Question 1- In what
ways does your media product use develop and challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
Music videos are conventionally short films, no longer than
4 minutes, that integrate music, songs and imagery. They are usually used as a
marketing and distributing tool to promote new music, but sometimes they are
just for artistic purposes, for example like this one that I’ve made. There’s
various different styles of music videos. These include performance, where the
video mainly consists of artists performing, for example Beyonce’s ‘love on
top’ or Chris Brown’s ‘Yo’. This isn’t too common because not every artist is
naturally as talented as that. The
second type of music video that is commonly used is narrative- a video
following a storyline. It can be linear narrative, following a story in a
chronological order or fragmented narrative, in a non logical order. A good
example is Taylor Swift’s ‘white horse’. The 3rd most common type is
cameo mixed with narrative, and this is the one I used for my video. The artist
features in a video but they do not perform, they just lip sync to the song.
The reason I use this mixed style is because In my target
audience research, I found that it is the most popular style in RnB and pop
music genres, which is where my chosen song sits. It is the style that teens
prefer because it is relatable and helps them connect with the artist. The song
‘location’ targets teenagers that use social media as a social barrier when
communicating in relationships. Khalid expresses how it frustrates him speaking
to a girl online and how he just wants to see her in person.
In this song and music video, Khalid is a story teller,
using thought through beat, a theory by Andrew Goodwin, which means seeing the
meaning of lyrics in your head, using a relationship between music and visuals,
for example when he mentions the sending location idea, I showed a phone
sending someone their location.
The most common platform to release music videos is YouTube.
Some artists only put their videos on vevo if they are more innapropriate. Or
on other sites that are less common, like Tidal or Vimeo. These are usually
used by artists who are already established and don’t need to advertise their
music videos as much, for example Jay Z.
It is conventional in pop and rnb music videos to begin with
an establishing shot, such as Ed sheeran’s perfect or j hus’s bouff daddy. I
also began with an establishing shot, in the gardens that I filmed in. When the
camera tilts up towards the sky and then comes back down to reveal the subject,
me, It turns into a very long shot, also common in music videos to reveal the
artist in the video and show the audience who the main focus is going to be.
When the title of my music video comes up, I used Ariana
Grande’s “everyday” intro as inspiration, where she appears to be pushing the
words off the screen with her hand. I did something similar, which took a few
takes.
As the video is starting, a different scene is intercutting
with the narrative order of the video, a purple scene that was filmed in a
completely different location. This technique, also theorised by Goodwin, is
called Amplifying, manipulating camera shots and images and showing them
repeatedly in a video. I did this because it reminds me of another rnb video I’ve
already mentioned, Bouff Daddy, where J hus continuously cuts to a different
location throughout his video.
In the next few shots I used a very wide shot to show the
entire bench as I knew I would be integrating different clips of myself to make
it look as though I was cloned. I got this inspiration from Bouff Daddy again,
when j hus has many versions of him on screen at the same time. This seems to
be a newer editing style used in this genre.
Next, I mirrored myself lip syncing because at one point I
look to the right, so mirrored it seemed like I was looking at myself. This was
inspired by the French musician Yuksek’s video, “off the wall”. I thought It
may add some visual variety in the video and make sure the clips weren’t all
too similar.
I challenged conventions of rnb music videos in some aspects
of the video, for example There are mid shots of me leaning against a brick
wall, not lip syncing just looking directly at the audience and very low angles
showing me sitting on a wall. These almost never appear in this genre of music
but I wanted to use them anyway because they focus on the artist, linking to
Goodwin’s star image theory. The main lip sync shot typical of rnb videos was a
panning movement, following the artist as they walked past the camera. I
included direct eye contact to let the audience feel they were being spoken to
by the artist and maybe relate to the music more.
Digipaks are typically presented in gatefold book styles
held inside plastic clear CD cases. The cover purpose is to advertised the
contents of the album, convey the artist’s theme and genre and to serve as a
primary promotional image to create a ‘look’ for the artist. An example of this
is khalid using his hometown for the location of his American teen album cover,
showing his roots. I used this same layout for my digpak.
Conventionally, album covers have little text, usually just
the album name and the artist’s name sometimes. With more established artists
such as rihanna and beyonce, their names may not appear but for my artist I
chose to include his name as he is a very new singer.
The back of album covers usually include the barcode and
record company/year released and copyrights at the bottom so I followed that
convention to make my product seem professional. I added a list of the song
titles within the album, which is on 99% of digipak back covers to give the
audience and over view of what they can expect to hear in the album when they
pick it up.
2- How effective is
the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
For my front cover, I made it a portrait style which is
typical of this genre’s digipaks, it helps build star image in order to sell to
masses. In my audience feedback research I found that teens are more likely to pick
up digipaks with the artist on them rather than with just artwork. I used
bricks behind me in both some shots of the video and also in the ancillary
products. This created a coherent theme throughout the products and made them
easily recognisable, and helped all the products promote each other. The
audience can clearly spot the bricks on all the products and recognise that
they are linked products.
I do think my audience would be attracted to these products
because they would see a teenage girl and be able to relate to her and her life
experiences that are mentioned in the song lyrics.
Album posters conventionally are supposed to attract
audiences and encourage them to purchase a single or an album. It usually
follows the same colour scheme as the album cover and digipak, which my
products achieved with the brick backgrounds and matching texts throughout the
products. The fonts used on my poster and digipaks match to link with each
other and so the audience can easily recognise that they are from the same
artist for the same album release and to ensure cohesion and cement the
artist’s look. Katy Perry used this same
technique on a lot of her album covers by having her name written in the same
font across multiple products, to help build her iconic star image.
Usually the artist’s name will be the biggest text on the
poster, to quickly draw in audience attention and their name follows below
that. This makes their brand easy to find and remember. I used this technique
when making my poster, as well as adding the artist’s website and social media
link, as I found was common on a lot of other album posters.
3- How did you use
media technologies in the construction, research planning and evaluation
stages?
The whole video was filmed on my iPhone 7+ because on the
day of filming, my camera died. However, the phone camera did an alright job
but I do think it would have been a bit better quality with the camera. To
transfer the clips to my laptop for editing, I used airdrop so it only took a
few seconds to do. The longest part of the process was editing in final cut
pro. During the editing process, the first thing I did was put a feather
distortion filter over all the clips for a vintage, non conventional film
camera style. The reason I did this was the setting of the video was a very old
garden and building so I wanted the video to have that contrast of a dated
setting with a younger more modern protagonist. I used a title setting that
meant the words faded off the screen as my hand moved to the left, creating the
illusion that I was interacting with the text.
For this shot where the colours look very purple, that was
actually done in colour board. This is how the shot looked before I played
around with the colour hue settings and decided on a deep purple. For dramatic
effect as the song was ending I added the raindrops effect on top of those
clips.
In the clip of me and my clones sitting on the bench I added
the bokeh effect to give a slightly surreal feel, complimenting the unrealistic
layering effect. This would have worked better if I had been using a tripod,
rather than a handheld technique, because syncing all the clips took a lot of
blurring edges.
Throughout the video I used the cutting effect to create choppy,
sudden transitions rather than smooth cuts. This helped the visuals fit better
to the song.
During the entire research, filming, editing and this
evaluation stage the two main platforms I have used are blogger and YouTube.
YouTube to upload my music video and evaluation video that you’re watching
right now, and blogger to keep track of all the research I’ve done and organise
the process and the planning effectively. This also allowed my teachers to stay
updated with my progress. I think it was a very effective way of documenting
everything. The sites I used the most for research was older student’s past
blogs, and Youtube to research other artists.
I took advantage of phone technology so much when editing
and creating my ancillary products. For my digipak, I used an iPhone to take
the photos and then uploaded those photo choices to the VSCO cam app, because I
am very familiar with it and found it a lot simpler to understand than
photoshop. I cropped and straightened the images, raised contrast to make me
stand out more and then added a subtle vignette effect around the edges for a
professional touch. Next, I used the Phonto app to apply the titles and any
other smaller text, then chose the image I preferred and that was it. Very
simple to use in my opinion.
Because of using my phone, applying images such as the
barcode on the back cover was easy to do. I used the app Moldiv to create a
collage in order to make the middle and insides of the digipak, by adjusting
the frame sizes and then adding a very thin photo for the spine design. I
researched a few other artist’ spine designs for their digipaks and found that
usually it includes no more than the album name, artist and record company.
Making my storyboard was a very fun process, because I incorporated
both physical and technological words. First I drew basic stick figures and
sketches , arrows etc onto pieces of paper, roughly planning out my shots.
Next, I took photos of those pieces of paper with my phone and uploaded them to
Facetune, where I Whitened the images lots and lastly, used phonto to add
numbers next to the boxes, add directions/instructions and explanation of
camera shots and movements. I then airdropped those edited photos to my laptop
and I was able to apply those photos into a blog post.
4- What have you
learned from your audience feedback?
I asked a teen student what they thought of my video and
ancillary products.
Student - “I think
more filming days could’ve given the video a little more variety in terms of
shots, however the digipak links really well to the video because of the bricks
in the background. The poster doesn’t look as professional as the other
ancillary products but it is realistic to what I usually see from other artists
when it comes to the text on it. There could have also been more lip syncing in
the video to make it fit better into the genre.”
From this feedback I
learned that I could’ve planned a little better and taken photos specifically
for the poster on the days of filming, rather than using a screen grab from the
video. The point I took most information from was the lip syncing comment. I
didn’t take as many lip syncing shots as I could’ve done, which would have
given me more cohesive shots to make use of in the editing process. So that was
a mistake. All in all, I found the editing the hardest but I learned the most
from it as well.
