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Final Music video

Final Digipak

Front Cover

Inside left

Inside right plus CD 

Back Cover

Digipak Spin

Final Magazine Advert

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 2

A2 Media Evaluation Question 2 - 2016 from abbiekennard

Evaluation - Question 1

For question one, i decided to do a podcast style and insert clips on top, however when trying to export the footage and adding it to youtube, it was blocked because of certain artists and their copyright permission, so to move around this, i inserted the video into a prezi with no other information. This way the video still plays.

Evaluation

Once again, now our music videos are finished and our showcase is over, we can focus on our evaluation questions. There are 4 questions; which are:

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

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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

Here is a list of formats that we could use throughout our evaluation questions 

ShowCase!

Today was our showcase! we had an amazing turn out and got a huge amount of feedback from written to video recorded feedback. The AS students went first and showcased all 6 of their film openings, then the A2 showcased their music videos that we have been working on.
It was amazing to see our final product shown, after months of working on it with our group to see the final results is fantastic!

Here's a picture of the evaluative sheet the audience could fill out for us, Asking 5 questions from their point of view.
After glancing at them, I can see a lot of positive responses about our video, saying that they really enjoyed it!
Below is the video of the the media showcase for my group and group 1.

ShowCase Tomorrow!

After finally finishing our music video, our media department set up a media showcase where the AS and A2 student show off their final products to an audience of  100 people plus. We invite friends, family and teachers. This all helps us with our evaluation where we get a lot of feedback from people, saying if they like our video, any improvements and what their favourite part was.

Final!

Here it is! Our music video. After spending months slaving away over this, we have now got a final product we are proud of. Starting back from July when we created our prelim, to researching our song, choosing this one to reach this in March.

Last draft

With one week to go until our deadline for our music video, this is the stage we are at so far. We are practically finished, with just the ending to work on, as our song is 5 minutes long, we have to cut it at the end, and as a group we are struggling to find a perfect point to stop the song and get it to fade out well, thus we have not finished the ending. However we have about 5 seconds to work with at the end. Once the ending is complete, we will do the last touch ups throughout our video, make sure everything is correct and the lip syncing matches up.

Extra Filming

As we are near the end of filming, and all the shots are in place we decided to get peers to view our video and give us some criticism on how we can improve. Once they watched it, the majority said they would want the ending to change slightly, to have a more dramatic twist, as at the moment the whole narrative builds a climax which leads to nothing. So we decided to add a twist, at the beginning we saw the protagonist get injected, so we decided to borrow a lab coat from our chemistry department a test tube with some photography developer in it.

Our main idea was to make the audience curious as to what these sudden jump cuts would be, and where the chemicals had come from and what would happen to our protagonist.
Heres a few pictures from the filming that we added in.

Inspirational Music Video #22 - Out Of The Woods

Taylor Swift's video for Out Of The Woods compliments multiple ideas my group and i have had for our music video. To begin with, as the video starts, we see the protagonist standing looking out towards the ocean, then cuts to a close up shot of her in what appears to be a forest. This short section shows a huge amount of contrast between the clip, which i feel as a viewer keeps you intrigued and makes you keep notice. As the video continues, you see that the majority of the video is set in a forest, to add to the low key lighting of the shots. I love this setting as it creates a sense of mystery for the audience to find out where the protagonist is, which is something we are trying to portray through our music video. And finally, the match on action in this video is fantastic, which the change of background and scenery but to still have the movements match up well. This is shown at the end of the video mainly. We would like the idea of match on action in our video, as it would show our protagonists freedom throughout, that she is in more than one location but is still the same time frame, and by having the match on action, it would help represent this.

Warning

As we have been spending a lot of time editing the music video, we found our video to be very triggering for people, due to flashing images, as even for us, watching it often can impact us. So we planned on putting a 'warning' symbol at the beginning, yet when discussed and trialed out. Our teacher stated that it looked like it was part of the video narrative rather than a warning, so she recommended when get rid of it as it was needless.

Adding the Band & Song Name

Coming close to the end of the editing process of our music video, we have started to add the song name and band name to the beginning of our video. As all of us decided to create our own digipaks and magazine adverts, we discussed prior the ideas we all had for the font styles. We all agreed that we would choose a simple font for the band name and a more scratch like font for the album and song name. This made this process of deciding easier for our song.

On photoshop we created images of our band name and song name, we downloaded the font from 'DaFont.com'. We came out with these results.

We decided to try white on a black background and vice versa to see what one stood out more. But after putting them over our opening scenes, we realized it made sense to have the font rather quick paced to match the editing of the music video. And by this, we decided to have it switch back and forth between the white and black background and to reduce to opacity. 

Here is how it looks at the moment 

Random Bits

Today we was up Central London and managed to get few extra shots for our video. We decided we needed more random and out of the ordinary shots. Some of the shots we captured were bubbles; a helicopter, under a bridge, water, lights and skateboards with graffiti.

These shots will be extremely beneficial as they will add a sense of mystery to the video as it will jump between shots, as we were having trouble finding enough jump cuts due to the how quick paced our song is and we had a lot of long paced shots which didn't fit the pace, so we had to add more elements.

Here's a couple screen shots of the shots we took.

Representations

Throughout our music video, we would like to portray a message to our audience. About mental health. As often in the public eye, mental health is an issue people tread lightly on, simply to not offend people however, in a different perspective a lot of people still see mental health as a laughing matter and call them rude names such as 'retard' and 'spastic'. 

Having experience in the group dealing with mental health, it is a subject we are close with, personally i have spent many years working with children and adults with mental illness and have often spent time defending them.

In our video we decided to focus on just one mental illness which is MPD (multiple personality disorder). This is a disorder that is very rare where two or personalities with distinct memories and behaviour patterns appear in one individual. 

Having learnt about this prior to media, learning about the history of it and real cases of people who had this disorder and was treated horribly due to it. We studied multiple case studies, films and books which all portrayed a different side of the story,

As we are in the 21st century, you'd assume that these stories would have stopped by now, yet they carry on. And although in our video it may not be extremely obvious, it still shows how people do get treated 

The point of our music video is to show the real side of how people with this disorder were and still are being treated across the world, treated like they are an animal, treating them with no respect, which is why we decided to create a choreographed scene where our protagonist was treated badly and due to the way she was treated to react badly. 

Certain films and books that focus on MPD are:

Charlie Bailey Gates – Me, Myself And Irene (2000, Jim Carrey)

Mort Rainey – Secret Window (2004, Johnny Depp)

Robert Elliott – Dressed To Kill (1980, Michael Caine)

Henry Jekyll – Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1931, Fredric March)

Teddy Daniels – Shutter Island (2010, Leonardo DiCaprio)

Below is an article with a drawing to illustrate MPD, showing the range of this disorder. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-489655/Patient-multiple-personalities-sketches-17-alter-egos.html

YouTube rewind - inspirational #21

Although this video is not a music video, its more or a parody///mash up of a range of different songs. The idea behind this video is to group together the most popular things on the internet that year and piece them together. What i particularly loved about this video is how this was filmed all over the world, from Tokyo to France to the UK to America and yet, when pieced together, the continuity value of it was remarkable. This showed the planning that went into this to make sure each shot was perfectly in sync with the next shot. This inspires me to show how much pre planning you need to do before you go out and film, that each day you need think thoroughly about what to film. I also loved the editing style, the quick paced shots .

Draft #2

A week later, we have carried on working on what we discussed from the last draft, this time, we have included a more variety of shots at different locations, as before we did just have 2 locations. From this, i can already see a huge difference on what we have produced by adding in quicker shots. We focused mainly on the second half as we felt like it needed more tweaking.

Inspirational Music Video #20 - PillowTalk

There is not much to say about Zayn's 'PillowTalk' apart from the terrific editing put into the whole video. Throughout it all, new styles came up that i found fascinating. With the use of  retro graphics, kaleidoscopic and shattered-mirror effects. The video had an extremely positive response from critics 'Forbes's contributor Hugh McIntyre praised the visuals, writing "The dripping, trippy visuals match the rock and roll energy of the song perfectly, with the viewer spending as much time with guitars being smashed as they do with Zayn crying black tears." For Lily Harrison from E! Online the video "it's not only extremely seductive, but it's very artistic," while Erica Gonzales from Harper's Bazaar wrote "the visuals are dark yet psychedelic." Lucas Villa of AXS commented "The debut clip seems to reflect the singer's artsy side. The action here is not as steamy between the two as the song suggests but it's still a NSFW video."Time's Nolan Feeney thought "Zayn seems determined to break with his boy-band image." The video received more than 25 million views in three days, and 247 million views after one month.'
I feel with the artistic value of this music video, i am so enticed with the techniques used that i am barely listening to the song. We are unable to do techniques like this due to the equipment we have and minimal skills, however i felt that it showed how one simple shot can turn with editing.

Symbolism

symbolism
/ˈsɪmbəlɪz(ə)m/
noun
1.
the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities.
"he has always believed in the importance of symbolism in garden art"

Symbolism in music videos is simply something in the video that creates meaning. There are many examples in music videos that depict symbolism and can therefore arguably be described to be more effective in result of this.

Throughout the music industry, there is always cases of people speculating about 'hidden' symbols in music videos to give meaning, sometimes about upcoming stories or some far fetched ideas of ;Illuminati'.

With our music video, we felt it was important to have a sense of symbolism to keep the narrative clear to our viewers. As we reach the end section, we decided to add quick flashes of imagery that represents danger when comparing it to the beginning of our video. Having someone captured then shots of a test tube, it gets the audience thinking more about the narrative and to decide what they think would happen to her, as in our video we don't show it. So by having this symbolism of danger, it steers the audience to thinking something bad is bound to happen.

Alot of the time, artists dont intend to add a certain element into their video, but the audience analyzing it then create new meanings. For example Katy Perry's Hot and cold is said to have a lot of symbols about the bible and god.

-Symbol: Green Eyes
Frame 3:14 The Jealousy Scene - using jealousy to motivate...
-Symbols: Rainbow & Zebra
Frame 4:06 - This one is easy!
Rainbow: Think back to the days of Noah - a rainbow was proof of a promise.
Zebra: Gotta go back to Sesame Street Days for this one - Z for Zebra and the end of the alphabet...
Put them together and you have: it's the end of the promise.

1st Draft

After my group and i have finished filming, we began piecing our footage together, By that, we are now deciding where we want each section to be. We had to think carefully about the ordering of our footage to make sure we got our narrative portrayed well, and also keeping the continuity throughout. As this is only what we've done within one media lesson, there are sections blacked out that we need to fill in. Below is the draft.

We are aware that our lip syncing is off, but we will leave that till the end to make sure we dont add in a clip and completely mess up the order. From this, it meant we was able to sit back and analyse the clip on our own, but also with input from people outside our media class. For the first half, there is a problem with the continuity, as some appear to be brighter with a higher saturation, so we will have to try and get each shot looking similar. Within the second half, there is still a lot of editing to do, yet the main idea once watching this back is the shot duration's  are too long for the song. Having such a fast paced song, we should start 'chopping' the footage we have. This is defiantly something we will try next time.

This is a very rough draft but we are working our way to our final product.

Filming Day 5

Today we finished the last part of filming!! Due to the fact we was weather dependent, it took us a while to find the perfect day to film, as we wanted a gloomy day but dry. Today was our lucky day as we was all free and able to film.
For this, we had to find an open area with lots of greenery, and for this we decided to head towards a golf course near us, as we knew it would be empty and have a lot of open areas. This also benefited us as this golf course it particular had a range of areas, such as a little forest and walk ways surrounded by leaves to create a very visually appealing shot.

This shots will go at the 2nd half of our video to show our protagonist being free,

Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer: 'Star Theory'-

He states that there is a complete different between celebrities in general, ones that are simply know for performing music manufactured by companies simply to gain more money, forgetting their have an identity that is not soullessly based around their music. Another example are musicians who care about their music and not the fame, they will stay hidden by the public eye purely because they enjoy their music.

His theory is spilt into three different categories:

Audiences and Institutions
Constitutions
Hegemony

Audiences and Institutions

Artists are created for money purposes alone. Increasing the brand identity benefits the institution they serve as they become a household name increasing sales in all of the media institutions and platforms they are in. The institution then models the artist and their emotions around the target audience they choose. For example Lady Gaga, according to Dyer, was modelled around fashion forward people so the audience can relate to her as a person and also her music. The way she dresses is very obscure and weird this draws attention to her and makes her easy to remember and recall from memory, rock bands like you me at six continue to dress in dark clothes and have long messy hair as this fits in with the ‘rock’ stereotype. Audiences and Institutions

Constitutions

The constitutions side of his theory states that the star is built for an audience, and is not an individual person.The star is built with someone signature to them that differentiates them from other stars significantly, for example Lady Gaga’s obscure fashion. Actor Jason Statham is now typecast because of the way he has been constructed, he has now typecast as a ‘hard man’ with a cockney accent mainly because of his previous roles

Hegemony

This is also know as 'culture'. It is the idea that audiences relate to the star as they have a feature they share or admire with the star allowing the audience to relate to the star in a subconscious manner. Some fans may attempt to replicate the star in their behaviour, or fashion as they admire them so much.This could regarded as a negative impact as some stars often are heavy drinkers and drug abusers/addicts. For example in the 60's and 70's there was a dramatic increase of sales of cannabis due to The Beatles being open about using it. Stars represent shared cultural values and attitudes, and promote a certain ideology (ideas). Audience interest in these values enhances their 'star quality', and it is through conveying beliefs, ideas and opinions outside music that performers help create their star character to their fans. A star may start a fashion trend, with masses of fans copying their hairstyle and clothing

Theorists

Ferdinand De Saussure 

This theorist focuses around semiotics by his theory about the 'signified and signifier'. The idea is that an image can be read in two ways, the SIGNIFIER and SIGNIFIED. The signifier is what we see, so any object, where as the signified is an idea each individual has associated with thus image. The implied meaning you take from the image/word. An opinion not a definition created by the media, similar to the Hypoderminc Needle Theory. For example, an image of a knife - Violence, a hoodie - teens and violence. The media has created this representation. This can be used throughout music videos and Digipaks. For example, in Katy Perry's TGIF, the signifer is teenagers and party and the signified is that they want to have fun with mates

Roland Barthes 

He believed that text can either be open or closed. An example of this is a coloured ball of thread the need to be untangled (open). Every new thread stands for a different application to how the text can be interpreted. 

He suggests 5 codes could be used to interpret a text. 

Hermeneutic/Enigma- refers to any element of the story that is not full explained and hence becomes a mystery. The truth is often avoided to keep the audience guessing
Proairetic/Action- audience guesses what happens, to build tension referring to action
Semantic- refers to ambiguity within texts- refers to connotations within signified/signifier. The story that gives additional meaning over the basic denotative meaning of the word.
Symbolic- similar to the previous, but acts at a wider level, organizing semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. E.G music videos add deeper meaning to the sing.
Referential/Cultural- code refers to anything that is funded on some kind of canonical works that cannot be challenged and is assumed to be the foundation of truth.

Erving Goffman 

Focusing on the codes and conventions of the two genders, which he believes is part of the socialisation process. Throughout the media, the way the two genders are represent are completely different as they are culturally dependent, consisting of certain codes. 

Goffman would argue that women in media are portrayed as:
Weak
Passive
Objectified
Always shown touching themselves
Delicate

Whereas males are portrayed as:
Powerful
Bold
Assertive
Manipulative
Controlling

Yet now, these stereotypes are getting pushed to the side as artists are switching the gender roles. One main example that stands out is Taylor Swift Bad Blood, showing women to be powerful, bold, assertive and controlling, all the stereotypes that men are portrayed as.

Inspirational Music Video #19 - The Black

Asking Alexandria have just released their song 'The Black' of their upcoming album which will be released late March. Although i am a fan of the band, so therefore enjoy their music videos in general, i feel that this one in particular has a lot of aspects that i value as a media student. Firstly, as soon as the video begins, there is a extremely quick montage of abstract imagery which i feel works well to engage an audience as personally, i would like to see what that imagery leads and whether it was just abstract. Through the beginning bridge, due to it being a fast rock/metal song, it contains a lot of quick paced editing. One aspect i absolutely loved is how they combine the performance part of the video to the abstract imagery, they do this by having shots that are a mere split second long in a montage, so the human eye has adjusted to the sudden change. Another factor i found influential is the sudden change from black and white to colour, although we have not decided to use this in our video, we do have a sudden change of colour palette, from a very dark, low key lighting to bright, high key lighting. Personally i dont like the idea of changing from black and white to colour as i find it too 'cringy' yet, throughout this video, with how quick the shots are works well. And finally, i feel this song related to a lot of the ideas they have in this song, such as the pace and beat of the song changing throughout, as just after halfway through the song, the pace drops and the video matches the beat perfectly which is something i hope we accomplish.

 

 

 

Inspirational Music Video #18 - Stitches

The reason for 'Stitches' by Shawn Mendes to be an inspiration is mainly due to the fact the whole music video is set in one simple location, a car park, and is still extremely effective as a music video based on the editing, which helps us a group to stop worrying about an extravagant locations. The technique of editing used throughout this is based on a handheld style, that we are moving with the camera when watching the video. With the video being based on the choreography of the protagonist, i admire the continuity of this video, as when people watch it, they think it is rather simple due to the stand location and no massive editing techniques, yet the amount of times he had to repeat the cheoreography as often the camera changes angle each time, and it still manages to match up without doubt. As our video contains a lot of these steps, i felt this would be a perfect inspirational music video,

Prototype

After finishing the designs for the digipak, i decided to make a prototype to see how it would look all pieced together. I used Kodak photo paper glossy to get the texture of a real digipak, i doubled it over to make the material thicker and to help piece it together. By having a prototype, it created an image for our protagonist with helped me visualize the whole project, by creating a character for our artist to show what we wanted to portray from our music video. I decided to use the dark colours to conform to the indie stereotype, but also i imagine the artist to be quite mysterious as she would be new to the music industry, and therefore is mysterious to the audience.
Below are the images of the prototype that i made.
The size measurements are 13.9 x 0.6 x 12.6 cm

Final Designs

Here is my final designs for my digipak and magazine advert

Front Cover

Inside Right

Inside left with CD

Back cover

Spin

Magazine