Alices evaluation

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

Our media product is a music video. For the idea, we drew inspiration from other music videos with the same genre - Dance-pop such as, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Beyonce and Jessie J. We reviewed these videos for a number of factors including styling, location, colour schemes and camera shots. We also viewed music through other media channels such as, MTV and magazines in order to get a feel of how a style could be extended across a whole integrated media promotional package. We thought this was important because any piece of music has to be promoted across a number of media platforms.

I was chosen to be the main character in the video, because I was felt to be the closest representation of today’s dance-pop icon. I was also an experienced dancer so could therefore give the best performance.

We originally decided to have a fragmented storyline. However, as we progressed,  we ended up having a linear narrative since our lyrics told a simple but compelling story. Most music videos in Dance-pop follow Goodwin’s theory of linking the visuals and lyrics throughout the video and tend to follow a strong storyline. For example Pixie Lott’ s ‘Boys and Girls’ video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7y1MdlXclM&ob=av2n.

 In our media product we used a lot of lip syncing to the camera as if she was singing directly to the audience. This was a major aspect we wanted to include as it is a convention of the majority of Dance-pop music videos and lots of other music genres too.

 Camera shots and special techniques

Similarities of videos in this same genre include a fast pace of camera shots and use of special effects to add to the colour and energy of the video.

A diverse range of different shots and camera angles were used,  from close-up’s to extreme close-up’s to long shots and wide shot’s, to show the audience the location and introduce the characters. Other shots includes Dutch angle, bird’s eye view shot, over the shoulder shots, two shot, eye level shots, high angle shots, low angle shots.

All other videos we reviewed spent much focus on close up portrait camera work to give the viewer a sense of intimacy with the lead character in the video.  

When watching the music video ‘The show’ by Girls aloud http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGUIE844hxk&ob=av2e, I saw they used split screen throughout the video. This is a convention of the genre Dance-pop and is commonly used such as in Michael Jackson’s video ‘Billie Jean’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y&ob=av2n. So therefore we decided to include a split screen in our video .  However, we took  it to the next level and split the screen 4 times whilst changing colour of each section to keep our theme of multi-colours, and add to the interest and pace of the video. It also makes the video appear very modern, and almost futuristic.

We used different transitions between shots within our music video as it is a good convention of other dance-pop music videos such as Rihanna and David Guettas ‘Whos that chick’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YIgfbn74qk&feature=fvst. Within this video there are transitions of a heart, or a star, or diamond. The use of transitions in this way allows the audience to see the next scene in a more effective and creative way. We used a transition of a clock in our video to get across to the audience that she is time has passed and she is waking up the next day.

Colours and styling

A very popular convention of Dance-pop is the colour themes. The majority of music videos within this genre include bright, bold multi-colours throughout such as Rihanna’s ‘Rude boy’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82VE8UtW8A&ob=av2e. We took this into consideration when creating our music video and decided we would make this a main theme for our music video of having bold vibrant colours. This made our video look exciting and fun. We thought about the bright colours and applied them to things such as mise en scene. Firstly, the characters costume, hair and make up. They were unusual and bold such as her eyelashes, wild blonde hair and funky clothing eg leopard print belt. The locations of being in a child ball pit was perfect to fit in with our colourful theme as it is bright, fun, exciting and memorable. Another convention of Dance-Pop is the random and fun locations. We decided to incorporate this into our video by having our character being in a child’s playzone ball-pit, a tunnel and a party. The actual artists of our song Ke$ha, includes a tunnel in her music video ‘We R who we R’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXvmSaE0JXA&ob=av2e, and has a party in every video she has made. Ke$ha is well known for her Dance-pop music and uses lots of glitter in every music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edP0L6LQzZE&feature=endscreen&NR=1). Other dance-pop artists who use glitter are Lady Gaga, Cascada and Britney spears. We therefore thought it would be a good idea to have glitter in our music   to really enhance the dance-pop convention.

We challenged conventions by instead of our central character being grown up and partying in an adult way the whole way through, we used childlike imagery for example in the ball pit and handprints of bedroom wall. By doing this, we felt you could get to know the lead character better and give her a warm personality rather than completely focus on the qwerky quick cut approach of most dance-pop videos.

Overall, we have taken many conventions from other Dance-pop music videos and incorporated them into our music video.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Together they form a really strong integrated campaign that works across the full spectrum of media. For example, we used the same bold and vibrant colours and lots of glitter. By being consistent across all media, it makes the package more memorable and has a greater impact than if everything was different. Also, by using common themes, we can ensure that we keep the interest of our target audience – we should not veer off into areas that might disengage them because they no longer feel that that it is relevant for them.  Consistent themes include using of the ballpit as a location, the colours from the ballpit form the basis of our colour scheme which are bright primary colours. Having this sort of theme would enable our products to stand out among others of the same genre, drawing attention to it and attracting the correct niche audience that we are aiming for; Women aged 13-20.

In our music video, we continuously refer back to our ‘heroine’ in the ball pit. This ensures the theme was kept constant, and when designing our magazine advert we used a photo of her with one of the balls on top of her head. To further keep the theme continuous, we used photo’s in our digipak which also include the multi-coloured balls. We thought that incorporating this theme throughout will ensure that our audience can easily relate one another to each other and therefore remind them of the playfulness and fun of our music video.

When connecting our Digi Pak and magazine advert together, we made sure we used a similar font for the writing, glitter, colourful and wearing the exact same costume, hair and makeup throughout the advert and album so the audience would immediately recognise the album after seeing the magazine advert. We also linked these 3 together by having a QR code on the Digi Pak and magazine advert which would connect you straight to the music video on Youtube.

Finally, it is important to include practical details that make buying our product easy, for example, website address, how to order it, picture of main artists.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When receiving feedback from family members, class mates, media teacher and my stage school, we took their comments into serious consideration. It was important to us to constantly refer back to our audience during the production of our music video and take into consideration their thoughts on what worked well, what could be improved and what they thought was missing. To begin with we researched into the music genre and various artists within this genre and created a presentation which we then showed to our class mates and received feedback on what they thought.

We firstly showed our class mates 2 music videos from the Dance-pop genre which gained  positive feedback as we found they liked the upbeat music and found the videos fun and interesting to watch. This feedback kept us positive about creating our music video and our ideas we had as it related to both these videos.

When doing our presentation, we also received a small amount of negative feedback. We discovered that our respondents were not clear on who the target audience was for our video.  We took this on board, and became more focused on who our core target should be – i.e girls 13-20. When finalising the video, we were really able to consider all the way through how in would appeal to our audience.  A questionnaire prior to the filming finally determined our niche audience.

After completing the background research we went on to create storyboards which then lead us to start filming our music video. Once we had a fair amount of footage we began the editing process. We edited the beginning part of our music video to create a rough cut. We put this rough cut onto our blog and received more feedback from our classmates and teacher. The rough cut feedback was essential as it enabled us to create the perfect music video which our audience would enjoy. Our camera work was firstly commented on. We were told that we used good sizing of camera angles however our zooming out in the first scene could be smoother as it jolts towards the end. We took this into consideration and wanted to change the shot to a retake we did, but we couldn’t do this as we found our lip syncing in this particular clip was spot on and it straight away introduces both characters. The cuts we used were said to fit in well with the song as the song jumps from time to time. Our use of short cuts showing flashing lights were liked by the other groups, we were told these fit in with our Dance-Pop genre. 


A second factor commented on from each group was our lip syncing. We were told that it was very accurate and in time with the words in the song. This was one of our worries before filming as we thought it would be hard to keep them in time when adding in different clips and shots but we overcame this by good editing. We are happy our lip syncing went well as communicating with the camera is common within our genre.


I went to my stage school and showed them our rough cut. Many of them commented that our mise en scene was ‘eye-catching’ and ‘made them in the mood for a fun party’. These are very positive comments our genre of Dance-pop includes lots of partying and crazy costumes.

Although we received much positive feedback, we also received little negative feedback from my honest family members. The zooming was commented on again that it was ‘jumpy’ and not ‘smooth’. I was also told that when her eyes are shown rolling, it lasts for too long and doesn’t fit in with the timing of the music which we also had established. It is good that we also received negative feedback as it means we can take these comments away and work on them to make them positive feedback. With our positive feedback, we can keep them in our heads and incorporate them in our video later on as our audience obviously like these aspects.

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

Throughout the production of our music video, we used many different media technologies. These include things such as the internet for research, websites, photoshop, final cut pro, high def canon camera, digital camera, apple mac computers, youtube, google, scanner, blogger, paint, computers for blogger, Microsoft word and quicktime converter.

The main use of technology was the internet. We used this from the very first stages from research into which genre to use, all the way through to the evaluation stage. We used Wikipedia to find out information about the artists herself (Ke$ha), we used google images to find examples of digi Paks, magazine adverts, different dance-pop artists and mise en scene ideas. We used Youtube to look into many many different music videos to analyse, compare them and get ideas on how to film our music video, and how to represent our artist. We used Blogger on the internet also, to put up and update our construction, research, planning and evaluation work within our music video project.

A very important media of technology we used was the high definition Canon cameras. We used these cameras to film all of our footage within our music video and our commentary. These cameras allowed us to film on our own tape, zoom in and out on characters and objects, stop and start filming when we wanted and let us upload all of our footage onto the next important media technology; the apple mac computers. These apple mac computers were key to our whole production of our music video as without these, we would not be able to see our footage or edit them with the programme they called ‘Final cut pro’. Final cut pro enabled us to edit our footage in many ways to create a good final music video. Final cut pro enabled us to fit together different footage, slow up or slow down the footage,  create different effects such as split screen and different colour effects and finally transitions in between clips such as fade in, fade out and a reverse shot. Without Final cut pro, I believe we would not have been able to create such a successful, creative and understandable music video.

After editing and finalising our music video, we used a programme called ‘Quicktime converter’ to convert our music video onto Youtube and finally onto blogger.

To create our digi pak and magazine advert, we wanted to include different pictures of the main character. To do this we used a digital camera to take pictures to then upload onto the computers to then upload onto blogger and Photoshop to create them. This was quick and easy to do. The challenging part then comes to using Photoshop to actually create the digi pak and magazine advert. Photoshop Is a very popular programme the computers have. Photoshop allowed us to edit our pictures with things such as colour, adding text and special effects to create an interesting and fun album cover and magazine advert. Photoshop was a challenge but we successfully got through it.

Before creating our digi pak and magazine advert, we drew out ideas onto paper as to what we will include in them and what they will look like. We wanted to put these on our blog, and in order to do this we needed to use another media technology of a picture scanner. We took our drawings to the Reprographics department and asked for them to be scanned onto our first class email accounts where we could access them. We then took these and uploaded them onto the blog. We also did this with our storyboards.

On the computers we used a programme called ‘Paint’ to save and resize pictures and create mood boards of things such as eye makeup ideas.

Whilst doing research, I used Microsoft word to type up what I wanted and then copy and pasting onto blogger. I found this easier to do rather than typing straight onto blogger as with Microsoft word, it checks for spelling and grammar mistakes.

Nearing the end of our project, we came back to use the Canon cameras to film each of our group members making a commentary. We will then go on to upload the footage onto the apple macs to edit the footage together using Final cut pro. To then use Quicktime converter to then upload it onto blogger.