My role in the group

From the beginning as a group we discussed our location, props and costume ideas which we thought would look the most effective within our video in able to make it look professional. Individually we all took part in researching other music videos and record labels so we had evidence for our blogs but we all made sure that we had similar research so it linked with our chosen song and planning ideas.

Since I was not acting in the video, my contribution to the project was mainly involving props and location. I was able to provide a black background sheet for the powder paint scene as I work at a store that sells them, so I was easily able to gain access to one. I was also able to arrange to use my back garden to film the additional powder paint scenes which was very useful as we were stuck for a place to film those particular scenes. 

When filming I was the one who organised the music and lyrics to make sure that the actresses were lip syncing the correct lyrics at the right time. I would also sing along with them to assist them in singing the correct lyrics and to give a confidences boost. I then also helped out with the props a lot, particularly within the powder paint scenes as I would be the one to throw the powder paint at the actresses as they sing/lip sync. 

Finally, I assisted in the making of the digipak, which involved a lot of planning and Photoshop editing. Myself and Hayley executed this task and were able to create a digipak that the whole group were proud of. In addition to this, I was able to bring a lot of ideas to creating the digipak, for example I chose the font styles that we used and chose the images that we used for our final digipak. 

Our final music video

Evaluation | How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Overall...
In the end we did not film any shots for the stage setting due the fact we had limited time left. One of the actresses within our video was ill for sometime and we were also not able to get permission to use the stage when we were all free to do the filming. However we did not let this set us back, even though we did not have as many settings as we wanted, we were able to challenge our editing skills by experimenting with different effects that we could use to fill empty space within our video. As well as this we also had some spare footage that could be seen as 'bloopers' but some of these shots were very useful and fit in well with our overall idea for our video. For example the beginning few shots of the actresses laughing and having fun allowed us to incorporate the idea of flashbacks into our music video.

Also, when looking back on the planning stages due to the fact that one of our group members was not in school during the time that we had to plan our music video, we had to think of a way to get in contact with her when we were all together as a group. So to get over this hurdle myself and other two group members Face timed the absent group member in order to discuss our ideas and plans for our project.

This was very useful for us as we were able to all contribute our ideas and communicate with each other as whole group, and whilst doing this we were also able to take notes of our ideas and research into mise en scene that we needed to purchase or use for when we start filming. By doing this we were able to keep on track with our research and planning stages, so we were then able to transition onto the construction stage.

Evaluation | What have you learned for your audience feedback?

We have created an audience feedback questionnaire to see what people think of our final music video. We have used people of various age ranges so we're able to get an older generations view on our video as well as our target audience (16-21).

Here we have asked a 17 year old female, which fits in with the age range of our target audience. Straight away we can see that she has seen that our music video fits in with the pop genre conventions and is a performance based one, which is what we wanted to portray for our video. She is unsure as to whether our actresses look natural, she feels that we could probably improve on this aspect, however it is good that they looked some what natural as we wanted our video to look as professional as possible. 

To improve this individual stated that we should use more camera shots and something other than the powder paint shots, which shows that she may have felt that our video was a little repetitive. But we have used a variety if camera shots, even though we could fit a few different ones in there. She did however give us full marks on our editing skills which is good as this is a lot better than our editing from our AS level project. This high marking shows us that we have improved greatly from when we made our AS film opening. This individual did not enjoy our song choice, but when we asked her why she stated that it is not her favourite genre of music, which is understandable as not everyone likes the same type of music. Furthermore she has said she would not purchase our video on iTunes. She gave an overall score of 9 which we are very proud of. 

We then got audience feedback from a 27 year old female, this age is not included within our target audience but is still part of the younger generation. They also guessed that our video was pop genre and performance based which again is good for us as this gives us confidence that a wider audience are able to tell what our video is showing. This person has stated that we should include an aspect of dance, which is a typical convention of a pop video. This would show that our video is is definitely a pop music video, by adding dance moves it is conforming to said conventions. The actress who scrunches her face when the powder paint is being thrown is an aspect that this individual says we should improve on. If we had more time to do this project we would re-film some of the powder paint scenes but due to the fact that it was a very messy process and took quite a while to film we chose not to do this.

This individual gave us top score on our video overall, which we are very happy about especially since this person was not included in the age range of our target audience.

We decided to ask someone that is younger than our target audience category, so we asked a 14 year old female. She could tell that our video was what we intended to be which is a performance based pop video, and stated that both actresses looked natural throughout. She did however write that the actresses needed to show more power when lip syncing the chorus, which I do agree on because the tempo of the song becomes more dramatic so this should have been shown in their body language and lip syncing as well.

She gave our editing techniques an 8 and our video rated overall a 7, which is a pretty good score considering that we were pushed for time and it was our first experience in creating a music video. So even though 14 years of age is not within our target audience age range, this age group still has an interest in our video and created artist which is good for popularity.

We then asked asked members of an older generation, beginning with asking a 49 year old female. She was able to recognise that our video was a performance based one which is very good because some people are unaware of the difference between a performance and narrative music video, she also knew that our video was a pop one, but she was also familiar with our song choice as well. This individual also felt that the shots of the actress who scrunched her face up during the powder paint scene needed to be edited or re-filmed as it makes our video look less natural/professional.

She found the exploding balloons filled with powder paint the most effect part of our video, as it created a dramatic effect and created colour/contrast throughout the video. When asked if she would purchase our video on iTunes she said she would which is a bonus because she is not within our target audience age range, she is an older generation and it shows our video does appeal to a wide ranged audience.

Finally, we also asked a female that is a couple of years older than the previous individual, she was 51 years old. She also stated that our video was pop, performance based and that the actresses within we're fairly natural throughout, however they could have been a little more natural for the powder paint scenes. She gave our editing skills an 8 overall which is pretty good, considering we did not want our video to become too repetitive, so we used our editing skills in various ways to insure this did not happen. She stated that she would not purchase our video on iTunes but she did give us a 9 for our final video, so even though she would not purchase it she still enjoyed watching it.

This shows that even though artists may have a particular target audience, some members of the public who do not fit into the category may find that they enjoy a particular style or genre of music video.

When looking at Stuart Hall's reception theory, certain audience members will interpret our video differently. The majority of our questionnaire feedback involved females, and even though they were from different age ranges we have not included an equal amount of male feedback. Males  have interpreted our video differently and stated more negative aspects of our ideas or how we have executed it. Our song choice is sung by an all girl group and our overall video is female dominated with no male actors, showing men will give more critical feedback.  

Our video has gone against the stereotype of women being seen as sex objects in pop music videos. Our intention was to portray an aspect of 'girl power' throughout our video and to make women look strong, rather than dressing our actresses in skimpy costumes and lots of makeup we gave them a more natural look and a trendy, but appropriate costume choice. So when out target audience (females age 16-21) watch our video we hope that they take a message of female independence away with them. 

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

Combination of ancillary texts...

For our promotional package we decided to use the our final front cover for our promotional poster. This included the main image and the album name and group name in our chosen font. We felt this would be effective because the promotional poster is used to create awareness of an artists album release, so if we used the album cover for the whole surface area of the poster we are creating this awareness to an audience.

The promotional poster is a more complex version of our album front cover. However we did need to think about the colours we wanted to use for additional textual information. We added the album release date underneath the album name so it will catch the target audiences eye to both the release date and album name, which could lead to more album sales. We chose to use white, pink and purple for the colouring of our additional font as we felt that it fit in well with the colours of the main image. The single names are in the pink and purple to highlight the tracks that will feature on the album, again to entice the audience into buying it. I think the colours we have used throughout work well together because they're very feminine which represent our created girl group as a whole and they also represent the group members because they like these particular colours as well.



Combination of ancillary texts with our music video (main product)
Since our ancillary texts do not include images of our created artist, it may be harder for us to draw comparisons between our video and our CD cover.

Our whole CD package includes the aspect of powder paint on the main images, even within our artist fact files we have used the powder paint image behind the file image. We have done this because powder is included a lot in our video, whether it was in the balloon popping scenes or the powder paint being thrown at the actresses scenes. We have done this because 'Louder' is the song we have used for our music video and it is also the first song that features on our album track list, by doing this it is a way to promote the song as a whole and to gain audience awareness.

 The images above show screen grabs from our music video, including the aspect of powder paint which we have used within our ancillary texts. We have done this to create a connection between our main product and ancillary texts, this will help the audience to recognise these images from when they have watched the music video on social networking platforms or YouTube.

We composed a questionnaire to see what the public thought about our ancillary texts and main product, and whether the two aspects combine well together or not.

From the answers, we found that our ancillary texts work well as combination to our main product because we have used the aspect of powder paint and colour within both tasks. This is good as it will show a good representation of our music video, and the song we have used for this is the first song to feature on our album, which is useful for advertising the song as a whole. The audience will be able to create a link. However from feedback we have realised that some individuals found it a little difficult to read the lyrics on our lyric sheet due to the brightly coloured background image. So next time we will have to consider what colour to use for our text and to choose a font that is more noticeable against our main image. I also feel that we could have made our lyric sheet more interesting to look at like we did with our artist fact files, for example we could have included the title of the song at the top of the lyric page using our signature font that we used for the CD cover.

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

What we did...
To present our video we used FinalCut to put all of our shots and footage together to make our final product. We decided to use this programme because we were familiar with it from AS level, and by using this platform again we were able to discover new transitions and effects that we have used within our video, for example the split screen. By using this programme we feel that we were able to create our video to the best of our ability, whilst also learning new editing techniques for future projects that we may carry out. We used a lot of fast cuts throughout our entire video, but we done this in order for the footage to go with the beat of the song. We felt was effective because not only does this create quite a dramatic effect it also creates flow within the video rather than the shots not going with the song at all or them being out of sync. With the fast cuts we are also able to put as many different shots and settings in as possible, which shows that we have thought about how we could make our video more appealing to the audience by using the different shot types and not just one setting. We have also used a lot of close ups, whether it was of the actresses or when we filmed the balloons popping. The close ups of the popping balloons shows the impact of the powder paint escaping the balloon, again to create dramatic effect, and the close up of the actresses allows the audience to see that the lip syncing was on point and this shows that we wanted the video to look as professional as possible.

To add to this for our ancillary texts we used Photoshop through out to create our entire digipak, including the CD front cover and back cover, lyric page, artist fact file and promotional poster. Again with the use of Photoshop we were able to make sure our digipak worked well with the genre we had chosen for our video and that it linked with the artist that we were trying to portray, which was a teenage girl band. We went against the typical convention of using a group image for the CD cover and promotional poster as we felt that the images we had taken of the powder paint splattered across the ground looked quite effective, particularly with our video. So we took those images and played around with the colours, saturation and contrast until we were happy with what it looked like, so this made our main image, and the colour choices of pink, blue, green and purple created a feminine look to the cover which we felt represented our artists personalities and image.

Comparisons to real videos...
Pop music videos are usually performance based through choreographed dance or in a narrative storyline which connotes the song lyrics. Pop music videos tend to be quite fun and lively, depending on the pop song the video will most likely fit in with the beat/tempo of the song at hand. The artists will usually wear mainstream/popular trended clothing in the videos and if it is a pop group in a video they will show each member individually when it comes to their part of the song, and a group shot when they sing together. A real life example could be Little Mix or of course Neon Jungle (original singers of Louder), which could be compared to our own artist within our music video.

Within Little Mix's Little Me video they use a lot of close ups of the group members, to portray the drama of the song as it is slow tempo and has a deep meaning behind it. Although our song choice does not have an equally deep meaning to it, we have still used a lot of close ups to show the intensity of the song and the actresses/singers facial expressions. Close ups are typical conventions within pop genre videos, especially if the song is a slow one because it shows the meaning behind the lyrics or the mood of the song as a whole.

We have used a similar group shot to Little Mix as well. Girl bands tend to use a lot of group shots when they harmonizing together in a song, and you can usually see the setting around the group as well. Their video is completely black and white through out, whereas our video has colour as well as various black and white shots, but we have done this in order to create more of an impact when we use the powder paints and use fast cuts.

Looking at another Little Mix video, we saw similarities in their Change You Life one. Both this video and our own video are performance based videos, not showing an kind of narrative. Pop videos sometimes use an element of flashbacks in videos, whether it is a narrative or performance based one. Little Mix's video shows flashbacks of the group on tour, portraying an element of friendship and reminiscence, and this is similar to the beginning of our video where it cuts between the glow stick shots and the flashback shots of the actresses laughing and joking around when we were filming. This allows the audience to see snippets of an artists life behind the camera as you can see them as their natural selves, even though they're in a music video.

In relation to costume, the typical convention for this in pop genre is that the artist would usually wear casual clothes and tight dressy clothes. Tight dressy clothes are used within Neon Jungles 'Louder' video which allows Mulvey's theory of 'male gaze' to be suggested. Males would see the group members as sexual objects and women would think 'I wish I looked like that', but most pop artists will wear tight dressy clothes in order to look trendy or to be a sex icon if they wish to do so. We decided to challenge this convention as our actresses have worn casual clothes within our entire music video, but still look trendy at the same time. We took the idea of wearing dark clothing from Neon Jungles costumes, but then decided to include fluffy, hooded coats because we were filming outside in the woods and we wanted quite a cosy feel to that particular setting. When it came to the powder paint and black/white background settings we decided on monochrome colours, but wearing more skimpy tops in order to fit in with the natural/plain setting.

Forms-Ancillary Texts...

We have challenged a lot of the conventions of a pop genre CD/album, the first convention being that we have not used an image of the artist as our main front cover image, we have used a powder paint image which will link in with our music video. However we have used quite feminine colours on this image to portray the femininity of our create group. The font used for both album back covers are however quite similar, they're in all caps which allows the song names to stand out to an audience in a shop or website.

Another typical convention is the font used for the album title and artist. Most pop artists have their own signature font that is present on all of their music products, so they're recognisable to an audience. We chose a font that we wanted to be our 'signature font' and have place this boldly on the front cover to attract the audiences eye so they know who our group is. Neon Jungle's album cover also uses this as you can see their group name is written in their signature font.

We have then included the convention of a barcode, record label logo and copyright message to ensure that the album can easily be purchased/scanned in shops and that the record label and group own all rights to the album and it should not be used for copyright purposes.

Audience feedback of music video

In order to get feedback for our music video we uploaded our project onto all of our social networking platforms. So we uploaded  it onto YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr in order to get comments from an audience to see what we have done well with our video and what we could improve on. We feel that we were able to get the most feedback from Facebook and YouTube because they are the most popular social networking websites, meaning a wider audience will see our video and give feedback.

TWITTER

We uploaded our video onto Twitter, but we have not yet gained any comments or feedback on this platform, however since we uploaded the YouTube link we were able to gain more views just by sharing our video onto this social networking platform.

YOUTUBE FEEDBACK

We uploaded our final video onto Becca's personal YouTube channel then shared it onto other sisal networking sites from there, after one day we have gained quite a few views plus a few comments stating that positive aspects about our work. We even got a comment saying that our video looked professional, which gave us a confidence boost.

FACEBOOK FEEDBACK

From looking at our Facebook feedback, we were quite surprised to see that we had not gotten as much feedback on this social networking platform than we did when we made our AS project. However we did get likes and a comment which are all positive feedback, and considering the number of views we have seen from YouTube we can tell that people have been watching our video, which is good as this means it is appealing to a wider audience. 

We are glad we uploaded our music video to social net workings websites as it has allowed us to get a little feedback from an online point of view and also quite a few views. This has helped us to see what people think of our video whether it's was positive or negative feedback. 

Storyboard for music video

When we made our storyboard for our music video we decided to use post it notes for each shot that we used. This was we were able to keep our work neat and if we went wrong with any shot we could just re-draw them or move them to a different place when making the sequence.

We chose a variety of different shots and effects to portray the various conventions of the pop genre and to attract our target audience. For all the shots we had to draw them individually and if they contained an effect or transition we noted down what they were on the post it. We also stated which actress was in the shot by noting down their names in brackets on the post it. 

Filming schedule

To make sure we get all of our footage done on time for editing we decided to make a schedule for when we're all available to film, so we're able to see what settings to film and when.

We first got together as a whole group in the Christmas holidays on the 2nd January, we planned to film two settings on this day, the first being the woods setting, and the second being the powder paint setting against a black background.

When filming the woods setting we had to decide what sort of background we wanted behind the singers, we chose to film different parts of the woods for different lyrics, to create a range of different shots, but we mainly used close ups to emphasise the lyrics and facial expressions of the singers. We decided to film panning shots for the chorus, circling both singers to create more variety, but we will be filming the black and white background setting and stage setting other days to get more shots which we can work with for editing.

The powder paint setting was simple to film but very messy, we used a black sheet as a backdrop that the singers would stand in front of whilst having the powder paint thrown at them. We filmed this at Viki's house in her back garden and it didn't take long at all top film, we played the song on repeat and threw the paint at both of the singers when we thought it fit well with the music, which was mostly during the chorus as it is more dramatic. We filmed a lot of the shots as close ups and mid shots so we could see the paint more clearly and how it impacted against the singers plain black costumes and background. We also improvised by filming the girls blowing the powder paint and a little bit of glitter out of their hands to see it fly out of their palms. 

We then arranged to film the black and white setting at Becca's house on the 13th January, but we were only able to include 3/4 of our group members because Viki was ill, so we could only film Becca's parts but we decided not to postpone the filming all together because we felt that it was better to get as much filming done as possible so we have more to work with when we were editing. We had to reschedule filming Viki's part when she got better.

On the 14th January we decided that we will film the extra footage that we wanted, so the balloons popping and the title spelt out with glow sticks, and any initial footage or images we wanted. We filmed these shots at my house, however only 3/4 group members were present because Viki was still off school ill. It didn't take very long to film at all, we used a funnel to transfer the powder paint and glitter into the balloons and then we blew them up and tied them, we then stood in front of a black sheet and used a pin to pop them whilst we were filming, so we caught the paint exploding out of the balloon which we feel looked really effective. We also popped some party poppers to see how effective it would look on camera but it didn't look as good as the balloons. With the spare powder paint we chucked it onto the floor to create a spattered effect which we then photographed as an idea for our digipak, we also drew V.S into the paint to stand for Vintage Strobe, which will also be considered for our digipak. Finally when it was dark enough we used glow sticks to spell out Louder and filmed this as an idea for the title at the beginning of our video.

When Viki came back into school we decided that we would film her shots for the black and white setting on the 27th January. We arranged to go to Becca's house again to film as she had the black and white screen, and we made sure that Viki had the correct colour costume (white) so that she contrasts the black background that she will be filmed in front of. We also had to make sure that the shots that we filmed of Viki were identical to the ones we filmed of Becca a few weeks earlier, we were able to do this by looking at still images of the footage that we already had.

Editing process of video

Since we only have two more settings to film for our music video, we decided that we would start editing as soon as possible  with the footage that we had. Becca is the main editor within our group but we will always have input with what the video will look like in terms of effects and transitions.

 We decided to add all clips and footage that we have onto our FinalCut document so we know that we have a lot more to work with and what footage wouldn't be as good to use. With some clips we would use them more than once but change the filters and speed if we wanted to make it look different, also this would avoid our video becoming too repetitive.

We chose to crop some of our clips because we did not need the whole thing, we wasn't sure how to do this so we researched how to, we now know how to do it so this will be very useful throughout the editing process. With the balloon popping clips we decided that we wanted to play around with the colours of the powder paint coming out of the balloon, in the image shown the powder paint is blue but it was originally green, so we moved the colour charts around to get the right shade of blue that we wanted. This will again allows our video to be less repetitive just buy changing the colour of powder paint.

 When changing something to our video it was important that we rendered the whole video so we didn't lose any footage when we played it back at the end of lesson, it was also crucial to save our work every so often and at the end of the lesson so we didn't lose our video completely. In the image on the left you can see the video being rendered but also that we have placed two clips on top of each other to create a faded effect, so the powder paint footage would be faded, behind the clip of Becca in front of a white background. This allows us to create a dramatic effect with the colour and impact of the powder paint, but also creating contrast, which is one of our main aims throughout the video, because we feel that contrast is a good way to create a dramatic effect.

We decided that we wanted to do almost a split screen for our video to highlight the contrasting colours that we chose to use for our setting and costumes. The shots of Becca and Viki were shot separately in font of the different backgrounds so when we wanted to place them together we had to crop both shots, as if it was a simple image, and then place them on top of each other in the correct places so that they were equal width to show a back to back effect. We then just had to make sure that the lip syncing was in time with the song and that both girls were lip syncing the lyrics at the exact same time.

When thinking about how to begin and end our video we wasn't sure how to go about it, we knew that we wanted to use the shots that we filmed of the word 'Louder' spelt out in glow sticks but we didn't know how to go about filling the bits of the song that we didn't have footage for. So to experiment we decided to use clips where Becca and Viki were acting quite natural e.g. laughing so we were able to fill in any bits of the song that did not yet have footage. This proved very helpful as we were getting very close to our dead line and Viki was not in school for us to film any extra shots, so the spare shots that we had from filming the first time came in handy for filling any empty space.







When it came to the end of our editing process we made sure that all of our shots were in the right place and the lip syncing was in time with the song. We rendered the whole thing for the final time, saved it and then exported it using QuickTime Movie to make it into a movie file. We would then begin to upload our music video onto social media websites (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and onto YouTube to gain audience feedback.

Lyric page for digipak

As well as creating fact files for our group we also made a simple lyric page, which will also feature in the inside of our CD digipak. The lyrics that we are using will be our chosen song 'Louder' because this is the song that we are using for our music video.

When artists in real life use lyric pages in their albums/singles they usually include the lyrics for all of the songs that are featured on the CD, however we are only including one song as we have created our own original song titles for the rest of our album, and they obviously do not have a real song or lyrics.

When we created our lyric page we used Photoshop again as we were confident in using the programme as a whole. We decided to use the image from our back cover of the album as the background image of the lyric page, particularly because it features the initials of our artists name Vintage Strobe and we agreed that the vibrant colours in the image was quite effective as a whole. We chose a bold lettered font and decided to have the writing as white as it shows up against the background image clear enough for an audience to read them. If I was to change anything about this I would have added the song title at the top of the lyric page in a quirky font from DaFont, similar to the ones that we have used in the fact files.

Artist fact file for digipak

To add to our digipak front and back cover we had to create an artists fact file which would be placed on the inside of the CD case, these are very common within real artists albums, particularly if it was a deluxe edition of an album.

We decided to use our album front cover for the background of the fact files then we added an image of a file template, to link with the idea of fact 'file'. We added an image of each group member and then used various fonts from DaFont to write out 'fact file and 'Viki' and 'Becca'. For this we had to make sure we used our own images, and we were able to merge each aspect of the fact file into one thing by using Photoshop. We included general information about each group member to showcase their personalities and life style, we then downloaded and included a couple of feminine stamps to add onto the images. We wanted the fact files to look quite quirky and nice to look at.

Location research

Woods setting

We decided that for one of our main settings we would use a woods. We thought this would be a good idea since the woods was nearby and easy to travel to when we needed to film, but also it was a more natural setting and it allowed us to get a variety of shots because the woods we used was quite large. Since it was outside we had access to natural lighting as well, when filming this was an advantage because it was sunny so the quality of the shots were very good, especially with the camera quality as well.




Powder paint setting

Our powder paint setting is very simple, we will feature the group in front of a plain black background while we throw powder paint at them, this setting is a small setting but it important in our video as we used this idea to create drama and contrast, with the bright coloured powder paints contrasting the black background.





Black and white background setting

This setting was also very simple to film. We used a black background for one singer, and then a white background for the other. The singer will wear contrasting colours to the background that they will stand in front, for example Becca will use the white background so she will wear an all black costume.







Stage setting

This setting is another one of our main settings, and we were thinking or using this at both the beginning and end of our video, so the two actors will walk out onto the stage at the beginning and then walk off at the end. The singers will be wearing smart dresses, flower crowns and heels as they will be standing in the middle of the stage when lip syncing, in front of them they will hopefully have a mic stand and mic to make it look like they're performing to an audience.