Evaluation question 1 - Ami Lawrence

                                 

Evaluation activity 1 - In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? from Ami Lawrence

I will explain how my media product links to other conventions of real media products, i will explaining underneath the powerpoint. If you are able to read the first slide can you please scroll down to read about the link, after reading the paragraph if you could scroll back up to see the second slide.
 Thankyou!

1) When planning this music video, we wanted to show different variations of linking the relationship of lyrics and narrative and visuals, by doing so i looked at Vampire Weekends music to see if they used any links of their lyrics to the music video.  I looked at lyrical music video on Youtube and discovered they used a train cut in the part of speaking about another location, this shows they are showing transport when singing about a certain area, this challenge forms and conventions, as the audience we can either have an open narrative where we decide what we want to interpret. Theorist Stuart Hall mentions the perception theory, this is where we give out signs and we let the audience encode/decode the  situation which decided by the reader.


2) Listening to different type of indie artists we wanted to understand the relationship of visuals, so when listening to Arctic Monkeys - Do i wanna know? You can understand there a continuous beat in the background which the visuals relate to as the line moves to the beat for it to make a difference to the beat. The audience will be able to recognize the beat to our music video and as theorist Jackobson invented symbolic and technical codes/conventions. We wanted to use this and show how the continuous beat can match up in our music video just like the Arctic Monkeys video. We used cinematography to show through our technical codes we are able to produce a well noticeable beat in the music video.

Performance 

Narrative

3)When researching other indie bands, i noticed a lot of bands will always use narrative and performance. By seeing this we thought it would be a good idea to keep the band in the music video but use them when it is necessary. In the music video She moves in her own way by the Kooks. They provided both narrative and performance but in a much more quirky way then our band, they used a log through the swimming pool and sat on top of it and performed their instrumental part too, a lot of medium shots and long shots were involved to keep the whole band in the frame. They kept the singer in the middle of the frame and we also followed the same conventions they provided in our music video.  We used similar features as we made  sure we had the artist as the  main actor too. We never challenged any conventions as this was an normal thing for a typical indie band.

4) I was really interested in investigating into indie/rock music, i discovered a very popular song Mr. Brightside - The Killers. We didn't want to challenge conventions as much as the The Killers have as not a lot of bands dress up in historical/fancy dress clothing, when seeing this video we decided to make sure our band kept to a casual dress look as we wanted to keep to the stereotypical indie band, we used typical conventions for a music video as we didn't feel like challenging forms for our genre of music.

5) When looking through different music videos, a lot of really well known artists had beaches, fields and some had more extraordinary  locations and setting. We used a typical indie genre location for our location. We didn't want to challenges conventions as we used similar locations such as a field, balcony and a park bench. Never Shout Never - What is love, whole music video is people sat on benches, they are singing about love and how it hurts and if they could get back together. We had a very similar song which involves being hurt, emotionally isolated and we decided to add the park bench at the end. Here is again where the Stuart Hall theory - perception theory comes involved as we want the reader to be able to encode/decode whether it has a meaning behind it or if they can see what we are trying to get out

6) The camerawork and editing was the main thing in our music video as you obviously can't create a performance and narrative music video without using camerawork and editing, when creating this music video we just wanted to get across our meaning which was a binary opposite ''togetherness/isolation'' which theorist Levi-Strauss discovers. We used sly ideas which wanted the audience to guess if they was looking into the meaning of our music video, when looking through music i discovered The Kooks - Ooh La, they had a similar setting to the same as ours, we both used black and white imagery throughout the music video and also used colour. It was depending on whether we thought it had a deep meaning, this is to show how he is feeling isolated. We got this idea from this music video. We definitely challenged conventions as we wanted the audience to be able to understand the emotion and the isolation throughout the music video at the end of our music video we edited so the female he is love with sits on the park bench where he sat previously but she was in colour to define she isn't hurt.

7) The lighting is very natural which shows didn't challenge any conventions as we used natural lighting in all of our shots, we shot mostly outside too which meant we had to adapt to what ever weather was permitted. In this video One Direction - You & I they filmed on a pier which was also very weather permitted, if it rained they would have not filmed and left it for another day where as we had very different lighting due to mist, sun and rain. Not using lightning is very usual for a music video, the only time we used lights, was when we were filming our green screen.

8) We wanted our mise-en-scene to show our cars, teddies, shadows and a phone which shows togetherness and we showed isolation to show loneliness from the actor Connor, as we had used a isolated train station and very similar settings. We kept everything in continuity and made sure that we didn't let anything stand out like a sore thumb.

9) When looking through music videos we needed to make sure we used similar shots and didn't want to challenge the indie stereotype music video. I looked at many different bands and they used so many different shots but wouldn't show any shots like high angles and low angles because there was nothing to make any one feel big or small. So using our shots we needed to make sure it all fitted in with continuity instead of sticking out too much.  This picture shows they wanted the lead artist/guitarist in the middle of the frame as he was the center of attention.

Evaluation question 2 - Ami Lawrence

Evaluation activity 2 - Media A2 from Ami Lawrence

Evaluation question 3 - Ami Lawrence

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When first understanding we was going to be producing an indie/rock music video, we needed to understand the audience for this type of genre. Looking through many music bands and videos we decided that we was going to have an audience ranged from 14 on wards, this helped us show the male gaze theory by theorist  Mulvey. By having an all boy band, this will show the theory as boy bands are very popular and the female audience do go crazy for boy bands, so we understood that going for an mainly female audience we will have a wider audience.

Target audience 

•  Female's 14 - 21 year olds
• Audience who enjoy both narrative and performance 
• preferably Indie/rock audiences

We created many different sources of surveys to understand what the audience wanted, we used survey monkey to find out what the audience expects in our music video. We used various of questions to understand what the audience expected and what the audience wanted to see in our music video.
The following questions are in the image below, we used these questions to see the audience expectations and to see if we can link our music video more towards our target audience. We needed to wait until the results came through to be able to link the comments to be able to create our music video.

 As you can see we asked 6 questions which was for the audience for fill in, they added comments of their ideas and also used many different ways to answer questions we wanted to make the questionnaire was a easy flow for the audience so they didn't get confused. Asking these questions all linked to how we was going to prepare for our music video making sure we used audiences ideas and also keeping it to our target audience. When filming and coming up with our story line for the music video, we decided to do performance and story to show that their was two sides to the band and artist, as he was very emotional and we wanted to show isolation we left the artist by himself and wanted to make sure that it was portrayed as togetherness and isolation as when they was all together in the band it showed 'togetherness' as they was all close together in front of brick will (adding the indie style to the music video too).

Wordle

Using Wordle helped understand where the main words are shown in a graph as you can see below, the main words are used to show the constant use of words people from class kept hearing and they thought it would be a good way to help show the songs through these words. When first asking our class to listen to the song and write down key words, thoughts and idea's they gave a good spread of ideas to use.

The word which stuck out the most was 'quickest'. This word was used a lot through out our song, it was in the main chorus and was one of the most heard word in the lyrics. When discovering this was one of the most used words throughout the songs, we wanted to make sure it made sense with other big words which was big and stuck out to our audience. Other words included 'phone, woahh, route, hurry, now, need, want, home' you could clearly see the resemblance of hurt and distraught. So we wanted our music video to relate to a heart broken story line.

Other words which also stuck out was 'talk, call' so this showed that there was some type of communication wanted. These words stuck clear as it was the first line to the song, it stuck out and wanted the audience to be able to see that something was happening with a relationship. You could see the distance and also the hurt it was showing.

From understanding the meaning of many words which stuck out we wanted to show togetherness and isolation throughout the music video, also understanding that this shows binary opposites which theorist Levi-Strauss defines in his theory. The togetherness was shown through little details such as cars, teddies and shadows, this all defines togetherness and then the isolation was shown through Connor being by himself at the train station and when he was running around the field.

Interviews

When preparing for the information, i wanted to make sure that we touched on a average female 16 years old who liked indie music, Sophie is asked 16 years old and really enjoys listening to Mumford and sons, Arctic Monkeys and much more similar music as well as chart music. Sophie studies media at GCSE at her school and would like to become a producer for music videos. She was very happy with answering the questions but didn't want to be filmed or voice recorded.  I asked her 5 questions related to more information from the survey monkey, as i wanted to make sure we was going into enough depth with the story line.

Me: If we used a performance and narrative based music video, how do you think we should show hurt, isolation and togetherness?

Sophie: I would use the band and artist to show togetherness and isolation, because we are the audience and we enjoy seeing the band as well as the artist so making sure you don't leave them out the 'band' you should make sure they are seen as equally as the narrative part. 

Me: If you could choose one option what would it be and why? Isolation or togetherness?

Sophie: I would show isolation, this is because it easier to show an emotion through camerawork and a good storyline.

Me: If you have ever felt isolated before how would you choose to show it in a music video?

Sophie:  I would just have me, walking, shopping, writing and being by myself. I think it would be hard to show isolation in a different way. 

Me: What type of clothing would you suggest our band and artist wore?

Sophie: I think they should wear just casual clothing and be themselves.

Me:  Do you reckon we should have a boy and girl characters or just one sex?

I reckon you should have two sides to a story? but include the band

Social media

I wanted to make sure we had audience feedback when we finished our music video, and see what they think about it.

Using my facebook account i posted the video and we had alot of feedbacking including 'likes' 'shares' and comments. The comments was about how good the male actor was and also how they liked our idea of the story. We felt like this got a good response but we wanted to go into more depth with social media by also using twitter, i posted the video on my twitter account and it had many 'favorites' which shows people enjoyed watching the video and we also had a few tweets back saying how they enjoyed the music video. 

YouTube

We uploaded our video onto YouTube as it is a very well known website which allows you to upload videos and view any video you like.  When uploading this video by posting it on Facebook and twitter many people viewed it and we had a lot of views for a A2 music video. This was a very good source to be able to upload this and send it to the audience to gain feedback. 

Once uploading we had people come up to us as a group and say they enjoyed our music video but there was a couple of glitches which need repairing which was the green screen took a while to jump back when going from one cut to another, so we used this to be able sort our music video and this was a great audience feedback

In conclusion the more audience feedback we got helped us with our music video and helped us to be able to include a indie/rock vibe to the video whilst showing different meanings throughout the music video. I think the surveys was our main sources to be able to hear feedback from our 'target market' but the social network was also great source to show our friends and family and hear good criticism which will help our music video.  

Evaluation question 4 - Ami Lawrence

Please find my evaluation 4 attatched below (Prezi link)

http://prezi.com/s5zpmdg0dmpp/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Charlotte Boosey 9029 Question 1

Charlotte Boosey Question 2

Charlotte Boosey 9029 Question 3

 From the beginning we decided that we were going to have a younger target audience from teenagers upwards. This was mostly because we had easy access to older teenagers that would fit the genre of indie perfectly. We also thought that it would back up the theory of Mulvey and the male gaze. This also meant that our target audience would mainly be female aswell. Boy bands are very popular within the female gender and this worked well in our favour. It meant that we could make the band look very desirable.




We used Wordle to look at the different words that are used within the lyrics. We then looked at the biggest words and how we can interpret them and them how we could incorporate them into our music video. For example, we used the words Quickest and Need to connote desperation and a love. After we had created our music video I then showed it to a group of eight people and asked them to write down emotions and ideas that they thought of when they were watching it. Below is another wordle showing the results.

- Wordle

Before we started story boarding we wanted to know what people would be expecting from an indie rock music video so that we could get a bigger view of what we should include in the video. We used survey monkey to do this. This was an easy way to access all the questions and results and they were then put into a graph

For example:


The results that were produced were very helpful, it meant that we could start looking at storyline based music videos and take some ideas down that we could manipulate and change to incorporate in our storyboard. It also allowed to see what people would like to see and it allowed us to make changes to ideas that we already had to make a popular music video. Aswell as being able to see what people would like to have in a music video, we were  also able to see what types of things were less popular and it gave us all an idea of what we shouldn't include. This was an extremely helpful tool in the researching process.

Youtube was another website that was extremely helpful resource. We were able to look at lots of different indie rock music videos and see how they had been edited. We were able to see how fast paced they were and what types of footage was included in it. It allowed us to widen our thoughts and come up with loads of different ideas with lots of different shot types. It also taught about story lines and how some of them link to the music video and some are completely different to how you would expect them to be. The band Kodaline were very helpful with this process. We have a total of 140 views on our music video but unfortunately we don't have any comments which makes it harder to see if people who are watching the video like it or not. We have had mainly positive feedback about the final product which is extremely pleasing.

One of the best feedback resources we had included a video that we filmed during one of our classes. We created an audience with class members which we filmed and we can watch back and see peoples response to our music video. This was extremely helpful because we were able to gather responses from people who had also created music videos and they can review it from an editing point of view as well. This was helpful because were face to face. Being face to face meant that we can ask people to adapt their answers and we can respond to them.
We were told that people didn't understand some of the aspects of our music video. This was shortly defused after we had discussed the meanings of the music video and the ideas behind it. Although it was upsetting to hear that the music video wasn't understood well we can also comment on the music video being from the indie genre and it doesn't have to make complete sense as there are many music videos out there that don't make sense.


To conclude, we used a variety of different websites to try gather audience feedback, however the best resource has to being either survey monkey or the class video that we filmed. The survey monkey could have been slightly better if we had asked a wider range of people to be involved in the survey monkey so it meant that we got a bigger response and the results could have been more reliable. The class survey would have been slightly less reliable because of the fact people might not have wanted to hurt our feelings because we were present at the time of the filming.
Over all I feel like the audience feedback was extremely helpful and it contributed largely to the ideas that we came up with for our music video and impacted the way we filmed it including deciding what angles to film from.

Charlotte Boosey 9029 Question 4

http://prezi.com/q0t4e5ydm9id/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Some Rough Cuts

Here are a few rough cuts that we used to look at and discuss, we used this clip to work out what angles we wanted and what location we would like in the back. We really liked the look of this clip up until we noticed the background looking very school like. This was very irritating for us as we then had to work out where would be the best place to film it. The costume was also not what we would expect of the genre we liked. We used this a practice run with the cameras as well as experimenting with the different types of shots we could use for the indie rock genre we wanted.

We used this next clip as a quide to what the quality would be like of the music video. We were able to look at the way it cuts to the next clip and we discussed whether or not we wanted transitions.



Charlotte Boosey

Digi pack drafts

Storyboard

Here is our original story board for our music video, the plan was t repeat his backwards
As you can see, we did not keep to our storyboard and I think this is for the better, we have added more scenes and we have added more detail to create a deeper and more meaningful story behind the song.

Individual Magazine Ad design idea

Below you will see my individual magazine ad design, I focused on giving the artist the main focus and allow him to be in the center of the advert. This shows how he is the main attention and enhances 'the chasing shadows' album title. We chose the title of chasing shadows as we think the whole attention of 'remedy' speaks about being addicted to someone but he doesn't want to let himself go. The picture I have use the lead singer in a mirror which allows you to see his reflection (sort of shadow). The font is clear which allows the audience able to read the font clearly and see who the band is and what the album name is.  I have included reviews from certain magazines ad's and allowed a quote from one of the magazines. I have included the Itunes and HMV logos at the bottom this shows we are with these two big music organisations. All the font is clear for the viewers and audience to see the dates of when the album is coming out.

(PICTURES TO BE UPLOADED ON THE 06/1/14)

Ami

Analysis existing Magazine adverts

Analysis of magazines ads from Ami Lawrence

Storyboard changes

When we first decided on our storyboard, we was using both narrative and performance.When filming and starting to edit the film we realised it didn't really make sense and we were better off with changing the story line. As an indie/rock genre we kept the performance in the music video and changed the story, the story was originally an love story line revolving both male and female we have now changed it to just an male and we tried to portray him as an lonely, depressed artist. Now the video has been completely edited it does make sense and fits in with lyrics.

(Pictures to be uploaded on the (06/01/14)

Ami

Original Album idea - Charlotte

This is my original design of the album cover, I wanted the colours to be darker and more mysterious but i didn't have the right colour pencils so I wasn't able to make the colours as dark.
I wanted one side to resemble day and the other night, like mystic land but I don't think I managed to portray it very well.

Charlotte.

Technical difficulties

There were a few technical issues that we encountered along the way, mainly these were caused by the greens screen we had filmed and wanted to use.

The first issue arose when we started editing our film on Final Cut Express and we realised that we were having to render our video most of the time which was unusual and hadn't happened before but we soon realised that it was because we were using brand new cameras that were in high definition and that the only way to work on our video successfully was to render every-time we needed to render however, this was a huge time waster as some would take up to half an hour to render and this made it very difficult for us to continue editing our video.

Another difficulty we had was with our green screen, we found that our green screen could be very temperamental and some days it would work instantly and very well and other days it would take ages and a lot of patience and time. This proved to be difficult as some of our green screen editing would work and when we came back to it the next day it wold be fuzzy and smudged around the faces and objects.
We managed to over come this issue with lots of patience on our behalf and lots of re-editing our work, it payed off as most of the green screen would save and stay after the 3rd or 4th time of re-editing it.

Charlotte