to 4 parts of our music video; the first part of us filming our music video was in Windsor Great Park this is where we decided to film the scenes of ripping the flashboards in half. This took approximately 3 hours to film to perfection we had to make sure the timing was right as we did not have access to the song for our music video.


Our second location for our music video is the small park outside of Windsor Girls School; this is where we decided to film the 'couple scenes' and we took a few hours to film these scenes as we wanted these scenes to longer than we expected to film as we wanted the scenes to have a natural and real feel for them.


The third location for our music video was filming inside of the school grounds and this was to film the burning scenes of a picture. This took roughly about an hour as the day that we decided to film this scene, it was quite windy, and this made it quite difficult to light the photo and keep it alight!


The fourth location for our music video was filmed inside of the school grounds where we could film the lip syncing scenes. This took longer than we imagined as when we first got the filming done and uploaded this to our music video we had some feedback and were advised that in order to get a better grade, we should re-film the lip syncing parts of our music video. We then re filmed our lip syncing scenes for our music video in the same location but in different angles.

Final Props

The main prop we needed for our music video was the camera and the tripod without either of the above ww would not be able to film therefore not be able to produce a music video.

There were many small props that we needed whilst filming the music video and those were lighter and a photo to burn. The reason behind that was that in our music there were a few words about burning and we wanted to match the image to the lyrics; the scene was of an actor setting fire to the image using the lighter whilst the audience could see the individual flames coming from the burning. This meant in our music video that wehad an match on action to the lyrics where the visuals match the lyrics.

We also needed red rose petals for the middle of the music video as roses are usually used for romance and we wanted to portray some kind of roomance throughout our music video. We used plastic red roses and our reasonbehind this was that they are cheap to buy but, also if we loose some we can always buy new ones as they are cheap and easy replacable. But we had some difficulty in purchasing them as the season for roses has passed so many shops did not have them in stock. So we had to ask around and a teacher volunteered to lend us hers.

Final Costumes

Our costume for the lead lyp syncer, as you can see above she is wearing a pink coloured t-shirt and black skinny jeans to an audience this will look a casual as we were going for the girly but chic look. The lead lip syncer is also wearing a black and white coat which is very eye catching ecspeacially in the scenes where there is a long or wide shot.

The costumes of our couple in this image you can see that the male wearing skinny jeans and a t shirt we wanted to portray the cool but down to earth guy and we wanted the male actor to feel as comfortable as he can be so the couple scene would seem natural. The image of the actress in this image shows that she is also wearing skinny jeans with small boots with a coat. Because it was very cold on the day that we filmed we decided that it would be best if she wore her coat to make her as comfortable as possible. To portray the girly look across in our music video we decided it would be best if she had her hair open as she also has a very photogenic look.

The image is of the heartbreaking scenes; the costumes that we used on the day was casual but comfortable at the same time as the main focus of the scenes would not be on the actors but on the peices of paper that they held therefore we didn't think much about the costumes.