Final Music Video

Ancillary Texts

Evaluation Question 4) How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evulation Stages? PREZI

Throughout researching and creating I was able to use many new and advanced technologies. To begin with I used a lot of blogger, this made it easier to plan my research and organise them in one place. This made it easier for me to go back over points I has made, which was overall very beneficial as it allowed me to improve any mistakes I had made and in addition to this If there was any crucial planning details I had left out I was able to retrace my steps and organise myself in a way which would be successful to not only me but my whole production team. My media teachers were able to access my blogs very quickly which meant feedback was always reliable and fast for me. This meant that any improvements that needed to be made would be made by me quickly and this allowed more time to concentrate on planning rather than waiting around to make corrections.

One piece of equipment I really enjoyed using this year in my advanced portfolio was the SLR camera. This meant that it was now possible to create something of higher quality. This was because as a whole the music video looked a lot more professional due to the crisp and clear quality. With this particular camera we were able to have the opportunity to play about this the focus to make it appear either sharper or more blurred, this would vary as to what kind of mood and atmosphere we were striving to create while shooting a particular scenes. For example the more emotional scenes where intended to be more blurred as this would create a very dreamlike atmosphere almost as though the artist can’t quite focus clearly on the traumatic experiences she may have to deal with in the music video. The fact that the camera gave me a range of different technological advancements that wouldn’t necessary be available with an ordinary digital camera meant that the advancement of technology in this department overall was successful to us as we were able to view a range of particular and both creative camera shots and angles that may not have been doable beforehand.

When editing the footage that was filmed I was able to conduct the editing process on Final Cut Pro X. This allowed me to use a very advanced piece of equipment which as a result led to us being able to create a very sophisticated finish. This is because Final Cut Pro X has access to a number of different transitions and filters which were needed to create a specific atmosphere. I found that the colours and filter changes where very easy to demonstrate on the software. For example when I wanted to change the gradient of the situation I was able to just like on the clip I wanted to change and then adjust the percentage of situation. On the other hand I felt that Final Cut Pro was much harder to use for a music video. This is because sometimes clips would automatically stick together and when trying to move them around to fit in with the lyrics this became a challenge for myself and my group as we would sometimes add one clip and then have to editing the whole music video again because the timing was now out.

Photoshop CS6 was used to create my ancillary texts. My task was to create a magazine advert and a digipak. Having to use such advanced software meant that if done right I had a chance to create something very original and professional. Although it helped produce very realistic ancillary texts I had to be able to use a number of different tools successfully. For example the paint tool that I had used often on my ancillary texts was sometimes difficult to manipulate, this was because I found it different to know what movement and density would look best. This took a lot of practice to get my preferred look. I wanted it to appear very natural and sophisticated. Although this was sometimes hard to conduct Photoshop CS6 was something that allowed me to complete a very smooth and finalised piece of work.

For the evaluation process I wanted to incorporate as much technology as was possibly needed. This meant that I had to include, Blogger, Prezi and Video/Audio Technology. I found that Blogger was most certainly the easiest to construct as it was the piece of software I was most familiar with. This meant that I was able to make a new post and begin answering question one. When finished I published my work and everything was there on my blog. Now for questions 2 and 4 I found that the digital technology used was slightly more difficult to follow. I had to create an online PowerPoint presentation for these two questions in particular. This meant that I had to write out my answers then edit them into Prezi. I found that this was very fun and creative, but also more time consuming as sometimes it took longer to figure out what to do next as I wasn’t as familiar with this type of technology. When finished I had to save the PowerPoint onto the website through my account I then copied the link into my blogger making it accessible to my teachers and examiners. 

Finally I was able to use my SLR camera and personally editing software (Vegas Move Studio HD Platinum 11.0) I found this question one of the hardest to get completed. This was because I not only had to film myself reading out the question. I then uploaded it to my laptop and then edited out any mistakes that may have occurred. In addition to this I then added particular relevant photo evidence of what I was talking about and following that I then published my video on to YouTube before placing a link in my Blogger. I found that this was the most time consuming use of digital technology and required a lot of patience as most of the time I was required to wait for something to either publish or upload. Overall though I found this number two was still very enjoyable to experiment with as I have always enjoyed editing footage together.

In conclusion, this whole experience in media has been very successful to me. This is because I was able to run deep analyse on what’s to come. By doing this I was all ready to imagine what typical conventions would be present in my music video. As a whole, I felt I was given a good opportunity to make my media media products and supporting ancillary texts as realistic and professional looking as possible all due to my advanced variety in digital technology and planning techniques. 

Evaluation Question 2) How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancilliary Texts PREZI

My main music video as stated is very conventional to the indie genre as it consists of involving many natural and relatable aspects when beginning to plan and create the ancillary texts I wanted this to be the same case. My main aim was to have a theme throughout the ancillary texts and main product. This included colours, location and other micro elements. I was able to research a number of different adverts and digipaks and study what the typical conventions was of them. Jessie J's magazine advert remained to be very noticeable due to the particular gold coloured font she had against a plain black background. The magazine advert created displays Amy Michaela in a forest area. The background is black and white while she stands out because she is in colour. I did this by using the eraser tool to remove the black and white filter from her and this made her much more noticeable as the colour stood out more. Not only does this fit in well with the natural theme but it displays her as someone who is original and stands out from the 'boring' and 'bland.' This appeals the my target audience as they see her as more of a friend rather then as someone who is trying to put herself above the audience.


My digipak contains a range of different shots that display different connotations and emotions. This fits in well with the very emotional music video that we have created. For example like the scene where the army boyfriend dies and the artist is left alone to spread the ashes. Amy-Michaela message to her fans slide on the digipak shows a black and white image excluding her blue eyes. Her hands are held up to her face and this allows the audience to firstly view her as a guarded person and secondly because her eyes are in colour they may feel connected to her spiritually and then focus on them directly and the emotion being them, just like how they focus on emotion in the music video 'Salvation' when the contrast of happy and sadder scenes are displayed when the artists partner goes off to war.

I decided to use this particular emotion in this slide as it is one that will stand out to the audience as it directed at them through the message she is trying to get across. One particular slide that has stood out to me as a producer is the slide where the artist is looking out and blocking the sunlight all that is seen is the lens flare and the silhouette of the artist. As a result of this the audience are able to view her as both extraordinary and ordinary. This is due to the fact that even though she is still in an ordinary location with natural lighting behind her she is able to be seen as someone who is beautiful and someone who the audience still may be influenced by. As a result of this the audience are able to view this particular artist as someone who is angelic and quite reserved about sharing her album and emotions. In addition to this the lens flare and manipulating of the sunlight is present throughout the main music video and ancillary tests supporting the natural flow and theme of all three products.

Evaluation Question 3) What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback

Evaluation Question 1) In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Delvelop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products? BLOG

In my A2 media coursework this year I was assigned to create a music video for an artist that I would design myself. These ancillary texts included a magazine advert and a digipak. I had to create a music video of at least three minutes long. While researching into other music videos through my planning I found that as a whole the main concept of a music video was to create a message that was visual and fitted the theme of the song well. Music videos were also seen as a chance for the artist to create a new image for themselves. Once I had justified why my music videos were essential I then went on to focus my attention on a number of indie artists who would influence the creation of my own music video. Gabrielle Aplin was one of these people, her music seemed to relate to me as a consumer very well. Her song ‘Please don’t say you love me’ was heavily based on both narrative and performance concepts. The idea that she herself was an indie artist whom presented herself as someone who was very relatable become interesting to me and I wanted to study the conventions further through other artists.

Ed Sheeran and Birdy were two other artists that were classed as successful indie performers. I was able to analyse his video ‘Lego House’ and again a clear narrative was shown through the emotional story that shows him decorating and making his house a ‘home.’ In Birdy’s music video ‘Skinny Love’ she has focused on the mise on scene in her music video. The particular costume being large combat boots display her as an artist who is able to get her hands dirty and is not afraid to act differently to the typical ‘glamourous’ artists. This then allowed me to recognise how the audience would appeal to this as they see the artists as friends and not anything above them. This allows me to be able understand what type of artist I want to use for my own music video which is going to be Gabrielle Aplin and the song ‘Salvation’ because it seems to have the right amount of emotion to create a very delicate narrative. While staring to plan my own music video I knew that I wanted a very creative side to it. I wanted it to appear original but still conform to the conventions of a music video.

Firstly, I thought about which three aspects of the music videos I wanted to include. I chose narrative and performance elements to be present in my own music video. In addition to this the mise-en-scene in my music video developed real life indie conventions mainly though the costume and location. The certain costume and makeup our artist Amy-Michaela has worn made it possible to identify her as an indie artist. For example the grey dress and black combat boots that she wears in the music video show an original and vintage side to her. This is because the boots she wears are stereotypically made to make her look ‘Tom-boyish’ and adventurous these two statements are able to make her seem like someone who doesn’t mind getting dirty and isn’t a stereotypical glamorous celebrity. I felt that the audience could relate well to this due to the fact that they might be able to see themselves in this particular artist and this will result in them taking an instant liking to her as a person not just an indie artist. 

In addition to this the many settings and locations used in the music video make it possible for their artist to be presented as someone who appreciates natural beauty, most of our shots in the music video are set in the forest areas and cornfields which natural sun in the background. This would be commonly seen in the real life display of indie gen music videos as both Gabrielle Aplin and Birdy themselves show a true representation of natural beauty in their music video by using natural elements such as the sunlight. The audience are then able to see her as a more relatable person as they are able to see her as someone who makes her videos in areas that may be very common to them as people.In addition to this like dyers theory states the artist is being able to be portrayed as ordinary as well as extraordinary. This means that even though the artist is successful and has all the fame and fortune they still choose to relate to the audience through typical locations and costumes that may be familiar with the artist.

Rough Cut - Miss Georgiou

After completing my music video I need to upload the rough cut to YouTube and have people view it. This is too guarantee decent feedback for our finalised music video. Audience feedback is crucial as it gives us as a group the necessary tools needed to improve the music video even further. Any mistakes or errors that may not have been picked up on can sometimes be seen easier or quicker from another person outside of the group. This allows us to be able to conduct the corrections a lot quicker and edit our final cut together and this will overall make it a lot more enjoyable for us as a production team as we will feel confident that it is what the audience members want. Overall this all add to the target audience feedback and as a group we are able to see if our audience is enjoying the music video and actually gets the message we are trying to get across.

The audience feedback will range from about 15-25. This is because we have all shared the rough cut through social media and this allows us to conduct a more reliable range of feedback. This is due to the fact that the audience who are going to be mainly watching the music video will be around these ages as the majority of people we know are around a similar age. This allows us to be able to get feedback from males and females that are in this age bracket and overall there opinions are the most important as they are sort of people that we would want to enjoy this particular type of music video. In addition to this audience feedback is important due to the fact that we are able to get different opinions and tastes being represented through the comments. As a group we can take notice of the fact that we may not always be getting comments from people that like the indie genre and this is okay because in a real life situation not everyone would be able to enjoy this particular genre of music. In consequence of this as a production team we should knowledge the fact that we can not appeal to everyone but we can try and make it at least watchable to everyone without them being too bored etc. The main source of feedback actually came from the social media side of things. As a group we all shared the video through YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. This allowed us to take full advantage of all social media and overall allowed us to be able to widen our spread to all audience members. This is because the more accessible we make this particular rough cut the more feedback we will have from all different types of people over the internet. Furthermore as well as using social media we also got face to face reactions and comments. We got people to watch the music video in real time and this helped us judge there real life reactions which overall helped us get a true and genuine reaction. However as social media comments can be made anonymous the real life comments may have been forced and faked to not hurt anyone's feelings. This could overall leave the group we not enough of constructive criticism although so far as a whole we seem to have a good range of honest opinions on the music video. The feedback being either negative or positive will still continue to benefit the our production and music industry as we are giving ourselves the opportunity to make it as good as possible. This made it easier for us as a group to take the criticism and provide the best music video there can possible be for our audience. In addition to this the music industry would benefit from this type of feedback as we are portraying a very careful and accurate type of music video that our audience ultimately wants to see.

 

This particular type of comment really shows the portrayal of the target audience well. The particular type of slang being used for example 'sik' allows us to know what type of culture this person is part. Obviously Aaron Daniels is young which is good as this is the particular age we want to be leaving comments on our YouTube page, in addition to this we are able to see how much of an impact this type of comment would have on our music industry as someone who would be classed as young but maybe a bit more edgy. This relates to our stereotypical indie genre fan and ultimately gives us a very accurate representation of what the fans truly think. This comment displays all positive feedback which means that for this particular people our music video has been successful in all kinds of ways. The particular phrase on fades and time movement help us understand that we have blended the scenes together well and that it has a distinctive rhythm that moves and doesn't cause too much confusion. His comment about the correlation with the colouring and the storyline is very appealing to us as a group as this is something we did on purpose to show the audience that the narrative was decreasing in happiness and overall can display a very depressing cold end. This is why we wanted to add the decrease the filter 'combat' to 60% and lower it as it went along to show the overall video getting darker and darker. 

This particular comment is more constructive and blunt on the music video. Although it aims to provide a lot of detail about why the narrative is liked and why they want more performances added it is clear that as a whole they do not have the strongest opinions on the music video. Although brief, we are still able to take positive and negative things from it. The particular part of the comment that is positive relates to the narrative side of the music video. This is a good comment to get as we know that the feedback on the music video shows us that the narrative has been taken successfully and doesn't overwhelm the audience in a difficult way that is too emotional for them. In addition to this we may look over the narrative and see if there are any scenes that we can shorten and add more performance elements in, this will convey with what the audience is after and help them to relate more with the artists talent rather then just the story. This is due to the fact that as an audience, people may want to see more of the artist performing to them and not acting in a scene. This is something that will be discussed with the group while making additional changes to the final cut. This particular comment appeals to the music industry as it displays what some people prefer as there overall taste, and this allows us to acknowledge what type of key concepts are more favourable to one person but maybe not the other.

This particular comment is able to show a clear demonstration of both a negative comment and positive comment. This means that as a whole we are able to see a positive and negative all in one. This comment also has additional information and states exactly what they don't like and what they do like about the music video. This was another comment about the narrative and how clear it is. Being clear is always a very successful feedback reaction as it shows that we haven't made it too confusing with all the individual scenes. The fact that they even included that we added so much and it was impressive was a very good sign that we are heading in the right direction with our music video. Although we have already received a positive comment on the colouring of the clips. We are also able to see a range of different opinions. In this case we are able to see how much of an impact the colouring can have on different people. This is seen through the particular comment about her struggling to get her head around the colouring that has been added to the original clips. This allows us as a group to be able to go back and go over the combat filter and saturation adjustment in the music video to try and arrange them better so that they are able to blend and be less noticeable when the clips fade to a darker correlation. This is something that as a group we need to discuss in greater detail together.

This particular comment relates well to the indie genre. This is because we are able to see a clear correlation between how the editing has influenced a clear storyline and music video that flows better. This particular comment allows me to be able to see where I am being successful and this is why I am able to take the positive information from this comment and know that I am doing well in my post production stage.

Although this comment still does well at being both constructive and positive. It produces a criticism that would effect the music industry in a real life situation as the record label would want the acting to be as accurate and realistic as possible. In my case however, It doesn't worry me too much as I am trying to create something conventional to the media genre. My aim was to create something that displayed all my media skills very well and the acting doesn't necessarily display this so overall it does not concern me as much. The positive comment about the fades and narrative is also very positive to me as I am able to see how well the transitions blend all the scenes together. I did this by overlapping the clips together and making them fade well and transparently. This is something that I wanted to display strongly as the whole theme I had for my indie genre music video was for it to be very natural and flowing which would overall relate well to my audience members as I could promote my music video as something that was bendable and the flow of the music video was important for it to look realistic. I wanted them to see the music video and the artist as something that was very relatable, this is because I felt that one of the most important conventions of an indie genre is in fact the idea that the artist is very original and relatable and I felt that by having a very flowing music video I was able to achieve this.

Overall as a whole, the group did need to come together to decide whether or not we would make changes and overall how much of an impact these changes would have on the music video. This is why we all needed to be able to have a group meeting about these comments and open up the editing process again and add the particular changes that we wish to make. This will result in either a huge change of the colours (by varying the percentages of the saturation and 'combat' filter) and particular performance styles or we could decide to keep it how it is. However the fact that the music video now has a range of different comments gives us the opportunity to at least consider what type of changes we could possibly make. This could lead to an even better music video and with the range of comments from our target audience the rough cut has aloud us to see what type of way we are heading with our music video.