EVALUATION - QUESTION 2

Finished video



Finished poster

Finished digipak:

 

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

EVALUATION - QUESTION 1 MAGAZINE ADVERT

Below is my finished magazine advert




Below is a list of conventions that would normally be seen on a magazine advert

• Logo
• Same image as on the digipak
• Text saying 'includes the single...'
• Name of artist/band
• Name of the song being promoted
• Record label
• Release date
• Same font/colour scheme

Blue - conventions that we have used

Green - conventions that we have developed

Red - conventions that we have challenged
Once again we have included all of the above on our magazine advert, except for the text 'featuring...'.

The magazine advert below is very simple, and in dark colours, which is associated with this genre, the text/font is similar to the one used on the digipak itself. We have used the same font and image from our digipak but just added a few other pieces of information, e.g. the release date, quotes, etc. We wanted to give our audience the most information that we could.




We have developed some conventions as we have quotes on our magazine advert from Q and Kerrang with a star rating, this is usually seen on a poster advertising pop music, not on a emo/punk magazine advert.


We have challenged the way that our text is presented on our magazine advert, e.g. the release date is not straight across the page, we have placed it onto the wooden cross that is pictured, the reason why we have done this is to make the most of the room available on the photograph that we have used, we believed that it was a good way to present the release date, it is also edgy, and non-conforming, like the punk genre.

Our magazine advert is below:

We have included the website at the bottom of the image, which is sometimes shown on magazine adverts but not always. We have also included the logo, which you can see in the bottom left corner, this is sometimes sown on posters/magazine adverts but once again not always.

In conclusion across our 3 media products we have used, developed and challenged the conventions of the punk/pop genre within our products. Although I believe that we have mainly used the usual conventions of our genre. For example, the costumes, like the bright red and blue jeans, and also the dark coloured clothes which we have used. Also the lighting within our video, especially on the puppet shots, where we have used a spot light on our main actress to draw the audiences attention on her. We have used lighting throughout our music video as others have in this particular genre. But we have also challenged many of the conventions, like the make up on our performer, and also the use of instruments within our video.

EVALUATION - QUESTION 1 DIGIPAK

Below is my finished digipak













Below are the usual conventions that you would see on a digipak:

• Bar code
• Track list
• Image - usually the artist
• Release dates
• Record label
• Sticker on the front, 'featuring...'
• Text on the front, artists name and song title, also down the spine
• Producer
• Website
• Copyright logo

Blue - conventions that we have used

Green - conventions that we have developed

Red - conventions that we have challenged

All of the conventions above are all the things that you would usually see on a digipak front and back cover. I have used nearly all of the conventions listed above, the one convention that I have not used is the sticker on the front 'featuring...' the reason why we have not included this is because our DVD is just one single song, so the audience should know what is on the disk, as it is already written on the front.

We have developed a convention as we have used a QR code on our digipak as well as a bar code, this is so we have a wider audience as we have used new technologies, that everyone is becoming aware of.

We have met the conventions of this genre in terms of the photograph on the front cover, this is because on most of the front covers that I have seen have a photograph of the artist on them as does ours, for example, the avril lavigne front cover below shows a picture of the main artist and next to it is our front and back cover:










The font that we decided to use on our digipak I believe to be more gothic and edgy rather than emo/punk. We have developed this as the text on the avril lavigne cover is more likely to be associated with the pop/punk genre, the reasons for why we chose this font was because we wanted it to be different and we thought that it fitted better with the song and the artist that we chose to do.


We decided to place the lyrics on the inside of our digipak. This challenges the normal conventions of other media products from the same genre, as you rarely see the lyrics inside the digipak on a punk/emo/gothic digipak. The reasons why we did this was because we wanted to make everyone aware that it is pop/punk, so we needed to make sure that the pop element was in there somewhere. A screen shot of our inside cover is below:



Below is a photograph of the inside of s club 7's CD digipak:

This group is usually known to be pop, and as you can see the lyrics are on the inside of the CD, they also have a booklet with the words inside for every song.

We also decided to keep the photograph in colour, this was because we believed that it looked better, and even though it may have stood out more with it being black and white and the red of her jeans brought out, we decided to keep it more casual.
We did use a photograph from the filming that we did though, this was so the audience can identify and relate it back to the video, this convention is common within music videos from any genre.

For the inside of our digipak (which you can see above) we used a photograph of a rose and petals, we made the background black and the petals bright red so it would stand out more, the reason why we used red is because the connotations of this colour are romance, blood, love, etc, which fits in well with our video. Usually the inside cover is simple but effective in this particular genre. I believe that we have used this convention as ours is very simple and stands out.

EVALUATION - QUESTION 1 MUSIC VIDEO

My finished video









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

MUSIC VIDEO

Our brief was to create a music video, magazine advert and digipak to promote our artist. In order for me to do this I have looked at many music videos to get inspiration for the song that we chose, Avril Lavigne My Happy Ending. I have seen many music videos from the same genre as Avril, which is usually known to be punk/pop or pop/rock. Within all of the videos that I have looked over the genre is represented as very rebellious, and that the common convention is to reject the norms, and to shock the mainstream. Taking this into account we have tried to incorporate it into our music video, for example, the locations, costume and props, lighting, editing pace, etc, which are all there to create a rebellious feel.


Firstly I am going to talk about how my music video has used forms and conventions of real media products from the same genre as mine. 
Starting with the locations and costumes, as you can see from the screen shot below from Pink's music video for 'Just Like a Pill', the location is very dark and emo/punk looking, which is usual for this genre. Also she is wearing black/dark clothes, which is a convention of our genre, the connotations/meanings of this clothing and the locations that I have spoke about are so people in this genre are noticed, it also sends our a message to everyone, that 'I can do what I like, where what I like, etc..'. We have used this within our music video as we have Kate (our Avril character) in a very dark room playing the piano and in dark clothes throughout the music video. Also we have performance shots of Kate on the roof and on industrial style rails as we were thought that they would add to the rebellious feel, also the graveyard which has more of an edgy, Gothic style, which I believe fits in with this genre.






Below is a screen shot of of the dark room where we shot our piano scenes:

Also in Pink's video there are shots directly elating to the lyrics. For example at the start the lyrics are 'I'm lying here on the floor where you left me' and she is actually lying on the floor singing. With regards to our video we have done the same,e.g, the lyrics 'held up so high on such a breakable thread' are related to the images that you see as we have made our artist into a puppet, with her boyfriend character holding her up, also on the lyrics 'you've got your dumb friends' we have a shot of Tom with all of his friends laughing and joking, with Kate stood in the background between them.

You can also see from other videos that there are reflective shots where the artist does not sing or act, she is just sat looking into or away from the camera, we have used this convention as we have reflective shots of Kate looking sad.


From Pink's video:

From our video:

As you can see below in Paramore's music video, Ignorance, from Youtube, the use of lighting is essential for setting the mood that is created for this genre:




The spot light from the light bulb is mainly on Hayley Williams suggesting that she is the lead of the group, we have done something similar within our video as we have shots of Kate, who is playing Avril Lavigne, as a puppet in our drama studio, we used a spot light to create the usual conventions of this particular genre, below is a couple of photographs of our puppet scenes:

These scenes make it clear who the artist is, who's being promoted and who the audience should be focusing on.

Evanescence - What You Want

In the music video for 'What You Want' by Evanescence (above) the lighting is also essential as it creates a certain atmosphere that is related to the genre, it is very dark, and they have used many different styles of lighting as we have in our music video. In Halestorm's video for 'Love/Hate Heartbreak' the lighting at 2.56 shows how effective lighting can be, as it draws your attention to the artist that you see.

Within Evanescence's music video for 'What You Want' there is many cuts/edits, they usually go on the beat, I have counted how many there are and there is 144, this is similar to our video as we have only made edits where the beat is and there is about the same number.

In many music videos I have researched into, like Evanescence, Paramore and Halestorm, the main artist is female and the attention is mostly on her, this is exactly the same in our video as the attention is always on Kate, apart from where we have some narrative shots, which mainly contain her and her boyfriend figure.

We have tried to use most of the dress/clothes that are usually seen in music videos from this genre, e.g. we have used studded belts and accessories, strips (the black and white striped cardigan that we have used), we have used a waistcoats, e.g. the piano shots, also converse shoes, bright coloured clothing (jeans (blue and red)) and finally the tutu which Kate wears on one of the performance shots, below are some of the costumes that Kate has worn in our music video, also the locations in which she has performed for us:

Within our music video the shot at the beginning and at the end are almost the same, I have seen this in a few videos from the same genre, e.g. Paramore, The Only Exception and Halestorm, Love/Hate Heartbreak. Our start and end shot are of the same photograph, but at the beginning the photograph is whole and at the end it is torn in half, I believe the reason behind this is to tell the story behind the lyrics/song and to complete the narrative. Below is a screen shot from Premier Pro of our start and end shots:

Start shot:

End shot:

Below is a screen shot from Youtube of Paramore's establishing shot, which is also at the end of the video:

 

You can see that the first shot is of a couple which has been seen in many videos from the same genre as ours and in other songs that are about love and losing someone, we have used this convention within our video as our song is about the loss of a relationship and about her boyfriend, so it feels right to include a couple within our video.

Within Paramores video for 'The Only Exception' there is many moments when slow motion is used, e.g. At 2.28 you can see Hayley Williams (the lead singer) in a crowd of people looking at her boyfriend, the way that they have used the slow motion is to enhance the happiness whereas ours is there to create sadness. Paramore's video is below:





Finally within Halestorm's music video for 'Love/Hate Heartbreak' they have used an establishing shot at the beginning as we have, although ours is a little different as we have a short section, cutting very fast with all of the performance shots, this was to create impact whereas there's is used to set the scene.



I AM NOW GOING TO TALK ABOUT HOW WE HAVE DEVELOPED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS FROM THE SAME GENRE AS OURS.

We have developed a convention that is seen within some music videos from our genre, including Halestorm, where there is no narrative within the video. Ours has narrative as well as performance. I believe that we needed narrative in our video as we needed to tell a story, this was to keep the audience interested, whereas in Halestorms video it created an impact with just having performance shots as it is quite an angry song.


We have also tried to incorporate a rebellious attitude into our music video, the reason why we have done this is so that the audience can relate to it, although we have dialled it down as we don't want to put across the wrong message. If you look at Pink's video for 'Just Like a Pill', below, you can see that they have conveyed a much stronger sense of rebellion in comparison to ours:

With regards to the punk/pop genre that make up is usually quite extreme, in our music video we have not used as much eye liner or eye shadow as you would usually see on an emo/punk person. We have used a little eyeliner, on the puppet shots and used red lipstick throughout to express the emotion that she is expressing, the reason why we have not used the normal amount of make-up that is usual for this genre is because she is more mad at her boyfriend not sad like in other videos that are about the loss of the relationship.

HOW HAVE I CHALLENGED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Within Pink's video, 'Just Like a Pill' (which you can see above) there are a lot of camera movement within Pink's video and many other video's from the same genre, this challenges our music video as ours is mainly still and usually on a tripod, the only camera movement that we have used is to zoom, tilt and pan, whereas Pink's video for 'Just Like a Pill' is never very still as they use a combination of camera movements.


Also Paramore's video for 'The Only Exception' challenges ours as the narrative/performance ratio is the opposite compared to ours, their video consists mainly of narrative shots, e.g. the speed dating, and the church. Whereas ours is around 60% performance shots and 40% narrative. Although in other videos from our genre, like Evanescence, 'What You Want'. it is mostly performance based. This shows that no genre is exactly the same and every video is different to some extent.


Within many videos from our genre the cutting/editing pace is quite fast whereas ours is slow. We have challenged this convention as we felt that a slower editing pace fits better within our video, although in some parts, at the start, we have used a very fast editing pace, this was to create an impact as well as to follow the beat. Even though we have used a slower cutting/editing pace, we have cut with the beat and at impact points which is usual for any music video.

Within our video we have challenged the way that our performer looks, in some of the videos that I have looked at the women are seen as sex objects, this is Mulvey's theory called the 'male gaze', it is very stereotypical as many women today are not portrayed like that. Within our video we have not done this as women from this particular genre are not interested in what people think about them, they are more concerned with whether they feel comfortable in their own skin.

You can see from the photograph to the left that we have used quite a lot of eye liner, this was to make her eyes stand out whilst shooting the puppet scenes, but this is the only place where we have used make-up. We have not used as much throughout the rest of our music video.

Some of the conventions that are usually seen in punk/pop videos we have not used. For example, the instruments. There is usually known to be one or two electric guitars, an electric bass, and a drum kit, along with the vocals. We haven't used a band as we have just focused on the lead singer, although we have tried to keep one element of this convention, the guitar, you can see this from the screen shot below of Kate playing the guitar:

Within Halestorm's video you see the band, this consists of the guitarists, drummer and vocalist, this challenges ours as we only see Kate and occasionally see her playing the guitar. Although in Paramore's video for 'The Only Exception' they have shots of the instruments that are being played, in our video, 'My Happy Ending' we have shots of the instrument (guitar) that Kate plays, so we have used parts of this convention.




As you can see from other videos from this genre most of the locations are inside, we have challenged this as some of ours are outside. The locations for this genre are usually as dark and gloomy box rooms inside, like on the Paramore video, Ignorance. We have challenged this as some of our shots were taken outside in bright sunlight. The reason why we have done this is to bring out the pop side of the artist and song, as the genre is pop/punk.


Below are the locations that we have used outside:

Although the traditional style adds to the goth element, whilst the grandeur adds to the more mainstream pop genre.

POST PRODUCTION

During post production we have added some after effects, made sure that the syncing is correct and the lighting looks professional. Once we had done all of these things and just polished of our video, it was ready to go onto YouTube, facebook, etc for audience feedback. All of the images/screen shots that are below are from YouTube.


This is our finished music video:

To start with we found a few syncing issues throughout our music video, which we amended, it was just a simple case of taking the clip which was out of time back a few milliseconds, until her mouth opened when the words came out.


Lighting was an issue on some of the shots. They were either a little dull (make-up shot, which you can see below) or too bright, as we had some of the over exposed shots still in our video. 
On these shots we used fast colour correction, this was to make sure that with us brightening and dulling down some of the shots, Kates face didn't look washed out, darker than usual or a different colour to the other shots we had. Although some of the over exposed shots we did remove, as the lighting didn't really add anything to our video.

We have also brightened up the shot below as it looked a little dull, we did this by using fast colour correction and gamma correction:

We altered the puppet shots, with both Kate and Tom, to make them look more professional. We were able to do this by duplicating the layer and using the luma key tool on the duplicated layer, which we then changed the threshold to get the shot to how we wanted it to look. We also used the gamma correction tool to try and get the shots to the highest standard/quality possible.
Screen shots of the puppet scenes are below:
 

During post production, we added an old style film reel effect on the memory shots to distinguish between the past and the present. We tried some video effects on the memory shots, like the cineon converter, which brightened the shot up a lot, and made the colours much brighter than they were originally. The reason we thought of using this effect, was because it would make the shots feel warm and happy which they would have been in the past. Although we didn't use this as we decided to use the black and white tool instead to add to the old/memory style which we were going for, you can see this from the screen shots below:

On the rose and photograph shots at the beginning and end we used a tool, it dulled down the colours and mixed them together, which made the images look older, as in a memory. Below is a screen shot:

We used the HD camera for some of the shots, because of this we had to stretch the image to fit the frame, to do this we simply clicked on motion and moved the image until it fitted the frame.

We also used a motion effect at 2.02 when Tom pushed kate onto the sofa, this was to emphasis the movements and to make them more visible to the audience.


On the 'dumb friends' shot where we had Tom on the right hand side, his friends on the left, and Kate in the middle at the back, we decided to do a focus pull, to change the focus from Tom and his friends to Kate, this was done to highlight the sadness. To do this we duplicated the layer, the used the rotor brush tool to cut her out of the picture, added feathering to make the edges around her smoother, then simply added a blur effect onto the duplicated layer. We then added a focus pull, and chose how long we wanted to pull to last, you can see the effect at 1.32 on the video at the top or from the screen shot below:

We did use a horizontal flip on some of the shots which included Kate and Tom together, this was done because in most of the shots Tom has been on the right hand side of the frame, which we believe to be the domineering side and we wanted to keep this the whole way through the music video:

FILMING 28TH NOVEMBER

Today after school we finished filming the argument, all loved up and the 'stroke face then push' shots. Today we had our media technician looking over us to make sure that we got the best shots that we could, as the room we are shooting in is very small and we needed to make the most of it.

Below is some photographs that we took whilst filming:

And here is some screen shots which shows what we have done with the footage that we have shot:

We filmed Kate throwing the cushions around and the messing up the room where we were filming, the screen shot above shows where we placed that footage. Also to add to the effect, we cut parts out of the scene, this was to create an impact and speed the footage up a little, we added cross dissolves in between all of the footage, this was to make it run smoother and to create an ellipsis of time between the shots.

FILMING - THURSDAY 24TH NOVEMBER

Today we re-shot what we did on Tuesday 8th November, this is because it looked amateur compared to the other footage that we shot, e.g. the puppet scenes, this is because we have used the lighting in the drama studio which makes it look very good quality. Therefore we are going to film again this lunch in a different location as the framing wasn't the best in the drama studio. We are thinking of either filming in a room in Learning Support as it looks like a domestic setting because it has sofa's, etc. The lighting in there is very good too and it would be best if we used a different location.



The photographs below are from our finished music video on YouTube, it shows the costume that Kate and Tom were wearing and how we included the footage which we shot:

 

You can see from the shot above that we changed it to black and white as we though that it would be more effective and capture their emotion more. We also added a old film reel over the top of the footage, to make the memory stand out and different to the other shots which we have included in our music video.

FINAL MAGAZINE ADVERT

Below is our final poster/magazine advert:

You can see that we have all of the necessary logos and information that you would usually find in a magazine advert, including the photograph of the artist, name of the artist, name of the album, record label, website, quotes and release date.

EDITING OUR MAGAZINE ADVERT

The screen shot below is how we started. We used the same photograph as our digipak, this is so our audience can identify what it is promoting. We have also used the same font and colour scheme, this is so it has brand identity:

 

This screen shot below shows that we have placed the website on the bottom, also we have added quotes, which are usually seen on a poster/magazine advert, the quotes we have used are from Kerrang and Q magazine, which are associated with the punk/rock genre: 




We then placed the Sony Music Entertainment logo on, but thought that it would look better without the white background so I removed it from the logo, you can see this from the screen shot at the bottom:



Final editing - we have chosen to remove the text saying 'release date November 30', this is because albums usually come out on a Monday, we thought that the writing was too big and you usually don't see the text 'release date' on a poster. So we have just decided to place 21st November 2011 on it, as you can see from the screen shot below:

 

We have made the text 'Avril Lavigne' and 'My Happy Ending' brighter so that our audience can see it better, and so that it stands out from all of the other text on the magazine advert.

DESIGNS FOR OUR MAGAZINE ADVERT

The photograph that we have decided to use is the same as our digipak, the reason for this is so that we could have brand identity and so that the audience can realise what it is that we are promoting, the artist and the song/album. The photograph is below:

We have decided to use quotes from some magazines and music channels.
The magazine that we are thinking of using is Q magazine:





The music channel that we have decided is Kerrang:





The reason why we have chosen these are because they are usually the type of magazines and music channels that would normally feature this type of genre, from punk to rock.