1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- We have three main sections to our video: narrative (including flashback), performance and close-up of artist performance. This was a major thing that we recognised in nearly every single pop rock music video we looked at. Having set out to capture this meanwhile we did have difficulty in only using one type of each because unfortunatly we didn't exactally film enough of each footage. We therefore had to add extra shots which although fitting with the idea of being one of the four were of different location, this is certainly the case when considering the closeup performance scenes.
- Jodie is shown lip syncing throughout nearly the entirety of the video that is not flashback actually flashback narrative. This is something that became especially apparent in Kelly Clarkson's videos.
- We used several close-up shots, especially when it came to filming the close-up narrative. These close-up shots acted as direct address. The only issue being with this is that when we filmed it we allowed for a few mistakes within the lip syncing so when it came to editing we didn’t have close-up shots for when we wanted them. An issue that made this even more difficult was finding that we could not rewind the tape and watch what we had filmed (so that we could actually check it).
- The editing was kept reassembly fast paced and there was constant reference between flashback narrative and narrative in general. This added to creating a story of a break up that actually made sense (even without the husband being involved).
- When it came to transitions between shots most of them are clear cut but we did slightly move away from the conventions to use some slower transmissions. The slower transitions do meanwhile work in the sense that they make some of cuts between images slower and easier for the audience to engage with. This although a slight break with conventions is not an unheard of thing in pop rock video’s, Maroon 5 for example use such transitions between present day narrative and flashback in “Won’t Go Home Without You”.
- Our video is a break up with the “Wife” walking out on her husband. The problem is that originally we were going to have a very clear narrative of a woman have a drunk husband who she leaves. In this original background we were going to show the husband. Unfortunately having chosen an unreliable actor to be in our film to play the “husband” he didn’t show up when we were supposed to be filming. We therefore decided to improvise and the role of the “husband” became an assumed role. The “wife” being the one to walk out on the husband and to get drunk to get over the break up, resolving at the end to get on with her life. The narrative that we came up with because the actor didn’t show up may not have be as clear and effective as with the actor included but when editing we formed into something that has clarity to what is happening.
- We avoided using literal connections between song lyrics and what is happening in the video. We did though have Jodie wave in the performance section which fitted with the words “waving you goodbye”. This one literal occurrence does work with the theme of the song meanwhile because it is slightly amusing and breaks the song up slightly, this action probably leans towards some of the dance moves in Katy Perry’s videos.
- We did have to break away from the conventions of the pop rock video when it came to the age of the actors involved. In most pop rock video’s they emulate a similar age to the artist, Katy Perry is in her twenties which means that we should have used twenty year olds. We unfortunately do not know twenty year olds so we used mature looking eighteen year olds. If we look at Jodie as the artist meanwhile then she is the same age (or there about) of the other cast members.
- Other breaks with conventions involved the fact that we had a non existent budget compared to Katy Perry and Kelly Clarkson who would spend thousands on their videos. This difference has feed into lots of different parts of our video including: costume, lighting, location, actors and filming equipment in general.
- We tried to use different conventions to separate out the different elements of our video. We had two main outfits to do this, one was a white tank top and jeggins, the other was a dress. We then alternated the tank top and jeggins with two different coats. The costumes again were not in line with the conventions of a pop rock music video because of the budget, we didn’t have the money to spend on extremely expensive and more elaborate costumes so we were forced to use clothes we already had. I think the clothes have worked in line with our storyline though, we want the person in the film to be average (in the sense of wealth), and we wanted the focus to be resolutely on the idea of a break up of a young married couple.
- We were able to stick to the conventions because of the amount of research that we had already concluded in making. We looked in great detail at videos from the artists: Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, Katy Perry etc.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Personally I believe that they match up pretty well. We were in the position of having a song which was sung by pop singer (Katy Perry) and yet the song had more pop rock vibes we therefore tried to fit as many conventions into the ancillary tasks as possible:
- One of the ways in which we carried this out was with the colour palette choice; we used a combination of dark purple, dark pinky purple and white. Not having too many colours involved worked well because it kept the images uniform and not too elaborate. If we had used lots of different colours or even shades of colour it the finished piece would have been too elaborate. The colours also work in the sense of our conventions in the way that: The dark purple has more of a rock connotation which then subtles down the brightness of the pink we used which is a colour more associated in rock. Bringing all the colours together gives a great authentic effect.
- When it came to the sort of font/text I used I added the Rosewood to fit in with the quirkiness of Katy Perry and the pop genre. When it came to the Stencil font it made it more rock because it had a much harsher line to it.
Feedback was extremely important when considering the development of our music video, especially in the early stages. The feedback from our rough cut gave us a lot to think about and was one of the reasons we changed the flashbacks to black and white (which really helped the flow of our narrative). Feedback at this stage also influenced our readdressing of lip syncing because people had noticed that it was out of sync- we then were able to change this and make sure that when we edited we were much more careful (of course this didn’t matter as the QuickTime conversion meant it was put out of sync anyway).
Then we had questionnaires that looked at our finished product and this helped us get the perspective of other audience members. All in all the feedback has been very positive. One of the most important things with the audience research was that they understood the narrative. People also really liked the jump cuts we used and felt that they were a good decision. One thing that I think everyone was really happy with was Jodie's acting which really did work well.
They did also have some constructive points about how we could improve the video. The amount of fading we put on some scenes made them quite difficult to see. Another issue they raised was of course the lip syncing error but unfortunately this was seemingly out of our hands. Another point raised was that possibly we could have used more exaggerated costumes or location but this, again, came back to budget.
4.How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation
stages?
stages?
RESEARCH/ PLANNING
- We used YouTube to watch music videos for other artists that shared our genre of pop rock.
- We also used other internet sites such as katyperry.com, and Wikipedia to research Katy Perry who is our artist.
- We used blogger to preserve our research and development.
- To complete all of this we used computers at school and laptops.
CONSTUCTION
- We used final cut to edit our video this was completed on a Mac computer.
- We uploaded the video onto YouTube.
- We used Photoshop to edit our ancillary texts. We took photographs for this on a digital camera.
- We used a film camera to film the music video.
EVALUATION
- We will hopefully film our evaluation. We will then edit it on final cut and upload it onto YouTube. All of which will be completed on a Mac computer.
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