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.