The End

Seneca, the roman philosopher, once said that "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." This summarizes my emotions on the end of my group’s exploration and experimentation with our pop video. Now that we have finally finished it I feel that we have come a long way in terms of our knowledge and skill as well as experience concerning the development of media products. I am more confident now about my work. This does not mean that there were not a lot of problems that had to be worked through. We as a group had to work hard to make the video and create what we wanted to. Whether it be finding the time to edit the video, or waiting for individuals during the shoot day so that we could begin the main part of our video, or merely finding a way to portray our message through the music video and make the audience interpret it correctly. Yet through all hardships one is granted a reward, and we have certainly received ours.

As for the music video there is not a lot that I would improve upon yet there still remains a few things that I wished we did differently. I feel that I could have made more of an effort to make sure the audience correctly interpreted the video but I still feel that by learning about different conventions and how to imitate and subvert them I created a pop video which the audience enjoyed to watch, which is one of the main reasons for creating anything at all, in the hope to make an audience appreciate your work.

The video’s use of jump cuts, discontinuity, a brightly coloured mise en scene and the abstract yet captivating performances of both performers really produced a work which seemed to not only encapsulate the artists artistic image but also grab the audience’s attention and keep it until the artist felt ready to say goodbye until they next would be drawn in by her power.

I am pleased with how well the music video became and as of such though I may be slightly upset over the fact that it is all finished yet I am grateful that it is over now because it means me and my team can continue to something new as the end of one chapter leads to another.

Director's Commentary

As you can see in the youtube link attached below, we gave a director’s commentary to our pop video. This commentary discusses the concept of the entire video and what messages we tried to put across to our audience and which elements we used to attempt this. We prepared a rough guideline of things we were going to discuss but as to keep the atmosphere away from the word tense we improvised our input as well as to make it come across quite colloquial and conversational as to not discomfort the listeners.

Task 3 - What I learnt from my audience feedback

To assess the audience feedback we took data from various sources, these sources were: You Tube, a Focus Group, our peers and our family. Having finally collected this data for our pop video and ancillary products I sought to explain what I learnt from my audience feedback.

The target audience for my pop video was considered to consist of a female audience between 16 to 25 year olds, from JICTAR groups ABC and speculatively DCE. Stereotypically as ABC groups are from a higher socio-economic background and are more educated than the DCE groups, but in either case we believe that all the groups can enjoy the artistic, surreal, mysterious and intellectual side of our pop video. This is because the music video communicates the strength of the female will and how no matter who you are you can make yourself happy by yourself at least; this was our preferred meaning. As the music video is sung in French we would also try and aim it towards the pop video towards a French audience yet as the video is intriguing by itself other individuals should be able to enjoy it. After completing our music video we uploaded the video onto Youtube to distribute it to a much wider audience. Youtube is a website that is usually used by members our target audience; because of this we were able to reach them in a more extensive manner due to the popularity of the website.

However, due to copyright issues, the soundtrack of our music video was removed by the record company who owned the copyright to the music because of this we were not able to find the statistics behind the amount of views the video had received or the comments posted on the video. Therefore we decided to use a focus group to collect the type of feedback we would have gained from Youtube, yet as it would be in person rather than through a website we would be able to collect more personal information and gather a more detailed analysis of the music video.

Our focus group consisted of an opportunity sample of 13 individuals between the ages of 16 to 19; six individuals were males and seven females. We asked them to firstly watch the music video and fill out a questionnaire that contained open questions to gather more qualitative information afterwards we had an informal discussion to merely go through any questions and answer them to gain more information. The questions follow below:

1. What did you think of it?

2. What message did you get from it?

3. How is the artist portrayed/shown/represented?

4. Is there a journey? What does this story tell you?

5. What did you think of their performance?

6. Do you feel they are stars in the making? If so, why?

7. Has it got a serious message about anything? Does it address any serious issues? For example, men or women, and love?

8. Were you entertained throughout? (Diversion)

9. Did you learn anything of was it too confusing?

10. Do you feel connected with any of the characters?

11. Do you feel that we successfully got our ideas across?

12. How do you think we could improve it?

The focus group provided a lot of feedback from a group of attentive teenagers who had a lot to say. As I found out from the responses most of the viewers enjoyed the video yet found it quite hard to understand the overall idea of the video.

Stuart Hall has a theory called encoding and decoding. He argues that media test will be created with a preferred meaning, which is the message that the producer, i.e. my team with our pop video, is trying to send to the audience. In my pop video, the preferred meaning being sent was that women can be self contained, independent, and happy individuals who enjoy life. This is shown through a series of close ups and mid shots with discontinuity editing and coloured layering as well as the planning of the colour co-ordination in costume and mise en scene to create an environment which stimulates happiness and thereby refers back to the idea that the performer, and thereby the audience, can make themselves happy.

Hall says that the audience may give the media text one of three interpretations. The audience may accept the preferred meaning with a preferred reading. They may negotiate a slightly different meaning on their own or they may reject the preferred meaning with an oppositional meaning. A negotiated meaning, as one of our focus group members stated, would be that the performer is merely “reliving the past” through the music video in an attempt to recall happy memories. This negotiated meaning is not far off the preferred meaning but is slightly different. An oppositional meaning, as another member of the focus group pointed out, would be that the link between “reality and fiction is closer than we think”, and that the world around us is merely meant to be a reflection of our thoughts and feelings. This was not at all what we attempted to convey and is thereby an oppositional meaning. All and all we found out that the focus group enjoyed the video as it was visually appealing yet the preferred meaning was generally lost. To improve this we needed to convey another meaning in a stronger and more direct way as the preferred meaning was probably lost due to the ambiguity of the video.

Blumler and Katz argue in their ‘uses and gratifications theory’ that audiences respond to media texts in four ways; these are: Diversion – using media to escape everyday life, Personal Relationships – feeling a sense of attachment with figures in the media, and discussing them with our peer group, Personal Identity – comparing your own life with that of a media character, and applying their experiences and situation to your own life and Surveillance – using the media for information about what is going on in the world. My pop video work on the audience in three of these ways, being personal relationships, diversion and personal identity.

We wanted the music video to grab the audience and let them connect with the unique artist in reference to personal connection, this was attempted by reinforcing by the ethereal world create by her, which was done by using jump cuts and colour combinations with costumes to emphasize the mystical nature and abstract qualities of the music video. Yet, in our feedback we found that only a few of the members felt connected with the performer and these individuals were female, this does of course come as a piece of good news as our target audience was the female audience rather than the male audience yet we still wanted to have more audience members feeling connected with the performer.

Diversion was attempted to be created by making the world of the artist as abstract as possible so it was as if the audience entered a dream world where they were entirely alone from the issues of the real world. Nevertheless in our feedback we found that the audience members of our focus group did feel as if they were entertained throughout the video and that the performance of the video was “definitely” interesting.

Personal identity was created by giving the audience common ground between themselves and the artist as the issues she is dealing with concerning break up in the lyrics of the song are commonplace occurrences as well as universal, we also used the music video to visually communicate how she is different but at the same time similar to our target audience as we have several shots with her trying on different dresses and trying to find the right one as well. This relates to how her attempts to finding the antidote for sadness which our audience will also be seeking. When we asked if this was communicated in our music video we found that our focus group thought that they believed that they too could be happy by doing things on their own much like our performer. This came as a plus to our overall analysis and interpretation of our feedback.

In conclusion we found that our music video did not quite convey the referred meaning that we wanted to communicate yet, nevertheless, we did seem to reach a majority of the focus group by keeping their attention by presenting them a “fun” and “interesting” video, which made them “enthusiastic” about our performers future. This would of course translate that we successfully sold our performers image to our target audience. And with that, in future, I would make sure that we communicate our messages to a stronger degree and keep the audience interested to a greater effect.

Task 2 - A Powerpoint presentation to explore how effective the pop video and ancillary products were in selling the song and the singer

Blog task 2

View more presentations from hurtwoodhousemedia5.

The Creation Of My Magazine Advert

When creating any form of advertisement to sell our performer it is important that we bring the best of her to our audience. As of such when we were designing our magazine advert we found it best to have the same memorable and captivating image that we used for our front cover as our magazine advert as it shows her intensely mysterious nature and exotic animalistic beauty. To do this we edited the picture slightly to have her eyes being the main attraction of the photo. We did this by simply removing the surrounding colour using Adobe Photoshop and bringing out her eyes by means of the ‘Sin City Effect’. The colours, which are highlighted through the editing, also convey her playful, joyful, surreal nature in a very compelling way. Her name and the album title, as with the digipack, are stylish and classy to show her true flair. As for her tour dates, they are placed below the main attraction of the photo to allow the reader to instantaneously see where and when she will be performing so that they do not need to look for the information they want right away.

The Creation Of My Digipack

The creation of my digipack cover required a great deal of planning and thought as we needed to convey to our select audience that Marie is a exotic, mysterious, trendy, surreal and definitely a dangerous performer. She is indeed a performer with real ‘bite’ and magnetism so it stands to reason that we needed to convey this through our digipack.

As we know around 70% of meaning is conveyed through our visual sense, as Khuleshov stated, because of this we needed our front cover to not only display the qualities of Marie but also be eye-catching enough so that people will want to look at it. We did this by firstly having a close-up of Marie’s face, being slightly covered by a black fur scarf, staring into the onlooker’s eyes with real intensity. This, in itself, conveys her exotic prowess and animalistic nature. Yet then we also had the eyes and the eye lashes of Marie intensified by removing the excess colour using Adobe Photoshop. With this the onlooker looks deeper into Marie’s eyes and deeper into her soul to truly see her magnetism as a performer. Her name and the title of the album are put in a classical and stylish font as to appeal to our audience by conveying a true sense of style and ostentatiousness.

As for the back cover we make a slight allusion to our music video as it included the cinema seats from the video.

The track list is placed on a black background putting across the idea that we are in a cinema watching the credits. The back cover is kept simple and uncluttered to keep the sense of style the front cover builds.

The middle pages add flavour to the digipack as it includes an image of Marie’s co-performer on a bike as well a thank you note and on the other page there is a compilation of photos from the shoot of the music video.

The ‘thank you’ page includes Lucas, Marie’s co-performer on a bike. This photo is designed to hit several hotspots thanks to Lucas’ face, the bike and the thank you note. The random quality of the photo also promotes Marie’s playful nature and surreal quality.

The compilation of photos really conveys Marie’s qualities as it includes photos of her in playful poses wearing appealing clothing and, of course, her fur scarf, which gives her animalistic traits life. They also further develop the illusory state of her music with the pictures of Lukas and the background all of which helps draw in our select audience.

Task 4 - How we used new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages.

A director’s commentary on how I used new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

New Media Technology is a whole new form of technology known as digital technology which uses binary code to compress and store files into minute packets. Digital technology is the modern world it exists within computers, cameras, mp3, mobile phones, the Internet, and most technology used in the world today.

New media technology was crucial at every stage of production, but especially so in the shoot and editing stage. There RATIO meant we could be very creative and this was caused entirely by the digital technology. Because of small and light cameras which are easy to light we were able to take over 200 shots and experiment. When we came to editing we had 200 shots to choose from and only used 35 of them in the final version. This meant our ratio was 6:1 which gave us a lot of choice to be creative.

As for the research and development of our pop video we required a great deal of help from the internet as we needed to understand exactly ‘what’ we wanted to included within it. This involved looking at pop videos on ‘www.youtube.com’ to understand how pop videos required a definitive performance and narrative within them. This helped us create our pop video by influencing our storyboard process. We also required the Internet to research the location of our pop video and what props / wardrobe we required and with great ease we were able to find exactly what we needed.

When it came to the planning of the pop video we used digital cameras to take photos of the location to make our storyboard, but then we needed to change our idea and thereby our storyboard. Yet, we did admit how effective it was to use the digital cameras to take the photos and assist in the storyboard as it was a lot easier than drawing them as none of our group members were excelling artists. We also used new media technology with the call sheet as we included a map from ‘www.google.com’ to show all the members of the team where to meet. We used Sony Z1 and DSRS7 cameras, which are digitally based.

The shoot itself included digital cameras as they allowed the a higher ratio of shots shot to shots used as we shot around 198 shots and used 59 which came to about a 2: 1 ratio. This allowed us to shoot more and thereby use more shots, as non-digital cameras would have a lower ratio due to their inferior ability to store information. We also used green screen to allow us to develop our layering effect, which would not have been possible with out digital media.

Post-production included a massive amount of new digital media technology, as we required to edit the film. With new media technology we were able to edit the film in a non-linear fashion, which made it quicker and easier to edit the film as we could make changes anywhere we wanted unlike analogue.

Task 1 - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we began researching and developing our pop video we found that we needed to understand the major conventions of a pop video as to create a compelling video that our audience would appreciate, because of this we began researching and analysing the major conventions of a pop video which Keith Negus lists as the following:

· The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption.

· The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)

· A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement

· Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)

· A possible narrative structure

· A possible performance element

· The flexibility to disregard realism

· Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track

· Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGIs, in-camera effects)

· A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track

· High impact instantly

We wished to imitate most of the conventions of the pop video to give plasir, the expected pleasure to the audience as Barthes explains, and also subvert the conventions in order to achieve jouissance, something new or unexpected in Barthes terms.

With all this in mind we sought out to use the conventions and imitating them and subverting them were we thought fit to promote the image of the singer and message of the song. The image, which we wanted to promote, included an individualistic woman who is exotic, mysterious, new age, secretive, ambiguous, hip, trendy, and surreal. As for the message of the song we wanted to communicate how the singer wishes to make herself happy and kill the pain, which she is feeling.

As we can see in this image of our pop video, we have our performer in the middle of the frame. As Negus stated as one of his conventions for a music promo video, one needs to have the artist featured within the music video with almost no exceptions and as of such we have included our artist through the performance and narrative. However, in this shot we have also subverted the conventions, as we do not have the artist placed in one of the hot spots corresponding with the rule of thirds. This makes the audience look at the singer as not being the ‘central attraction’ but a bit askew, which communicates her trendy and surreal image. It also communicates how in the song she is the main focus of her song.

In this imagine we can see how we have broken continuity for a reason as to appear irregular, strange, and mysterious, which relates to the artists image, yet by doing so we are not only follow Negus’ convention of having the flexibility to disregard realism but also subverting the entire stable continuity convention that is generally followed in all real media products.

With our music video we wished to not only capture the audience right away but also confuse them to initiate the idea that our singer is not only mysterious but also surreal. To do this right away we had our first shot be a ‘rewind’ shot of the singer falling down after dancing for a while. When played backwards it appears that she falls upwards and begins to dance to the music, which captivates the audience due to its almost illicit nature of disregard towards realism. This one shot not only disregards realism but only creates high impact instantly thereby following imitating two conventions at once to provoke the audience to thinking that this singer is strange and quirky but also brave enough to do what she wishes. The shot also carries solid strength in the forms of composition rules as the colours in the background symbolise calmness and coolness making her come across as cool and collected while disregarding realism. Also, as the singer ‘falls’ upwards in a straight fashion the viewer gets the sense through the shape she creates she is going straight up in correlation to fame, fortune, and all the rest.

Our entire video technically uses special effects as we used layers to allow us to place the cinema seats inside the music video as well as the actual music video behind it. Yet, one shot that carries real substance with this idea is the shot where the singer begins to sing to the audience member we eventually find out is her. This shot not only uses a more developed skill of special effects, as we had to edit in the actual singer with a more precise use of the layering technique but it also shows a narrative structure while the overall performance carries on whilst at the same time disregarding realism. It conveys the singers’ mysterious qualities and surreal nature, while at the same time getting across the message that the singer is trying to make herself feel better within the song. Yet, this shot also subverts the convention of having shots cut to the beat as it goes on for a long while and then ends when it the singer sees fit to leave herself, getting a whole another round of messaging across to the audience suggesting that she does not care about the rules.

Our digipack front cover was designed in such a way as to communicate a whole lot about the singer to the audience. As you can see the photo presents the singer staring straight at the person looking at the cover, as if to intimidate the onlooker. With the fur of her coat as well as her eyes we get the feeling that we are looking into the eyes of a lioness or a tiger on the prowler: strong, mysterious, and surreal. The picture follows the rule of thirds well as the hot spots are quite evenly matched out with her, giving the viewer as sense that she is the most important thing there is concerning this album and soon the entire music industry as her image is unrivalled by any other artist.