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

Evaluation Q4. Technology

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Q3-What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The first stage of my research involved me conducting a questionnaire to send out to my target audience. Basically from this me and my partner wanted to gather some reliable and valid data which we could transfer into a graph format. This was an extremely important part of the coursework because it gave us an insight into our target audiences preferences, which would then allow us to create a music video that would be fully appreciated.

The questionnaire that we produced included the following questions, and generated this feedback:

1) Gender?
Male Female


70% of the people we asked were male and 30% of the people we asked were female.






2)Age?

40% were aged 17-25 and the other 60% were 8-16

0-7 8-16 17-25 25+

out of the people we asked, all of them were either 16 or 17, so they fitted in two specific boxes. 40% were aged 17-25 and the other 60% were aged 8-16


















3)How many music videos do you watch per week?
0 1-3 4-7 8-11 11+

60% of our audience (which is majority) said that they say 4-7 music videos a week

the other 40% said differently.
20% said that they watch 1-3 music videos 
20% said that they saw 8-11 










4)What is your favourite genre? 
RNB RAP DRUM n BASS INDIE
DUBSTEP ROCK HEAVY METAL OPERA SOUL

This was perhaps the most important question on the questionnaire because here we really got to find out our target audiences opinion and what kind of music they liked. This is where we had the biggest variety of answers.
The option that was the most popular was ROCK, we asked 10 people and out of them, 8 people ticked rock as one of their favourite music genre.
Second most popular option was INDIE, which was ticked by 7 people.
6 people ticked DUBSTEP as one of their favourite types of music.
RAP & DRUM'n'BASE were only ticked by 5 people.
RNB& SOUL wereonly ticked by 3 people.
The least popular option was HEAVY METAL and OPERA , which only one person ticked.




5)What would you expect to find in a music video?
dancing shots of the performer(s) close ups of actors cutaways
establishing shots of locations titles


This question focussed more on the technical part of the music video as opposed to the part which a non-media-student takes notice of.
The most popular options turned out to be 'SHOTS OF THE PERFORMER', 'CUTAWAYS' and 'CLOSE UPS OF ACTORS'. After getting this feedback me and my partner decided to incorporate all 3 shot-types into our music video.
'DANCING' was not seen by any of our target audience as being vital in a music video, and not something that they would necessarily expect to see either. For this reason amongst others, we decided not to include any form of choreography in our media piece.
4 people out of 10 said that they thought TITLES were important in a music video and only 2 people said that ESTABLISHING SHOTS OF LOCATIONS were important in a music video. 



6)How important in your opinion is that the narrative of the music video links to the song lyrics?
0..1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10

In this question no one picked lower than 6.

10% picked 6, 30% picked 7, 40% picked 8 and 20% picked 10

1 people picked 6
3 people picked 7
4 people picked 8
2 people picked 10 











For the second step of our research, we decided to show our music video to our peers in the media class. This gave us both positive and negative feedback. The positive feedback that was generated covered all aspects of media, from visual effects to the acting. In terms of the acting, my media teacher was particularly impressed with the realism of the acting and the feeling shown by the actor. Some people in the class disagreed and said that the actor did not show feeling, but these were people with no acting experience who didn't understand that over-emotion in a music video can make it look cheap and fake. Another topic of positve discussion was the editing side of the piece. One specific part that my peers enjoyed was the spin by the main actor, which cut to 3 different locations. This was something that i did personally, so to get recognition for this was very pleasing.
Once my video was complete, I was able to undergo the third step which was to upload the video to YouTube for the public to see. I also linked it to social networking sites such as twitter and Facebook so my online friends could comment on it. On YouTube I only got two comments but on Facebook & twitter I got a lot of feedback.
I also got a lot of text messages and blackberry messenger messages about my video.

I put my video onto Facebook, and here 15 people liked my video, consisting of 12 girls and 3 boys. The overhaul of female viewers in relation to male viewers was something that we expected bearing in mind the genre and origional artist.

List of comments i received about my video

All of the user comments generated were positive and because of this we were extremely happy about our video. However, we did get questions about the girl in the towel, lots of people were confused as to why our female actor was in a towel, but then after iweexplained to them that she was meant to be seductive, they then understood and thought the idea was good.

This is a private inbox my partner got from one of her friends.

This is another email that she received from another friend of hers.

This is when i told more people to comment on my video. I got extra comments and % extra likes, all from girls.

If I had the oppertunity to re-do my A2 media coursework I think the main thing that i would improve would be the camera handling skills of the person doing the filming. As pointed out in some of out viewer feedback, some of the shots aren't steady and i think that this has a negative effect on the feeling of those particular scenes. Perhaps also, there is a case that in some scenes there is not much feeling shown by the actor, so this is another thing that we could have discussed and improved. However, overall i have enjoyed the coursework and it has been a thouroughly positive experience.
                                      

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

When constructing our ancillary tasks, the main target that we set for ourselves was to fully incorporate the imagery and feeling created by the main task. The music video generated feelings of lonliness and isolation from the main characters point of view, and this cause the audience to empathise with him and feel sorry for him. In my opinion, these themes were the bedrock of our coursework and this is why we wanted them to feature in our ancillary tasks. However, the story of the song "Should've Kissed You" doesnt really have much to it - a boy that is upset with himself after not kissing the girl and therefore in his mind he ruined his chances - and for this reason we thought that too much information in the magazine advert or CD cover would in a sense give it away. After discussing this with my partner, we decided that we would limit the amount of information the consumer gets through the ancillary tasks.

It is evidenthere that some of the key elements of our main task are not included in either of our ancillary tasks, perhaps most impotantly the girl. We didnt want to add the girl to either because we wanted to give the audience the feeling of his lonliness and isolation in himself, but also we wanted to keep them guessing as to the reason for these emotions.

The shot used for the magazine poster and CD cover is one that reoccurs in the music video itself - a mid shot of the male character walking by himself, showing the emptiness of his surroundings.

It is evident from this still image of a scene within the piece the similarities in posture and expression between the main piece and ancillary tasks. The only other difference is that we edited our poster and CD cover in a black and white colour scheme. We decided to do this to add the the questions going through the audiences mind as to what the problem is, but also to enhance that dull feeling of sadness that the character is experiencing.

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

The huge stereotyping of R'n'B/ Hip-Hop videos in my opinion has pushed artists to start to challenge these stereotypes and bring a new dimension into the world of the genre. Chris Brown in the early stages of his career was seen as a typical R'n'B artists and song such as "Forever" and "Kiss Kiss" followed the common conventions of R'n'B songs and music video's such as money, girls, and partying.





A common these in these videos is dancing, mostly by Chris Brown himself, but in some parts he is assisted by a group of people. Dance is a convention of R'n'B/Hip-Hop, but it is one that we have challenged in own own video by not including it. We chose to challenge this convention because we feel that 'Shouldve kissed you' is one of Chris Browns softer songs and it therefore needs more performance to generate feeling and emotion.

As Chris Browns' career developed, his status in the industry allowed him to experiment with his music without much of a risk, and subsequently some of his music has ventured into the genre of rap, and some softer songs, such as 'Shouldve kissed you' could even be classed as more pop than R'n'B. The song is slow in tempo and not really the that you would expect to find on an album by an artist renowned for being a big name in R'n'B.

As you can see in the video for the song, the focus is purely on the performer and there are no other actors involved. This is not the case in our own music video for the song, as we have an extra actor as well as the performer, giving us the chance to include a lot of narrative to get the story of the song across to the audience.

The constant attention on the performer is one of the main conventions of R'n'B music videos, and in my opinion this is linked to the stereotypical view of artists in this genre as being self-centred and naive. As this is the case, we have in fact challenged this convention as well be including a fair chunk of narrative. In fairness, overall our music video is probably about 70:30 in favour of performance over narrative, but this is still more than in most R'n'B videos, such as 'Riding Solo' by Jason Derulo.




There are very few occasions in this video which shots could be classed as anything to do with narrative or the story of the song, but on the other hand it could be argued that the song is about doing things for yourself and living your own dream, or 'ridin solo' as Derulo says.
The lighting in the video for 'ridin solo' is also significant because it highlights the fact the the artist is doing well in terms of his career, and the large board of lighting behind him helps to add superiority and status. Quite frequently in our video we used natural lighting therefore most of it is set in the daytime, but whilst this challenges a convention in itself which is the nightlife, it also means that costs were kept to a minimum when it came to production. High costs of production have become a convention of hip hop and R'n'B music videos as more and more money enters the industry, along with technological advancements that make it possible for videos to have the quality that they do nowadays.

We did use a common convention of R'n'B/ Hip-hop music and this was the sexy female. We chose Fade because of her looks and I think this has a positive effect on our overall video in terms of the look and the pairing of the two characters. We enhanced the sexiness of the girl by having her walking around in a towell, highlighting her shape and figure. However, with the use of the sexy female convention came another challenge. Commonly in R'n'B videos there is a situation in which a rich black man chases a white girl, but in our video we reversed this and had a white man chasing a black girl. This was an important stereotype to challenge from our point of view, because it is something that is almost never seen in todays music videos and because of this it makes our piece more individual.

Ancillary task complete

                                                                           POSTER

                                                            DIGIPAK FRONT COVER

                                                              DIGIPAK BACK COVER

                                                       DIGIPAK INSIDE COVER (RIGHT)
                                                             

                                                      DIGIPAK INSIDE COVER (LEFT)

The design that we have chosen is inspired by Matt Cardle's album 'Letters', in the sense that it demonstrates emptiness felt by the subject. The poster consists of a shot that we were happy with as soon as it was taken, because the mise-en -scene turned out just as we planned. On the ground around the actor are autumn leaves which represent a season associated with sadness and loneliness as the vibrant colours of the summertime darken and the leaves fall leaving distant memories. This relates to the similar surroundings of Matt Cardle on the front cover of 'Letters', where he is isolated in the location with only the hills around him. The white font we have used on top of the black and white colour tone is also inspired by 'Letters'. We chose it because not only does it stand out, but it is in tone with the calm atmosphere and doesn't take the attention away from the actor, who we are trying to promote. 'OUT NOW' is in a big font and this commands the readers attention, encouraging them to purchase the album.

The inside covers of the digipak have similarities to the front cover in the sense that these also follow the overall calm and sensitive tone. The picture focussing on the leaves gives a great effect and this would be on the side where the disc is held, maybe personifying the disc to relate to the actor with regard to the fact that the disc will effectively be surrounded by nothing. Opposite to this is a picture of the actor sat down with his back to the camera. He is in the bottom left hand corner of the frame and therefore is relatively small in comparison to the overall picture, showing his feeling of inferiority to his thoughts about the girl.

The back cover is a shot that was taken in the same location as some of the footage in the video, and this relation provides a key link between the digipak and the music video. We framed the shot so that there would be a clear space in which to list the songs, while at the same time showing the stairway which links to the video.

The front cover is the same shot as the poster, however we changed tot font to black   to make sure there are some differences between the two. We chose the record label 'JIVE' because this is Chris Brown's actual record label and it therefore shows authenticity.

Digipak

A digipak is a style of CD or DVD packaging used to promote a particular artist.

This is the album cover for Matt Cardle's debut album 'Letters'. The colour scheme is just greyscale and i think this is because, even though he won The X Factor, he is not yet an established name in the UK music industry. The lack of colour on the album cover could therefore represent a career that has not yet fully blossomed. But also on the other hand, the fact that it is not completely black and white could represent that this is someone who is going to become something big. Other features of the design also coincide with this thought of representing a career with no substance, such as the location and the text. The location is in the middle of nowhere which could symbolise isolation, and the white colouring of the text prevents it from standing out.

Mike Posner, like Matt Cardle, is an upcoming artist. However, whilst Matt Cardle participated on the X Factor and got the votes of millions of viewers before he signed a contract, Mike Posner was relatively unknown and the fact that this single cover has even less colour than 'Letters' reflects this.Mike's pose is also similar to Matt Cardle's in 'Letters' as they are both looking to the ground. This is yet another similarity between the two and they both give the same feeling of isolation and loneliness in their thoughts.

I think it is obvious now that will use both these album covers as inspiration for our own, as the feeling that they give off and the sympathy that we feel for them links to how want our audience to empathise with our actor in both our music video and our digipak.


We had a shooting session yesterday for our ancillary tasks, where i was the subject of the shots and my partner was in control of the camera. The session went well and we have drawn up a short-list of our four favourites:

This is a favourite of ours because it portrays the songs feelings well, however my partner did not like the fact that there is a bin present in the background so we will choose not to use this one.

Me and my partner both agree that this picture is perfect for an inside cover.

I think this is perfect for the front cover of the digipak as well as the poster. The actors pose is good and the fact that he is looking down makes it seem like he is in thought and this links the songs bottom line of the performer thinking to himself. There is also room on the right for text.

Too central. Although the picture in itself is good, the framing is bad and there isn't  enough space for text.

Editing

Our editing process has been progressive throughout the time that we have been filming footage, however now that we have captured most of the footage we need, we can now focus on perfecting our piece section by section.