Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Youtube: Throughout all stages of our project, we were using Youtube as a guide. When planning our initial research for our music video, we used to it to pick up on typical conventions of our genre by watching different types of music videos. Not only did we use it to watch professional music videos, but previous students had used it to upload their projects which helped us enormously as we were able to watch these and create a list of strengths and weaknesses that we could include and avoid. During our editing stage, I used youtube to find a tutorial on how to cut a picture using Final cut. Without Youtube I would never have been able to do this and our pictures may not have looked so professional. In addition, Youtube enabled us to upload our rough cut and final cut of our music video which meant we could put it onto our blog.
Blogger: To keep on track of all the preliminary research we did for our research we used Blogger, which is an online blog. We were able to record whatever we had ideas on during the lesson, such as the research on professional or student videos, update it by putting any tutorials we used, put evaluations of mise-en-scene etc. We found it extremely useful as we were able to look back to what we had written in the case of forgetting an idea we had had in one lesson and were able to monitor other ideas from the rest of the group which had not been voiced out loud within the lessons. This helped us to then create our final cut and our ancillary products as we had noted down all of our evaluations and research.
Photoshop: Using photoshop helped us to edit our photos that we took for our ancillary products to make them look more professional. This was done by changing the colours of the front cover of the digipak so that the picture looked more airbrushed, this then made it fit in with the conventional digipak front cover of R&B genre.
Final Cut: Final cut played a gigantic part in the making of our music video. We were able to edit all of our clips with this technology and it also enabled us to change the green screen background using colour corrector, cut clips that had not been shot to the standard we'd hoped and were able to edit and filter to different clips together to create abstract backgrounds.
Green Screen and cutting: By watching a tutorial on youtube I was able to learn how to change the green screen background by changing certain settings such as the chroma key. By doing this it made created great effects within our music video as we used various abstract backgrounds. i also learned by watching a tutorial that I could cut a picture and fit it back within the screen without distorting the picture. I was able to do this through the cut tool on Final Cut. Camera and tripod: We were given a video camera to film our shots on for our music video by the college. As i do not own one of these it was a new experience to film with it and I learnt very simple things such as switching it off, starting the recording and watching back the videos we had already filmed. We were also given a tripod which helped me to realise just how important it is to keep your camera steady; if this is not done so the shot looks very unstable and unprofessional! I learnt how to set it up and adjust it to help us film at different angles.
Question 1:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Question 2:How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Question 3:What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the project of creating our music video and 2 products, we have used a variety of different technology. We have
used it to research into real products and music genre conventions to
understand how and why these products are made in the way they are. We have
also used it to plan and produce our music video, digipack and magazine advert,
and lastly to show our work to the audience and make an evaluation on all 3
products. Blogger
During our journey of making our 3 products, we have been
able to use Blogger to record all the research, planning, work and evaluations
we have done through blog posts to create and look back on our music video and
2 ancillary products. This allowed us to store our work in one place and
present it neatly to an audience who are interested to discover how we came up
with our 3 products. It is an easy way for us to easily access our work to look
back on as blogger is a free site that has an easy and simple layout with posts
clearly layed out and easy to make.
Youtube
During our research stage of finding out more on music
videos in different genres, we used Youtube to watch student music videos and
real music videos. We analysed genre conventions, micro elements and macro
elements used to create their work, and try to understand how they affect the
audience. Being able to view other people’s work helped us to understand the
how and why music videos are made the way they are, and inspired us with our
own ideas for our music video. Youtube was also useful while we were editing
our music video to give us tutorials when we needed help with Final with things
like editing backgrounds into the green screen and cropping footage.
PowerPoint and
SlideShare
For our research we also used PowerPoints to record
information we researched, and present it in a simple and tidy manner for us
and an audience to understand clearly if we were to present it. Powerpoint has
also helped us to present our information in an interesting way to keep an
audience engaged by using different slide designs, transitions between slides
and using different colours. It has come in useful to use as we could bring up
different and detailed points on separate slides, with the ability to use pictures
and add hyperlinks to videos to illustrate and back them up. The internet site
SlideShare was of great help to enable us to upload our powerpoints to our blog
for us and the audience to easily find and look at.
Flickr
When making blog posts on Blogger, sometimes we had the problem
of photo’s/images being too big to upload through Blogger, so we used the
website Flickr to upload big photo’s/images such as our digipack and magazine
advert. Photos could then be easily shared to our blog posts by embedding the
photos and pasting the link into a blog post. This gave us high quality images
in good size and format. Google
By using the search engine ‘Google,’ we were able to easily find
specific research or websites we were looking for by just typing it in the
search box and scanning through the suggestions. Google also provides many
images that we needed of things such as other artists, album covers and logo’s
of websites or other companies to support our points made in our blog posts. We
also found Google maps helpful to take a closer look at locations we could film
in, and then used the Mac to take a snap shot picture of the location, so we
could post it on our blog and use it to illustrate our points on why we choose
the location for our music video.
Twitter
When it comes to using another person’s song, the artist who
owns the rights to the song must give permission first to allow anyone to use
it for copyright reasons. By using twitter, we were able to contact Rita Ora by
sending her a message to ask her if we could use her song to create a music
video with it. Many famous artists from around the world have a Twitter account
as a way to advertise to fans and allow them to follow their activity as a
means to make the fans feel more involved with them. Twitter makes it easier
for people to get hold of the artists.
Camcorder and
tripod
Without the
camcorder, there would be no music video. The camcorder we used was a HD camera
to shoot high quality footage to make our music video look professional. It
also has a light weight to enable us to easily carry and move it for shots like
handheld movement or pans. All the footage then saves on an SD card which we
could easily put into the computer and copy the footage onto Final Cut.
However, there was the risk of the battery dying during filming which could
have interfered with our work. Thankfully this did not happen, and there were
spare batteries for the camcorder incase this was the case.
To make our
work even better, we used a tripod to get neat and steady shots. This was one
of the technologies we used that were not digital, but it was very helpful to
make our camera work look professional by attaching a screw mechanism onto the
camera, and then locking that into place on the tripod. It held the camera very
still for basic camera shots, and then produced smooth movement for things like
dolly shots when moving the top part of the tripod that the camera was attached
to.
Green screen
This was the first time that any of us had used the green
screen before. Before using it, we watched a tutorial on YouTube and asked
someone who had used it before to demonstrate to us on how to use it. After
finding this out, we starting filming with the green screen with lights either
side of it to ensure the footage would not be too dark and would work properly
when editing images in the background in Final Cut. After filming the green
screen footage and reaching the editing stage, we found many problems with
editing images into the background. In some shots there are green outlines left
around the artist that we could not remove properly and sometimes the images in
the background came through in patches on the artist that were also hard to get
rid of. The green screen was the most problematic aspect we faced when
producing our 3 products.
Fairy Lights
In part of our music video, we used footage of pink and blue
coloured lights by placing it on top of green screen footage. We used the
camcorder to zoom in on the lights, and we recorded them against the green
screen so we could add a black background to make the lights stand out. They
contributed as a background of our idea on using lights and colours for our
music video.
Camera
For the Digipack and magazine advert, we used a HD digital
camera to take high quality photos to give a professional look to these
products. Having high quality photos would also allow us to blow up the images
to bigger sizes without the image pixelating (the magazine advert would rely on
camera quality as it has to be made into A4 size or even bigger if it were
printed on a poster). It is also easy to transfer photos from the camera to the
computer, as the photos store on an SD card like the camcorder which can be
easily inserted into the computer via an SD card slot.
Final Cut
This program is very important to actually put the footage for
our music video together, but put it together in an interesting format be cutting
it to the beat of the music. It allows anyone to take pieces of footage and manipulate
them in my many ways using things from transitions, effects, text etc. In our
music video, we used these 2 tools a lot to change the appearance of our work: colour
corrector and chroma key. Colour corrector allowed us to change our clips to many
different colours to make them vivid and engaging, and chroma key was used to
put backgrounds onto green screen footage. We also used a transition called
dissolve a lot as it softly faded from one clip to another to add to the soft
tone of the sad R’n’B we worked with. However, this software isn’t the best for
creating professional green screen backgrounds, so this affected our music
video’s quality. Despite this, what was helpful about it compared to other
software like Windows Movie Maker, is that you could have a lot more timelines
to add more footage without having to move the parts you had already edited.
This saved us some time to complete our work, but we still struggled for time
in the end due to sudden idea changes during the project.
Photoshop
Photoshop was another major program we used to make our
Digipack and magazine advert. Like Final Cut, it gives you lots of different
tools and effects to manipulate or create images to create professional and eye-catching
pieces of work. For our Digipack and magazine advert, we used it to change the
colour of photos into bright colours, sepia and black and white. We also created
designs on top of the photos for both products by using an easy line tool to
create our Andy Warhol inspired look with the square shapes. Photoshop has a
great range of different text fonts to suit different moods, genres or ideas.
We choose a bold and modern font to connote the artist’s youth and vibrant personality
to attract our teenage/young adult audience. It also has advantages with the
way it allows you to use as many layers as needed. If something goes wrong
during designing, the layer can simply be deleted and not affect the overall
image. Having used it before, I was confident with using it so time was not
wasted trying to find out how to work it.
Word
During our research, we used word to type down research or
write our evaluations on our 3 products before putting them on the blog. This
was useful to use to create first drafts and enable us to easily transfer our
work to memory sticks or by e-mail to work on. Word also has many tools to change
the presentation of written work to make it more formal, engaging and
understandable. These include tools such as underline, bold, different text
formats and the ability to include images to illustrate points made.
Prezi
Lastly, I used the website Prezi to present part of my
evaluation on the music video and ancillary products in an interesting and easy
format for the audience to understand. Prezi is a website where you can create
brainstorms and mind maps of ideas and thoughts in a digital way; you can
change the designs of them to appeal to the audience the information you’re presenting.
I had never used this software before then, but I quickly learnt the tricks and
tools to using the software by asking someone who has used it before. I think
the website is very useful for presenting information professionally.
1. In what ways does your media product use develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The song we chose for our Music Video is Rita Ora’s
Song ‘Love and War. This song categorises into the genre of R’n’B. Therefore,
we had to incorporate and take into account the genre of conventions to use in
our own music video, our Album digipak and magazine advert.
Green
Screen
As this shot was filmed using the green screen it
enabled us to play around until we chose our desired background. We found that
in a lot of R’n’B music videos, the location is set around an urban area, and a lot
include brick walls as a background. Therefore, we used this same idea to use a
brick wall as a genre convention for our R’n’B music video.
Furthermore, using the Green screen
challenges some R’n’B music videos as they tend to be seen as realistic
something for the listener and audience to relate to. Therefore, the use of our
green screen may challenge this as the abstract appearance may be seen as
unusual.
In addition, in the following
screen grab, there is clear indication that we had created this shot using the
green screen and there is still green surrounding the artist. Although, we
tried our best with final cut we couldn’t completely get rid of the green in
all of the shots. Obviously, this doesn’t help our music video doesn’t appear
as professional as this challenges the use of green screen in music videos.
Also, our use of Green screen may be a challenge to professional music videos due to the line down the left hand side of the screen. When filming our music video we didn't notice the light out of the window behind the Green screen, which the camera obviously picked up on. Therefore, this doesn't help the professional appearance of our music video.
Colour corrector and
filters When looking into the conventional
use of colour correction and filters within other media products, we realised
that by using these technique made it appear more original and professional
when watched. We wanted to create an interesting and engaging music video, and using bright colours, and editing them with jump cuts helps to keep the audience watching.
Although this, the genre conventions of R'n'B may challenge our music video due to the use of the colour corrector. For instance when using the colour corrector on Final Cut the artists face changed colour as well as the background. The use of colour on the artists face isn't very realistic in terms of everyday life, and a specific convention and ideas surrounding of R'n'B normally is about events, relationships in the artist's life.
As well as colour corrector which is a dominant feature in our music video, we also included a sepia tone, which we placed over a narrative section, to show the artist is reminiscing about a previous moment of her relationship. This shot is also is edited using an overlay technique to help further present this idea. Split screens
Andy Warhol's Art
Although we used the inspiration from Andy Warhol to
create this look, using split screen and colour correction to make each of the
colour background this may slightly challenge the forms of R'n'B conventions as
it is not realistic in life. However, this experimental techniques creates an
original look to our music video, making it appealing and visually interesting
to the audience's eye. Although this slightly develops some music video
conventions, for instance we have seen in Rihanna's music video that a projection
is used to change colour, although our colours are bold and not as subtle as
Rihanna's music video, we are using and creating a similar idea.
Furthermore, this shot includes a close-up direct
address to the camera and audience is an significant genre conventions in music videos as it helps the audience relate to the artist.
We have also used the split screen technique to show the narrative and between the the two artist's love and hate relationship.
Lip
sync A large percentage of music videos
contain the artists performing/acting and then the music is added through
editing software and lip synced to a more professional sound quality which we
used this convention in our own music video. Although most of our lip syncing
clips are a convention of professional music videos, we have included some lip
syncing of the artist which her singing starts fine but speeds up and doesn’t
precisely fit in with the words of the music, therefore, this challenges the
conventions of music videos.
Jump
cuts
From watching other R’n’B music
videos we noticed that a lot of cuts were used to fit in with the fast and
dominant tempo of the music. Therefore, we chose to use a series of jump cuts
throughout our music video so that the visuals can fit in with the genre of
music and the fast accented beats which each cut fell on (in some sections). By
using this technique it keeps the audience eyes engaged. When completing the
rough cut we realised that the more we used the jump cuts, and the more precise
they fell on the accented notes made the music video appear more professional. Camera
Angles
Another convention of most music
video genres was to use a variety of shot and angle types. For instance we used
close-up, long shot, mid-shot, high angle shots etc. The most frequent use of shots
were the mid-shots as we wanted the artist to be themain focus as well as being able to see
background interest. This allowed the music video to look more professional and
interesting as there is more variety to the video. Direct
address
From researching professional and
student videos we noticed that a dominant convention of most music genres
included direct address as the creators used a range of close-ups of the main
artist. Therefore, we took this into account when producing our own music video
as included close-ups we believe that by using direct address helps the
audience relate to the artist. Furthermore we used this convention in all three
of our products: the music video, album digi-pak and the magazine advert, as we
wanted the main artist to be the focus of our products and by using close-ups
of the artist directly addressing the camera can help the audience to relate to
the artist. Depth
of field For the majority of our music video
we used large depth of field so that the audience can get a sense of where the
artist is situated and get a feel of where and who the artist is. However, we
did include small depth of field when creating the abstract background.
Taken from Ellie Goulding's 'Lights'
This shot challenges some R'n'B music videos as we sometimes see the
location set in an urban area whereas we used a green screen and filmed and
added an abstract background. Although this, we were influenced by Ellie
Goulding's 'Lights' music video as she was filmed with lights behind, but
filmed with a small depth of field to enable only focus on to the artist. I
liked this technique a lot as it was abstract but different and made an unusual
look. As we didn't have big lights to use behind Leksi we filmed her part
against the green screen, then filmed some fairy lights using small depth of
field against the green screen added a black background and placed it behind
Leksi in Final cut. Overall, I think that this technique works well as the
background goes well with the tempo and upbeat of the R'n'B song.
Relationship
between the lyrics and the visuals
Although most of our music video is
extremely abstract particularly due to the use of the backgrounds and use of
colour corrector. We felt we should add a small narrative to show that there is
some relationship between the two artists. We used the title ‘Love and War’ and
the lyrics as a representation to how we perceived the song. We believed that the use of the lyrics and the title 'Love and War' suggested that the song was about the artists love hate relationship and it is repeated that they 'don't wanna fight anymore'. By using the
artist and showing the ups and downs of their relationship we were able to use
a narrative that can be seen as a convention in some but not all music videos.
By using this split screen we can show both sides of their relationship the 'love' side and 'war'. For instance, we saw a similar love, hate relationship in Rihanna’s music video 'Love the way you lie' (screen shots from her music video are below).
Location
Abstract background using the Green screen
As we mainly used an abstract
setting/background for a large percentage of our music video, we wanted to use
a variety of visuals. Therefore, we thought that we shouldn’t use the green
screen for all of our music video, but show a realistic setting, especially for
the narrative scenes as we wanted a realistic and imaginable approach that the
audience can relate to. However, as we chose a woodland/ nature setting this
may challenge R’n’B conventions as they tend to be set in an urban area.
Although, this we have noticed that in some R’n’B music videos where the mood
of the artist is sad and subdued they tend to be situated in an isolated
location (e.g a beach). Therefore, we wanted to create a similar impression and
appearance for our own artist.
Clothing
Screen shot taken from our music video showing the clothing we used for our artists.
J Cole (male artist in the song)
We chose our male artist to wear casual clothes
yet appropriate to fit into the genre of R'n'B we told him to wear jeans,
leather jacket, t-shirt, a large cap and 'bling' as we found that all of these
were examples of clothing that we found in R'n'B music videos which is a specific style to what J. Cole wears. Luckily he
already had large glasses which we used as they are in fashion at the moment
and fit in with the genre conventions. All these items of clothing fit in with today’s
society which helps the audience relate to the artists.
Rita Ora
Furthermore, when researching Rita Ora's clothing, we came accross this photo taken from her music video 'How we do Party'. Rita Ora is wearing a lot of denim including denim shorts and a denim jacket, this is a casual but stylish style which we too wanted our artist to wear. By wearing items of clothing like denim can help the audience to relate to the artist as it is an everyday item, and young people, those of her target audience, can look up to her as a role model. Therefore, we chose our female artist 'Leksi' to wear a similar style dress sense to that of Rita Ora.
Magazine
advert From looking at professional artist's magazine adverts such as Ellie Goulding's 'Lights'. We can see that the main conventions of an album magazine advert that must be included are...
The artist's name that can easily be read and is clearly seen.
The Album name which must be in an easy to read font and size.
Picture of the album so that when people want to and go to purchase the artist's CD they can easily recognise the Digipak.
Reviews and star rating to help to promote the album.
Date when the album is released.
Our magazine advert:
I believe that our magazine advert follows most of the conventions of a magazine advert, as it is bold and attractive for customers and followers of the artist. By using the spilt screen, Andy Warhol influence helps make the magazine advert stand out as it is original and different from using just a photo. However, our magazine advert may challenge magazine adverts as our advert doesn't include an album release date, which would not be helpful to customers if they wish to purchase the album as the album may not yet be out when seen.
Album Digipak
From looking at professional artist's digipak and from looking at Katy Perry's Digipak album 'Teenage Dream' we can see that specific genre conventions are used. For example....
Highly edited photos of the artist to help capture a style for the audience.
Motifs which have been used throughout their work. (e.g how the artist is portrayed through their image, the use of backgrounds, font etc.) In Katy Perry's digipak we can see that her albums are quite abstract and brightly colour which helps to attract a particular target audience (e.g young teenagers)
The Album name
The artists name
Barcode for use when purchasing
Producer's company
Track list
Our Album Digipak:
I feel that our album digipak definitely includes many significant Digipak genre conventions. For instance, we have included lots of edited photos of the main female artist to help the audience relate to the artist. By using a range and editing each image helps make the Digipak look more professional as it follows the same conventions as seen in real album digipaks. We included a track list, which we made up, but we related the track names to the typical R'n'B conventions refering to the artist's life events, the ups and downs of relationships etc.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Using the front cover from the Digipack that Jess created, I was able to use that as the main photo to advertise and emphasis the front cover of the album. I used conventions of advertising by looking at other examples of magazine adverts, and I used a colour range that suited the album colours and the colours used in the music video so it links back to both products so the audience though that they are related.
When creating our ancillary products we ended up with two magazine articles which we had to choose from.
We decided to go with the one that Keri created because it follows the motif that we have been using throughout this whole music video experience. This motif being the Andy Warhol art style.
This magazine article would stand out on the page more because of the colours which are very bright and bold, whereas the other article made used dark colours.
In addition it also focuses a lot on the artist which goes with the conventions of the R&B genre we have been following.
I think both the Digipak and the magazine article would be effective in attracting our target audience because the bright colours make the album stand out and also, the picture of the artist Leksi fills the whole of the front cover of the Digipak and most of the magazine article so fans would not easily miss it.
Here is a possible layout of the digipak using a template for guidelines.
I wanted to include a range of photos that helped the audience to learn who the artist is and enables them to relate to the audience in terms of fashion sense etc. In addition, by using direct address and close-ups further creates this impression. I used a range of filters (sepia and cyan) and edited the images to create a more professional look. Furthermore, by using these filters, using backgrounds which I used for the green screen helps link in with our own music video as we included the same ideas.
When creating our first initial ideas (Andy Warhol style) for our Digipak on Photoshop it didn't turn out the way we expected. I had the idea of splitting the front cover image into four sections either using one photo or four different photos in each section. However, when I split the front cover into four sections using one photo it cut straight through her nose, which didn't look very professional. When researching I liked the look of Little Mix's album cover 'DNA' as this also was split into four sections similar to that of Andy Warhol's artwork. So I tried out this, with four different photos but it didn't look quite right. Therefore, I used the same idea but used more sections, but created it in a way that didn't cut through her face. Furthermore, I used four different filters over the photos to create a slightly different look but was still influenced by Andy Warhol.
We have finished the final editing of our video and are able to watch it back without having to change anything.
I am very pleased that we got the whole of the video finished in time, as I did not expect to get it finished by the deadline, however I now feel that if we had had a bit more time then we would have been able to improve our video a lot.
For example, there are a few shots that we did not have time to crop and therefore where there is a window behind the green screen there is a line of light in the shot that looks out of place.
There is also parts of the green screen shots where we spent a long time trying to get rid of the green outline around our singer when we put a different background behind her, but however much we tried and adjusted the settings, the green glow would not go so it looks quite unprofessional.
Another problem I have found is that when changing the background colour of the green screen, it has also changed the colour of our singer's face and arms, for example, when we changed the background to pink, her skin colour went blue.
I do however like how the Andy Warhol, different coloured, split screen went as it adds some diversity to the rest of the shots of her singing by herself. I also think that where we filtered two shots together it looks very professional and makes the video more interesting to watch as there is two things going on at once.
We were given a video camera to film our shots on for our music video by the college. As i do not own one of these it was a new experience to film with it and I learnt very simple things such as switching it off, starting the recording and watching back the videos we had already filmed. We were also given a tripod which helped me to realise just how important it is to keep your camera steady; if this is not done so the shot looks very unstable and unprofessional! I learnt how to set it up and adjust it to help us film at different angles. 
