Finale

"Messages are there on all levels in all music, and what ever level you get it on, I get it too when I wrote it or sang it." - John Lennon

I kept this quote in mind when I was thinking about when I was making the pop video because all good music always has a message in it and I wanted to make it clear what our message was. The blog explains what we have done from our first ides to what people thought of the final result and it is good to have finished it and seen all my work come together in one place gives a real sense of satisfaction and achievement. It was 7 month labour of love to do our pop video, digi pack, our magazine advert and writing the blog. Along the way we have had a few problems. One of which involved finding members for the band. The problem was that we left it too late to find the right members that can play an instrument, have the right look and are confident enough to pull it off. When we finally got people together and started filming they were not very good and so we had to cut them out of our pop video in the editing process.

The editing also was difficult. We did our first draft all together and overall pent about 6 hours doing it but when we presented it to a teacher they thought that it wasn't good enough so with little time left and my group having all day rehearsals I had to finish which took time but I think that I got the idea of having to stay up late and come in early to get it done and I think that it actually was good for me to have that opportunity. It has all been hard work but I can see now how I could have done it differently and how I could improve each area but overall I am proud of the work that me and my group have produced.

Director's Commentary - Audio Recording

The director's commentary is to help the audience understand out pop video even more and to show them how we did it and what we were thinking of at the time we made it. There were a few things that we needed to mention in our video. We needed to say what kind of image we were trying to create and why we were trying to create it. We also needed to talk about certain camera shots and what they suggest, how we used the rule of thirds and colours, line shape and form. We needed to talk about an d few of Negus' rule and weather we subverted them or imitated them. Mise en scene was really important in the video and the editing style would have a massive effect on the audience and how they felt bout the artist. We then had to go into the studio and perform it to a camera and put it over the video.

TASK 3: What Have I Learnt From Audience Feedback?

To access audience feedback we took data from various sources - you tube, a Focus Group, our peers and out family. I tried to use open questions throughout and realised this was a small scale trial of our pop video, and ancillary products.

I can apply Jictar to my pop video. Jictar made a scale of society going from A, which are the people who are rich, well educated, and high aspirations, E, who are uneducated, poor and have low aspiration . This is what we had to think about who our target audience was when we were making our audience and what would please them and stimulate them. Our target audience was mostly girls from the ages 13 - 25. The song does not apple to boys but there maybe a gap in the gay community for our artist. I showed my peers 3 of which were girls and one of them said ' I really enjoyed it, I loved the style.' This means that we gave her an image which appeals to girls. The lyrics of the song have a deep and thought provoking so our target audience was for ABC of Jictars theory. The A group will analyse the music video and really listen to the lyrics and take on the message that the artist is trying to covey. Group be would be very similar to this but possibly to a lesser extent. Group see maybe would not think about the lyrics so much and would not delve as deep into the message of women being suppressed and just understand the guilt and angry behind her song.

As a part of our distribution we put up our video on Youtube which gave people the chance to watch it for free whenever they want and to comment on it and gives their opinions on what they thought. Over all we got 456 views and 5 likes with no dislikes. One of the comments that was made from caz2435 a girl of 18 that said 'This is really cool' which shows that our style appeals you a young female audience mostly. Another person, dkeofhazard said 'whoever made this video is amazing, I love them, I might know someone who is interested please let me know the students name.' This was great for feed back but it would have been better if we could get more professional feed back on what individual shots they liked but to know that our work had generally been liked was good.

To get further response we set up a focus group. For this we let ether watch our video once because that is the amount of times real audiences would watch it and then asked them 10 questions that we had set up before hand. We had to try and keep these questions as open as possible so that we would not restrict their response. This is different from a questionnaire because it is open for discussion. If someone comes out with a good response then we are able to ask them to elaborate and get more out of them. We also made sure that all of the questions that we asked were open so that again the answers were not restricted. We tried to make it hard for them to answer with just yes or no so that we could get more information and opinions. So for example instead of did you get anything form this video? Where the answer is either yes or no, we would say what did you get from this video? This way it forces them to contribute more. There were the ten questions that we used:

1. Did you enjoy it?
2. What did you get from the video?
3. What message did you get from the video?
4. What personal for our artist did we established?
5. Did you identify wit the character, if so how?
6. Did you feel a personal relationship with the character, if so how?
7. Were you informed by the video, if so in what way?
8. Did you get the idea of women being ill treated in society?
9. What did you think of the video not having a narrative?
10. Ways it could be improved could we have done in differently?

The group was made up of 2 girls and 4 boys. We would see that there was a clear spilt between weather they liked it or not depending on their genre. One girl from London said 'I really liked it and I felt a real connection with the artist'. The more masculine boys of the group seems to not grasp the message of the video as much. One of the boys said 'I really liked the girl in the video but I didn't really feel close to her and I didn't get the message' This clearly shows that the audience for our pop video is for girls especially when it comes to having a relationship with the girl. I think that most of the focus group got the message of the video with one answering 'I got a sense of the woman being trapped in a cage which may signify society'. This is the exact message we were trying to portray. So overall the response was really positive and the feed back was just as we hoped.

Outside of the focus group and on youtube I also showed it to a few of my peers from outside of school to see what they think of it. One of my friends from Kingswood who is 17 and quite indie in her style said 'I really love the feathers and that girl is so pretty and energetic' This shows that her style and swagger appeal to my aged audience and for girls. Another boy who is the year below and is 16 said 'I thought that it was really good but I thought that you should have used some more locations rather then just the bird cage'. However a media teacher who saw it when I was editing said 'I loved it and the editing is done well because you feel like the cage is actually swinging and there is a lot of movement which makes it exciting.' I think that possibly older males understand it more and adolescent males don't grasp the concept.

We tried to use the theory of Bumler and Katz and 'uses of gratifications' to assess our audience response of Blumler and Katz says that audience respond in four different ways. the question was did ours respond in the same way. Bumlber and Katz identify four different way that the media is used or gives gratification.
1) The audience identifies with a character on screen we were trying in our pop video to get the viewer to identify with the main young, pretty, fairy tale, woman of group. It worked in the main. Of our focus group of 2 girls and 4 boys identified with the image. Hannah a 17 year old girl who is down to earth from London said 'I could see she was in pain and I wanted to get her out of the cage.' This shows tha the audience will identify with the young woman of their own age who is fighting back against society even thought trapped by the cage which is an extended metaphor from her womanhood.

Audience can be seen as the group of people who consume or might consume a media text. (Price). I can apply this to my video by using Stewart Hall who had a theory that producers encode a preferred message and meaning which the audience will decode in one of three ways. These are where the audience accept the message and meaning, rejects it by being oppositional or negotiates their own interpretation. One preferred meaning is that women are suppressed by society. The black box that she is in represents society and golden cage is and extended metaphor for her womanhood. When we did our focus group we asked them do you think that women are being ill treated in this video. One girl of 17 who is a little eccentric and colurful said 'Yeah, I fell really sorry for her'.

Image of Stuart Hall, media theorist

TASK 2: A Power Point Presentation To Explore How Effective The Combination Of My Main Product And Ancillary Text Is?

Blog Task2

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To answer this task I created a slide show to adress four things.

SYNERGY to stress how the image have to be convay through the pop video, the magazine advert and the digi pack cover to consistantly communicate the brand we are tryinh to create in the public mind.

THE IDEAS OF RICHARD DYER ABOUT STARDOM where he stresses that a star has to have certain qualities such as being youthful and rebelious, while two paradoxes also operate. I try and aply this to our pop video.

THE THEORIST CARLSSON EXPLORES THE IDEA THAT A POP VIDEO STAR IS ONE OF THREE THINGS. I try and analyse how and why our singer is a commercial exhibitionist or a televised bard or a electronic shaman, as Carlsson defines them.

THE IDEA OF LEVI STRAUSS AND UNIVERSAL MYTHS is also relivent and I try and show how our pop video and singer and song explore to important universal myths.

The slide show explores all these ideas and trys to apply them to our pop video and other products.

Magazine Advert

The promotional magazine poster is a really impotant part for building the image. The tour is how an artist makes their money because these days music on the internet goes really cheap. the poster has to look exciting and convay her image so that people will want to but tickets and go. We made it so it will appeal to people who read NME magazine which is about 16 - 24 age group. We put the same image as the album cover to keep the image consistant and so they will recognise them. We then also put a picture of her with a mike. This is good because you dont see her face and so she is breaking the rules and making things a little more exciting and mysterious and will draw people in. We then put the tour dates and the number to find to buy them. We made the font the same as the album cover to make sure there was continuity in the theme so the fans and people who are interested will recognise the band. The suggestion of the images being black and white throughout, with just a touch of colour, suggests high culture and art and so that our singer is a real artist with a serious message in her songs. Apling the rules of thirds the first hot piont is on the words 'UK TOUR DATES', which are very important. The fourth hot piont is on the empty swing which suggest an air of mystery.

Digi Pack

For the front cover we chose this picture because we felt that it was dark and mysterious yet with a flowery, innocent look. We were going to put a faint image of her face over the bird cage but I think the reason why we thought the cover worked because of it's simplicity which made it really eerie. We also wanted a mysterious and also etherial or 'other world' type feel and achieved that through the mise en scene, colours and camera movments.

For the inside we wanted the image for the band to be quite indie and arty. I really liked the work of Laura Marling and I tried to think of that when I was doing these two pages. Because the face is not on the front then I thought that there need to be at least two pictures on the inside so that they can really know what she looks like. Inside I put a picture of music but instead of notes there is birds sitting on the lines. I combined the last shot which is our strongest shot and the one of the guitar and but them over each other I think this made quite an impact because together the colours contrasted each other. The back we kept the same picture on the back of the cover to keep some consistancy. We wrote the song titles down the side and we tried to make it look as realistic as possible so we wrote out the copywrites parts and then put the lable record on this gave it a really professional look.

TASK 1: In What Ways Do Your Media Products Use, Develop or Challenge Foms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

The first thing that I was to do was to research Pop Promos. I went on to you tube and I found a few popular videos, some old and some current and analysed the major conventions. The main conventions that are set down by Negus are:

The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption

The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)

A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement

Repetition of reoccuring 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 element

The flexibility to disregard Realism

Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track

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

A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track

High impact instantly

Looking whether the maker of the video had subverted these conventions or not meant that we could start thinking about our own video. We also looked into Barthes theory of plasir, the way you give the audience pleasure through what they expect in a genre, also jouissance, which is the unexplected and the different. If we imitated these conventions then we would be giving the audience pleasure in what is expected which is called plaisir. Or we could subvert them which would give jouissance which is the pleasure in the unexpected. We wanted to subvert some of them because this will make her seem edgy and interesting but if we inverted to many we would find that it would just look messy and will not be aesthetically pleasing, and we might even lose the interest of the audience if to much is different.

The message of the song that we were trying to convay was the idea of a hidden secret and that guilt was possessing her but not matter how hard she tries to suppress it it will never go. Listening to the lyrics of the song it seems quite dark and mysterious however the style of the song was quite light hearted and exciting so we wanted to keep it in that style. The image of the band was at first very innocent and pretty but we had put hidden meanings thought. The bird cage for example is an extended metaphor for her physic. It implies that she is trapped by her own guilt. Her image is very illusive and suggest struggling. the way we told her to act meant that you could see her split personality which made implies that there is a facade. She seems all innocent but then all of a sudden becomes aggressive and eruptive and then back into innocent.

In terms of Negus's key conventions we imitated cutting to the beat, but not all the time, disregard of realisum but we subverted high impact and a clear narrative.

This shot below says a lot about the singer and her image. At first is seems very innocent and peaceful. This is implied with the circle that is around her which makes people feel at peace and calm but we then the use tracking means that the shot ends up turning around. You zoom into her legs. This suggests sex and her innocence is taken away. It also goes on for too long and doesn't with the beat. This was done on purpose because it will give the audience jouissance and because it is an unusually shot to begin with it draws in the audience.

This shot of the hands running down the bars. I put this in because I thought that it was quite suggestive in the same way that the shot of the legs were. It suggests a lack of innocence however because the other shots in there are innocent you could also not see it in a sexy suggestive way at all. we did keep to the rules of thirds because it is more pleasing to the eyes. Putting the hand on the left of the screen suggests that she is good which also contradicts the idea of it being suggestive. This also means that it was pleasing to the eye a gave the audience plaisir. It also subverts the mager convention of excpecting high impact and realisum from a pop star in Negus's terms.

The third shot that I chose was this one of the last shot. For this we put the bar on the left hand side which kept to the rules of thirds and but her face is in the middle and that is the main point of focus. This meant that I converted them and they gave the audience jouissance. We cut this shot to the beat and faded it out as the music faded out which made it very pleasing to the eye. Her facial expression is seductive but the environment that she is in is very innocent this could suggest that she is in a world which she doesn't fit in. Also it makes it quite dream like which imitates one of Negus conventions of ability to bend reality. This shots also explores the ethereal and mysterios mature of our singer .

This shot I think added something different to the video. I think the the curve of the guitar I thought about calm peaceful and tranquility. It is also the contrasting that go across also gives the impression of tranquility. None of these shots of the guitars were put in the fast aggressive part because it did not go with the multiply personality theme. the film teorist Ricjard Maltby argues that colours and shapes are vital in convaying the atmosphere, feel and underlying message of any film piece. Khuleshov argues that 70% of the meaning of any film comes through the visual. By using shapes and colours that are easy on the eye, confortable and not threterning we continue to put over the soft feel of our singer and her brand. Many other pop videos do the same. For instance Eminem in his pop video in his video using sharpe diangoal shapes that are crushing on him to show how the world is hostile. www.eminem .com

For the digi pack I wanted the image for the band to be quite indie and arty. I really liked the work of Laura Marling and I tried to think of that when I was doing these two pages. Because the face is not on the front then I thought that there need to be at least two pictures on the inside so that they can really know what she looks like. Inside I put a picture of music but instead of notes there is birds sitting on the lines. I combined the last shot which is our strongest shot and the one of the guitar and but them over each other I think this made quite an impact because together the colours contrasted each other.
The promotion magazine poster is a really impotant part for the image. Tour is how an artist makestheir monet because these days music on the internet goes really cheap. the poster has to look exciting and convay her image so that people will want to but tickets and go. We made it so it will apeal to people who read NME magazine which is about 16 - 24 age group. We but the same image as the album cover to keep the image consistant and so they will recognise them. We then also put a picture of her with a mick. This is good because you dont see her face and so is breacking the rules and making a little more exciting and mysterios and will draw people in. We then put the tour dates and the number to find to buy them.

TASK 4: A director's Commentary On How I Used New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evalution Stages

New media technologies are up and coming and current technologies that we use in researching, producing and post producing media products. This include things like CGI, green screen and using digital filming in stead of using film. I max is also a big part of media. Films are now filmed on a lot bigger film which is 70mm instead of your average cheaper 35mm. However even though it is a lot more expensive to use it also means that it produces a profit because it is new and exciting to the audience and draws people in.

In TV technology is always improving to make sure that the audience gets information and entertainment quicker and better quality. For example they have changed from analogue to digital. Analogue sends it scrambles it up in to loads and loads of pieces separating the sound and the picture and reassembles on our screen. This would have to be filmed on a huge camera which was impractical and slow to move and set up and it is not good quality. Also it was really difficult to edit it because you would have to re-record to edit it and you went through it when it was finished and did it wrong then you could have to re-record which wouldn’t be a problem but it loses quality every time to got back and change it. They then switched to digital which was far more effective. It uses digital technology so you can broadcast it quickly and easily. The editing is all done on programs just a final cut pro and there is a lot more room to make special effects which is so much more effective and faster. Using digital is really cheap. An analogue camera can coast up to £100 000 and digital is only £60 000. the digital cameras are also smaller and easy to move and set up. The quality of digital is never destroy and can be enhanced so is so much better.

Technologies help in all aspect of making a film for example in pre production you can film your story board with a digital stills camera, edit it and watch it back to make sure that all the shots go well together. You can use the internet to do intensive research or just to e-mail someone details. The construction of the shoot was good because we now use digital. This means that it is faster and is in better quality. You can now use green screen which is much better quality. The construction in post editing is probably the most dramatically improved of all these areas. You can now create huge explosions and turn someone into an alien just by using CGI. There is also a new technology call motion capture which was used to create characters like Davie Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean or more popular Gollum from lord of the ring. They film the person putting motion point around their body so that you can CGI a creature around them. Although it is not always used in Pop Videos there is always the option and I think it will become increasingly popular. CGI however is used a lot in music video to crate exciting and visually pleasing image to draw the image in and to make them look up-to-date and current so they will appeal to a large group of people. The exhibition in films is showing it in the IMAX in 3D and with special surround sounds. Although Pop Videos got always get that opportunity to be shown in a cinema it can only be watch on the TV at home. Soon people will start getting 3D TV in their living room so the option to bring 3D into music videos is very likely.


Throughout the preparation and creation of this music video I have used loads of new media technologies to help me. First of all I had to research. this meant that I had to look through and study a various amount of video so that I can understand the concept and different styles of music videos. For this I used website such as YouTube where I can look at loads of different videos. I then spent some time on music video channels to see what was most current and the different genres on the different channels. I found that there are big splits between commercial pop channels and rock and roll channel. I also would look at band websights to look at how the image of the music video integrates with the cover and the design of the website.

The planning was helped along also by the use of the internet, which is based on new media technologies. For this we needed loads of different props. The internet allowed us to look at different types of bird cages that we would have liked to use on Google Images and also on YouTube to look at the channel advert to experiment with what kind of style we want it to be. We also used prop sights to see what we could get. We then used technology to film the story board and edit it together. this meant that we could watch it and see what worked and what didn't work and it was quick and easy. We also used the camera to do the camera test on our leading lady. this was to make sure that she would work in the camera.

The construction of the shoot we use new digital cameras which was the Sony Z1. this meant that it was quite, easy and cheaper. It was also in better quality which meant the the music video would be appealing to the audience. This also meant that we had a high ratio which means that we filmed about 70 shots and we ended up using 28. This gave us more choise in editing and made us more creative. New media technology is responsible for this. It would have been more but we were doing long fluid shots rather then quick sharp exciting shots. this means that all the material that we are shooting is working well and can be used. the cameras also allowed us to use slow motion which contributed to the dream like surreal film in the video.

The post production we used load of new technologies. We used a program called final cut pro in which we edited our video. We could sort through them and select the right bits and put them in over the track easily. We then used Adobe after effect to put effects on the video which included the diffused edges which gave it a dream like feeling and innocence to it and I think it completed her image. We then had to colour balance to make sure all the lighting in each shot match and didn't look un continuity. We did have the option to shoot green screen but we had no use for it in out video. We also could have used 3D but we didn't want to because I don't think that it would have been right for our music video.

The distribution was excellent. It no longer needs to be shown on TV for people to see it. We could then put it on YouTube so that everyone could see it. It also means that we can track how many people has watched it and it allows people to comment on what they thought of it. We also can now burn it onto a disc and people can buy a DVD of out video.

Overall it is easy to see how new Technologies in media are taking over and improving the speed, quality and cheapness of media and is making it a lot more assessable foe everyone to use. I have already been using a lot of the new media Technologies to make this product better.