Evaluation - Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

At the start of our project i had problems with bubble on the tripod, the bubble kept on moving from the circle every time I moved the camera from one angle to another and changing shots.

Using photoshop for my digipak and magazine advert was hard at first but as i kept on using it, it became easy for me.

Using blogger was always simple and straight forward i had no difficulties using it.

Evaluation - Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of my main products and ancillary texts are very effective, this is because my digipak and the music video go together every well as a whole. the main thing they have common is the fact that they both have a cartoon effect. my digipak's font is bold and colorful and my music video at some bits has its own colorful and cartoonie effects.



First of all our music genre is electro/house music, through the planning and research we did I was able to gather different types of digipak, magazine adverts and music which were all from the same genre of our electro/house music. Gathering digipaks and magazine adverts from our research helped me to structure mu media products.


My digipak itself was very colourful simply because the research which I did I found that most of the real electro/house digipaks has a vide of colour and brightness in them, the digipaks from real products have different techniques, sometime they used bright colour and some they used dark colours. furthermore one of the key aspect of my digipak was the to make it look as funky as possible, I did this because I wanted my digipak to have the same sort of affect and feel as our music video, this was very impostant to me because I wanted our target audience to notice and sense the link from our music video and my digipak. However my magazine advert had more similarities to my digipak and music video, I used a different method here because I didn’t want all of my media products to have exactly the same vide as each other, so what I did for my magazine advert was the used dark colours this time to give it more of a deadly vide to it.


Overall I think that the combination of my product and ancillary texts was very effective because with the help of the research me and my group did we were able to find different ideas how real media products use different techniques for the combinations from which I was able to forward towards my media products.

However my magazine advert does not fit in with my music video and digipak. i did this because i wanted to give my media project a different result and outcome, what this does is bring a whole other product to the time.

Evaluation - Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product uses, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media product in many ways. Because our music is an electro/house genre we had to be very careful with how made our music video. Our music video contained different features from the editing techniques, customs, and use of colours, dancers, locations and performance. We use all these different aspects through the help of our research we did, with the help of research we were able to gather what other electro/house music videos used to get what they wanted. Firstly we understood the concept of the other music videos, we found the most of the electro/house video used a lot of fast paste editing so based on that we did the same for our video, this was a good touch because what this did was it made our music flow well with the editing as they were both at fast paste and the editing cut to the beat of the song.


The customs/outfits for the dancers we used was short and quite revealing outfits for the female performers, the reason for this because other electro/house music videos have some sort of similar concepts, in a music video for this particular genre females are most of the time portrayed as being sexual. For the male performers we tried to dress them as funky as possible, we had male dancers wearing bright colourful outfits which would bring out the joyfulness and happiness of the music.


For location we had different options we could have done but at the end we decided to use different location all over London from East London, Essex, Central London, Havering etc, this technique was used in the music video of Nickelback - Rockstar. Film in different location gave the music video a feel of that the music is everywhere. Even though most of other real music video has other idea how to use location we decided to use a different approach.


Lighting played a key role in our music video, lighting was very important simply because the lighting effect which we wanted for our music had to be bright, the reason for this purely because we wanted our target audience to feel comfortable watching the video. If we had used dark colours then it wouldn’t have had a good flow to with the use of fast paste editing.


So overall I believe that our media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media product because our music video present most concepts that other electro/house music video have at this time and moment.

Evaluation - Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

•We used this audience feedback to make most of the changes to our first draft.
•We made my video more colourful which is one of the things suggested in the feedback.
•We learnt what our audience want from this music genre and what they expected from the video.
•After getting audience feedback our video had improve

Final Draft of Music Video

This is my final piece my our music video.

Final magazine advert of my album

This my final piece of my magazine advert for which used pohotoshop complete.

Final digipak

This is my final piece of my digipak, i did my digipak with the help of photoshop.

My role in the group

My role
My role in the group was as the camera man. Being the camera was difficult as some points during our filming. One thing that was hard to maintain was the bubble on the tripod, I always had to make sure that the bubble was the in middle of the circle every time we changed or moved angles. Using different types of lighting was hard for in the beginning until i got the hang of it. But other that it was fairly simple and straightforward bring as the camera man.

Safia's role in the group

Safia’s role
Safia’s role in our group was as the editor. Safia had a very difficult time after the filing of our music video. She had capture the tapes on the IMac computer, after she had to delete the part of the filming which we wouldn’t need and then putting the rest of the tape were they would belong according to her. This brought a lot of pressure her she had to do the final piece of our media project. One of the main difficult parts for her was using the IMac computers while she was using feature such as after effects, filters and sound effects.

Natasha's role in the group

Natasha’s role
Natasha’s role was the director of the group. Natasha always had to make sure that everything went to according to order no matter. She was in charge of most situations on the group, she had organise most of the groups time table as well making sure all the props, equipment were always on site. Her biggest part was being charge of choosing and deciding what angle and shots were need during the making of our music. This was very difficult for her as it involved a lot of time, it was hard because she was the centre attention during filming.

First Draft of our music video

Animatic

Shot list

Shot list

Long shot

Extreme long shot

Close up extreme close up

Medium shot

High angle

Low angle

Point of view

Panning

Oblique/Canted Angle

Arc

Crab

Dolly

Dolly zoom

Follow

Pedestal

Tilt

Tracking

Trucking

Zooming

Two shot

Three shot

Group shot

Extreme low close up

Extreme high close up

Eye level angle

Crane shot

Technical Analysis

Taylor Swift is well known country rock singer from Nashville. In the video you will recognize that it does not abstain away from the usual characteristics of a pop video stereotype. This video is defined to be of narrative based, in which some parts of the video are performance. The content of the video emphasises this. The main theme of this is a love story which is very familiar in Taylor Swift’s songs. The setting of the video is set in a school which helps make it easier to identify the target audience. This feature will be taken into consideration for my own music video. The artist has a variety of costume changes in which this is shown in editing. The entire purpose of the video is of Taylor transforming from a nerd in which no one takes notice of into a beautiful girl of whom everyone is fond of. When the end of the video she emerge in a long white dress, this is slightly linked to her ‘Love Story’ video in which she appears in a long white dress running towards her lover. But in this video she appears to be in her prom dress on her prom night, this again links to the high school setting. Both theme and setting have been made so that the song its self is more related. In this particular video it has some parts that are humours in which a majority of pop video tend to promote.

This music video is narrative based which means that that there is some kind of relation between lyrics and visuals. For instance at the beginning Taylor Swift appears to be looking through her window across towards another window in which a male appears. She start singing “Your on the phone with your girlfriend she‘s upset”. The male character Lucas Till seems to be on the phone arguing presumably with his girlfriend on the phone. This appearance Swift comes across as she cares for Lucas, stating to the audience that she may already be in love with him, at this early stage. The relationship between music and visuals are not as obvious, but both music and visuals still play an important part in productions Fir example clearly in the beginning image of Taylor on her own as the beat of the music starts to pick up; I see as the beat pickups even further you see her again dancing, It appears here that Taylor has of little rhythm in her movement as she can hear the music playing.

I really do think that the record label of Taylor Swift is trying to sell the music to the audience through the artist herself. The image that is being shown by the artist comes across as daring, I have noticed this as she keeps on changing costumes and personality this suggests that she is not afraid of doing anything. There is another image of her had been formed that is flexible. This is also very common in pop genre videos. The video is aimed at for young audience and therefore things of sexual approach are missed out. Instead of using things of a sexual nature they have used innocence and humour.


The main genre for this music video is pop. The target audience are mainly teenagers made obvious by the high school theme. The video creates a fairytale story and ending by being narrative and performances based. I believe in this video the lyrics relay more to the visuals then the music. To conclude I would like to say that my overall view of this video would be that it was a very well made video in which it concentrates on promoting the artist as well as the music.

Analysis of album cover (Digipak)

The image on the left hand side is an album digipak of “Desert Rose” as you can see the digipak is well organisation and structured. The location of where the photographs seems like a remote area, with only dried up, dead trees and leafs, an image of a desert as it states on the album single ‘Desert Rose’. The photo of both her and some male is set outside, what looks outside a house, again the location looks European with the style of the area and its warmth in colour.
The artist’s makeup seems to be fairly natural, keeping it to a minimal. Using colours such as brown, bronze embanking the theme of romance, keeping the makeup very settle but in a way makes it effective towards her viewers.
The colours red-orange correspond to desire, sexual passion. The lightening in this digipak seems to complement each other well. The warmth of the colours seems to build up this theme of romance / love and lust. The usage of such colours are vivid that have a great impact on the potential buyers. The two vivid colours act like a frame as it draws the reader to the darker colours of dark brown placed in the centre. Where the cool blue colours on the front cover make her look even more confident in a sophisticated way, as the black off her costume seems to stand out from clear blue background.
This artists is wearing some kind of a European style costume, I think this because of the embroidery on her black jacket. The significance of this type of costume that she is wearing is quite common if the artist came from such ethnic minorities. My own interpretation as to why she may be wearing such costume would be that she may be religious in a way she may have to cover up and not be out there and revealing, as a majority of female artist tend to wear revealing costumes. The colour of her costume could represent elegance and formality so that she builds up this representation with her audience.

Analysis of magazine ad

In the image at left hand side is a magazine advert of an artist “Wretch 32”, the aim for a promotional advert is bringing a product to the attention of potential and current audience. This advertising is clearly focused on some particular ways which are thus, money and street life; this is an advertising plan for some product might be very different than that for another product. Advertising is typically done with signs, brochures, commercials, direct mailings or e-mail messages, personal contact, etc.
The theme of this advertisement is shown through the colours, image, photography, graphics and font; all these elements are used to build one particular which is urban / underground. Normally advertisements some, grab the viewers attention by their usage of colour and this advertisement poster does just that the black and blue colours represent the urban scene / outlook of the poster. The artists record label / company is perhaps selling as if he is coming from an underprivileged background and is trying to make something out of himself.
The name of the artist ‘Wretch 32’ is displayed in graffiti style font and this font is typical of the whole urban ambience in the poster. Both his name and title of the album is clearly been placed on the poster, this is also quite important in order to grab attention off viewers. The usage of the graphics which surround the artist gives out an uneasy feel. The body posture in which I see off the artist is as if he doesn’t care, no direct mode of address is shown he looks to his right side, a sign that he may be a rebellion.
To the bottom left of the poster there is a image of his album cover, which is very common in some promotional advertisements alongside his website and MySpace, popular sites in which a majority of artist try and reach out to audience worldwide. Other fonts indicate the release date other artists in whom will feature in the album; other elements which are shown on the poster are purchasing options such as iTunes and 7 digital.

Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin has acknowledged many solution types in music videos.

A connection between the lyrics and the visuals of a music video with the visuals demonstrate, increase or challenge the lyrics of the song. A bond among the music and the visuals of the video by the visuals demonstrate, strengthen or cancel out the music of the song. Genre-connected style. Many close-ups of the main performer .Voyeurism often plays a key piece especially in bond of females.

Shot list

Shot list

Long shot

Extreme long shot

Close up extreme close up

Medium shot

High angle

Low angle

Point of view

Panning

Oblique/Canted Angle

Arc

Crab

Dolly

Dolly zoom

Follow

Pedestal

Tilt

Tracking

Trucking

Zooming

Two shot

Three shot

Group shot

Extreme low close up

Extreme high close up

Eye level angle

Crane shot

Inspirations

Inspirations

We as a group together did a lot of research for our music video. We all looked at different music video from different genres and different styles and methods of music videos. What we were looking for was techniques, method and different manner the videos had.

Overall there were two music videos that inspired me which was:

Beyonce – Sweet Dreams

Calvin Harris – Ready For The Weekend

Beyonce’s music video for “sweet Dreams” is a brilliant music video, what makes the video good is the skills they used. The video is all filmed in one location, which is in a blue screen room or a green screen room. By using the blue or green screen backgrounds the director and editor had freedom to put any effects they wanted. The video itself usually uses a white background which is unique from other videos. The costume changing also played a big role, at some parts while the background changed the costume changed as well, this gave the viewers feel of different atmosphere every time they changed.  

The other music video encouraged was Calvin Harris’s music video for “Ready For The Weekend” this video uses one major effect which is zooming in and zooming out of objects. In this video the used they also used a blue screen or a green screen room. The video had fun and happiness atmosphere to it, as they used multiple bright colours, funky costumes, multiple objects for the zooming in and out affects, dancers in many different costume colours and props used.       

Editing plans

Editing Plans

After us finishing off filming our music video we are going to log and capture our footage. Safia Shafi as the editor she will first spend three days deleting the parts of the footage we will not need and then putting the parts of the footage we need in a sequence.  After that she will be using the after effects to fade out the blue screen in the background and put different images in the background. I volunteered to find the images, while look for the images I have to make sure that there should not be a clash of colours with the outfit of the dancers and I have to make sure that they are still image. I choose to do still images because then it would give our video a funky effect to it.   

Equipment list

Equipment List

The main equipment we used was:

-          Camera

-          Tripod

-          I Mac computers

-          Lighting and lighting tools

 For the cameras we used two types of cameras, a HDV Camera and a PD170 Camera. As the camera man when it came to filming in the blue screen room I decided to use three cameras to capture from three different angles. Me Natasha and Safia were on each camera. We used three cameras because it would be easier and quicker, if we had only used one camera then it would have been harder and longer. Other than that we used one camera everywhere else we filmed. While I was using the cameras hardly gave me any problems except for the batteries, the batteries had a short life spam so because of that i had to keep on changing the batteries.  

When it came to the tripod, the tripod gave me some difficulties. The difficult part of using the tripod was to always get the bubble in the middle of the circle, if I didn’t get it right then the camera angle wouldn’t have come out straight but would have come out slightly tilted.

We used different lighting equipment to get a good strong focus on the performers in our video.

The I Mac Computers were used for the editing, Safia as the editor had no problems at the beginning but then she had difficulties using the after effects so she could get the effects we wanted for our video.       

Location

Locations

We filmed in three main locations; we did this because we wanted to give different feel of atmosphere in our music video.

Locations:

Havering college (Blue Screen Room)

Ilford (shopping Centre)

Trocadero (Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square)

We went to Trocadero in at basement floor because of there is a break dancing studio where lots of people mainly teenagers come to practice their dance routines. In Trocadero we filmed two people who I asked if they could be star in our music video.

In Ilford (shopping Centre) we film people at random in inside and outside the shopping centre, we mainly filmed part if their feet which we planned to use in opening of our video.

In Havering College we film in the blue screen room with dancers which we organised.

Prop list

Prop List

For the Props we only used one prop which a photo frame, we used the photo frame in the video for the zooming in effect. Inside the frame we put a green paper so that when came to the editing it would be easy to key out the bits where we would zoom in.

Costume list

Custom list

For the Female dancers we decided to dress them up in:

 - Leotards

- Shorts

- Crop Tops

- Trainers

The Leotards we asked the females to wear had to be specifically black the reason for this was because when it comes to filming in the blue screen room we had have a colour which wouldn’t clash against the blue screen so we decided to dress them in black as a whole to make them look as a group together rather than individual dancers. At some parts of the music video we wanted the dancers to wear shorts and crop tops (not blue), this is because female dancers wearing shorts has a sex appeal to it, which fits in with the code and conventions of an electro/house music video. Any sort of footwear was acceptable from any design and colour just as long as they were not blue.

For the Male dancers we asked them to wear clothing such as:

-          Jeans

-          Jumper Hoodies

-          Hats

-          Trainers

With the male dancers it was the same sort of thing as the female dancers. The only differences with the male dancers was that they had to wear colourful outfits because as one of electro and house music themes are happiness and joy colourful outfit would fit in with that category very well. But because these are male dancers we asked to cover more than the female dancers because otherwise it wouldn’t have fitted in well with the codes and convention if they dressed in the structure as the females.

For our Vybz Kartel and Major Lazer we had two main things for them to wear which are:

-          Hat

-           Hoodie jumper.

The reason for just a hoodie and jumper was because we would only concentrate the top half of their body and use many close ups. We asked them to specifically wear a dark jumper and hat, we did this because we planned to use a black background so the outfit and background would blend in together.  

An idea tester of our music video

This is our little tester of a little idea which I came up with; I want to have the whole video in the concept of the zooming in and zooming out effect. Before we started the filming of our tester I got a picture frame and stack the inside of it with green paper because that is where the still images are going to be before the camera zooms in to the next scene. While film the idea tester, as the camera man I made one mistake of not getting a straight angle, instead on the tripod I had forgotten to get the bubble in the middle of the circle.
This idea of zooming in and zooming out effect came from the music video of “Seven Nation Army” by The Seven Stripes, their music video was very simple and effective and that is what we would want to have as concept.

Logo

This logo above which I made through Photoshop was originally my first draft and was meant to be my original design for media project. However I decided not to use this logo because outside of the font “ASN” there is a clapperboard. The font “ASN” looks like it is printed on the clapperboard, but because of the clapperboard, the logo seems to look more like film industry logo which does not appeal to a music video production.

The image below is my original and final logo for my music video project. As you can see the logo is very simple with the coding of black and white which I did through the help of Photoshop. What I did was with the text “ASN” was keeping it straightforward with big and bulky font and in the font I printed the Play, Pause, Stop, Rewind, and Fast Forward buttons. This logo relates more towards a music video production and an effect of simplicity to it.

Call sheet

DAY AND TIME	LOCATION	NAME AND CONTACT DETAILS
18TH OCTOBER – 12am To 5pm	HAVERING COLLEGE	ALI - 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511 JOHNATHAN - 07977885629
19TH OCTOBER – 8am To 10am	EAST LONDON/ESSEX/ILFORD	ALI - 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511
31ST OCTOBER – 11am To 3pm	TROCODERO	ALI – 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511 AARON NUTTALL - 07523305486
1st NOVEMBER – 12am To 4pm	CENTRAL LONDON/PICCADILLY CIRCUS AND LEICESTER SQUARE	ALI – 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511 AARON NUTTALL – 07523305486 ALEX MARTINE - 07967678976
2nd NOVEMBER – 4pm To 8pm	HAVERING COLLEGE/BLUE SCREAN ROOM	ALI – 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511 JO – 07955223378 KYLIE - 07989672340 REBECKA – 07990065743 BEN – 07967386767 MIKAH – 07988664576 KEVIN – 07911342800 OPE - 07788450980
7th NOVEMBER – 3PM To 8pm	HAVERING COLLEGE/BLUE SCREN ROOM	ALI – 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511 JO – 07955223378 KYLIE - 07989672340 REBECKA – 07990065743 BEN – 07967386767 MIKAH – 07988664576 KEVIN – 07911342800 OPE - 07788450980
8TH NOVEMBER – 12am To 3pm	LONDON/ESSEX/GIDEA PARK	ALI – 07935851899 SAFIA – 07976379323 NATASHA – 07978565511 MAX WILLIAMS – 07912547366 CHRIS HONES – 07986565228 KEVIN – 07911342800 OPE - 07788450980

Dancers

Lyrics

LYRICS

-INSTRUMENTAL-

PON DE FLOOR

-INSTRUMENTAL-

PON DE FLOOR

*HOOK

LADIES LET ME SEE YOUR BESTEST WINE (3)

MOVE IF YOU WANT TO ALL T TEK A JUS A LIKKLE WINE

PON DE FLOOR ANY WEH

PON DE FLOOR 

-INSTRUMENTAL-

*HOOK

-INSTRUMENTAL-

Risk Assesment

Contact with artist

Moodboard

Codes and Conventions of electro/house

Codes and Conventions of an Electro and House Music

In an Electro House you expect to see bright colours perhaps in a night club or different surroundings.

You would want to see performers, dancers from any age to gender.

Alcohol could play in a part in it depending on where the music video is being filmed.

You might want to see music equipments from drums, base speakers depending on what sort of equipment the music uses.

Sometimes you might see random props, which could make the whole music video funky and give it a chilled atmosphere.   

You would also expect to see good camera work and unique effected which would give the viewers a good understanding of what is going on in the music video. 

 Our audience research also relates to these, because when we asked the audience some of the feedback we got was very similar to this or could also relate to these points.

Music Genre Research

Music genre research

House and electro music originated in the United States in the State of Chicago around the early 1980’s, it became initially popular in the mid 1980’s. It slowly spread out from Chicago to other States, which then also spread out to the African Americans and Latin Americans until it eventually reached out to Canada and European countries, it mainly became worldwide around the 1990’s

One of the main things that influenced electro/house music was Disco which was blended Soul, R&B and Funk. These different music genres that created electro/house music had a strong feel of love, dancing, sexuality and drugs.

Electro/house music now in the modern days has a similar feel to it but now it also known for happiness, relationships, alcohol, fashion, group of different cultural background and groups of different ethnicity.

The main instruments and technologies used for electro/house music are Sampler, Drum Machines,  Synthesizer, Turntables, Sequencer and Personal computers.

Target Audience

Target Audience
Our main target audience in people between the age of 16 to 30 of any both male and female genders, this is because electro/house music aim at all different kinds of groups.

Audience Research Evaluation

The audience we did was to purposely done so that we would gain a better knowledge of what the audience would want in an electro/house music video and what other kind of features they would want to see. Most of the audience had recommended two features which were dancers and a story/line. After the feedback of the audience it is clear to say that dancers (performers) is something that we should really thinking about and take on board, on the other hand the idea of a story line/narrative for a electro/house music video seemed quite unsure to us, however we still choice to it on board and discuss it future as a group. We asked the audience about their best and least good music video, we asked them this question because we wanted to make sure that we try to provide them with some of the feature of their favourite music videos have and try to avoid the techniques and features of their least favourite music video. We mainly talked to people from the age of 16 and 30 purely because that around those age groups is our target audience.

Audience Research

The audience research we done for our media project, it helped us in many ways to carry out our music video. With our audience research what helped us the most was finding out what exactly the audience (listener) would be expecting in an electro/house music video. One of the main things people said was dancers which fit very well in an electro/house music video. An important question we ask the audience was their least favourite music video, this is important when it comes to the making of our music video because we have to make sure that we not use any of the techniques those music videos use. We also asked them what their favourite music video is, this would play a big role towards our music project simply because we would try to use the techniques the music video they suggested. The reason we did the audience research is because we want our music video to appeal, draw and attract our target audience also even to aim at different audiences. The age group we are aiming at are between the ages of 16 to 30 male and female. As a whole our audience research has given as a good and better understanding of what is expected in an electro/house music video and what we can do and use to make this happen.    

Star Analysis

Fashion and Genre
Michael Jackson had his own views of fashion that helped him to stand out and get his own identity in world of music. The customs he wore whether if it was in a music video, performance at his concerts or casual wear, he always tried to have this uniqueness about him. Other then clothing he seemed to style his hair as well, he styled in many methods from long curly, long straight or an afro when young in the Jackson Five. Michael Jackson never tried get his influence of fashion from anyone, however one of the ways his fans saw him as an idol in the terms fashion.



Here is Michael after performance at his concert, performing on stage in his early days and posing at a photo shoot wearing his white sock which was classed one of his trade mark logo.
Michael Jackson’s fall around the category pop, but he also made music with the genres of RnB, Soul, and Rock etc. Through his music Michael did not reach or aim himself towards a particular target audience, he seek to all different types of people from different racial background (Culture) and different age groups from all around the world. Michael used his own sense unique fashion to put himself out there in world as different individual positively. One of the things that caught the public’s eyes was his white socks and white gloves, Michael most of the time seemed to wear white no matter where he went or what he wore, this was seen as his logo by some of his fans base.