Monday, 17 December 2012
Final Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In the research stage of the coursework I looked at a lot of videos, album adverts and CD covers within the rock/pop genre. Because the song I was going to use is on the borderline between rock and pop it actually gave me a lot more freedom because I could look at products from two different genres. Whilst looking at the videos, adverts and CD covers I looked out for conventions that I would also be able to use. This gave us ideas as to what would make our media products look realistic.
Whilst looking at music videos the first thing I noticed was how the aesthetic of the video created a mood to fit the genre of music. A lot of this was to do with costume. We had originally decided to use a white lacy dress paired with Doc Martens for the feminine grunge look we saw in many other videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Christina Perri's 'Jar of Hearts'. We eventually decided to develop the convention of costume and instead of our original idea we used a black lacy dress paired with tights, Doc Martens and a leather jacket. To choose the costume we created an audience profile and within it we talked about the shops that the consumer would shop at. Using influences from clothes available in these shops, music videos that we researched and images that have previously been used to promote albums we created a look for the artist and the band. We found that in many bands with a female lead singer and an all male band a lot of the focus is put on to the female in terms of costume. This may be because of the male gaze theory. This means that the males wear very simplistic clothing, usually jeans and a tshirt in a dark colour. We used this convention, putting our the two male band members in black jeans and a black tshirt, and one also wore a denim shirt over the top. Their look was casual but slightly alternative to fit with the genre of music.
We also saw that in most of the videos and album pictures that on the female dark eye make up was used and we also wanted to use this convention. We decided on mainly natural looking make up apart from around the eyes, which were made dark and striking with eyeliner. We used a face powder and very little eyeliner on the male band members. This was a development from the conventions we had seen because although males would wear facial make up for professional videos so that they don't look washed out under the lights and the camera, they may not wear eyeliner. We did this because it gave more of an alternative look.
Another part of the look of the video that was important was the lighting and colouring. This also applies to the advert and digipak. In the video we used the convention of gloomy lighting and tried to make the colours of the video look dull. We did this by filming the outdoor shots when it was cold and overcast. This also made sure there was no glare from the sun whilst filming. Obviously, within big budget music videos they could use smoke machines and effects but we worked with the natural setting we had. Something that links to this is the use of black and white. The videos for Evanescence's 'My Immortal' and Automatic Loveletter's 'Hush' are completely in black and white but we developed this by using black and white shots in between full colour shots. The black and white shots in our video were used for flashbacks. Using a different effect made it easier to understand that they were a different part of the video and made the narrative easier to comprehend.
I carried this over to the digipak and adverts by using mainly greys and blacks rather than bright colours. I felt that this captured the feel of the song and the genre of the music. I found that a lot of rock genre album covers used very little colour, some being completely black and white such as My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' and Black Stone Cherry's 'The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea'. I developed this convention because although my advert and digipak were mainly grey, black and white I used a deep red/pink colour to add interest. I was inspired by some album artwork from My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' album to do this. Overall, I wanted my media products to look saturated in colour to set a mood that fit with the genre of music. I think I used and developed the conventional use of colour within pop/rock music videos, adverts and album covers. 
Using both narrative and performance shots together is a convention we saw in nearly all of the videos we watched in the research stage. We used this convention for video, filming the narrative flashback and field shots as well as the band shots. Videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Evanescence's 'My Immortal' use separately filmed shots of both purely performance shots and narrative shots. These shots are then interspersed with each other to give variety. In both of these videos the narrative shots are of the lead female singer walking and portraying a lot of emotion to the camera. We were heavily influenced by this, our field shots being based on the same idea. We were also influenced by the structure of Taylor Swift's music video for 'Love Story'. The narrative and performance shots come together at the end, showing that there was a link between them all a long. We used this idea in our music video, making the band and the singer meet at the end of the video. We developed upon the narrative/performance idea and also added flashback shots to create a fuller storyline that was easy to follow and ran along side the lyrics of the song.
We also used the convention of emotive close ups of the artist that we saw in Evanescence's 'My Immortal' and Ellie Goulding's 'Starry Eyed' and 'The Writer'. We felt that these shots allowed the artist to interact with the audience and emote to fit with the lyrics of the song. In our own video we used a range of shots but we shot a lot of close ups based on this idea. We liked that there was a large range of camera shots and angles with the 'My Immortal' video, including extremes. Because of the slow pace of the video a wider range of shots were used to give variety to the video. The song we used for our video was slightly faster so we didn't feel we needed to use such a great variety, in fact this may have made the video look messy. We did, however, use a few different shots and angles such as long shots, mid shots and close ups. We used high and straight angles shots for most of the video. These are the main conventional shots and angles used in music videos. 'Jar of Hearts', for example, mainly uses these shots. A specific shot we were inspired by from the 'Jar of Hearts' video was the close up of the artists feet while walking, I have seen this before in a few videos and we used it in ours.
The mise scene varied in each video we watched, their didn't seem to be a particular convention that ran throughout the videos. However, in performance shots such as in 'My Immortal' and 'Sorrow' very limited lighting is used and there aren't many props apart from the instruments. The performance shots were focused more on the band and the pace of the music rather than what was around them. In other videos in which the only performance shots were of the artist or of just a pianist the mise en scene was more detailed, like in Birdy's 'Skinny Love' the setting was an old looking house, decorated with props such as paper, an antique chair and everything was covered in dust. In the performance shots of Avril Lavigne's 'When You're Gone' the scene is set up to look like an abandoned house, with a settee, a fireplace, bookshelves and ornaments. Because we were using both guitar and piano but not a full band we wanted something in between these. We decided to use the convention of quite a plain room but develop the idea by using chairs for the performers. This made sense for us because the pace of the song wasn't suitable for the band members to be jumping around like in 'My Immortal' and this way we could focus more on portraying emotion.
When researching for the digipak and advert I created a list of the conventions I saw used on professional products. This way I knew I could make my products more believable. I feel that my advert and digipak used the conventions of the genre quite well because of their imagery. I decided to use a picture of a skull and a skeleton. This fit in with a lot of the dark imagery I saw on real CD covers and adverts such as My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' and Halestorm's 'A Strange Case Of ...'. I thought that the image of a skull would be quite striking for the front cover and then inside the digipak I used the image of a skeleton which clearly links but wouldn't work quite as well for a front cover image.
My digipak and advert are very closely linked and use the same colour scheme, text and images. Though I saw that a lot of artists simply used the album cover image for their advert (Florence and the Machine's 'Lungs' and Kings of Leon's 'Only by the Night') I developed this convention by using images that were linked and used in my digipak but that were not the front cover.
A lot of the fonts used on the albums and digipaks that I researched are quite bold and recognisable. My Chemical Romance's logo seems to suit the genre of music because the font is jagged and messy. Flyleaf's logo is simpler but uses a bold, distressed font to fir the rock genre.
I knew when choosing a images and a style for my digipak and advert I needed to mirror the style of music in every aesthetic, fonts included. I used www.1001freefonts.com to find a font that I liked and initially came up with four. I chose to use SF Phosphorus and Helvelticrap for both my digipak and advert. For the fonts, I used the convention because it made sense for my digipak and advert.
I wanted my colour scheme to be quite simple because a lot of the products I had researched used a black and white colour scheme and there was usually only two or three main colours used. I used mainly grey for the background, and then used black and white a highlight. I wanted some colour for the line that runs through my digipak and advert and for this I used red because it stands out. When finishing off my digipak and advert I looked at the official wording and logos used on real products so that I could use these and make my product look realistic. I used a wesbite name, the record company logo, a barcode and copyright information to acheive this.
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Plan for Final Evaluation Questions
- Evalauation Question 1 - Blog post (Done)
- Evaluation Question 2 - Captioned video (Done)
- Evaluation Question 3 - Scribd (Done)
- Evaluation Question 4 - Prezi (Done)
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Evaluation Question 4 Draft
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the research stage we only used a PC, this was because it was what we were used to working with, we found it easy to use and it had all the programs we needed at that point. Mainly, at this stage, we were just using websites online for research for our own products. We set up a blog on Blogger to show the work we had done chronologically. Blogger is good for simple text posts and its easy to understand. You can change the way it looks to fit with the digipak, advert and video meaning everything ties in together. A bad point about Blogger is that it can be difficult to add pictures in text posts even though it is an option. It can be difficult to resize and order the pictures and usually it ends up looking messy.
On Mr Ford's blog he had posted a Scribd document of the schedule and deadlines, I then copied the embed code and pasted it to my blog so that I could have it there for reference. On my personal blog I pasted two other Scribd documents originally posted by Mrs Hammond with the mark schemes for the music video and the digipak and advert. This meant that I could refer to it at any point.
I used Google a lot, it made the research stage a lot easier because it is simple to use. I used for the audience profile, when researching bands that the consumer may listen to and places that she may shop. I also used it to find pictures that would influence the look of my video, digipak and advert.
Part of the research stage was to find other influential texts and analyse them; for this I used Youtube. Youtube is simple and quick to use, I found all the videos I was looking for in good quality and I could easily analyse sections of the video.
Towards the end of the research stage, when we putting our ideas together we were asked to create a pitch that we would then present to the rest of the class. For this pitch Mae and I used animoto, a slideshow type technology. I find that this can make any presentation look interesting because of the effects it uses. It doesn't take a lot of work to make it look good, so you can focus more on what information you are going to put into it. On this program you can add text, pictures and music.
In the planning stage we also created a Twitter for our band. This helped to develop the personalities of the band members as well as making the band more believable. I mainly used Twitter from home on my laptop and even though I don't use it a lot personally I found that it was easy to use. Even though there is a word limit on the text posts it worked well for the kind of messages I wanted to write.
After creating the storyboard of our video we made an animatic. In order to do this I used Windows Live Movie Maker on my laptop. The process of importing the music and the pictures was simple enough but I did have a few problems when putting the animatic together. It took a few tries to get the timings of the clips right and sometimes it went out of sync.
We also took location shots for the blog using a Canon camera. We uploaded the photos from the memory card on to the PC and then uploaded them to Blogger. These pictures were used to show different parts of the location and as I hadn't seen the location first hand it gave me an idea of how it looked. This meant we could discuss which parts looked best before we actually started filming. The location shots also showed teachers and the class initial location ideas if they wanted to know.
For the draft digipak and advert I used Word. I wasn't originally planning to do this, I was planning to do the rough drafts to get placements of images and text and then quickly move on to Photoshop. In the end, though, I decided that for the drafts Word worked quite well. I used Google to get some images that I wanted and used the text and picture formatting tools on Word to create my drafts. Because Word is mainly a writing program sometimes it was difficult to get the images in the right places but I managed to fix this.
When I did start my final pieces I used Photoshop. Obviously this was a much better quaility program for what I wanted to do but it was quite complicated to use. There were a lot of options, tools and effects,which to someone who had never really got to grips with Photoshop was a bit daunting. Eventually, after using it for a while I became quicker at using the program and it became easier to understand. I uploaded both the drafts and the final digipak and advert to Blogger.
For the music video we used Final Cut pro on the Macs. I had never used a Mac before and though they were quite different to the PCs I found that I adapted quickly and one I had got used to the differences it was simple to use. Final Cut Pro took a while to get the hang of but once I'd used it a few times and got used to the tools and the options it was enjoyable to work with and I was able to use it productively.
When writing the evaluation questions I only used Blogger. I used it to write up the answers to the questions, to check previous students work for reference and to check Mr Ford's blog for advice and links.
In the research stage we only used a PC, this was because it was what we were used to working with, we found it easy to use and it had all the programs we needed at that point. Mainly, at this stage, we were just using websites online for research for our own products. We set up a blog on Blogger to show the work we had done chronologically. Blogger is good for simple text posts and its easy to understand. You can change the way it looks to fit with the digipak, advert and video meaning everything ties in together. A bad point about Blogger is that it can be difficult to add pictures in text posts even though it is an option. It can be difficult to resize and order the pictures and usually it ends up looking messy.
On Mr Ford's blog he had posted a Scribd document of the schedule and deadlines, I then copied the embed code and pasted it to my blog so that I could have it there for reference. On my personal blog I pasted two other Scribd documents originally posted by Mrs Hammond with the mark schemes for the music video and the digipak and advert. This meant that I could refer to it at any point.
I used Google a lot, it made the research stage a lot easier because it is simple to use. I used for the audience profile, when researching bands that the consumer may listen to and places that she may shop. I also used it to find pictures that would influence the look of my video, digipak and advert.
Part of the research stage was to find other influential texts and analyse them; for this I used Youtube. Youtube is simple and quick to use, I found all the videos I was looking for in good quality and I could easily analyse sections of the video.
Towards the end of the research stage, when we putting our ideas together we were asked to create a pitch that we would then present to the rest of the class. For this pitch Mae and I used animoto, a slideshow type technology. I find that this can make any presentation look interesting because of the effects it uses. It doesn't take a lot of work to make it look good, so you can focus more on what information you are going to put into it. On this program you can add text, pictures and music.
In the planning stage we also created a Twitter for our band. This helped to develop the personalities of the band members as well as making the band more believable. I mainly used Twitter from home on my laptop and even though I don't use it a lot personally I found that it was easy to use. Even though there is a word limit on the text posts it worked well for the kind of messages I wanted to write.
After creating the storyboard of our video we made an animatic. In order to do this I used Windows Live Movie Maker on my laptop. The process of importing the music and the pictures was simple enough but I did have a few problems when putting the animatic together. It took a few tries to get the timings of the clips right and sometimes it went out of sync.
We also took location shots for the blog using a Canon camera. We uploaded the photos from the memory card on to the PC and then uploaded them to Blogger. These pictures were used to show different parts of the location and as I hadn't seen the location first hand it gave me an idea of how it looked. This meant we could discuss which parts looked best before we actually started filming. The location shots also showed teachers and the class initial location ideas if they wanted to know.
For the draft digipak and advert I used Word. I wasn't originally planning to do this, I was planning to do the rough drafts to get placements of images and text and then quickly move on to Photoshop. In the end, though, I decided that for the drafts Word worked quite well. I used Google to get some images that I wanted and used the text and picture formatting tools on Word to create my drafts. Because Word is mainly a writing program sometimes it was difficult to get the images in the right places but I managed to fix this.
When I did start my final pieces I used Photoshop. Obviously this was a much better quaility program for what I wanted to do but it was quite complicated to use. There were a lot of options, tools and effects,which to someone who had never really got to grips with Photoshop was a bit daunting. Eventually, after using it for a while I became quicker at using the program and it became easier to understand. I uploaded both the drafts and the final digipak and advert to Blogger.
For the music video we used Final Cut pro on the Macs. I had never used a Mac before and though they were quite different to the PCs I found that I adapted quickly and one I had got used to the differences it was simple to use. Final Cut Pro took a while to get the hang of but once I'd used it a few times and got used to the tools and the options it was enjoyable to work with and I was able to use it productively.
When writing the evaluation questions I only used Blogger. I used it to write up the answers to the questions, to check previous students work for reference and to check Mr Ford's blog for advice and links.
Evaluation Question 3 Draft
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The first feedback I received was about the draft digipak and advert. I was told by Mr Ford that the font I used for the band name was too plain and didn't represent the genre. To overcome this I searched for some other fonts, mainly using www.1001freefonts.com. I looked for fonts that fit the genre of music and the style of the band. The reason I originally wanted to use a plain font was because the other font I had used was bold and stood out and I didn't want the two to clash. However, after researching some fonts I could use I found a lot that I was happy to use. Another piece of feedback was that the text for the release date was too big on my advert. My initial reasoning for the size of the text was based on some adverts I had been researching and I felt that my advert was quite sparse. I quickly realised, though, by moving some of the images and text around I could make my advert look better and less spaced out without having to increase the size of the text. On my digipak I was told that the CD panel was too plain. I argued that because i have the red line running through my digipak having something in the middle would interrupt it and my idea wouldn't work. After talking this through with Mr Ford I decided to keep it the way it was.Mr Ford also said that my idea was interesting and that it fit the genre well. Even though it looked quite simple it should work well. Initially, the layout wasn't coherent and needed a few tweaks. I changed some of the images I had put on to the back panel of my digipak to make it look like it had a logical flow. I was told that some of the elements needed to be polished; some of the editing on my first draft could have been improved and using Photoshop enabled me to achieve this on my final piece. The fonts I initially used lacked impact and didn't fit the genre. I was unable to use the fonts I planned to and I am still not happy with the final result but hopefully this can be resolved soon. Mr Ford and I talked about how I was going to apply the skull and skeleton to my work. I hadn't thought this through fully until we had talked and I hadn't originally planned to draw them. However, I had a go at drawing them after looking at some pictures for reference and I was happy with the end result. After finishing my final digipak and advert I was told that the overall idea is strong and the final version looks like a real digipak. When the class gave feedback about our work I was told that it was a good idea to use the skeleton because it looked good and fit genre. The only negative was that I should draw them rather than using images that were already available, which I did for my final. I was told that my digipak looked too plain and there wasn't a lot that grabbed the attention of the audience. I didn't want to add a lot of images or text as my initial idea was simple but I overcame this by brightening some of the images and text. I was told that my advert fit well with digipak and that there was a clear theme. Both Mrs Hammond and Mr Ford looked at our music video at different stages. One of the first things I was told when Mr Ford looked at our draft was not to use the running shot at the start of the video as it looks staged and didn't work. For our final we changed this to a walking shot, still from the same angle. Mrs Hammond commented on that our music video had a clear narrative that could really work well once finished. It had a direction and made the audience want to see more. Our class feedback told us that we had used a good variety of camera angles and shots, making the video interesting to watch. Some of the class said that the lip syncing was good and looked professional. Mr Ford said that I came across on camera well and the way I had been dressed meant that I looked the part. He also said that the close ups were good and that there should be more of them as they portrayed the emotion well. In the draft we were told that the lighting needed changing, which we had picked up on ourselves so when we shot the final video we were very careful to use good light.
The first feedback I received was about the draft digipak and advert. I was told by Mr Ford that the font I used for the band name was too plain and didn't represent the genre. To overcome this I searched for some other fonts, mainly using www.1001freefonts.com. I looked for fonts that fit the genre of music and the style of the band. The reason I originally wanted to use a plain font was because the other font I had used was bold and stood out and I didn't want the two to clash. However, after researching some fonts I could use I found a lot that I was happy to use. Another piece of feedback was that the text for the release date was too big on my advert. My initial reasoning for the size of the text was based on some adverts I had been researching and I felt that my advert was quite sparse. I quickly realised, though, by moving some of the images and text around I could make my advert look better and less spaced out without having to increase the size of the text. On my digipak I was told that the CD panel was too plain. I argued that because i have the red line running through my digipak having something in the middle would interrupt it and my idea wouldn't work. After talking this through with Mr Ford I decided to keep it the way it was.Mr Ford also said that my idea was interesting and that it fit the genre well. Even though it looked quite simple it should work well. Initially, the layout wasn't coherent and needed a few tweaks. I changed some of the images I had put on to the back panel of my digipak to make it look like it had a logical flow. I was told that some of the elements needed to be polished; some of the editing on my first draft could have been improved and using Photoshop enabled me to achieve this on my final piece. The fonts I initially used lacked impact and didn't fit the genre. I was unable to use the fonts I planned to and I am still not happy with the final result but hopefully this can be resolved soon. Mr Ford and I talked about how I was going to apply the skull and skeleton to my work. I hadn't thought this through fully until we had talked and I hadn't originally planned to draw them. However, I had a go at drawing them after looking at some pictures for reference and I was happy with the end result. After finishing my final digipak and advert I was told that the overall idea is strong and the final version looks like a real digipak. When the class gave feedback about our work I was told that it was a good idea to use the skeleton because it looked good and fit genre. The only negative was that I should draw them rather than using images that were already available, which I did for my final. I was told that my digipak looked too plain and there wasn't a lot that grabbed the attention of the audience. I didn't want to add a lot of images or text as my initial idea was simple but I overcame this by brightening some of the images and text. I was told that my advert fit well with digipak and that there was a clear theme. Both Mrs Hammond and Mr Ford looked at our music video at different stages. One of the first things I was told when Mr Ford looked at our draft was not to use the running shot at the start of the video as it looks staged and didn't work. For our final we changed this to a walking shot, still from the same angle. Mrs Hammond commented on that our music video had a clear narrative that could really work well once finished. It had a direction and made the audience want to see more. Our class feedback told us that we had used a good variety of camera angles and shots, making the video interesting to watch. Some of the class said that the lip syncing was good and looked professional. Mr Ford said that I came across on camera well and the way I had been dressed meant that I looked the part. He also said that the close ups were good and that there should be more of them as they portrayed the emotion well. In the draft we were told that the lighting needed changing, which we had picked up on ourselves so when we shot the final video we were very careful to use good light.
Evaluation Question 2 Draft
How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?
My digipak and advert are very similar and very clearly linked. One of the reasons I was able to achieve this is because I used the same colour scheme of black, white, grey and red. I used a grey background for every panel of my digipak and the background to my advert is the same. The skull and skeleton images on both the digipak and advert were scanned in from paper and then edited to make the colours clearer. I used black for the album name and the spines and white for the track names and album information. The only other colour I used was for the line running through the digipak. I used the same colours and the same imagery on my advert except the track names featured on the advert are in black and there is one part of the text in red as well as the line that runs through it.
I didn't use a picture of the artist or band on my digipak or advert because I was going for a more alternative style and wanted to use hand drawn pictures. I was also inspired by the look of My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' album artwork which is all hand drawn.
This, however, means that there is no clear link between the ancillary texts and the music video. I think that the genre lent itself well to a very specific and defined look that I tried to use in both my digipak and advert and my music video. The dark imagery on the digipak and advert are reflected in the video too, just in a different way. The costume is mainly black and the grunge fashion that we used reflects the genre of music.
My digipak and advert are very similar and very clearly linked. One of the reasons I was able to achieve this is because I used the same colour scheme of black, white, grey and red. I used a grey background for every panel of my digipak and the background to my advert is the same. The skull and skeleton images on both the digipak and advert were scanned in from paper and then edited to make the colours clearer. I used black for the album name and the spines and white for the track names and album information. The only other colour I used was for the line running through the digipak. I used the same colours and the same imagery on my advert except the track names featured on the advert are in black and there is one part of the text in red as well as the line that runs through it.
I didn't use a picture of the artist or band on my digipak or advert because I was going for a more alternative style and wanted to use hand drawn pictures. I was also inspired by the look of My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' album artwork which is all hand drawn.
This, however, means that there is no clear link between the ancillary texts and the music video. I think that the genre lent itself well to a very specific and defined look that I tried to use in both my digipak and advert and my music video. The dark imagery on the digipak and advert are reflected in the video too, just in a different way. The costume is mainly black and the grunge fashion that we used reflects the genre of music.
Evaluation Question 1 Draft
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In the research stage of the coursework I looked at a lot of videos, album adverts and CD covers within the rock/pop genre. Because the song I was going to use is on the borderline between rock and pop it actually gave me a lot more freedom because I could look at products from two different genres. Whilst looking at the videos, adverts and CD covers I looked out for conventions that I would also be able to use. This gave us ideas as to what would make our media products look realistic.
Using both narrative and performance shots together is a convention we saw in nearly all of the videos we watched in the research stage. We used this convention for video, filming the narrative flashback and field shots as well as the band shots. Videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Evanescence's 'My Immortal' use separately filmed shots of both purely performance shots and narrative shots. These shots are then interspersed with each other to give variety. In both of these videos the narrative shots are of the lead female singer walking and portraying a lot of emotion to the camera. We were heavily influenced by this, our field shots being based on the same idea. We were also influenced by the structure of Taylor Swift's music video for 'Love Story'. The narrative and performance shots come together at the end, showing that there was a link between them all a long. We used this idea in our music video, making the band and the singer meet at the end of the video. We developed upon the narrative/performance idea and also added flashback shots to create a fuller storyline that was easy to follow and ran along side the lyrics of the song.
I feel that my advert and digipak used the conventions of the genre quite well because of their imagery. I decided to use a picture of a skull and a skeleton. This fit in with a lot of the dark imagery I saw on real CD covers and adverts such as 'The Black Parade' and Halestorm's 'A Strange Case Of ...'. I thought that the image of a skull would be quite striking for the front cover and then inside the digipak I used the image of a skeleton which clearly links but wouldn't work quite as well for a front cover image.
In the research stage of the coursework I looked at a lot of videos, album adverts and CD covers within the rock/pop genre. Because the song I was going to use is on the borderline between rock and pop it actually gave me a lot more freedom because I could look at products from two different genres. Whilst looking at the videos, adverts and CD covers I looked out for conventions that I would also be able to use. This gave us ideas as to what would make our media products look realistic.
Whilst looking at music videos the first thing I noticed was how the aesthetic of the video created a mood to fit the genre of music. A lot of this was to do with costume. We had originally decided to use a white lacy dress paired with Doc Martens for the feminine grunge look we saw in many other videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Christina Perri's 'Jar of Hearts'. We eventually decided to develop the convention of costume and instead of our original idea we used a black lacy dress paired with tights, Doc Martens and a leather jacket. To choose the costume we created an audience profile and within it we talked about the shops that the consumer would shop at. Using influences from clothes available in these shops, music videos that we researched and images that have previously been used to promote albums we created a look for the artist and the band. We found that in many bands with a female lead singer and an all male band a lot of the focus is put on to the female in terms of costume. This may be because of the male gaze theory. This means that the males wear very simplistic clothing, usually jeans and a tshirt in a dark colour. We used this convention, putting our the two male band members in black jeans and a black tshirt, and one also wore a denim shirt over the top. Their look was casual but slightly alternative to fit with the genre of music.
We also saw that in most of the videos and album pictures that on the female dark eye make up was used and we also wanted to use this convention. We decided on mainly natural looking make up apart from around the eyes, which were made dark and striking with eyeliner. We used a face powder and very little eyeliner on the male band members. This was a development from the conventions we had seen because although males would wear facial make up for professional videos so that they don't look washed out under the lights and the camera, they may not wear eyeliner. We did this because it gave more of an alternative look.
Another part of the look of the video that was important was the lighting and colouring. This also applies to the advert and digipak. In the video we used the convention of gloomy lighting and tried to make the colours of the video look dull. We did this by filming the outdoor shots when it was cold and overcast. This also made sure there was no glare from the sun whilst filming. Obviously, within big budget music videos they could use smoke machines and effects but we worked with the natural setting we had. Something that links to this is the use of black and white. The videos for Evanescence's 'My Immortal' and Automatic Loveletter's 'Hush' are completely in black and white but we developed this by using black and white shots in between full colour shots. The black and white shots in our video were used for flashbacks. Using a different effect made it easier to understand that they were a different part of the video and made the narrative easier to comprehend.
I carried this over to the digipak and adverts by using mainly greys and blacks rather than bright colours. I felt that this captured the feel of the song and the genre of the music. I found that a lot of rock genre album covers used very little colour, some being completely black and white such as My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' and Black Stone Cherry's 'The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea'. I developed this convention because although my advert and digipak were mainly grey, black and white I used a deep red/pink colour to add interest. I was inspired by some album artwork from My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' album to do this. Overall, I wanted my media products to look saturated in colour to set a mood that fit with the genre of music. I think I used and developed the conventional use of colour within pop/rock music videos, adverts and album covers. Using both narrative and performance shots together is a convention we saw in nearly all of the videos we watched in the research stage. We used this convention for video, filming the narrative flashback and field shots as well as the band shots. Videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Evanescence's 'My Immortal' use separately filmed shots of both purely performance shots and narrative shots. These shots are then interspersed with each other to give variety. In both of these videos the narrative shots are of the lead female singer walking and portraying a lot of emotion to the camera. We were heavily influenced by this, our field shots being based on the same idea. We were also influenced by the structure of Taylor Swift's music video for 'Love Story'. The narrative and performance shots come together at the end, showing that there was a link between them all a long. We used this idea in our music video, making the band and the singer meet at the end of the video. We developed upon the narrative/performance idea and also added flashback shots to create a fuller storyline that was easy to follow and ran along side the lyrics of the song.
We also used the convention of emotive close ups of the artist that we saw in Evanescence's 'My Immortal' and Ellie Goulding's 'Starry Eyed' and 'The Writer'. We felt that these shots allowed the artist to interact with the audience and emote to fit with the lyrics of the song. In our own video we used a range of shots but we shot a lot of close ups based on this idea. We liked that there was a large range of camera shots and angles with the 'My Immortal' video, including extremes. Because of the slow pace of the video a wider range of shots were used to give variety to the video. The song we used for our video was slightly faster so we didn't feel we needed to use such a great variety, in fact this may have made the video look messy. We did, however, use a few different shots and angles such as long shots, mid shots and close ups. We used high and straight angles shots for most of the video. These are the main conventional shots and angles used in music videos. 'Jar of Hearts', for example, mainly uses these shots. A specific shot we were inspired by from the 'Jar of Hearts' video was the close up of the artists feet while walking, I have seen this before in a few videos and we used it in ours.
The mise scene varied in each video we watched, their didn't seem to be a particular convention that ran throughout the videos. However, in performance shots such as in 'My Immortal' and 'Sorrow' very limited lighting is used and there aren't many props apart from the instruments. The performance shots were focused more on the band and the pace of the music rather than what was around them. In other videos in which the only performance shots were of the artist or of just a pianist the mise en scene was more detailed, like in Birdy's 'Skinny Love' the setting was an old looking house, decorated with props such as paper, an antique chair and everything was covered in dust. In the performance shots of Avril Lavigne's 'When You're Gone' the scene is set up to look like an abandoned house, with a settee, a fireplace, bookshelves and ornaments. Because we were using both guitar and piano but not a full band we wanted something in between these. We decided to use the convention of quite a plain room but develop the idea by using chairs for the performers. This made sense for us because the pace of the song wasn't suitable for the band members to be jumping around like in 'My Immortal' and this way we could focus more on portraying emotion.
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