Editting my ancillary work

Evaluation Part Four - New Media Technologies

"How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of your project?"

The use of the web 2.0 provided a huge advantage for most aspects of our project. For example, throughout the research stages we were able to access thousands of music videos, album covers and websites to give us inspiration for our work. If access to the internet wasn't available, then our research would've taken much, much longer. We would've only been able to analyse CD covers by going into shops or buying them, and music videos would only have been able to be viewed by waiting for them to come on to music channels on the television or again by buying CDs with them on. So not only did the internet save us a lot of time, it also saved us money! It was also very easy to do so as we could use search engines on websites like Google and Yahoo to find websites, and then search engines on individual sites to find particular things. For example, when I used Katy Perry's website to find out information about target audience, I was able to search through the website to find certain forums where I'd be able to gain the information. The internet allows you to reach huge audiences, which enables you to find out diverse, valid results very quickly.

Music websites like Spotify and Last.fm were also very useful as they can recommend artists similar to who you are listening to, so when I wanted to look at music videos by artists similar to Katy Perry, I was able to enter Katy Perry on to Last.fm and was linked to pages of similar artists. This allowed us to find out about codes and conventions of pop music videos very easily, and meant that we could see what shots & mis en scene we should use. This is a very good example of web 2.0 as it shows the interaction between audience and the internet. For example, the way that these music sites recommend similar music to what you are looking for is by saying what other people who listen to the same thing also listen to. So if I was looking for artists similar to Katy Perry, and somebody else had listened to Katy Perry but also listened to RIhanna, this information would be on the website and would show the most popular similarities. Another website like this is Ping which is linked to user's iTunes account allows people to rate and comment on songs with their opinions. In my next evaluation blog entry, I am going to embed a slideshow of shots in our video compared to real media texts which is like a storyboard.

We used iMovie to upload our footage and edit our final video. Although I'd used the programme for my AS project, I still didn't know much about it and it was very different making a music video on it than making the opening scene to a film! We would've been able to create a better quality video if we had the time, as we would've been able to use Final Cut Express, another video editing programme. We used iMovie to sync together the shots we'd taken in different locations to fit it to the song. This was useful because it meant if we wanted to change something we could do it easily as it was all in different sections. For example, we were able to add a performance shot to our storyboard but then if we thought it didn't work well we could delete it and replace it with something else. We were also able to edit sections of our footage to fit the music and sync up the lyrics when it was on the storyboard which made the software quite straightforward. I found iMovie relatively easy to use as we got used to it, but was quite confused at first! But the help section of the programme gave us information to work out the best and easiest ways to produce our work.

When we were producing our ancillary tasks, most of the class used Photoshop to create high quality images. However, I found this programme particularly hard and struggled finding ways to use it and therefore had to use Paint Shop Pro 8 as I had a better understanding of it. This was quite a disadvantage as not only was the programme I used quite an old version, I feel that it didn't produce as high quality work as Photoshop does. Paint Shop Pro still enabled me to produce my ancillary task to quite a good standard though, and also provided help when I needed it. For example, when adding text to certain areas, sometimes I had to change the layer style but I was given warning messages when I had to do so which I found very useful. I was also able to find PSP tutorials all over the web which gave written and visual guides, which is another very useful aspect of the internet.

As mentioned in my previous post, the internet provided a huge advantage for our audience feedback, as were able to post our video on YouTube which is used by a huge amount of people and onto Facebook where we could get direct feedback. Without the internet, audience feedback would've taken much more time and effort. Sites like surveymonkey.com allow you to create questionnaires online, and share them with friends and followers on multiple social networking sites. I was going to use this, but as we'd already created a questionnaire for feedback, I thought it'd be a bit pointless. However, it is another example about how easy the internet can generate fast results, and if I was to complete this project it's something I'd definitely use.

When I have had to complete projects in the past, I've normally had to display them in a Word document, PowerPoint document or sometimes by hand. The use of blogs such as blogger.com and tumblr.com allow you to display your whole project in a small but organised place where you can access from just about anywhere. My blog has enabled me to use direct links to other websites I have used, and even show pictures and videos. Another useful aspect of this is that you can include PowerPoint presentations in a very tidy way by using sites like scribd.com and slideshare.net as they let you upload presentations just by using one window.

Overall, I'd say that the internet has had a massive impact on my project, as it's easy to use, doesn't cost very much and has access to millions of different pages and information. The use of programmes like iMovie and Paint Shop Pro helped me produce my work aswell, but I found them a lot more difficult to use! Although, I think that if I was to use the same programmes in future then I'd be a lot more comfortable with using them.

Evaluation 3 - Audience Feedback

The use of the internet and social networking gave us a huge advantage to gaining feedback on our music video as we were able to reach a large group of people in a short amount of time and for no cost. We still used a few more traditional methods like getting the students from our class and teachers to watch the video with us but we mainly used modern methods. I think the combination of the two allowed us to obtain some genuine feedback and allowed us to see what went well and what we could improve. I also think that using different methods of gaining feedback worked well because we received different criticisms & praise from each way we did it.


"What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The picture above is a screen shot of our video which we put on YouTube. We put the link up on Facebook and a few friends posted it on their 'walls' too, meaning that quite a big group of people were able to view it and give us feedback. The thing we were most surprised about is the amount of views it received in such a short time! We put it online on the Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday evening we had over 100 views which shows how good web 2.0 is at distributing work to large and diverse audiences.

We were quite pleased with the feedback we received, as a lot of people found the video easy and humorous to watch, which is what we had intended our video to be like. A lot of people commented on the storyline of the video, thinking it was about a homosexual relationship. Although we had tried to make our video about friendship which goes against conventions we had found in most pop music videos, we weren't too disappointed because same sex relationships are rarely seen in the pop genre which means that whatever way you look at our video, it's likely to show a very modern representation of people that challenges current conventions. Another thing that was mentioned quite a lot was the light-hearted feel to the video. People who watched it said it would suit our target audience very well as it wasn't as serious as a lot of pop music videos around. Another good aspect of our video that people commented on was our choice of costume as it was quite casual but without looking boring or out of place. A few people said that the clothes we had used made the two characters in the video appear as good role models, which is a very important aspect as we aimed our video at quite young girls/teenagers.

We did also receive some criticisms, for example on the variety of shots used and the quality of filming in some shots. Because we started filming relatively late, it meant that we didn't have a lot of time with the camera which limited how many different shot types we could take in each location. Although the majority of people did think we'd used enough shot types, quite a few people disagreed. I think this goes to show how important time is with filming, if we were to do this task again then I think it'd be a good idea to start earlier to ensure we had plenty of time to film and include many different shot types. On average, our performance scenes rated higher than our narrative scenes. Many of the videos we looked at combined narrative scenes with performance but we wanted to use more of a split. I think that if we had used more narrative scenes then our video might've looked better and maybe would've provided more of an understanding of our storyline.

In our performance scenes where Emma is seen singing on the stage, the quality of the footage is quite fuzzy and blurry. It was very difficult to create a setting similar to performance scenes we've seen in other videos as we were restricted to where we could film. When we used bright lighting, Emma looked far too bright, but when we turned the lighting down, it was very hard to see her! However, we decided to film in this setting anyway, as it was the most appropriate setting for a performance scene which meant that in our final video the stage scenes weren't as strong as the other scenes. Our media teacher also pointed out that a lot of of shots were quite stiff, we were able to add movement by using the Ken Burns tool, but I think if we were to film again, it would be useful to use some panning shots.

Overall, I think we done quite well considering between us we only had very, very little knowledge of filming and editing! I also think that this task has made us realise how important time-management is and that using a timeline that we would stick to would probably have impacted greatly on us!

Evaluation Part Two - Our Products as a Package

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

Through my research, I found that its quite rare to find artists in the pop genre who have a direct connection between their music videos and albums, unlike films where the posters, billboards, trailers and adverts all correlate with one another. For example, Katy Perry's album is called 'One of the Boys' but the colours and mis en scene used are quite feminine. She's pictured outside in a garden, yet none of the songs in the album have anything to do with this! I think a lot of album work tends to reflect the artist's personality rather than the songs that are on it. The images used for single CDs on the other hand are more likely to reflect the song, for example Ellie Goulding's CD cover for 'Starry Eyed' uses a lot of stars and sparkly images which is not only very similar to the title of the song but is also similar to to the music video for the song.

As I created a digipak for an album, I decided to stick to the conventions that I had found in my research and used plain backgrounds. Because the photos we had taken for our ancillary tasks were taken on the day that we had filmed a scene, it meant that the pictures used in my digipak looked similar to the performance shots in the video, which could be seen as developing a convention of real media text. I feel that this is a good development as it shows consistency between advertisement and the music video which allows the audience understand clearly that it's all part of the same package.





Above is a screen shot from my music video and the back cover of my CD ancillary task. They both show Emma stood performing on stage in the same outfit.

Our target audience is girls aged around 12 - 14, an age group that is associated with innocence but with a cheeky, mischievous edge. We tried to convey this behaviour throughout our video and our photoshoot, as we felt it would appeal to our audience. For example, in the video, Emma comes across quite smiley when she is on her own but 'stroppy' and more annoyed when she is around her friend. In our photoshoot, we asked Emma to pose with a hand on her hip and singing into the microphone, which gives off the impression that she's quite confident and outspoken. I feel that the video and ancillary task both portray the way that our target audience behave accurately, but also quite positively. I used dark backgrounds throughout my ancillary tasks as I thought it was the colour that produced the best quality work, and also used a light purple, dark purple and grey colour scheme for every part of my digipak. This was because it looked quite feminine without looking childish. I also used vintage brushes in the background to make the covers look less plain but creating a feminine feel at the same time. The colours and brushes I used could've made the CD look like it appeals to an older age group, but I think because the pictures we used were quite fun and happy looking which makes it look a lot less serious and more friendly, making it suitable for our target audience.




The above pictures are examples of how we made the character in our music video and ancillary task look innocent and friendly but quite cheeky and confident at the same time. I did this as it'd make her appeal more strongly to my target audience.

The poster I produced is very similar to the rest of my digipak, creating more consistency throughout my work. The only difference with my poster is that I used a different font. This was because the font was quite bold and I thought it would be good at drawing attention. Its also very similar to the font used by Rolling Stone music magazine which means that if someone looked at the poster, they'd probably think of music almost straight away.

I think that keeping some kind of consistency throughout the music video & ancillary task is useful, as it means that straight away you can look at one piece of work and know that it relates to another piece, even if its just a font or a colour scheme. Its also a good way of trending and promoting something if consistency is used as it makes it easily recognisable and people can familiarise themselves with the products.

Evaluation Part One - Codes & Conventions

"In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge the codes and conventions of real media products?"

When researching the genre for our media video, we found that the majority of real media products place a big emphasis on romance and intimate relationships. Straight away, we decided that we wanted to do something different so I think that by focussing our video on friendship, we challenged one of the main conventions of a pop music video. It was quite difficult to do so, as there's not a huge amount of difference between romantic relationships portrayed in music videos and friendships. Although we tried very hard to use settings and mis en scene to create a friendship storyline, it wasn't totally obvious in our final piece! For example, our media teacher's first opinion was that we had used a same sex relationship storyline. Although there was still the idea about a relationship in our work, it had in a way challenged a different convention in the way that we had used characters of the same sex. This is a very modern representation of relationships, and something that is seen in only a very small group of music videos. I think that our narrative scenes challenged the traditional conventions of a music video.

A lot of the shots and settings we decided to use were quite similar to ones already seen in real media products. There wasn't many other shots we thought of that haven't been used in other music videos that would be appropriate for our video, so we decided to use camera shots that we had seen in similar videos. For example, in Lily Allen's video for 'Smile', she is seen sat on a bed, and the shots move between close ups to mid shots, which keeps the audience interested. In her video, the way she is sat in her bedroom gives a sense of sadness and almost vulnerability and she looks quite bored, but we thought that the use of a bedroom setting would make our target audience seem relatable to who they are seeing in the video. We were quite selective about the settings we chose to use, as we all thought that mis en scene would play a really important part in trying to convey our storyline and would also signify to the audience about what age we are aiming our video at. For example, in the bedroom scenes, we dressed Emma in a dressing gown which had stars on it. The costume used in these scenes signifies youth which appeals to our target audience.

We decided to use a selection of different shots throughout each setting in our filming. For example, during the performance shots where Emma is on stage, we chose a close up to show expression and emotion of the words being sang. In Kelly Clarkson's videos for 'Since U Been Gone' and 'My Life Would Suck Without You', close ups are used when she is performing on stage which makes what she is singing look powerful and passionate. I also found that mid shots and full length shots are quite often used when there is a performance shot of somebody on stage. This allows the viewer to familiarise themselves with the setting and also creates a sense of excitement especially when fast paced panning shots are used.
Below is a slideshow of shots we used that are similar to real media texts.

similar shots

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When producing the items needed for our ancillary tasks, both me and Susan decided it'd be a good idea to keep the name of the artist and album the same as the original work. The album work we looked at mainly showed a fairly plain background, sometime with computer added images and usually with a close up of the artist's face. Katy Perry's album cover on the other hand has a very busy background, she is seen lying on a sun lounger with a sunny background and different accessories around her. A set would've been used to take this picture but this was too difficult for us to do so I decided to use a plain background. However, instead of using a close up like many other artists do, I challenged the conventions by using a mid shot that we took of Emma leaning on the stage with her arms. I cut this out so it looked like she was leaning on her name instead which gives off an impression that she is quite fun. Not only would this appeal to our target audience, it also goes well with the album title (One of the Boys) as she looks quite playful. A lot of album covers I looked at were quite general in the way that they didn't relate too much to any of the songs includes. CD singles on the other hand used images that were related to the song on the CD. As we took the pictures used for our ancillary task on the day that we filmed our performance scene, it meant that the outfit used on the CD cover is the same used in the video for Hot n Cold. This is the only similarity to the song, the colour scheme and the pattern used in the background doesn't relate to the song. In my ancillary task, I think I mainly used the same conventions as other CDs use, the only aspect I developed was the use of the picture which is similar to what is seen in the music video. My back cover was also quite similar to real albums, I used a picture of Emma on the right of the case and the list of songs next to her on the right. I also used a gradient to make the picture look quite hazy which is quite similar to Rihanna's 'Loud' album. Although they don't look the same at all, the conventions are quite similar.


The above pictures both show the artist positioned on one side of the case, with the song list next to them & a kind of hazy effect.

The font I used on my work is very similar to the font used on Katy Perry's album. I chose it because it's very fun and girly which would appeal to my audience. I decided against using the pink and blue colours that are used on Katy Perry's album however because against my plain background, they made my CD cover look like it was appealing to a much younger age group than I was aiming at. I still used feminine colours but darker shades to make the CD look more mature but still fun.

All the posters I looked at used the exact same background as the CD cover, just enlarged to A4 size. However, I decided to challenge this convention and create a new image for my poster. I used another of the photos taken from our photoshoot and kept to the same colour scheme to create consistency throughout the whole of my digipak. I used a font similar to the one used by Rolling Stone magazine which is very recognizable and relates well to music topics.

Similarities To Other Videos

Before producing our video, both me and Susan looked at a range of pop music videos to figure out what codes and conventions were used so we knew what we should include in our video. In the slideshow below are some shots from our music video that are similar to scenes we have seen in real media texts.

similar shots

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Our Video

This shows our video that we've editted on iMovie. As it's currently the Easter holidays, we're unable to edit anything that people have suggested we change as we don't have access to the software we've been using!

UPDATE
Due to time restrictions, we have decided to keep our video as it is. Although there are some things we'd like to improve, we simply don't have the time to do so! All improvements are written about in my audience feedback and evaluation blog entries.

Video Feedback

On Wednesday, we all had to show our music video to the two media teachers and the rest of our class to get feedback on what we've done well and what we can improve. We generally got good feedback, even though we've still not finished the actual video yet! We have a good mix of narrative and performance shots, but we need to work on syncing every part of the video to the music. One of the teachers commented on our theme of our video and about the characters we used. We decided to focus the video on friendship issues rather than relationship issues which is quite often found in videos of similar genre, as seen in the screen shots below.

Rihanna








Pixie Lott



Katy Perry


However, she thought that our video showed a good example of traditional representation as you could interpret the video as being about a same sex relationship.


We were told that we had a really good balance of narrative and performance shots that complemented each other well. We also got good feedback on the narrative scenes as the story fitted really well to our target audience, and also flowed well. However, the lighting on the main performance scenes (where Emma is on stage) were criticised because of the quality of the shots. The lighting was very bright but the picture ended up being quite fuzzy and blurry. Filming in this setting was quite difficult as we were only able to see Emma clearly if the lighting was very bright, which resulted in the poor quality afterwards. Susan decided to upload our video onto YouTube and then onto Facebook, a social networking site that we both regularly use, to get feedback from a wide range of people both who we know and don't know. This picture is a screenshot of the post and the comments we recieved.



One person commented on the miming of the music, Emma didn't actually sing the song for all of our filming, sometimes she just mimed which could explain why it doesn't look as good as it could. This is definitely something that should be considered if we were to refilm some scenes.

Mr Rees, our media teacher, said that some of our shots were a bit still and said we should look at the Ken Burns tool on iMovie. This allowed us to select a certain area of a shot and zoom out in the direction we chose, which made it look like we had used more panning shots throughout filming.


Our Questionnaire
To get even more feedback on our video, we decided to create a questionnaire to give to other students between the ages of 16 and 19.

How would you rate our music video out of 10?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - 0
5 - 4
6 - 5
7 - 11
8 - 2
9 - 3
10 - 0

How would you rate the performance out of 10?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - 0
5 - 0
6 - 7
7 - 8
8 - 9
9 - 1
10 - 0

How would you rate the narrative out of 10?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - 0
5 - 3
6 - 9
7 - 12
8 - 1
9 - 0
10 - 0

Does the narrative create an easy to follow story?
Yes - 19
No - 5
Don't know - 1

Does our video look like a pop video?
Yes - 22
No - 3

Have we used a variety of different shot types?
Yes - 18
No - 7

The results show that all students rated our video with a score higher than 5, with the majority of people rating it as a 7. I think this shows that overall, our video is of good quality but still has room for improvements.
Our performance scenes rated higher on average than the narrative scenes, I think this is because we only had a very few scenes where only narrative was used, making it harder to distinguish between the two. Most people thought our storyline was easy to follow, which I agree with as we made it quite basic and light hearted. 22 out of 25 people thought our video looked like a pop video which is very good as that's what we had intended it to look like! The main things I think we could improve on would be using more shot types and making our narrative scenes more interesting.

Video Editing

Due to the late start in our filming, we won't have time to make a rough cut of our video with iMovie and then make our final video on Final Cut Express so we're using iMovie to produce our final video. We filmed each setting around 3 or 4 times to get different shots, for example when we filmed the bedroom scenes, we did a close up and a mid shot of her lying on the bed and a close up of her sat on the bed. This meant that when it came to editing, we had a lot of footage to choose from! As we could hear the music in the background of our filming, it made it easier for us to put together. We started from the beginning of the song and worked our way to the end, combing performance and narrative shots throughout. We'd select quite a long piece of footage and then once we'd put it onto the storyline we'd cut it shorter to make it consistent with the previous shot. Once we'd put a sequence together to fit the whole song, we applied the actual song to the storyline and blocked the audio from the original shots. Because we put the music on last, it meant we had to crop some parts of the video to sync with the lyrics. The last thing we did was add a tagline to the beginning and end of the video which gave information about the name of the song and the artist.

Filming Day 3

For our final day of filming, we used the school canteen in John Cabot to film our last narrative scene of the music video. We went in between break and lunch time so it was relatively quiet and filmed Emma sat near the window, at a table by herself. Then we filmed Susan (who was also filmed in the garden scene at Emma's house) coming through the door and walking straight past her. We filmed this part from many different angles for example, an over the shoulder shot of Emma so we could see Susan walking towards her, a close up of Emma to see her expression as Susan walks past and a two shot of both of them to give the audience a clear idea about what's going on. Filming in here was quite difficult as the canteen is surrounded by windows, and as our filming day was sunny, it meant we had to position the characters and camera in a place where we could have good lighting without any shadows or making them seem too brightly lit.

Filming Day 2

We managed to film most of our scenes on Tuesday, but needed to add an extra performance shot. We have a drama studio in BBA which is used for several performances, and has staging blocks with a lighting system so we thought this would be a perfect setting for a performance shot. The curtains in the studio are black which were useful as we were able to create a plain background, making sure that the main emphasis would be on Emma. We used some stage blocks, at first just using one level but then moving one on top of the other so she was more central to our shots. We chose different angles to shoot from, one low angled shot to make her look more powerful as she was singing and the attention would all be on her, we used a close up of her face as she was singing and another shot where she was stood in the middle of the camera and you could see the whole of her body. We filmed each of these shots twice as we didn't know what lighting would look best on the screen. We filmed once using a spotlight which focussed on Emma, and another one with just some background lights so she was visible but not as blatant.

Filming Day 1

We chose to start shooting on a Tuesday as all three of us in our group have a media lesson in the morning and are free for the rest of the day, as well as this our friend Emma who we'd asked to be in our video was free too meaning that we had a whole day to film. We were really lucky to choose this day as it was really sunny outside which worked well for the style of our song but also provided good lighting for us and enabled us to easily work outside.

We started off by choosing an outfit for each scene we were going to film, picking mainly casual clothes for the majority of the scenes and a more dressy outfit for just one of the performance shots. We felt that this reflected our target audience as they are quite a young age and would tend dress in more casual clothes than the outfits that are mainly seen in similar music videos.

We started off in the morning by filming all the shots we need indoors, for example, in the bedroom mirror and on the bed. then around midday when it was slightly warmer, we filmed our outdoor shots like where the two girls are sat on the bench and when the main character was sat on the wall outside. We had to move the camera into different positions to make sure we had a good amount of lighting but without having shadows over Emma's face as it would affect the quality of our filming. We mainly filmed our shots using the whole song, but there were a few shots where we just filmed random parts without music so we could use them between different performance shots throughout the video.

We were quite lucky when filming outside as the street which Emma's house is on was relatively quiet, especially seeing as we chose to film during the day when most people are at work or school.

Ancillary Task - Poster

We also had to produce a poster for the album release of our artist. I decided to keep the colour scheme the same as the rest of my digipak because it gives a sense of familiarity. A lot of the promo posters I looked at used the same colours and pictures too, and some just used a bigger version of the picture used on the album front cover. I used a font which is similar to the font used by the famous music magazine, Rolling Stone as its a very recognisable type of writing that people associate with music. Its also very bold which draws attention.

Ancillary Task - CD Digipak

Part of our task was to produce a CD front cover, back cover and two CD inserts for our artist. To start with, I used Photoshop as it was already installed onto the computers in my media class. However, as I'd never used it before I found it very difficult to produce good quality work on it and decided to use Paint Shop Pro instead. Although I needed some help to work out how to use certain tools, I found it much easier to use than Photoshop. After we'd filmed the performance scenes in the drama studio on our second day of filming, we decided to take some photos that we could use for our ancillary task. I chose the photos I liked the best and using the edge seeker selection tool on Paint shop pro, I cut Emma out from the backgrounds which would make it easier to produce new images. I used the same font colours throughout all of the pictures included in my digipak, and made all of my backgrounds black. I decided to use some vintage style brushes to use in the background of my front cover as it made it look less plain without making it take the attention away from the picture of Emma. I used a similar background for the CD inserts to keep consistency throughout my digipak. On the back cover, I didn't want to keep a plain background because it looked quite boring but I didn't want to use the vintage brushes again as I thought it would be too repetitive. So I decided to use a gradient for my background to give it more texture. It still looked quite plain when I finished so I added a vintage brush to match the theme. My front cover, insert and back cover can all be seen below.

Front Cover


Thank You Insert


Lyrics Insert



Back Cover

Ancillary Task - Photoshoot

When we finishing filming our perfomance scenes in the dance studio at sixth form, we decided it would be a good opportunity to take photos for our ancillary tasks. Using the same outfit used in the video, the same stage and lighting, we took several different pictures in different ways, for example we used some close up shots which we thought would work well on front covers and some some midshots we thought could be used in our inserts. A selection of the photos can be seen below.

Our Music Video Locations

To decide the best locations for us to film our music video, we came up with a list of places that were easily accessible but still applicable to our genre.

Location ideas

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From this, we thought of how we could incorporate our ideas into the locations we had picked, for example we thought that a performance scene would work well in the bedroom whilst narrative scenes would be better suited to inside school or outside in the garden.


As a lot of music we looked at uses romantic storylines in their videos, with a much smaller focus on friendships so I mainly thought about films from the "chick flick" genre to come up with locations that would reflect our target audience. For example "Mean Girls" has a big emphasis on different friendship groups in a canteen so i thought that using the school canteen would be a really good way of reflecting the age and theme of our storyline.


The above picture shows the cafeteria scene from the film Mean Girls, it emphasises the age of the audience we are aiming the video at and also links in well with the storyline of our music video.

Video Pitch

Before filming, me and Susan decided it would be a good idea to come up with an idea of what we wanted to do so we know what we we're doing when it comes to filming. Being organised in this way will mean that we won't waste anytime whilst we have the camera, trying to work out what shots will work best. The pitch can be seen here.

Ancillary Task Inspiration

Although a lot of the CD's I've seen use a close up on the front, I think I'm going to choose a mid shot photo instead, which is quite similar to the 'Teenage Dream' album by Katy Perry. However, instead of using pale colours like the background on her cover, I am going to stick to the convention of using a plain background like Rihanna uses on her 'Good Girl Gone Bad' album. Katy Perry uses a colour theme of pink and blue for her writing which is something I may include too, and I am also going to use a similar, girly font.

Filming

We'd originally planned to start filming this week but the person we wanted to film hasn't been in for a while so we're going to have to find somebody else very quickly so we can start filming! I'm worried that this might put us behind schedule and we won't be able to produce a video as good of quality as we'd originally planned!

Initial Video Ideas

Andrew Goodwin suggested that music videos are 'just an extension of the lyrics.' For our music video, we want our narrative scenes to reflect what is being sang as I think it's pretty difficult not to! The lyrics and music include a range of emotions, from being kind of impatient and annoyed, upset and angry to eventually feeling happy and fun again, and we would like to portray these emotions in our video. We've decided to use quite simple settings, for example, inside a house, in & around the school, in fields, in shops. Not only will this be easy to do, it also reflects the areas that our target audience spend a lot of time in which will make the video more relatable. We will be putting most of the focus onto one character who will be in all of the performance and narrative shots, and we may include a few friends and some other background characters to make it seem more realistic. I think a performance scene where the lead character is singing on stage will work well as its seen in quite a few pop music videos and is a good way of entertaining the audience. Mis en scene will be based on our target audience, for example, if we film a scene in a bedroom, then we will make sure that cosmetics and girly things are on show. I also think it's important to use a range of different shots to express different emotions, if there is part of the song where the lyrics or music is quite vulnerable or sad, then a high angled shot will be useful for making the main character look quite small.

Lyrical Analysis

Susan decided to analyse the lyrics of the song we have chosen to produce a video for, we felt that this was important as it would enable us to come up with a relevant narrative storyline which reflects what is being sang. The lyrical analysis is here.

Album Promo Posters

As part of our ancillary task, we have to create a poster for our song. Using panicposters.com I looked at some posters that have been used for other artist's singles. As the song we have picked is in the pop genre, I clicked on the pop category of the website so I could look at similar artist's work. One that stood out for me was the promo poster for Lily Allen's single, Littlest Things.

The poster is split into two sections, the bigger section is a picture of Lily Allen dressed in quite a 50's style outfit but with cartoon tall buildings behind her which is quite modern. At the bottom of the picture of her is a box with the title of the song in it, again in quite 50's style writing which is quite tall and thin. The logo she uses on her album is in the top corner of the picture which just says her name in quite bold writing, which stands out even though its quite small. The bottom section of the poster is probably half the size of the other part but contains a lot more writing and information. Again, the title of the song is used again in the same font, but this time much bigger. Below is the release date of the single, which the actual day is red compared to the majority of black writing on the rest of the page. Again, this stands out on the page but also fits in with the colour scheme of the poster. Underneath this is a short message about how you can preorder the single using your mobile phone, this is wrote in white writing with a red background which is different from the rest of the poster, the red background also indicates to the reader that its important to read. Underneath the border, right at the bottom of the poster, is the record label logo which is in quite big, bold writing which again stands out.

Again, Susan analysed work by Lily Allen and Lady Gaga, to see the poster analysis, click here.

Codes and conventions of a pop album cover

From what I have seen, album covers don't really tend to use a very busy background, which gives more focus for the artist on the front cover. Both Katy Perry's and Rihanna's albums seem to use quite a feminine colour scheme, although they are very different to one another. The covers tend to give a vague idea about what music to expect on the album, but generally I think they mainly reflect the artist's personality. Rihanna and Lady Gaga's albums both use a close up on the front cover, whilst Katy Perry's album includes a close up inside the CD. I think this indicates that close ups of artists are quite a big convention of a pop album cover.
For my ancillary task, I think that one of the most important aspects will be using a feminine colour scheme throughout. I will use a close up shot for one of the inserts, but I'd like to do something different for the front cover so will possibly use a mid or full length shot.

Rihanna - Loud Album Cover

Unlike the Katy Perry album cover I analysed, Rihanna's cover for her album Loud uses a close up of her face rather than showing her whole body. In fact, the album cover is completely of her face and only part of her hair & shoulder is visible. She has her eyes closed which limits the interaction with the audience but gives a sense of mystery which intrigues the audience to find out more as nothing is revealed. Her face is quite plain, with minimal make up used and dark eyelashes, but her lips and hair are both very bright red which indicates some degree of sexiness, which correlates with many of her songs. Although some aspects of traditional representations view women as sexual objects, which to a certain extent is shown by this album cover, the way that Rihanna's face dominates the whole cover shows a more modern representation of females too.



The back of the cover, in contrast with the front, has used much softer colours making Rihanna seem a lot more vulnerable and soft than she does on the front. The angelic image will appeal to young girls in our target audience as its very feminine and pretty but still has an edge with the use of the red tint and the red writing. The writing used is fairly plain and simple, just using capital letters for each song and keeps to one side of the cd, leaving space for another picture of Rihanna.

The inside of the cd uses a picture similar to the one on the front cover, but its a bit softer, as the colours aren't as bright. Again, an extreme close up of Rihanna's face is used but this time one of her eyes are open whilst the other is hidden under her hair. This gives off the impression that she's quite mysterious like on the front cover, but also gives a bit more interaction between her and the audience. Her lips aren't red in this photo, making her seem more innocent than on the front cover, but she is holding a red rose close to her mouth which again indicates sexiness, but also femininity at the same time.

Overall, I think that the pictures used in Rihanna's cd case really give the audience an idea about her and her music. I think the Loud cd gives the impression that her music, and Rihanna herself, is quite sexy but feminine and powerful at the same time. Rihanna's fan base probably is a bit older than Katy Perry's but probably is largely female dominated, but I think this cd case has helped as I think that we should reflect the type of music and meanings behind the songs when we produce our ancillary task.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream Album Cover

Using www.allcdcovers.com, I was able to analyse the album over, the track listing on the back cover and the cd insert of different cd's. This is the original CD cover for Katy Perry's most recent album.

The colours in the background are very soft, for example the pastel pink cloud/candyfloss that Katy Perry is pictured lying on, and the pale blue sky. The main focus is on Katy herself, who is right in the centre of the picture. Another reason she stands out is because her dark hair contrasts with the paler colours. There are two titles on the cover, one is just her name in shiny pink and blue writing and the other is the name of the album, "Teenage Dream" which is in white and pink stripy writing, made to look like candy canes. The CD cover is very similar to the video of the first single released from the album, "California Girls". In the video, she is seen sitting on clouds and waking around with big sweets everywhere, for example walking gummy bears. The writing on the cover reflects the sweet theme whilst the picture of Katy is taken from the exact same setting as the video. This style also reflects her personal image which is kind of 1950s, for example, dresses with bold colours and pictures of fruit on them.



This is the back cover of the cd which shows all the songs on the album. The same picture from the front cover is used on the back, but without the picture of Katy Perry on the front, just the list of songs. Again, like the front cover, pink and blue writing is used and the letter 'O' in different words has been replaced with round shaped white & pink sweets. The pale colour scheme and use of sweets used throughout the cd case indicates that Katy Perry is quite feminine and would appeal to young, 'girly' females, as we found in our target audience.



Finally, I looked at the picture inside the cd case and on first impressions it looks very different to the front & back covers. It looks formal and quite royal with the way her hair has been styled and the crown and jewellery that she is wearing, which contrasts with the fun images that I looked at before. However, when you look closer at the picture you can see that the crown and jewellery is actually made up from sweets which again follow the theme from the front and back covers. This picture really conveys a humorous side of Katy Perry which is often seen in her personal life from the media, which I think enables the audience to relate with her & her music.

To see Susan's analysis of Lily Allen's and Lady Gaga's album covers, click here.

Codes and conventions of a pop music video

From analyzing music videos of other artists, its clear to see there are a few similarities between them. The females in the video show a very modern representation of women, for example, in the video for 'Hot n Cold', and the video for 'Tik Tok', both Katy Perry and Kesha are very powerful, independent and confident looking. This is very different to the traditional representation of women as its usually the men who have the power. Both videos are filmed on very sunny days, and the lighting is bright too so the videos look very colourful and vibrant, giving quite a happy feel. There are very few scenes, if any scenes at all in both the videos where only narrative is used. Both videos seem to combine the narrative & performance scenes so the artists are singing throughout the storyline. One difference is that while both videos seem to reflect the meaning of the lyrics (Andrew Goodwin) only Katy Perry's video uses the theory of equilibrium (Todorov).
Both videos use a lot of close ups, especially of the artist when they are singing which shows emotion.

I think in our video, we will use some conventions but won't stick completely to what we have seen. For example, I think we should do some filming on a sunny day, as we want our video to look quite happy. On the other hand, we are going to use some narrative scenes where no performance is used at all.

Performance vs Narrative

As mentioned in my previous post, Jamie T separates narrative and performance shots in his video for If You Got The Money. To show this, I decided to screenshot every shot that is shown in the first 40 seconds of the music video and put them onto Power Point. I placed each shot onto a different slide, and made two different presentations, one showing the original order of shots as seen in the video, and the other separating the performance shots from narrative shots.

Original Order of Shots

Jamie t – if you got the money original shots

View more presentations from stacypringle.

These are the shots in the order they would've been filmed in.

Jamie t if you got the money ordered shots

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Jamie T - If You Got The Money

Jamie T fits into the indie/alternative genre which also includes bands like The Maccabees and Bombay Bicycle Club. I decided to look at his music video to see how it differs from the other videos I've looked at from the pop genre and found that there was a split between performance and narrative shots. In the Katy Perry and Kesha videos I looked at, the narrative shots were combined with performance so this If You Got The Money was very different. Jamie T's video is fairly simple, using only three settings for the narrative shots and one for the performance shots. The video uses quite a few close ups that are slowed down as the song first starts which not only fits in with the slower paced start to the song, but also introduces the different characters of the video to the audience. Most of the narrative shots throughout the video are close ups or mid shots, they show different guys dancing badly which uses mid shots, whilst the girls' reactions are shown by using close ups. All of the shots have been put into slow motion whilst the performance shots aren't in slow motion, making them appear much more faster. Close ups are used again for the performance shots, but more extreme close ups are used especially for musical objects like the microphone, symbals and guitar. The lighting is a lot darker than the other videos I looked at, both the narrative and performance shots have been filmed in a club, with narrative on the dark dancefloor and the performance on the stage which uses red lighting.

Kesha - Tik Tok

Kesha was listed as one of the most similar artists to Katy Perry on the last.fm website, so I decided to analyse the video for her song "Tik Tok" and compare it to "Hot n Cold". Like Katy Perry's video, the narrative and performance parts of the video were linked in together, but Kesha's video used a much more basic storyline. The video was pretty much about going out, having fun and partying, there wasn't really a straightforward beginning and ending. Similarly, the video for "Tik Tok" also used very bright colours, and the outdoor scenes were sunny once again. However, this video used black and white editing in some parts, for example on extreme close ups of objects and body parts. Both of the songs are upbeat, so the colours and weather almost reflect the feeling of the music. One very noticeable comparison between the two videos, is that both main characters were seen riding bikes. This could perhaps be seen as a deviation from tradition female representation, as physical activity and sport are stereotypically more associated with males.
The shots are mainly made up of close ups, mostly of Kesha's face but sometimes focusing on other objects. In parts, the video completely follows Andrew Goodwin's theory about videos being an extension of the lyrics, for example when the line "I'm talking pedicure on our toes, toes" is sang, a close up of her feet is shown, and at the end of the video, when the line "Now the party don't start til' I walk in" is sang, she is shown walking through a door into a room full of people. The camera is quite shaky which goes along with the lyrics of the song, as its about partying which gives a slightly jumpy effect to the video. Some of the cuts between shots are quite jittery which again goes with the theme of the lyrics but also matches the music of the song.

Similar Artists and Music Videos

I thought it would be a good idea to look at other music videos by other female pop artists to see if they used the same conventions in their music videos. I done this by using last.fm, a music website which uses social networking to recommend different songs and artists. By using this website, I was able to find other artists who are similar to Katy Perry, which were ordered by highest similarity to lowest similarity.

Katy Perry - Hot n Cold (Music Video)

To see what conventions were used, I decided to analyse the original Katy Perry video to help us decide if we should use the same for our video. The video combines narrative with performance all the way through, and follows the theme of the lyrics. Four or five different settings are used throughout, the first starts in a church which is very stereotypical 'girly' and fairytale. The next scenes however are very different from traditional representations of females. Katy Perry is seen in the video riding a bike and chasing after a male character, and the scenes at the end of the video use very urban settings and costumes. Although the costumes change throughout the video, each one uses very bright colours. The lighting is also very bright and the outdoor scenes all have sunny weather.
At the beginning of the video, when the church setting is used, a lot of over the shoulder shots are used between Katy Perry and her love interest to show where the words are coming from and who they're aimed at. A mixture of close ups and mid shots are used throughout the video, the mid shots are mainly for showing Katy and the guy, as they are the two main characters in the story. Some extreme close ups are used particularly on clothing, for example in the stage scene, there is a big emphasis on Katy's sunglasses and belt.

Susan analysed one of Lily Allen's videos, to see her analysis please click here :)!

Copyright

As we are using another artist's song, we had to follow copyright rules and ask for permission to use their track.