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.