evaluation draft

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 3^rd 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.