Final Video

Summing up...

Conclusion on Prezi

Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 3

Looking at specifically the focus group which we filmed, we were able to gain both positve and naegative feedback which will definately help us in the future if we chose to make a music video again. One key feature of our music video, that has recieved all positive feedback, is the lighting of our music video, and how it is definately a genre signifier of the pop/rock genre, as the lighting is able to convey a grunge look which fits in with the song itself.

Also as we have been able to create the right lighting meaning the audience believes the music video fits in with the style of the band, they think it is east for the audience to decode what we as producers have encoded, and as we have done this, it will keep the audience entertained throughout the duration of the music video, as we place the break up scene in the middle of the sequence. As the subject matter presented in the music video matches the son meaning, audience feedback suggests that it will be easy for audiences to realte to the story, as they would have gone through, also the costumes and locations used mean the audience can further relate to what the characters are going through in the video.

Another positive feature that audience feedback liked is the use of a black and white filter as it is clearly a convention of modern music videos as it gives a different and interesting look to the music video. Also the black confetti in the close up shots, against the white background, was liked universally as it gives the music video as proffesional look that handmade effect along with the motion blur final cut effect means the audience are kept entertained and interested in the music video throughout. Finally, the audience enjoyed the animation we incorperated, was liked as it gives the music video that little bit more for the audience, and some feedback members suggested that it fits well with the storyline of the music video and that it works well through the duration of the music video. However, it was also stated that the animation does not match the look of the video, but it is neccessary to give a new dimension to the music video. The negative feedback we recieved was that some shots of the couple were 'cheesy' and could have been made to look less cheesy by using a wider variety of shots.

Our digipak recieved positive feedback, as it creates a strong band identity, by using the same colours that the music video has, the blacks the whites and the yellows. They said that the lighting in the video helps convey the same genre as the digipak and that both work together to give a strong band identity.

How we can improve...

According to the audience feedback, we can spend more time on the lead singer focusing on their ability to lip sync, making sure they consistantly stick to the lines they have. Also with the lead singer in mind, we need to improve on taking more close ups of the lead singer to fit in with Andrew Goodwin's icon theory. Wider variety of locations will be neccessary to make future music videos even better. We will also need to make sure that the effects are appropriate to the shots we include, using all of this feedback and suggested improvements we will be able to make an even better music video in the future.

Evaluation Question 2

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

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our music video is one that uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products. For our song we chose You Me At Six - Fireworks, this song is of the rock / pop genre, expressed through its high tempo but sombre lyrics often expressing betrayal and anger. To conform to the 'sound' of the song in our music video, we centred the main plot around two couples involving the same girl and how she has cheated on her previous boyfriend, and has started a new relationship with her lover. We believe that this conforms to the song we have chosen as we have centred the song around a specific lyric; "when you're sleeping in someone elses bed". Looking at other media products of the same genre we found that the shots involved include, close ups, upward pans and tracking to show how the relationships in the stories are coming to an end, making it easier for the audience to relate with the story. We conformed with these general conventions of music videos of the same genre by including shots and angles that show intimacy and infatuation.

Our genre signifiers include the style of the band, which is similar to the audiences sense of style, their hair and clothing, by dressing the band in this way, as producers we are able to to encode to the audience that the band is of the similar style to them. As we used a black and white colour for one of the relationships with a vignette which was created in Final Cut, by utilising colour to our advantage it will mean that the audience will be able to subconsciously decode that that is the past relationship, also this will make it easier for the audience to distinguish between the two relationships in the, one in colour one in black and white. In our music video we created an animation to give it a new dimension of viewing, we did this by using the same plot as the rest of the music video, this means that the audience will identify the two stories as the same, this ties in with our preferred reading, as we hope the animation will appear as 'cute' to the audience.

When filming our main character Tommy we focused on close ups to conform to Goodwin's theory meaning we are able to create a band identity and make the lead singer an icon, which will again strengthen the band's identity. By using close ups of the band and the lead singer the audience can decode that he is both the lead singer and the main character. By using non-verbal codes such as costumes, actors and locations the audience are able to decode the messages we have encoded the video with. Barthes outlined that media texts have signifiers that audiences decode subliminally, by using black and white the audience can automatically decode that it is in the past using these signifiers.

Our music video has four elements within them; narrative, performance, continuity and montage filming. We incorporated narrative filming, by selecting a story, the relationships within the music video, we decide to show these relationships in the same with the same locations and mise-en-scene but using different male characters in each shots. For the narrative shots we used clips short in length as they presented arguing and shouting. But for the performance parts of our music video we used quick cuts and pans of the lead singer, along with close ups of the band. We placed the band in the mise-en-scene of a garage to show that they are practising again this can be subconsciously decoded by the audience. By cross cutting between a performance and narrative we are able to conform to Andrew Goodwin's theory that suggests music videos are devices to promote band and band members alike, our video most certainly does this, as we include lots of shots of the lead singer, and the fact that we use the lead singer as the lead protagonist in our narrative video sequence.

We also conformed to the stereotype that teenage relationships are based on lust and sex, we did this by including clips of the couple in bed, arguing and intimate exchanges of emotion between the couples. We used Laura Mulvey's theory of the virgin/whore dichotomy which outlines that women in media products are based on 'whores' or 'virigins', we chose to show our female as promiscuous, as she cheats on the male character. This challenges the hollywood view that male characters are the catalysts for break ups in on screen characters, but our music video challenges this with shots of of female character with another man.

This challenging of general conventions, also challenges the theory of the Male Gaze theory, again put forward by Laura Mulvey, that all media products are viewed through the eyes of a male, meaning the women is often demeaned in the media text. A video to contrast to ours in P.I.M.P - 50 cent which shows cars, bling and scantily dressed women which shows that men are in control of relationships but our music video we show the women as the dominant ones in the relationship.

Our target audience for this music video will be young people aged between 15-25, as the songs are about issues such as falling in love for the first time, infatuation, break ups and heartache. The audience would have a style stereotypes as 'grunge' or 'indie' , and would hobbies musically orientated. We believe that we can attract the target to music video, by the storyline, and the actors are teenagers dressed in the same our audience would dress. Our main way of connecting to our audience is by filming in London which to most would be seen as Europes cultural hub. As we have created a performance and narrative music video we believe this will mean our audience will have a deeper relationship with the band if the wish to see them live or have seen them live.

Music videos use quick cuts to keep the audience entertained throughout the music video, this conforms to Blumler and Katz Uses and Gratifications Theory which suggests that audiences of media texts must be INFROMED, ENTERTAINED, allowed opportunities for SOCIALISING , a chance to attain a PERSONAL IDENTITY and being able to ESCAPE. We believe we have managed to do this with our music video as we allow for all of these criteria, we entertain the audience by using different shots of our characters and we offer a story that will be recognizable to our target audience, the story also allows the audience to escape. As our music video is not just a narrative music video, it is performance the audience will be able to escape as they will be able to see how the band perform.

Looking at examples of digipaks, the general conventions that are used is to advertise the artist and their music. Rihanna's digipak is filled with both images of her and the name of all of her songs and the album, the name is clearly presented it shows the name of the album 'Loud'. This is used to promote the artist and increase sales figures. Our digipak features the name of the band, the artists, photos of band members, a small bio, reviews, track lists and a bonus behind the scenes dvd. We think that this will give the audience more than enough extra material and they will form a relationship with the band. Our fictional band is called 'Sinful Agenda' and the album is called 'Facing the Insecure'. The colours of our digipak and advert are black, grey, white and yellow which all contrast and represent the dark sombre lyrics presented in our music video. The blacks are used to represent the dark meaning of their songs while the brighter yellows and whites represent the up beat tempo of their songs. To give the audience more we incorporated a silhouette of the band members heads with their signatures underneath them, this is another way of promoting the band as the audience can identify with each of the band members.

We believe that both our digipak and digipak advert conform to general conventions as they both promote the band and their material, and by maintaining one theme throughout them the audience can immediately relate them to the bands music.

Digi- Pak Sinful Agenda Advert Analysis

When creating our digi-pak advert we used Photoshop as we used it in creating our digi-pak, first of all we used a black background as it will stay with the theme of our digi-pak to then reinforce to the audience that this is Sinful Agenda's. We also reinforced the image of the band by using the same font and colour of the font for our digi-pak, however, to give the audience more than they would recieve in the digi-pak itself, we give the audience the signatures of the band members and a silhouette of their heads which personalizes the advert further as the fans will feel they are that much closer to the band. We coloured the signatures and silhouette in white to contrast well with the black background of the advert, also we used the yellow and white flaring that is a signifier to the audience again promoting the band and their new album/ digi-pak. We used a quote from NME, as the audience of that magazine is one that we aim to target as this band is one that would feature in the magazine. To conform to Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory and Richard Dyer's Utopian Solution theory that a media product must allow the audience to have some sort of social interaction, we achieved this by giving information, that fans can follow the band on facebook thus enabling them to leave comments and interact with the band and other fans. The most important part of a digi-pak is promoting the release date of the digi-pak we did this by placing the information in the lower part of the advert so fans cand see it clearly and know when the digi-pak is available. As a whole we feel this advert works well as we stick to the theme of the digi-pak which gives the band an identity enabling the audience to relate to the band as a whole.

Digi-Pak Sinful Agenda Analysis

The front cover of our Digi-Pak was created on photoshop we used a black background to make the yellow's and white's more vivid as they contrast well with the black. We downloadedphotoshop brushes which allowed us to get the flaring effectwe desired. By layering each part of the front cover we were able to organize it a lot easier. The text we used was ORATOR STDwhich is clear for the audience to read, the band name 'Sinful Agenda' is a white strong font with the band's album name 'Facing The Insecure' in a gold/yellow color which clearly defines the album name from the band name. On our front cover we incorporated a semi opaque circle with information for the audience that lets them know that there is the musicvideo with bonus footage in the digi-pak.

We believe that our front cover of our digi- pak is conforming to the general stereotypes of pop punk album covers as it has a dark feel with bright flares to represent the up beat tempo of their songs.

The second part of our digi-pak is our profile page which contains a paragraph on the origins of the band, but it still maintains the same dark feel but keeping the same background color and colors as the album cover. This page also contains reviews of the band's album from magazines such as NME, we believe by giving the audience a profile page they will want to listen to more of the band's songs as we also mention the previous album of the band.

This page works well as it promotes the previous work of the band and with the reviews it gives depth to the target audience as our target audience will be likely to read the magazines we mention. Also the information we provide makes the digi-pak personal which we feel will communicate a better message.

The next page of our digi-pak is the photo page this, page follows the same layout as the previous theme as the other pages with the black background and yellow/white flares, but we used a photoshop brush to give the photo's we selected a frame which sticks to the look and feel of the digi-pak. The photo's were darkened on photoshop to maintain the theme of the digipak as a dark but optimistic representation of the band,we used the frames to give shape to the page ,also thev white frames makes the photo's stand out as they are dark. As the gives the audience an added extra; the photo's themselves it means the audience will be able to form a bond with the band.

This page works well as part of a digipak as it promotes the band members by putting a picture within the digipak we believe that audiences will be able to relate more with the band if they get a picture as they will be able to decide who their favourite band member is.

For the actual CD and DVD cases we decided to leave the design as black background with yellow and white flares we decided to leave the pages like this because the CD and DVD will cover the design of the pages, but we maintained the theme throughout the whole of our digipak meaning that when audiences see this digipak they will know that it is Sinful Agenda's digipak.

The last part of our digipak is our back cover or track list, this again follows the theme of the rest of the digipak with the white flares penetrating the black background with a yellow haze layered on top to give a very simple but classy looking back cover. For the track list we used ORATOR STD as we used it for the front cover giving the digipak extra consistancy, we used a light yellow for the font as it contrasts well with the black but is also visible to the audience. We believe that the track list part of our digipak works well as the tracks are easy to read but the style of the digipak is shown through the design of the back cover.

All in all our digipak works well as there is consistant theme throughout the whole digipak (black background with white and yellow flares and haze) meaning that the audience can insatantly recognize that this digipak is Sinful Agenda's. We promote the band through the pictures we have put in the digipak and the profile page which gives origins to the bands creation meaning the audience will be gratified. Looking specifically at Blumler and Katz uses and gratifications theory, the audience will be Entertained and Informed by the profile page,the music, and the music video, given a chance to Escape by the music and music video meaning that our digipak confroms to all the trends neccessary to make a successful digipak.

Digi-pak Sinful Agenda Advert

Digi-pak Sinful Agenda

Progress Report - 29th November

Today we made the advert for our digipak, we kept the same black and white with yellow highlights, we used silhouettes of the band members we did this by using photoshop brushes then underneath we used the band members signatures. We used the HMV logo in the bottom right so that audiences will know where to buy the digipak album. We managed to create the digipak in two hours as we all contributed different parts meaning we were all happy with the outcome of it.

Progress Report - 24nd November

On our final day of editing we completed all of the work on the music video, matching all colours for the correct scenes and we are now happy with the order and think we have used the conventions we wanted to use. We also started the digipak we used photoshop to create six black 15cmx 15cm slides, we then places a flair design brush in opposing corners in each slide before layering a yellow haze on each slide. Then we chose to use orator std for our font throughout the whole of our digipak, we changed the size and colour depending on what we were using it for, we used yellow font for the track list and album name, but white for the band name and a gold for the bio. We also used the photos we had previously taken to make a photo page which will give more to the audience.

Progress Report - 22nd November

Today we finished the two animations, and placed them in the music video, we added the vignette around the animations showing the past. But we felt we needed to add another animation to match the story of the music video, so we made one where Mike's animated character steals Louise's animated character, we struggled with the 90 degree rotation of Louise as we needed a new centre point for each move of her character. After we done this we had finished all the animations and could continue editing the music video.

Progress Report - 16th November

We filmed Tommy again today, we used black paper which we tore up to make black confetti which we then let fall over Tommy, we thought this would give a nice contrast with the white background and will keep the audience entertained as they will not expect that confetti will fall. We then uploaded the clips and changed the colours to black and white and lowered the saturation to make the blacks more vivid so that they stand out.

Progress Report - 14th November

As we needed to film more shots, we filmed Tommy our lead singer in front of a white background, we managed to get some nice panning shots across Tommy's face, bringing him in and out of focus, and we got two shots of him singing the whole song.

Progress Report - 10th November

Today we decided to do most of our editing, and making sure that the gaps we have filled are properly edited with the correct colouring, to represent the past relationships we are using black and white with a vignette haze around the clip which will mean the audience will be able to decode that it is a past relationship. Today we also realised that we needed more footage of our lead singer.

Progress Report - 8th November

In today's session, we were adding clips to gaps to fill out the music video, but we had to make sure all the clips were in the right place meaning that the sequence would again make sense. As well as filling in the gaps we changed the colour of some of our clips, to give the colours more depth and to create a nice contrast.

Progress Report - 4th November

Today we continued with the animation, as each 4 second animation will take about 30 minutes of editing, we also had to work out where the animation was going to fit in with our music video as the sequence has to make sense which will allow the audience to decode the animation and its meaning.

Progress Report - 2nd November

Today we continued to edit the animation as we plan to have three little animations, the problem we have when making the animation, is that we have to render each animation to see if it works. We also uploaded the scenery part of our animation, this included the clouds, grass and sky we used this to show the emotions of the characters and that their relationship is out of the quotidian.

Progress Report - 31st October

We uploaded all of our footage we filmed during the half term holidays, and tried to put the clips into order so the footage will flow with the song we have chosen, in Final Cut, we edited the colour and saturation of the clips by going to colour corrector, which allowed us to attain a black and white effect and by lowering the saturation of these shots, it gives colours more depths along with a more pleasing look for the audience.

Progress Report - 29th October

We used today to take photo's of the band for our digipak, we used myself, Tommy, Jack and Simon to get close up photo's to put in our digipak, we will surround these photo's with a polaroid looking brush on photoshop to keep with the look of our digipak.

Progress Report - 25th October

We filmed a scene with Tommy and Louise in the park, when filming we encorperated a 360 degree shot with a tracking shot to show that Tommy is alone now after his break up. We then filmed a medium shot of Tommy and Louise walking away from each other to show that the are no longer together. We felt the park was a good location as the sun was at its highest point mean we had consistant lighting.

Progress Report - 19th October

Today we focused mainly on the animation, looking at how we could attain a fluent motion within the characters. We ran in to some trouble when trying to make the characters limbs mover all at the same time, we experienced this problem as we are using Final Cut to create the animation, which is a new way of creating an animation to all of us. We had to scan in each individual limb of our characters, then move each limb seperately then move the limb back to the centre of the frame, thus creating a trail of movement for each limb. This new way of animation is one that we believe will work well as we can get a more flowing motion, than we could have if we used stop frame animation.

Progress Report - 17th October

Today we started the first phase of making our animation, we drew the characters on paper making sure we left room between all the body parts, we made sure to define each body part as it will make it easier to cut around then in Photoshop. We then scanned the images in in to Photoshop, we then cut around the limbs, before saving each limb individually before uploading them to Final Cut. This will be a new way of animation we have not experienced before.

Progress Report - 12th October

Today we went to London Victoria Station, to get shots of Mike, Tommy and Louise. Firstly we planned to use the station as a transition shot, we placed Tommy in the centre a medium shot then left the camera for 30seconds, we plan to speed up this shot so we can use it as a transition shot.

We then filmed a 360 degree shot of Tommy along with an establishing shot.

We then filmed two indetical shots with different actors in them so when editing we will be able to layer the two shots.

We also went to Camden today as we needed to get some intimate shots of Tommy to fit in with the plot of the music video, we also took some contrasting shots between the two couples which will show how Tommy has not moved on from his relationship.

Progress Report - 10th October

In today's filming, we went to one of our group members house (Mike) and filmed a scene that involved Louise 'cheating' on Tommy, we used the spotlight to get the correct lighting for the room, as there would be close ups involved. We positioned Tommy in the corner of the bedroom so we got get a close up of his face singing then slowly pan down to the bed where Johnny and Louise lay, we thought this shot will be good, as it links directly the relationship between the couple. Our filming today lasted 2 hours as we had alot of takes, with different camera angles, positions and lighting. All in all we were able to get the right shots we needed to progress our music video further.

Progress Report - 5th October

In today's session we used the footage we had already filmed to get a general outline of where possible shots could fit in to the music video, we did this by using Final Cut which allowed us to upload our song on to it and see what shots needed to go where in the sequence.

Progress Report - 3rd October

Today, we used the bedroom location outlined in our location list, we filmed in this location as we needed to get footage of our couple in bed together. We used mainly handheld shots in today's filming to create intimate shots of the couple, we also used different types of lighting to see what effect they would have on the shot. Today's filming was a success as we were able to gain the right footage neccessary for our music video.

Storyboards

Focus Group

Construction of Mise en Scene

Intertextuality

Intertexuality Within Music Videos on Prezi

Lyrics Annotated