Final Piece

Evaluation 4

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

Evaluation 3

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I have learnt a lot from audience feedback as the whole way through the process I have been getting feedback on my products, I have taken all feedback on board negative or positive and they all help you when your finding it difficult to make a decision. 

We collected feedback in lots of different ways such as asking people to fill out surveys to which font they liked best or to which name of the artist they preferred or even to which colour they like out of a selection. The way I normally produced these surveys were through a tally chart or even an on-line survey to which people filled out. The results always helped me in making my decision as your judgement may not always be correct and it helps to have another pair of eyes to look over your work. 

Another way of feedback of which we received was screening our product such as our music video, we received lots of criticisms throughout the screening process and through these our video only became stronger and better because other people were able to see problems we could not such as an artists performance not being strong enough in certain clips, however we always listened to these feedbacks and evidence to this is why we changed artist 2-3 times because the audience who was viewing our music video told us that the performance was no where near as good a the narrative so we listened and made drastic changes to our production and construction of the video.

I also received heavy feedback on my digi-pak/poster as I was not the best at using Photoshop this showed but the feedback I received help me improve on my skills and let me know what looked good and what did not.

One more way I received feedback was through the use of my teachers, every now and then they would sit and go through our work with us letting us know what we need and what was good and bad about our coursework and this whole conversation was filmed and put onto our blogs so that we could go back to them and use them to improve upon.

       

Evaluation 2

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

When I started to create the the music video, Digi-pak and poster I wanted to keep them all similar and very alike however as you can see my music video is very different to both my poster and digi-pak. I started off with the idea of making both the digi-pak and poster black and white with certain colour aspects standing out such as the reds in the different colours to connote a sense of danger or sex appeal, however while creating all three products I developed new ideas and changed my original plans, such as having all the music video in black and white and not just the narrative. I also changed from having hardly any colour in my poster and digi-pak to having lots of colour to fit the conventions of a female pop artist a little more, this is also more marketable to the teenage to early 20's age groups as this is my target audience that I need to sell my products to. 

The combination between my poster and digi-pak work really well due to the very quirky girlish feel to it due to the colour scheme and patterns used, I used light colours such as the nudes and pinks to show her personality, whilst referencing the album name 'Uncovered' meaning she is showing herself for what she is or letting us into her life. I feel the poster and digi-pak do a nice way of showing this, although the poster and digi-pak appear to have no link to the the music video in way of appearance, they link through the name of the album as the music video is inside the album and when you uncover the album an look inside you see something different to what is actually on the outside of the album. So through watching her video and listening to our artists song's you are uncovering her as a person. I felt this was a smart way of doing things and would work well and make people think and not just watch the video. 

Evaluation 1

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

At the start of this project we was all given the task of creating a music video, we created our own brief and as a group decided we wanted to create a pop artists which fit the normal conventions of a pop artist which was in the media today. What we came up with was a female artist named Isabel Beau. We used this name as we thought it was a pop star like name as it was quite catchy. We then had the hard choice of choosing a pop song for our artist, to me this had to be a song which was catchy but still had a strength to it such as the chorus, as we was looking for a song we saw the song Battlefield on YouTube and I thought it would be perfect for our artist, after most of us in the group agreed on this song we was able to think of lots of ideas for this music video due to the lyrics itself of the song. 

We then had to look at our artist a little more closely. Through choosing the genre pop we gained some codes and conventions for our artist, music video and anything else we produced for our artist. To find these codes and conventions of pop artist we had to look and research into present female pop artist who are about such as Pixie Lott, Ellie Goulding, Taylor Swift these artists are similar to what we was looking at for artist to be. From these artist we felt they all had a sense of innocence about them but also a sense of sex appeal too. 






   








One of the main factors when looking into conventions of a music video would be Andrew Goodwin's theory of conventions of a music video:

The first convention is that the video demonstrates typical genre characteristics, I believe our video does this but only to a certain extent, this is because our music video has a really strong narrative compared to the performance of the artist her self. This goes against Goodwin's first convention, as in normal female pop videos the performance is the strongest part as this is how the record labels sell the records or albums. Although it does not meet the convention in that way it still does follow certain aspects as the narrative and song itself are quite emotional as well as the performance. Other ways it fits this convention are the use of an attractive young women which will be found consistently throughout the genre of pop. As well in our music video the artist herself is wearing fashionable up to date trends which fit the convention of a pop music video. The only part we challenged with in the genre of a pop song was the use of black and white throughout, normally pop songs are filled with colour and lots of it however we felt it was better to have it in black and white adding a more elegant feel to the whole video and showing more emotion.   

The second convention Goodwin explains in his theory is the relationship between the lyrics and the video itself and I believe we followed this convention pretty well with the use of our strong narrative I think the song 'Battlefield' linked perfectly with the narrative as in the narrative I was trying to get the idea across that our artists younger self's home life is like a 'Battlefield' and she uses her dancing to try and escape this, so through the use of the image of her parents arguing I linked it with the line where she says 'Battlefield' to show the relationship between the two. Another time we did this was in the performance with the lyrics "tear us down" I had a shot of Jess sliding down the wall so I decided to add this in at this part which which meant that there was a relationship between the lyrics and visuals here also this part also showed pain because of the battle she was in during the song also referencing the song title. 

   


The third convention that Goodwin includes in his theory is the music having a relationship with the visuals this is done mainly through the editing side of things. In my music video I attempted to do this however it is limited such as when the pace of the music gets quicker I have attempted to add in more cuts to show the change in pace. I feel I accomplished this in certain places such as the first pick up in pace when I cut to a dance part and it flows perfectly and cuts on all the beats and I then also do it using the performance of Jess, cutting to a mixture of close ups and mid shots much quicker then I do in the rest of the song to show the change in pace. After this it does this less and is probably down to the fact that we changed our artist for the third time at such a late stage. 

The fourth convention of which is in Goodwin's theory is the use of close ups which is used by the record labels to promote the artist as they try to show the face of the artist as much as possible. They do this to gain fans for the artist as fans like to see the face of artist which they like. This normally works better with female pop artists as they are conventionally all very good looking and is how they promote there selves. Our artist is signed to Mercury Records which is a bigger more mainstream record company or 'Major' which meant we felt like we needed to include this convention as it probably a normal thing for this record label to do seeing as they already have artists such as Taylor Swift. We decided to follow this convention because of this and used lots of close up shots especially throughout the beginning, showing the audience who this new artist is. 

The fifth convention that we decided we was not going to follow was the voyeuristic treatment of the female body, we felt that we did not need to include this in our music video even though it is a major convention in today's modern music videos. We felt as if our song was a little more emotional and innocent and just the wrong song for using that convention in particular. I felt as if it would not fit the video effectively in the first place and however it could be said that through the use of some of the mid-shots that I included, Jess could be seen in a voyeuristic way because most of her body is in the shot.

The sixth and final convention is the use of an 'intertextual reference' I believe we followed this convention in our music video  as we combined to 'intertextual references' within our dancing scenes, using a first reference from 'Black Swan' the film of the dancing feet filming them from a close up angle using a steady cam. The second reference I took from Sia 'Elastic Heart' where the camera circles the dancing following it forward and backward which I also done when filming the dance scenes for the second time. 

Overall I feel our group matched and accepted most of the conventions of a pop music video however I fell we did challenge some but only to benefit our video to make it feel right for our artist and the song we chose. I feel the main thing we challenged which was the use of black and white throughout gives the video an edge which wouldn't have if the video was in colour.

Feedback on Final Cut

We had a little bit of feedback on the final cut of our music video, almost everyone said it was the best they had seen it so far, even though jess still did not fit the conventions of Pop star everyone still enjoyed it because her performance made up for this and made it that much better. Also people said that her performance got better as the song went on.

The other points people like was the fact the whole thing was now in black and white which gave a real elegant feel to the whole video and everyone agreed that the ending really works.

The only criticisms were that some of the shots were still to long but other than that it was a good music video.

Battlefield Final Cut

Editing over the weekend

As we filmed on Friday and it was due Monday I decided I needed to edit over the weekend, so I booked a Mac book out and spent the whole weekend editing putting all the footage into place and adding the transitions in where they needed to go, the only things I added was the black and white colour filters. After finishing this I decided I wanted to have two images playing over the top of each over at the end to create the sense that they are the same person, unfortunately I am unsure how to do this effectively so I decided to take it in Monday morning and get Hayley to help me finish it off which she did.

 

JESS First and Last

So for this shoot we hired out a different drama room, booked out a tripod, two cameras one 500d and one 1200d, also a crane and two studio lights. We filmed the song over and over again until we had so many cuts of it. Jess brought in 3 different dresses to wear and change into and we shot in lots of different positions and areas around the room. We used the light to add effects as well as using the fan again to create the effect of wind, we also did some extreme close ups as we though they would give us something we don't already have.

From this shoot I believe that we have enough to finish  the video and for the performance to be at a good level so that we don't have to re-shoot again.

Emergency RE-CAST

The performance being carried out by our artist Alex was not to the high standard which everyone was expecting to see in the music video compared against the ballet shots, we decided to re-cast the role even with limited time remaining.

From the constructive criticism feedback we got from our music video we have decided to have Jess, who is a singer and performer to be our artist. By having Jess takeover the role we feel her performance will be much more stronger and natural due to it being realistic as she will sing and perform as if she was singing.

Although this is the third time we are changing our actress for the role of Isabel Beau, our digi-packs and poster will still remain the same as Poppy being on them.

Feedback for screening 4

From this feedback we was told that the narrative looks great and is filmed really well and edited well, however still the performance side is still brining it down as it not strong enough compared to the narrative, so from this we are going to do one last re-shoot but re-cast and use someone else with a stronger performance.

Screening 4

Alex- Last shoot

After looking a the footage which Hayley and Laxmi got from Danson Park all decided we needed to re-shoot Alex again this time getting her to do a live performance set up as if she was performing it in front of a crowd. We decided the only thing that worked from the outside shoot was the effect of the wind so we decided we would use a fan inside to recreate the effect.  

When doing our re-shoot in the drama room we set up white studio lights so that the lighting is different but also similar to the lighting used in the ballet scenes. Alex's costume here was Hayley's prom dress. I was able to get a microphone from music so that we was able to use it a s a prop. When filming we used two cameras in which one was purely tripod based getting wide angles from each side and the other being hand-held getting the close-ups and mid-shots. We also used the crane to get some higher angle shots and give another effect to the video entirely. 

Filming Narrative - Grace

After school today I went back to Megan's house to get some more narrative footage of Grace, I managed to get all the shots I needed including her on the stairs listening to her mum and dad argue, I then also managed to get the shots of her breaking down in her bedroom. 

 

1st shoot with Alex

This is the first official shoot that has been done with Alex, unfortunately I was unable to attend this shoot as I was already busy. However looking at the footage attained I can see that the girls have done a good job from the way they have set up and the use of 2 Cameras, 2 Tripods and 2 Studio lamps. This was a good idea and goes back to the planning we did before hand. We had already planned to do this technique with Poppy but with 3 cameras on tripods and one handheld but had difficulties because she did not know the song. 

They have done well by incorporating 2 different costumes and a change of jewellery which is a good use of misce-en-scene. Although the costume change is a good idea in theory, I do not like the shots where she is in white compared to the ones of her in black this is because I feel the ones in black make her stand out and look much more elegant.

The girls tried filming from different angles but some of these shot do not work, in particular the ones at more of a distance as I feel they contribute nothing to what we are trying to achieve, however most of the front up close ups work really well and now all we really need for Alex's parts are some handheld shots.

3rd Screening

This is the third screening or draft of our music video Battlefield.

Changing of the Artist

After much debate we decided that the artist had to be changed for the sake of saving the music video as we could just not get the shots we needed for the video. By her finding the lyrics difficult to memorize and express made the visuals less in sync then they should be and not flow as effective. 
We have already chosen another girl Alex from year 12, who has done a test shoot to see if she would be a good choice. 

This is the test shoot: 

Re-filming Poppy

Me and Laxmi were the only two available for this shoot, we decided to re-shoot poppy again. This time using more than one camera, as we thought we would get more shots and better cinematography this way. So we set up two different camera angles one in front and one at an angle to generate a better cinematography in our shots.

We also set up lighting to change the shots and make them more effective as the lighting really put more emphasis on her face in the shots.


We was able to get some better shots than before this way however we was still filming our performance in sections as Poppy was unable to learn the lines this meant that there was loss in her performance as she didn't know the song enough to add emotion into it.

After this shoot me and Laxmi had a discussion about whether or not we still wanted to use Poppy as our artist.

Narrative filming- parents argument

We all went to Megan's house after school to film the arguing scene for the parents and car scenes of them driving grace and arguing in the car. We booked out a tripod and Cannon 500d  with the 50mm lens so that the focus pull can be used to create the sense on tension being there while they are arguing. Whilst filming the argument scene it was not easy as Megan's mum and dad were struggling to stay in character as there not use to arguing like that, but the more they did the better it got, Megans mum and dad fit the roles perfectly as her dad is big and masculine and her mum smaller compared to her dad meaning that there was a height difference.

Once we had finished filming the argument scenes we began to set up for the car scenes out side. However here we ran into a problem as the SD card that was given to us was only 8GB  which was not enough space for us to film the car scenes and the inside ones. We then came up with the idea of filming with the iPhone camera, so sat in the car and filmed using the phone trying to keep it steady, and it ended up being really good footage and I think we will be using it in the final piece. 

The shoot today turned out well and we manage to get almost everything we needed. Now we have to wait till Wednesday and see which bit of the footage we like and want to use.

Editing a Small Part of the Dance Sequence

After lesson had finished me Megan stayed and edited through our lunch, we was looking at and editing the dance bits using the shots of the feet, so the low angle shots and the mid shots of the upper body these parts were all filmed handheld with out the tripod which gives the footage a unique feel to it. After looking through the footage with Megan I started placing bits together and then discussing with Megan whether they fit or worked well together. After doing this for about 25 minutes or so I had created a 14 second long dance piece which fit perfectly with the song and flowed at the pace I needed it to. This small piece of our music video looks a good standard after we also changed the saturation of the footage so that it comes out in black and white, this adds a different mood to the piece as a whole because it changes the audiences perception of the the music video.

This is the section of which we edited.

Filming part of the dance sequence

Laxmi and I filmed the start of the ballet scenes of Grace today. We started badly though as the room we had originally planned to use was occupied by someone else which meant that we had to change room. In the room we was shooting in there were no spotlights which meant we had to use a studio lamp that laxmi borrowed from art, although it was not the best quality it give the shots an added effect anyway. The shots that we managed  to get were of a good quality and with a little editing can be made to look very professional. The costume being white looked amazing against the darkness around Grace; it showed the idea of negative spacing. The camera we used the Cannon 500d with a 50mm lens looked really good, however there was an issue with the amount of lighting being let into the camera so next time we may use the 1200d instead. We will need to film the dance at least one more time to get the narrative side of it as well as some other shots of the ballet. 

Experimenting with the 50mm lens

In this lesson we had not planned anything due to both our actors being busy and having no new footage to edit. We decided to have a discussion on how previous shoots had been, so whether they had gone well or not and why? One problem we had that came up was the lack of quality on some of our filming, so I looked into if the school had any other lenses which we could use and it turns out they had a 50mm lens. This was great and is exactly what we need as with this lens we create a depth of field. "A depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appears acceptably sharp in an image" so basically it means that we can pull focus on certain objects/people and leave others out of the focus making them appear blurred. I decided to try this lens out and see how good it was for myself firstly on a moving target which was me and then secondly targets which are stationary. 

After watching these 2 clips, you can see that this lens gives so much more of a professional look to them and can really be of use to us when filming the narrative and dance scenes, and give our music video that little something special about it. 

A film that uses the focus pull technique quite well and shows us a depth of field is the end part of "Whiplash" where it is showing a lot of detail all around the drum kit while he is playing.

Planning for the narrative shoot

We have just created another schedule for when we are going out to film, where and with who this makes it clear to everyone when they need to be free and able to shoot:

Feedback on the second screening