Final music video

Final digipak

 

Digipak template

 

 

Final magazine advert

Q4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research?

Q3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Q2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media produ...

Production Diary 23 – summary of the project

In this project I gained a lot of new skills as I was introduced to Adobe Premiere Pro. For example, I learnt how to use different effects such as the ultra key to remove the green background and how to use the motion effect and key framing to create transitions. I found that editing on Premiere was not as difficult as I imagined and it just takes some practice to become familiar with it and use it well. I enjoyed the editing process a lot as it was something new to me which I explored as I went along. I was also able to develop existing skills I had in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign by looking on the internet to find out about different functions which I could use.

The filming process was also a very exciting part of the project which was the point where I gradually had become more immersed into the creation of my music video. This was perhaps the most difficult part of the project as the final product relies on what you achieve in the filming stage.

After doing many projects, I have been reminded how important time management is when carrying out a project as planning out what you should do can help you to use your time efficiently.

Overall, I have enjoyed doing this project as I had come across a lot of new challenges which allowed me to develop useful skills for the future.

Production Diary 23 – evaluations

We started to do the evaluation part of the coursework. I started planning the answers to the evaluation questions. I first focused on question 1 and 4 as these were easier to do considering that they are similar to what we have done before and the exam side (question 1a and 1b). These are also ideally the longer answers so it is perhaps better to start off with these questions.

Once I finished writing up draft versions of my evaluation, I got feedback for it and made improvements to it accordingly, Afterwards I started to put them in more presentable formats. I displayed my evaluations in different formats to make it more interesting to read. For the first question, I made a video to accompany the Miscrosoft Word document. For the second question I created a Prezi. For the third question I used Microsoft PowerPoint and presented it in Issuu in the scrolling format. Finally, for question 4 I created a magazine style document in InDesign and uploaded it onto Issuu so it you could flips the pages when viewing it. 

Evaluation Q2 and Q3 draft

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

There are many aspects in creating a house style. Some of them include the use of fonts, colours, as well as the layout. In order to illustrate the association between the products, these elements of the products must be consistent all the way through the music video. For example, the use of the same fonts throughout the different products demonstrate that they are all connected rather than being individual pieces. All the products work together in order to promote the artist and album.

 

Throughout my products, direct address was constantly used to create a connection between the artist and audience. This is considerably important for the pop genre as it heavily relies on the audience to maintain their interest to the public. Therefore by using direct address which gives the audience the sense that they are interacting with the artist, suggests that the artist concerns about their audience.

 

A music video primarily functions to serve the purpose of entertaining the audience and bringing them pleasure. It may also enable the audience to become familiar with the artist, particularly with performance based music videos as they are able to visually see them perform the song. In addition, music to some people may even be a way of escaping their problems and so this could then create a new purpose of more than just entertainment and instead help them cope and relax. Nevertheless, the main aim of music videos is to satisfy the audience in some way which is provided by in my music video especially in terms of mise-en-scene.

 

Firstly, a lot of positive emotions are displayed throughout the music video. For example, the facial expressions of the artist displays happiness and the costume features a smiley emotion which both reinforce the positive mood within the music video. In addition, the different coloured backgrounds used during the course of the music video may also contribute to the positive effect generated.  The colours I used were bright and varied with the use of both primary and secondary colours such as yellow (primary) and purple (secondary). The range of ‘pop’ colours used create a cheerful atmosphere. All of these features function to entertain the audience and bring joy to them whilst watching the music video.

 

Similarly, the purpose of the digipak is also for enjoyment as listening to the songs creates pleasures for the audience. Furthermore, the audience may feel satisfied in a way to be able to physically own a copy of the album which is considered to be more meaningful than an online download. This may be due to the inclusion of certain features such as the ‘Thanks to’ which creates a distinction between the two formats of the album.

 

On the other hand, whilst the main intention of music video and digipak is to entertain, the magazine advert serves a different role that is considerably important and that is to promote the artist and album. The magazine performs this function by including the necessary details for the audience to make sense for the advert. The essential details included on the magazine advert are the artist name, album name and release date. Other less important but useful information include the format of the album (e.g. digital, CD) as well as the songs featured in it which are possibly known to the audience.

 

For both the digipak and magazine advert, I used the same background to create a consistent theme. This background consisted of the lyrics of the songs in the album with the song names being highlighted in different colours. This created a theme amongst the products which effectively demonstrates to the audience that they are related and are promoting the same thing. Additionally, another consistent theme I used was the display board held by the artist which was used on the magazine advert and front cover of the digipak. This was also seen in my music video where the artist held up the lyrics. The use of this display board acts a message being conveyed to the audience by the artist which creates a connection between them.

To create consistency among the products I used similar fonts in the music video, digipak and magazine advert. There were a couple of fonts I chose to use on my products which I chose from the website ‘dafont’ as there are many unique fonts on there that are appropriate for my products. For the artist and album name I used a font called “DJB HOLLY JOLLY B’GOLLY”. I thought this font was very suitable for my products as it is bold and fitting for the pop genre due to it being rounded which gives off a friendly look. Another font which I used a lot in my products was “A little sunshine”. This font was also rounded and bubbly but it was less bold which made it suitable to use as it complements the artist and album name. All the fonts I used were sans serif fonts as the appearance of the fonts make them more suitable for the pop genre due to them being less formal and traditional which serif fonts may appear to be.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The target audience for my music video are mainly young females. They are most likely going to be in the social grade E as they are probably still in education.

 

Feedback is an important process that allows you to get an idea of what people think about your product so that you can make relevant improvements to it. The way in which you gain feedback is also important as different types can be informative in different ways. For example, using surveys is one of the best ways to get a range of quantitative and qualitative data. Furthermore, the respondent’s answers are anonymous meaning that they are more likely to be truthful which can produce more useful feedback for me to act on.

 

I received feedback for my music video through the survey I created on SurveyMonkey. In this survey I included a range of questions which were quantitative as well as qualitative to ensure that I had a variety of answers to look at. Some of the quantitative questions required the respondents to rate certain aspects of the music video. The use of a rating question ensured that the question wasn’t leading the audience to answer in a specific way as all the elements of the music were treated equally without hinting which one may have been slightly better than others.
As for the qualitative questions, the respondents were asked to comment on the strengths, weaknesses and more specifically what improvements I should make to my music video. This allowed me to get a detailed response of my music video which would help me to make useful improvements to it. Similarly, the way that I phrased the questions asking “Which features do you think needs improvement?” rather than “Do you think the editing needs to be improved?” is much less suggesting which means that the answers are likely to be more of a true reflection of their opinion.

 

I gathered from my audience feedback that the use of props is a strength of my music video as it is appealing. In reaction to this I created more props which were used in the second video shoot. I also found that the positioning of the artist being in the centre throughout the music video was uninteresting. Therefore, to improve this I positioned the artist so that they were on the left or right side occasionally. Another issue brought up by my target audience is the use of transitions. Some of the transitions I used in the first draft seemed to vary too much which made it look slightly unorganised. As a result, I decided to use the key frames to change between the scenes with the artist appearing on and off the screen. To add variety to this I made the artist appear form different directions –from the left, right, bottom.

 

I made use of the comment feature on Blogger to obtain feedback for my digipak and magazine advert. This allowed people to comment freely on what they thought of my products which is an easy method of getting qualitative data.
I acknowledged that the quality of the temporary image I used was poor in quality which was also mentioned by some of the audience in the feedback I got. I therefore took new photos in the studio which were in much higher quality than before to replace the original one.
From the feedback I received, I found that the first draft of my digipak was relatively simple and lacked some information which makes it look less like real world products. After acknowledging this I made a few additions to the digipak whilst keeping the original layout as this was liked by my audience. For example, I added a special edition label on the front cover, a ‘Thanks to’ page and details on the CD. As for my magazine advert, I learnt from my feedback that I should add more reviews to make it look more similar to real products.

Evaluation Q1 and Q4 draft

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Two particular features of Goodwin’s theory of music videos that are significant to my music video is the use of close ups and the relation between the lyrics and visuals. Typical pop music videos use a lot of close-ups as this allows the audience to be focused on the appearance of the artist which is key to gaining an audience due to the target audience being young and more likely to be interested in the appearance of the artist. My music video consists of many close-ups where the appearance of the artist makes it clear to the audience that the genre is pop. The expressions of the artist is mainly joyful and positive which again highlights that it is a pop music video. Furthermore, the constant use of direct address to the camera creates a connection between the artist and the audience and engages the audience into watching the music video.
My music video uses literal signs as well as metaphoric signs to display the relationship between the lyrics and visuals. For example, a literal sign of the globe is used to represent “I’ll sail the world to find you” and a metaphoric sign of a calendar is used to portray “Every day I will remind you”.
In terms of mise-en-scene, pop music videos are generally quite bright and colourful so that it is appealing to the audience and can have a positive impact on them which is to entertain and bring pleasure to them as noted in the uses and gratifications theory. The main way in which this was portrayed through was the different coloured backgrounds I used throughout my music video.For example, bright colours such as yellow and pink were used when the lyrics were depicting a positive message, whereas colours such as blue which is commonly associated with sadness was used to connote negative feelings in the song. The use of different props in the music video may have also contributed to the entertainment brought to the audience as there is a possible appeal to the unexpectedness of the props revealed in the music video.
Features of the music video where I challenged the conventions include the use of a female actor to lip-sync a song originally sung by a male singer. This is untypical of most music videos and the effect of the use of a female lip-syncing to a male voice is that it makes it more entertaining to watch as the audience may not have expected it.

As for my digipak, I also used many conventions of real media products. My digipak consisted of four pages with a front and back cover and two inside pages with the CD on the right hand side. This is perhaps the most basic type of digipak layout that is generally used as it is simple yet it can work effectively by having a good design.
On the front cover, I placed a sticker in the top right corner which states that it is an exclusive deluxe edition. Many products which are special and different to the original in some way usually display it on the front cover to inform people what is different in an attempt to attract people to buy it due those differences which are often regarded as being valuable. The main image create a direct address to the audience as the artist is directly staring at the camera. This has the effect of the artist presenting the product to the audience with their eye contact created by looking into the camera when the photo was taken.
On the inside of the digipak, I decided to add a ‘Thanks to’ page which mentions the people who the artist wants to thank in relation to the album produced. This is typically seen in digipaks as fans who would want to be acknowledged by the artist are most likely going to be mentioned in this section which can act as a connection between the artist and fans.I placed the ‘Thanks to’ text on the paper held by the artist in the photo as the use of this image where it seems as if the artist is looking down at the text makes it more presentable and can differentiate it from the background lyrics. A lot of digipaks would mention the production details of thesongs in the album but my digipak challenges this convention as the target audience of this genre are mainly young people and so they are less likely to be interested in the production of the album.
On the back cover I had included the tracklist, barcode and other production details of the album. This is conventional as it is displayed to inform people when and where it was produced and who produced it. The tracklist is also very informative as it tells people the name and number of songs in the album. By knowing more about the album it can encourage them to buy it.
I also included the spine of the digipak which adds to the professionalism of the product as most real life digipaks have a spine as it can indicate the artist and album name when stored, where the front cover may not be visible.

The conventions I used in the magazine advert includes the image, layout and reviews. Like most magazine adverts I displayed quotes with the source and stars below it to indicate the rating of the album to theaudience. Theses quotes are similar to those seen on real magazine adverts as they are generally from music channels or shows such as Billboard and 4Music which are two of the sources I stated on my magazine advert.
For the main image, I used a mid-shot image of the artist with her staring directly at the camera to display a direct mode of address. This type of image may be commonly used on magazine adverts as it can create a balance between the image and text so that the text can be placed over the image which acts as a sort of background. Furthermore, the layout is also conventional with the image in the centre filling most of the page as this is the initial part of the magazine advert that is likely to be noticed by people. Details of the album is noted on top of the image, below the face which appears as if the artist is holding a board with the information.

The fonts I used throughout the music video, digipak and magazine advert were similar in terms of style. All the fonts were sans serif fonts, some which were more cartoon-like and others which were more round and bubbly. These all indicated at the genre being pop as it created a light-hearted feeling to the music video. The sizes of the text were adjusted according its significance. For example, the artist and album names were the biggest pieces of text on both the digipak and magazine advert as they are the key bits of information that the audience would want to know when looking at it. On the other hand, other pieces of text were relatively smaller that the artist and album name so that it can create a contrast between the two and emphasise the more important information. On the magazine advert, the release date was smaller in size but it was placed right below the album name which makes it quite noticeable to the audience and therefore doesn’t need to be particularly big. The reviews were relatively small in size despite being a key feature of the magazine advert as I used a box to highlights it importance. As for the digipak, I used a box to organise the information about the content of the exclusive deluxe edition of the digipak on the front cover. This therefore made it stand out despite the text being in a small size.

Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The internet was vital in the research and planning stages as it enabled us to look at existing examples as well as present our work in an organised way. In order to create a successful music video I had used the internet to research existing music videos and get some inspiration from them to create my own. I noted the conventions of music videos and considered how I would use them in my own music video.  YouTube had hugely assisted me in the researching and planning process as I was able to watch and analyse existing music videos. The features of Youtube were useful in the analysis process due to the ability of being able pause and print screen certain scenes to analyse. I also used YouTube to upload my music video as well as some demonstration videos of how I made use of certain features of the software I used. We used Blogger to present all of our work by creating posts and labelling them under the different stages of our coursework. This enabled us to keep our work organised and easily navigate through the blog.To upload certain files such as Microsoft PowerPoint onto Blogger,I had to use a range of different websites. There are many websites available to choose from which enabled me to present my work in different formats. Some of the websites include: prezi, slideshare, scribd and issuu. I chose specific websites for different types of files, for example I found that slideshare was better in presenting PowerPoints and scribd presented word documents better. Also issuu looked professional in the way it presented documents in the format of a book which was suitable for the evaluation. In addition, SurveyMonkey was useful in helping me obtain feedback on my work so that I could make improvements to it. The features were great in helping me design a professional survey that could be analysed easily with tables and graphs of the data.

To shoot my music video I used a digital SLR Canon 550D. I shot the footage at ISO-100, shutter speed of 1/50 and aperture of 1.8. I used a 50mm 1.8 prime lense. This produced high quality videos that had enabled me to construct a music video that mimicked existing ones in the real world. Using a digital camera was beneficial as I was able to constantly review the videos I had taken which meant I was able to adjust things as I go along and make it as good as possible. For example, I found some of the videos I had taken were out of focus and by being able to check the quality of the videos it allowed me to immediately re-do it.

My music video is performance-based which uses a green screen background. To ensure that the green background works effectively, two bright lights were placed on both sides of the actor so that it was bright enough to show the actor on camera clearly. However, due to uncontrollable factors regarding lighting, the two shoots that took place on separate occasions produced slightly different quality videos.

I used the software Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 to create my music video. There were many reasons why I decided to use this over other software such as Windows Movie Maker. Firstly, there are many effects in the software that had assisted me in constructing my music video. For example, one of the main effects was the ultra key which allowed me remove the green background from my video clips. This was an important part of editing as my music video is performance based with the use of the green screen to create a range of different effects to present the song in an interesting way.
Another important feature of Premiere I used was the 3-way colour corrector. Since I had shot on different occasions where uncontrollable factors such as light had affected the outcome of my footage, I had to alter the colour of the footage so that they matched more in terms of colour which the 3-way colour corrector had allowed me to do.
In addition, Premiere allows you to use different layers which hugely assisted the construction of my music video as it allowed me to create different effects such as putting the lyrics on top of the footage as well as duplicating the footage so that it showed two of the same footage in different positions. It also organised all the clips and titles I used as I had put similar parts on the same layer e.g. all the background colours were on one layer and the audio was on another layer. This made it easy for me to edit as I could hide or mute the layers when necessary. For example, when I was editing the clip so that the lip-syncing matched the audio, I had muted the audio of the original clip and matched it with the higher quality audio clip.
In terms of the transition of my video, the position tool had greatly impacted the construction of my work as I created key frames to make the video appear on or off the screen. I also used the scale tool a lot, mainly to create the effect of the video enlarging. This were effective in shifting from one scene to another as it appear to be quite smooth.

To create the digipak and magazine advert I used Adobe InDesign CS6 because it had a lot of useful features that allowed me to create a professional standard product. In order to make the text look professional I had made use of the line spacing tool which enables you keep the distance between the lines of text consistent. I also used the tracking feature to widen the distancebetween the letters so that it is more spaced out and clearer to read. Furthermore, for the background text I altered the transparency setting so that it was quite faint which made it distinct from the foreground. When creating the text of the CD of the digipak. The ‘type on a path tool’ tool was very useful as it allowed me to arrange the text in the shape of the CD so that it was equally spread around the CD. I used some effects such as the drop shadow and outer glow to enhance some parts of my product. For example, with the magazine advert I used the outer glow to create an effect of the background text fading out. This in effect made it seem more natural and blended the top part of the page together. I used the drop shadow on the box for the reviews as it made it stand out from the background which is important as the reviews inform the audience a lot about the quality of the album and can give them a good initial impression of the album.

Adobe Photoshop had helped me to edit the photos I used in the digipak and magazine advert. I was able to adjust the brightness and contrast of the images using the images settings. This had sharpened the images so that they looked clearer. To smoothen the image I had used the spot healing tool on selected areas of the skin to make it all relatively the same colour. Since the background colour of the images were not consistent I had to use the magic wand tool and quick selection tool to remove the background. The quick selection tool allowed me to carefully remove selected areas around the image whereas the magic wand tool was useful in selecting large areas of the same colour which I wanted to remove.

In addition, I edited in the quick mask mode to create a selection of the image to edit. I selected the lip area to adjust the colour of it and I did this by adding an overlay effect of pink/red on it. I also used the brush tool and set the transparency level relatively low so that I could fill in areas where necessary without making it inconsistent.

Music video comparison

This video shows the two versions of my music video side by side so you can see the improvements made at different parts of the music video.

Alterations made to digipak and magazine advert

Alterations made to digipak and magazine advert

Final draft - advert and digipak

Magazine advert

Digipak

Final draft - music video

Production Diary 22 – feedback and final draft

This week we had to complete the final draft for our music video, digipak as well as the magazine advert. We made improvements according to the feedback we received.

After getting feedback on my music video I analysed the results and found which areas I needed to improve on and which parts were favoured by the audience. I changed some of the camera shots so that there was more of a variety. I added in more transitions and different movements. I also included new props which were filmed in the second music video shoot. 

For my music video, I mainly changed the transitions of the scenes so that they were smoother. I also added in the extra footage I had taken and altered the lighting to make it fit with the rest of the footage.

As for the digipak, I had changed the image to one that I had taken with the camera in the studio rather than the print screen of my music video with the green background. This made the quality of the photo much better as it was clearer and the outline was smoother. I also added in a ‘Thanks to’ on the inside page and decorated the CD.

For the magazine advert, I also changed the photo so it was the same as the digipak. I also added in a more reviews to fill up the empty space around the image.

Audience survey responses

Audience feedback survey

Please complete the survey here:

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Production Diary 21 - contact sheet, brand guidelines, key framing

I created the contact sheet of the photos I took for the digipak and magazine advert. To do this I opened up Photoshop and created the contact sheet by clicking file > automate > contact sheet II.

For the brand guidelines I displayed the colours, fonts and logo of my product to show what would be used if other people were to create a product related to my brand.

I also created a video using CamStudio to show how I did the key framing for my music video. This was more useful than explaining in words as you can see how it is done.

 

 

 

Brand Guidelines

For the brand guidelines, I displayed the main fonts I used as well as the colours for my print work (digipak and magazine advert). I also put the logo I used throughout my products. These were used to create a house style in my products.

Key framing

This video shows how I used key frames to create movements and transitions in my music video. In addition to what was demonstrated, I also included movements where the artist came on and off the screen from the sides. The use of key frams was effective in achieving a fun and interesting vibe that matches the pop genre.

Contact sheet

I took some photos for my digipak and magazine advert in the studio where there was good lighting that would enable me to edit my photos easily. I took some landscape and portrait photos so I could have more of a choice when choosing which photos to use. I only directed the model to do two kinds of poses as I was clear on what type of photo I wanted to use.
I created the contact sheet on Photoshop which put together the photos I potentially would use for the digipak and magazine advert.

Production Diary 20 – Shot list and altering shot type in music video

I completed a shot list which included the details of each shot in my music video. For every shot I noted the type of shot it was e.g. close up, a description of the shot e.g. lip-syncing with props as well as the timing of it in the music video e.g. 0:00-0:26. This then gives a brief outline of my music video which is handy to use if I wanted to change the variation of the shot type for example.

After completing the shot list, it had helped me to change some of the shot types as I had little variation throughout the video. I looked though my music video and changed some of the shot types so that all close ups were about the same size and all mid shots were the same so that there is a clear distinction between the two type of shots.

Shot list

Shot List

I listed all the shots in my music video in chronological order. For each shot I mentioned the shot type such as close up and mid shot. For the details I described what happened in the shot and which part of the song it corresponded to e.g. verse, chorus. Finally I noted the exact timing of each shot of my music video.

Production Diary 19 - Music video shoot BTS

This week I did made a behind the scenes video for my music video shoot. To do this I imported the photos I had taken and made the duration of each photo very quick so that it created a time lapse effect. I added background music to it using Bruno Mars’ “Runaway Baby” and since I only used part of the song I added a fade effect so that the song didn’t finish abruptly. I also added in a brief title in the beginning and credits at the end. After I had completed this I upload it on YouTube and then posted it on my blog.

I also uploaded some raw footage of my music video through YouTube. I picked out some videos which I could talk about in terms of how it was different to my actual music video –editing.

Raw footage

Here are some examples of the raw footage of my music video. As you can see I had made significant changes to this footage in the actual music video by trimming it, removing the green background as well as adding in a coloured background and some text. I also muted the audio of the raw footage and added in a high quality version of the song instead. I had also resized some of my clips in Premiere as they only filled up half of the screen (like in raw footage 2).

 

Music video shoot - behind the scenes