Final Blog

“Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't” -Robert Wyatt This is something I can fully empathise with now and understand what Wyatt was thinking when he said this quote. I now know that making a pop video is no easy task. From the planning right through to the editing and post production has been nothing but hard work. We encoutered many problems along the way but through hours of descission always found ways to overcome them. In planning we had difficulty coming up with a concept. After coming up with a concept and planning it all, we then were unable to find a cast meaning that we had to change the whole idea at last minute. Having said that we had theses difficulties I feel we did well to over come the problems we faced and I am very pleased with the outcome of our video. If I were to redo the video, I would make sure that I had a better concept and had throughly planned it before hand as this was the biggest problem that we had to deal with and had repecusions as a result.

DIRECTORS COMMENTRY

Bellow is the video of our directors commentary along side with our pop video. The directors commentary is a simple voice recording of our thoughts and aspects that we included in our pop video. The main reason for recording a directors commentary is to let your audience know the reason for doing certain things the way we did and why we included other elements. By doing a directors commentary our audience would understand our pop video better and hopefully engage with it more.

BLOG TASK 1 - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media products?

For the pre production of our pop video we had to conduct a lot of research into the common conventions of the content of a pop video. This meant we used youtube to watch other music videos and analysed the elements in them that were common and what we liked about them. When doing our research we also studied the theorist Keith Negus who explores the common generic conventions of popular music promo videos. Theses conventions are:

· The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artists image

· The featuring of the artist

· A wide extensive use of shots types camera angles and movement.

· Repetitions of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)

· -A possible narrative structure

· --A possible performance elements

· --The flexibility to disregard realism

· --Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track

· -- Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGIs in-camera effects)

· --A carefully constructed Mise en scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track

· --High impact instantly!

As I have previously mentioned we watched lots of other pop videos in the research stages of our pop video. From watching theses videos we were able to try and imitate certain elements in them. This would give plaisir – the expected pleasure to the audience. This theory comes from Barthes. As well as imitating conventions we also subverted some of the conventions. This would develop Barthes theory and give jouissance – this being something mew or unexpected.

For our pop video we choose the song ‘La La La’ by The Bird and the Bea. The song its self is about being youthful and free. The lyric of the song are very light hearted and fun. We decided that we were going to put our own meaning across on the video how ever. We wanted to portray the twins as being close and intimate with a feeling of freedom and in places connotations of etherealness. We manage to show this by using tight close up shots to make the girls appear close and comfortable around each other. For freedom element, a lot of our footage was shot free hand or was a pan. This is good because it meant we had more freedom with the camera and the viewer would not feel so restricted when watching it. We managed to create a light heavenly mood by dressing both the twins in white dresses, this also aimed to show their purity and that they are not rebellious – which would have been the case if we had dressed them in dark and dull colours.

This image is a still from my video its self. As you can see she is wearing a white dress, as I have previously mentioned to give the impression of good girl and angelic. Furthermore, the dress has a slightly floral pattern and you can see the orange flower next to her head. We did this to make the video have a feeling of fantasy and girly. This imitates Negus’s conventions of having the flexibility of disregarding reality, which is what we wanted to achieve within our video. You can also see from this image that we used multicolour lighting and projections again this was to imitate Negus’s convention of having the ability to disregard reality as well as imitating his convention that most videos have the use of CGI or special lighting in our case. We placed her on the right hand side of the screen as this was a factor we wanted to keep consistent throughout our video, her twin sister was always framed on the left hand side of the screen.

picture

This is another still that I have screen grabbed from our pop video. Although you cant see it because its a still, this particular scene is where were we panned over the top of the girls free hand. This goes to show the freedom and fluidity within in our video and fulfils the impression we were aiming to give off. The fact that this scene is a pan also subverts Negus’s convention of having short sharp cuts that cut to the beat. The reason we subverted this was because this is the opening scene the music is flowing nicely and we wanted to mirror this in our camera work. In terms of Mise en Scene, you can see in this still that we used fairy lights and flowers this was in an attempt to create mystical and fantasy atmosphere. This still also high lights that we used twins because they would be very comfortable with each other, meaning that we could easily capture intimacy and portray the closeness of the two girls.

It is difficult to show what this is from a screen grab as it was a moving image originally. On the shoot day we filmed lights and projections through a piece of flowing material. The effect looks as though it was light coming through water and that we were filming underwater. We did it with lots of different colour lights and placed it along with a high-pitched chime that is repeated throughout the song. This imitates two of Negus’s conventions the use of lighting and special effect and the ability to disregard reality. The first convention we imitated was in order to help up achieve the second.

This scene is very under exposed the reason for this was because we wanted the lights to be the main attention in this shot, hence why they are framed on two of the four hot spots. From this still you can clearly see the projection that we were using onto the sheets. We also built a tent like structure to film inside with the idea of it being a get away from reality and a world with in its own.

This is the front of our CD cover, as part of our digi-pack. I wanted to carry our the theme of the fantasy and lights, hence the whips of pink round the outside. This also helped me frame the twins and so that your eye is focused on them and lead towards the middle of the picture. Negus suggest that a common convention is to have ‘the explicit and unashamed promotion of the artists image’. We were not promoting our band in this way and subverted this by showing their innocence and their purity instead as it followed the theme of the song and our image for our band. The lettering I did and took me a long time. I kept the colours similar to the ones used in our video in order to have a direct link with the song. I also added the floral patterns on the lettering as we has a lot of flowers in the video and the fact that it is a reminder that the twins are fun and light hearted.

This is also part of our Digi-pack. It is the back cover to the CD. As you can see we wanted to keep this theme of fantasy and dreamy feeling consistent right the way through from the pop video to the CD. Here you can see the keyboard to show that they are an organic band and play all their own music and are very original. This was the image that we would like to be associated with our band. The lights and the feathers were from the video and I feel adds nicely to the mise en scene. In the top right had corner is the name of the music company the band are part of. This is a standard requirement and must be on the back of all CD covers. I edited the bar code so that it was blue, although it is unrealistic it keeps the colours consistent thought out the image.

BLOG TASK 2 - A PowerPoint presentation to explore how effective the combination of my main product and ancillary text is?

BLOG TASK 3- Audience- What I learnt from my audience feedback

Having collected a variety of feedback for out pop video and ancillary products from members of the target audience demographic via Youtube and a Focus group. In our focus group I tried to use open questions throughout.

In terms of our target audience we aimed our pop videos for both males and females because we thought that men would find the twins attractive and females may relate to the video and aspire to be the members of our band. We thought that the appropriate age for our audience was 9 to 16 the younger girls who may aspire to be the band and then perhaps males aged 16 to 25. In terms of Jictar, we believed that are appropriate target audience was A B C this is people that fit into the upper classes of society, those who are well educated and tend to be wealthy. Chose these people, as they would probably be most likely to appreciate the arty and surreal video that we produced.

One way in which we were able to receive audience feedback was by uploading our video onto youtube. Youtube is an online site, which allowed us to reach a big audience at once. We uploaded our video and since the 13^th of November we have received 427 views. We have had 4 comments and all 4 have been positive feedback. Youtube user; ‘michelthecure’ said, “I really love this song”.

We decided one way in which we would be able to gather more feedback about our video was by asking a focus group questions. So on Friday 10^th March we invited 12 AS students into a classroom. Out of the 12 people 5 were boys and 7 were girls, they were a lively bunch of students with lots of positive and constructive information to give. They watched our music video and then were asked a series of open-ended questions. It was important to open-ended questions because that ensures we were not persuading the people we were asking through the way in which the questions was phrased or being asked. Here is a list of the questions that we asked during the discussion with our focus group:

1) Did you like the video?

2) What was the most enjoyable part of the video?

3) What message did you get from the video?

4) Do you think the video compliments the song well?

5) In what was would you agree that this video reminds you of a fairytale?

6) In what way could the video be improved?

7) Do you feel that the choice of colours went well with the video?

8) Did you feel there were different types of shots or could this be improved?

9) What are your thoughts about the band from this video?

10) Does the video / band reminds you of another band/star?

There where three main reasons for use conducting a focus group instead of any other methods, like a questionnaire. One advantage of a focus group means that people take your questions seriously and consider their answers where as with a questionnaire usually people tick any box just to get the process over and done with. Secondly, with a questionnaire you have to wait for it to be filled out and then have to shift through the information on it, on the other had the advantage of a focus group is that after asking the questions you get instant questions in return this is quicker, it also means you get an answer that is direct and too the point you don’t have to shift through vast amount of information. Finally, when you are in a focus group it is a face to face process, this allows you to not only see their emotions and reactions to your video and questions but also means that you can start interesting discussions that relate to something someone within the group has said. Are focus group gave us a good insight of how others see our video. We had some positive comments and some negative. Amelia a vivacious bright 17 year old said: “I really like the way the lights create a very dreamy and unreal effect” this was a perfect response because not only was it positive feedback but also shows that she picked up on the preferred message of us trying to create a dream like effect in our video.

As well as showing it to a focus group and posting it up on Youtube I also showed it to some of my friends and family. The majority of my friends liked it however there were some people who gave some negative comments. My brother said: “ I don’t understand why it’s all close up, you can never see what’s going on.” We used close up shots to create the dream like arty feeling we wanted. My brother is a 14 year old male and I think he didn’t appreciate this aspect of the video because he would have had more of an interest in the girls in our video that the arty and creative side of it.

Blumler and Katz created the theory of ‘uses and their gratitude’. We tried to use their theory to asses our audience response. This is the theory in which they argue that audience respond to media texts in four ways however my pop video is only applicable to three on Blumler and Katz theories.

1) The audience identify with the characters on the screen

In our pop video we were trying to get the audience to indentify themselves with young, free, self-dependant women. As there was a larger majority of women than men in our focus group it was apparent that this worked in the main. Elizabeth a 18 year old within our focus group said: “the girls in the band look like they are having a really good enjoyable time” this goes to show that she can relate with the girls in our band.

2) Diversion

Blumler and Katz say that Diversion is the ability to get away or escape mentally from everyday realities. Blumler and Katz say that in order for a media text to be diverting it has to occupy the viewer for more than 70% of the time. Our focus group said that they found our music video very entertaining. Both girls and boys in our focus groups said that the fantasy, dreamy feeling we gave our video really helped them to divert from reality.

3) Personal Relationship

Blumler and Katz say that personal relationship is about the ability to be able to identify themselves with the characters within the media text.

BLOG TASK 4 : A directors commentary on how I used New media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

New Media technologies is where the technology is based on digital storage and communication of data, using 0 and 1 code to compress the data into tiny packets, which givegreater speed and quality and huge amounts more storage. This is a lot better than the oldanalogue system. Digital technology underpinscomputers, mobiles phones, modern video and still cameras, editing, the Internet and most technology equipment raging from in hospitals to schools. This technology means that media productions have the advantages of being a higher quality; interactivity and convergence are just some of the many. For the producer the advantages of digital technology are that it is faster, lower costs, higher quality and ease of production. This is all based on binary code.

We used new media technologies extensively through out all the stages of our productions. Including in the stages of research, development, planning and construction of the shoot, post production and evaluation. Theses are Richard Maltby's five stages.

When carrying out the research and planning for my pop video we used the

internet to access information that we would not have been able to collect, before new media techno

logy came along,all the necessary information’s that helped us through theses stages of planning without digital technology. Digital technology helped us look up potential locations to shoot our film, also allowed us to use youtube to research other pop video and see get inspiration from other people. We got our idea of using the multicoloured lighting from a clip that was posted on youtube, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ8ahElWOk8) this was a technique that we used in our filming and proved to work well and contributed to the meaning of our song, without the internet and youtube we would not have been able to do this.

As for the Planning, we had to draw out our storyboards for our pop video. After drawing them we were then able to film them using new cameras which were smaller and therefore easier to control when filming such a small thing like our storyboard. We then edited the footage of our story board on mac computers using a software called Final Cut Pro. This use of Digital technology allowed me to easily capture and edit our story boards into a clip that was easy to see the different shot types and layout our story board clearly. We also were able to do a camera test easily and quickly using these new cameras.

On the shoot day we used new technologies in many different ways. We were using new cameras that were smaller and lighter. These two factors allowed us to pan a lot more easily around the set making it easier for us to capture the pan that we use at the beginning of our pop video where you see the two twins lying on the set. We also had the cameras linked up to a big plasma TV allowing us to see better quality the footage that was being captured. This leads me on to my next point because they were lighter and better quality with better sound it was easy to carry them and capture free hand footage and not have to worry about so much. The new cameras are better quality which in turn deals better with lighting and darkness, this meant that we did not have to be constantly worrying about the aperture and lighting on set and could focus on the actually footage, in this was the use of new technology and digital technology helped use greatly on our shoot day. Because of New Media technology, the equipment is easier and smaller to used this allowed us to shoot more and increase our ratio, meaning that when it came to the editing stage we had a bigger choice of footage.

With Post Production we were able to use mac computers, which rely on binary code, and an editing programme called Final Cut Pro and Adobe After effect to edit our pop video. Both of these programs fit into the category of new technologies. They are easily set out and simple to use. The editing of the video was used Final Cut pro, which we cut the shots down form the digital storage they had originally been captured on and we merged them together. We used Adobe after effects to colour grade our music video so it was like the video that we had got our inspiration like on youtube with many different colours. Colour grading our music video allowed us to add colours that we didn’t actually shoot on the day and make it have more of an ethereal, fantasy feeling about it. The editing process took about 2 weeks and would have probably take double the time had we not had the new technology to deal quickly, easily and effectively with things.

The internet underpins much of distribution and evaluation. New media technology make the internet possibly by linking tens of millions of computers together, with millions of pieces of binary code whizzing about. New Media technology would mean that we could do two things that we could not do with out the internet. Through youtube we could put our pop video up for the potential of 123 million people to watch it and give us their comments very quickly and easily. It would be impossible to get such a vast amount of audience and there reactions without new media technology. The interned also means that we can put our pop video up on our website and people can download it if they want to broadcast it, so radio stations and TV stations can see and use the pop video instantly if we email them, and this is all very possible through new media technology and the binary code system.

The creation of my magazine advertisement

When creating our band portfolio we wanted to portray our band as girls, fantasy and fun. During the pop video we incorporated many more elements such as giving the girls an ethereal feeling by dressing the two girls in white dresses and but using lots of multicolour lights creating a fantasy and dreamy atmosphere.
The purpose of a magazine advert is so that you can grab the public’s attention to your band. In our case we decided to put the tour dates on our advertisement. This is in order to increase the sales of tickets for concerts. In this day and age more and more people are starting to illegally download music off the internet for free. This means that instead of paying the artist for their music they will download it for free therefore the artist makes very little money of heir songs. As a result of the music industry changing in this way, artists have had to resort to making money through other means. Most popularly is performing live and putting on concerts. This is a big money earner for the band or artist as they can charge a lot for tickets and sell tickets on mass. Furthermore they can make income from selling merchandise like t-shirts and posters at these concerts. It is for these very reasons that we decided to post the band’s tour dates on our magazine advert, in an attempt to raise sales of concert tickets and make more profit for our band.
Another reason for creating a magazine article is because by placing a magazine article in a magazine will also help with subliminal messaging. Subliminal messaging is when a person subconsciously reads and takes in a message without having to think about it. If we have a very happy colorful advert then when people see the advert they will subliminally thing good and positive things about the band as apposed to a band that were trying to portray themselves as rebellious and dark. Having an advert situated in a magazine constantly reminds people of the band and their existence and by being in a magazine (especially a popular one) will attract a big audience.