Our media product contains a number of similarities among other dance pop music videos, I knew the use of shots such as close-ups and mid shots would help the audience establish our genre so we focused on what conventions of mise en sene are used by artists from the same genre. I thought the use of mise en sene would benefit in our genre being recognised, we put a lot of thought into the costumes that our characters would wear along with things such as lighting, props and make-up. We related these to ones we had seen in videos by artists such as P!nk, Cascada and Kesha herself.
When looking at music videos from artists such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry I found numerous shots such as mid, long and establishing shots that we would like to include within our video. Fast cuts were common within many of Lady Gaga’s videos especially her single ‘Just Dance’ , so we knew including them would follow her conventions along with other well known Dance-Pop artist’s music videos. In including these fast cuts it meant that our music video would contain a strong link between other Dance-Pop videos as when doing my research and planning. I found that fast cuts were also used in Kesha’s video ‘Tik Tok’ and a video by Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer, called ‘Give Me Everything’. Fast cuts are something we created and used twice when editing our footage as it conformed to the conventions from our Dance-Pop genre.
When I was watching a music video called ‘Sexy and I Know It’ created by LMFAO they use a split screen for about 30 seconds within their video, it helps show two different scenes and is very common within the Dance-Pop genre as I have also seen this in Michael Jackson’s music video ‘Billie Jean’. I thought that including a split screen would relate to the Dance-Pop genre, so instead of an ordinary 2 way split screen we developed this and included a 4 way split screen, adding different colourful effects whilst editing.
We used artificial lighting throughout most of our video, this is until it came to the scene with Alice in the tunnel. The light we can see shinning in from the outside of the tunnel is natural sunlight, this is one of the few scenes where artificial lighting was not used. Other scenes were that of our fast cuts and an over the shoulder shot of Sophie when she was stood outside.
Having our character represent the artist allowed us to show her lip syncing to the music, most of the videos I have seen from our genre shows the artist singing to the camera so we knew that this would be a key element to include within our video. A video in particular that has the artist singing and dancing to the camera is ‘What hurts the most’ by Cascada, the scenes of her singing are shown numerous times throughout the video. Many videos from our Dance-Pop genre also include a link between lyrics and visuals our song repeats the words ‘N N N Neva Baby’ so we thought that showing the audience links towards this will increase our video conforming to Dance-Pop Conventions.
When watching 'California King Bed' a music video by Rihanna, I noticed the different editing techniques she would use throughout the video. On several occasions she used a fade to cut from one scene to another, I thought this added a great effect and kept the video flowing smoothly. When planning our music video we knew it would not be soft and graceful as this is not what our Dance-Pop genre represents. So when looking at Rihanna’s transitions I thought that including a fade could also benefit our video as it will prevent our video from looking as if it jumps from one scene to another.
When planning for our storyline we initially agreed on following a fragmented narrative, although when editing we realised that like many other Dance-pop storylines our music video follows a linear narrative. Throughout the video we are shown what our main character Alice does during the day and then her night life at a party. Following this linear narrative uses the conventions that are also seen in many other Dance-Pop videos.
When looking at the aspects of challenging an ordinary Dance-pop music video we noticed that most did not include a constant prop where as our video did. If ever the camera showed Sophie 'the geek' she would be holding a fake flower. We found the use of the flower allowed us to keep with our storyline as it showed the 'Geek' trying to win over Alice.
When I was watching a music video called ‘Sexy and I Know It’ created by LMFAO they use a split screen for about 30 seconds within their video, it helps show two different scenes and is very common within the Dance-Pop genre as I have also seen this in Michael Jackson’s music video ‘Billie Jean’. I thought that including a split screen would relate to the Dance-Pop genre, so instead of an ordinary 2 way split screen we developed this and included a 4 way split screen, adding different colourful effects whilst editing.
We used artificial lighting throughout most of our video, this is until it came to the scene with Alice in the tunnel. The light we can see shinning in from the outside of the tunnel is natural sunlight, this is one of the few scenes where artificial lighting was not used. Other scenes were that of our fast cuts and an over the shoulder shot of Sophie when she was stood outside.
Having our character represent the artist allowed us to show her lip syncing to the music, most of the videos I have seen from our genre shows the artist singing to the camera so we knew that this would be a key element to include within our video. A video in particular that has the artist singing and dancing to the camera is ‘What hurts the most’ by Cascada, the scenes of her singing are shown numerous times throughout the video. Many videos from our Dance-Pop genre also include a link between lyrics and visuals our song repeats the words ‘N N N Neva Baby’ so we thought that showing the audience links towards this will increase our video conforming to Dance-Pop Conventions.
When watching 'California King Bed' a music video by Rihanna, I noticed the different editing techniques she would use throughout the video. On several occasions she used a fade to cut from one scene to another, I thought this added a great effect and kept the video flowing smoothly. When planning our music video we knew it would not be soft and graceful as this is not what our Dance-Pop genre represents. So when looking at Rihanna’s transitions I thought that including a fade could also benefit our video as it will prevent our video from looking as if it jumps from one scene to another.
When planning for our storyline we initially agreed on following a fragmented narrative, although when editing we realised that like many other Dance-pop storylines our music video follows a linear narrative. Throughout the video we are shown what our main character Alice does during the day and then her night life at a party. Following this linear narrative uses the conventions that are also seen in many other Dance-Pop videos.
When looking at the aspects of challenging an ordinary Dance-pop music video we noticed that most did not include a constant prop where as our video did. If ever the camera showed Sophie 'the geek' she would be holding a fake flower. We found the use of the flower allowed us to keep with our storyline as it showed the 'Geek' trying to win over Alice.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Throughout the creation of our main product and Ancillary tasks we have continued a bold and vibrant theme. When studying other Digi Paks and Magazine Adverts from other Dance-Pop artists I found that keeping a constant theme within the advertisements will attract people as it will allow the advertisements to be appealing to their audience.
I looked in detail at a Digi Pak by Britney Spears; the front cover gave us the idea of having a close up photo of our character as the front cover. It also showed me that our use of scenes such as the Windsor Leisure Centre play zone would need to be continued from our music video to our Digi Pak and Magazine Advert. From this we chose to take photos for the Magazine Advert in this environment so we maintained a continuous theme. I feel that keeping these themes will allow our magazine advert to stand out against other genres as it will be very bright and intriguing.
We knew that our main character should be the main picture in our Magazine Advert and Digi Pak so Abi and I decided to use a photo of Alice. The photo we used included feathers and a ball on top of Alice’s head, the feathers related to our Dance-Pop genre as the genre is based around the difference it has from other music genres. This photo in particular stood out to me as it also showed Alice’s bold eyelashes and lip glitter, these are both commonly seen adverts from our genre. The ball on top of Alice’s head in the photo for our Magazine Advert relates to the scenes of Alice in the ball pit, we thought that including this would keep with the scenes within our music video.
The colour scheme throughout our music video is very bright and bold colours, so when creating our Magazine Advert and Digi Pak we included these in the picture but also the background images. We used a bright glittering background to relate to the conventions of our genre as we had seen this in numerous magazine adverts.
The layout of our Magazine Advert and the front cover of our Digi Pak show Alice in the centre of the page, this is so that she will stand out as in a normal Digi Pak & Magazine Advert the artist will always attract your attention. We have placed lettering such as the artist’s name, featuring songs and the albums name around Alice on the Magazine Advert. We have also done the same for the Digi Pak but included more detail of things such as other songs featured on the album along with more photos of Alice around the Digi Pak. We maintained a constant font for the words throughout both of these so they can relate to each other.
Ensuring that our theme was kept throughout our main product and ancillary texts allowed our work to keep a constant relation to each other.
I looked in detail at a Digi Pak by Britney Spears; the front cover gave us the idea of having a close up photo of our character as the front cover. It also showed me that our use of scenes such as the Windsor Leisure Centre play zone would need to be continued from our music video to our Digi Pak and Magazine Advert. From this we chose to take photos for the Magazine Advert in this environment so we maintained a continuous theme. I feel that keeping these themes will allow our magazine advert to stand out against other genres as it will be very bright and intriguing.
We knew that our main character should be the main picture in our Magazine Advert and Digi Pak so Abi and I decided to use a photo of Alice. The photo we used included feathers and a ball on top of Alice’s head, the feathers related to our Dance-Pop genre as the genre is based around the difference it has from other music genres. This photo in particular stood out to me as it also showed Alice’s bold eyelashes and lip glitter, these are both commonly seen adverts from our genre. The ball on top of Alice’s head in the photo for our Magazine Advert relates to the scenes of Alice in the ball pit, we thought that including this would keep with the scenes within our music video.
The colour scheme throughout our music video is very bright and bold colours, so when creating our Magazine Advert and Digi Pak we included these in the picture but also the background images. We used a bright glittering background to relate to the conventions of our genre as we had seen this in numerous magazine adverts.
The layout of our Magazine Advert and the front cover of our Digi Pak show Alice in the centre of the page, this is so that she will stand out as in a normal Digi Pak & Magazine Advert the artist will always attract your attention. We have placed lettering such as the artist’s name, featuring songs and the albums name around Alice on the Magazine Advert. We have also done the same for the Digi Pak but included more detail of things such as other songs featured on the album along with more photos of Alice around the Digi Pak. We maintained a constant font for the words throughout both of these so they can relate to each other.
Ensuring that our theme was kept throughout our main product and ancillary texts allowed our work to keep a constant relation to each other.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Throughout my planning and research we were able to gain feedback from classmates and our teacher. The first element we were given feedback on was for a presentation that we showed to our class to help them gain an idea of what we would like our music video too look like.
We showed the class two music videos from artists of the Dance-Pop genre, this gained us very positive feedback as the class found these videos amusing and interesting to watch. We were told that due to the information we provided the class from these videos, we showed a detailed explanation of our Dance-Pop genre, in doing so we also showed good evidence of research into this genre. This feedback allowed us to remain positive about the ideas we had for our video as it related to both these videos.
Feedback we gained from our presentation told us that we did not focus too much on our niche audience; this is something that we had not considered. From gaining this feedback it allowed us to understand that we will need to do some separate research into our target audience.
A main element that we gained very positive feedback from was the type of shots we had planned to use. We mentioned to the class that we wished to include fast cuts when it came to editing, the class thought this would add a great effect to our music video so we decided as a group this would defiantly be something we wished to include. Other shots such as low/high angled shots, mid shots and close ups were also something the class picked up on and thought we should include. Although as a group we had thought about using these, gaining advice from the class it helped us to come to the decisions of what would be appealing as the age of our class mates relates to the age group we had considered our video to be aimed at.
Some of negative feedback that we gained made us realise that we did not have a solid storyline, we had not put too much consideration into this and it showed when we done our presentation. From this feedback it allowed us a group to know that we needed to sit down and think about the storyline that we would wish to follow.
The class gave us some advice on what outfits and make-up they think would look good for our character in the video, many of which, from what we have seen related to our Dance-Pop genre. Although this presentation was at the beginning of our music video project, the negative and positive feedback helped us to know what else we would need to consider before creating our video.
We showed the class two music videos from artists of the Dance-Pop genre, this gained us very positive feedback as the class found these videos amusing and interesting to watch. We were told that due to the information we provided the class from these videos, we showed a detailed explanation of our Dance-Pop genre, in doing so we also showed good evidence of research into this genre. This feedback allowed us to remain positive about the ideas we had for our video as it related to both these videos.
Feedback we gained from our presentation told us that we did not focus too much on our niche audience; this is something that we had not considered. From gaining this feedback it allowed us to understand that we will need to do some separate research into our target audience.
A main element that we gained very positive feedback from was the type of shots we had planned to use. We mentioned to the class that we wished to include fast cuts when it came to editing, the class thought this would add a great effect to our music video so we decided as a group this would defiantly be something we wished to include. Other shots such as low/high angled shots, mid shots and close ups were also something the class picked up on and thought we should include. Although as a group we had thought about using these, gaining advice from the class it helped us to come to the decisions of what would be appealing as the age of our class mates relates to the age group we had considered our video to be aimed at.
Some of negative feedback that we gained made us realise that we did not have a solid storyline, we had not put too much consideration into this and it showed when we done our presentation. From this feedback it allowed us a group to know that we needed to sit down and think about the storyline that we would wish to follow.
The class gave us some advice on what outfits and make-up they think would look good for our character in the video, many of which, from what we have seen related to our Dance-Pop genre. Although this presentation was at the beginning of our music video project, the negative and positive feedback helped us to know what else we would need to consider before creating our video.
When we next received feedback, we had published our rough cut onto our blog page. In gaining feedback from this it allowed us to consider what could need changing and what we should keep in our final piece. It also helped us to understand what our classmates thought looked good in the video.
From 3 different groups we were told that our lip syncing was extremely accurate throughout the short video, this is something that we knew we had to concentrate on as it is a key element within our video. In knowing that our lip syncing was in time it allowed us to add in more scenes of lip syncing throughout the video. Feedback we gained from our mise en sene was very positive we were told that it was ‘eye-catching’ and ‘keeps with the fun of the song’. This is something that we were very happy with as we had put a lot of effort into thinking about how our character would look.
Some negative criticism we gained from our rough cut was that the zooming out at the beginning of the video could have been smoother. We took this into consideration but this shot was the first one that would be shown with lip syncing so we decided to keep this in as it is something that as a group we all thought benefited to the video.
Our use of quick flashing lights had a mixed feedback; one group did not understand the meaning to these random flashes. We knew that until the whole music video would have been seen these would not make sense. We were also told by another group that these fast flashing lights fitted in well with our Dance-Pop genre. From this feedback it proved to us that we would need to show a clear involvement of the party during the video.
Also when we received feedback for the questionnaire that I created, it helped us to establish our target audience and make sure we were producing a music video that would attract our audience. As we had been told we did not make our target audience clear during the presentation we wanted to make sure we were aiming our video towards the right audience. That is why these questionnaires were created so we knew exactly who to aim our video towards.
From the questionnaire we were able to understand what teenage girls would expect from a Dance-Pop video, this came back with things such as bold colours and a wild imagination. These two aspects would help in keeping our audience drawn to the video and allow them to want to watch it again.
One question that I asked in particular is something that we wanted to understand, when the students were asked ‘Do you think connecting with the audience is good in a music video?’ many came back with saying yes. As we wanted to include continuous lip syncing and having our character appear to be singing to the camera, the results to this question helped us when deciding what to add to our video.
All girls agreed that having comedy in a Dance-Pop video will encourage them to keep watching it, this is something we had already considered including and due to these results we knew it would be a very good idea.
Overall from all the feedback we gained we took a lot into consideration and included numerous shots, mise en sene and conventions of the Dance-Pop genre within our music video. Event though we gained some negative feedback we did not take this as an insult but rather a way to improve our video.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the duration of planning and creating our music video we used a number of technologies to help with the research into our genre.
A main use of technology that we used was the internet; we used this when first establishing our music genre and then continued to use this all the way up until our evaluation stages. When doing further research into our genre for things such as the Digi Pak, Magazine Advert and mise en sene ideas the internet was our main source of information. As we needed photos for many of these I used Google images a number of times to find what we needed. Another use for the internet we used was youtube; this helped us when planning our music video, by watching other music videos by other artists from our Dance-Pop genre we were able to know what we should be including in ours.
Also when doing research into our genre, I used a programme called ‘paint’ to be able to create a collage of photos for our mood board and initial eye make-up ideas. This allowed me to re-size photos and place them where ever I wanted on a small background.
When filming for our rough cut and final piece we used a cannon camera, this camera allowed us to focus in and out of specific images within the scene. It also allowed us to zoom in and out on characters within the images; this is something we used frequently throughout the video.
A main use of technology that we used was the internet; we used this when first establishing our music genre and then continued to use this all the way up until our evaluation stages. When doing further research into our genre for things such as the Digi Pak, Magazine Advert and mise en sene ideas the internet was our main source of information. As we needed photos for many of these I used Google images a number of times to find what we needed. Another use for the internet we used was youtube; this helped us when planning our music video, by watching other music videos by other artists from our Dance-Pop genre we were able to know what we should be including in ours.
Also when doing research into our genre, I used a programme called ‘paint’ to be able to create a collage of photos for our mood board and initial eye make-up ideas. This allowed me to re-size photos and place them where ever I wanted on a small background.
When filming for our rough cut and final piece we used a cannon camera, this camera allowed us to focus in and out of specific images within the scene. It also allowed us to zoom in and out on characters within the images; this is something we used frequently throughout the video.
Whilst editing our rough cut and final piece we used the Apple Mac computers. On these computers they had a programme called ‘Final Cut Pro’ this programme allowed us to create a number of different effects throughout our videos. Transitions that we included such as fades, split screens and colouring were created when we used this programme. It also allowed us to include a reverse shot; this is something we were really keen on including in our video.
After using Final Cut Pro we used a programme called 'Quick Time Conversion' to convert our music video, this allowed us to put the video onto youtube and then place it onto blogger.
While doing blog work we would need to have access to a computer along with Microsoft Word, in using Microsoft Word we were able to check our spelling and grammar before posting our work onto the blog.
We had basic drawings of images we used when considering what our Digi Pak would look like, when putting these onto a computer we took them to the Repro Graphics department and asked them to scan them in for us. They then sent these images to us by First Class which is an email account all students have to communicate with each other; I then took these and uploaded them onto the blog.
When it came to taking pictures for our Digi Pak and Magazine Advert we used a digital camera, we would then need to upload these pictures onto the Apple Mac computers to be able to edit them on Photo Shop. Photo Shop is a programme that allows us to edit almost every aspect of our picture, including its saturation, background and special effects. We used this programme when creating our final Digi Pak and Magazine Advert. It also allowed us to add writing on top of the picture.
The cannon cameras, computers and final cut pro were also used when creating and then filming our evaluations. We first typed up all of our answers and then filmed each other as a group answering these. Once we had done this we then had to upload the footage onto final cut pro and begin editing it, later to upload it onto blogger.
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