In what ways does your Media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?
In our group there are many different type of personalities, and with that in mind we had to choose a song that all three of us would like as well as be comfortable to make a music video. We picked the song ‘Heartbreaker’ by the artist P!nk. We then had to do some basic research about the genre of the song and the artist in general. From looking at the artist background we could see that our song fell into the category of Pop Rock.
Initially as a group we did some research called the star analysis and from this I had to pick out certain conventions in order to analyse them well. Whilst looking I noticed that there were regular patterns in all of P!nk’s music videos, from the make up to the mise en scene. From just analysing other music videos by P!nk had made it so much easier for us to imagine what our music video would look like. As a group we decided that we needed to look at more music videos that had the same genre. We decided to look at the music video by Miley Cyrus ‘7 Things’ by looking at this music video we were astonished by the amount of simplicity in this video but even more so at how the visuals matched the lyrics. And we decided that we wanted to incorporate this idea into our music video.
As a group we had to look at more conventions that would be in a Pop rock genre; as we did more and more research we found out that in certain areas of the music video there would only be a few changes in costumes as well as the mise en scene would incorporate the music video as a whole (the mise en scene would complete the video). One of the major conventions of Pop Rock genre is that there is subtly to the scenes but the main focus would be on the artist singing/acting. We decided that we wanted to incorporate this into our music video; and we achieved this by having a natural location shot in the nature where the artist was the main focus rather than the surroundings.
The clothing in most Pop Rock music videos were either very bright coloured or natural looking. We decided to go for a bit of both as our main focus of producing a music video was that the lyrics would match the visuals. This was a major convention for Pop Rock music videos because the main focus of the music video would be behind the lyrics of the music video and we decided that as a group we would somehow want to portray as many emotions as possible because out song was about falling for the wrong person, and we believed that many people from our target audience could relate to this.
The make-up in many music videos that we looked at were either subtle on the face and heavy on the eyes or subtle on the face and heavy make up on the lips. We decided as a group that for our music video we would go heavy on the eyes and subtle make-up on the face as this would be easier to replicate the make-up if we needed to re-film the scenes as well as keeping up with the conventions of usual Pop Rock genre music videos.
The locations in Pop Rock music videos were either very much noticed by the audience or not at all, this meant that a majority of the music videos we looked at were dark and gloomy either in a house or a dark club. When looking at the conventions for our music video we decided to go with a very different concept the reason behind our choice was that because the song itself was very dark and gloomy that the location of bright and light would contrast making the audience wanting to see more. The lighting in our music video was very light but in some areas of the music video we decided to change the colour contrast so that the scenes would look more clear and sharper to the audience. This was not a typical Pop Rock convention as explained above we decided that for the target audience we were aiming at it would be better to have the lighting light; apart from the couple scenes where we decided that those scenes would be in black and white to show that it is a flashback. The flashbacks were one of the conventions for P!nk’s music videos and we decided to use this idea.
In many Pop Rock music videos there are not many scenes outdoors so it is very hard to tell what the weather is. As a group we decided to film some scenes outside but in windy conditions as it would add a little effect in our music video for the flashboard scenes. (It made the pieces of paper fly away easily).
How effective is the combination of your media product and your ancillary task?
When discussing our magazine and digipak we decided that we wanted to keep it simple as well as a signature look that kept with the theme of Pop Rock music videos and this meant that all our other tasks (ancillary tasks) had to follow the same concept. We decided to stay with the same theme as our music video which was that to have a wow factor to our magazine advert we wanted the theme to be black and white with only one part of the magazine and digipak were in the signature colour pink. This would make our magazine and digipak to stand out against all other genres.
The setting that we used for our digipak was very much down key in a neutral location where there were only trees as a background. The reason behind our choice of location was because that we wanted to person on the cover of the digipak and the magazine to be the centre of attention. The location we used for the digipak and magazine was the same location that we have in our music video. We decided that the main person that was on our cover would be wearing the same clothes that were in the music video as well as the same make up. The lighting in both the digipak and magazine were the same but this did not matter too much as the image would be in black and white.
When we were trying to compare both of our digipak and magazine advert we made sure that they were both similar so that the target audiences could tell that they were linked to our music video. The digipak had more information than the magazine as the magazine advert was sort of like a statement rather than selling the product. There were many different conventions of a digipak and a magazine advert and we had to incorporate them into our final ancillary tasks.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We showed our rough cut edited version for the first 14 seconds to some of our peers to get feedback on what we could improve and what they liked about it. We found that they really liked that our visuals match the music. We were told that the guitar scene was a bit too long and it lost the audience attention half way. They noticed the lip-syncing was slightly off too. To rectify these problems we shortened the guitar scenes and put in some other scenes to make it less dull, we also made some shots black and white to show that these were in the past and clearly showed they were flashbacks. We learnt to be more careful whilst putting in shots for the lip-syncing scenes.
After taking this feedback we then went on to finish the music video and showed it to more people. We got a lot of positive feedback such as they found it easy to understand the narrative and they could clearly see how the main lip syncer was heartbroken. The most positive feedback we got was that many people thought it looked like a pop-rock music video; we were very pleased with this as this was the style we were going for, so it shows we included enough conventions for it to be easy to see it was of the pop-rock genre. We got feedback on how we could have improved it such as some suggested we could have used more locations or ones that we more interesting. Again we were told the lip-syncing was off in some places but this was due to a problem with the QuickTime converter as on final cut the lip-syncing was fine.
Our feedback from our presentation told us that some of our shots we jumpy and in order to improve this we re-filmed a couple of the scenes. Our feedback told us that some of our zooming was a little jumpy and could be smoother and the duration of one or two shots needs to be shortened as they keep the audience waiting for too long, however we also gained positive feedback, such as, we used good angles and framing when using a variety of camera shots, the quick cuts of flashing lights worked well with our chosen genre, and we used ‘fun, bold’ and ‘eye-catching’ mise en scene which also came into connection with the genre of our music genre. From the mixed response of good and bad feedback, we were able to work upon the negatives and improve these aspects, as well as understand what the audience liked. Finding out what they liked was extremely helpful, we were able to repeat some of this, for example, the editing techniques, and ensure that these positive points stood out for the audience, resulting in a music video that enticed an audience and followed media conventions.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
When beginning the research stage, we used the most common and obvious, but also the most helpful media technology, the internet. The internet enabled us to research media conventions, our music genre, various artists and much more at a very good speed, it was not only useful for its speed, but it also gave us more information than we needed, more than we would have received if we had of researched from books etc. Research is what some would say is the most crucial and important stage out of the entire production, without the research we would have minimal knowledge on the conventions we needed to follow, the stereotypical aspects of our music genre and information on other music video’s/artists.
After the research was completed we went ahead and began our filming, this involved another form of media technology, the video camera. We were already familiar with the video camera as we used the same camera when filming our AS coursework. The camera’s had a great picture and picked up on every detail when filming, along with the camera was the tripod; this prevented any unsteady filming and enabled us to turn the camera smoothly when following actions on screen. The camera contained a play and pause button so we were able to stop filming easily when changing location or bringing in new props etc., it was also easily connected to the apple macs when uploading the footage.
The editing stage was possibly where the provided media technology came in the most useful; we used an editing program named ‘Final Cut’. This particular program allowed us to add in shots where wanted, remove unwanted/unneeded shots, use ‘qwerky’ and eye-catching transitions and enhance colour schemes where necessary. The editing techniques that could have been used were endless, some working with our music video/genre better than others. We were consistently changing and adding upon editing that we had already completed and new footage that needed a fun, edgy spin to it.
Photoshop was yet another major media technology used within our A2 coursework. This was brought into action during our ancillary task; the production of our magazine advert and digipak. We used your standard every day digital camera to take the photos for the digipak and mag advert, we then uploaded these photos onto the apple macs and began editing. Like the film editing, the options we had were endless, we were able to change the background of our image, edit the brightness and contrast of our photo’s, add texts and symbols, characterize the images, change the colour schemes completely and so much more. We played around on this for a while, trying to figure out what worked best whilst fitting into our music genre which would also catch someone’s eye and stand out among other similar adverts. Without Photoshop we would have ended up with a very bland and simple digi-pak/magazine advert, this would not have been ideal, therefore having such media technologies, we were able to produce professional looking pieces for the ancillary task.
A final media technology that cannot be forgotten is blogger.com, this has been used to track all of our work and enables each member of the group to keep up with what is being researched, analysed, produced etc., by other members of the group. It is also how members of the public and the examiner can look at our individual and group work, as well as watch our final music video. The website offers many things, we are able to edit our page to our own liking, tag ourselves in posts so we can see who completed certain research etc., and also offers ease of use. Understanding how the web page works is very simple and quick.
As you can see, various pieces of media technology have been used right from the very beginning of the production of our music video, right up until finalizing the last aspects. Each one of the above, with exception of Photoshop will also be used when researching/filming/editing our evaluation.
