2. How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?
The promotional package I have created for my artist 'Lilia' is successful as there is a distinctive link between the music video and its accompanying ancillary products.
This is Kehinde talking about my ancillary products, which helped me in seeing how audiences were able to recognise my products as a package and to see what was successful and not so about my ancillary work.
I believe that my main product (video) was highly successful, due to the black and white contrast that remained consistent throughout and the use of the flicker effect tool in final cut pro 'bad film', with this in mind and the framing of the shots worked well and made it look very professional. Therefore in my ancillary products I still used the desaturation of the images to maintain the black and white. The images were nice and bold which looks effective, so I chose not to use a flicker filter on the ancillary work as it looked better without them. Our video was very consistent with the shots, and we only used a few locations, although this could seem like a downfall it worked in our favour because the structure of our video was intended to be simple and relied heavily on symbolism, however it may have been better if we included perhaps two more basetracks of our artist lip syncing. The type of locations we used, were quite outside overgrown and rural to convey the dark atmosphere, which I wanted to continue onto my digipak and advert, to further associate similarities with the music video.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
Going to watch the music video as a cinematic experience was brilliant. Just before this a quick coffee with last year’s group member Poppy Power, led us a short walk up to the cinema where fellow media students were standing outside waiting in line for this great ‘premier’. The energy was simply curiosity and excitement as everybody in the year wanted to view and share their experiences of the coursework and see their work on the big screen. Of course at that particular moment, physically, it was more about who is going to be the first in line and get good seats for a luxury experience. The cinema wasn’t big, or had a major name like ‘vue’ or ‘odeon’ but it did the job just as well for us independent movie makers. The anticipation of seeing your own work on screen was immense but appreciating other videos was just as eventful. During class, it was common to have witnessed other people’s videos during the process of editing, but so many had left unseen that it was interesting how other people had interpreted the task and seeing just how many different style, genres, and generally different types of people there were in the room all of whom had different ideas of what would make the perfect music video.
As we found seats we heard a short introduction from our media teachers, just before the screening which as always was a warm welcome and a realisation that we had accomplished something that we are willing, and proud enough of our work to share. Later, the structure turned into video, applause, hearing the audience respond to the video is a major part of understanding your success and previous assumptions of target audience, showing you whether you have been accurate in your research and assumptions. After a long wait, as our video only appeared towards the end my camera was at the ready. Here is a visual description of exactly how it went:
The reaction to our video was very pleasing, first, the utter silence during the video made it seem like everybody was paying attention and were interested in what was on screen, and then the applause that followed at the end taught me that the audience did like the video, this assumption was also taken from the cheers that made it all the more exciting and showed us that our target audience enjoyed our video.
FEEDBACK VIDEO 1
FEEDBACK VIDEO 2
FEEDBACK VIDEO 3
FEEDBACK VIDEO 4
I have to apologise for feedback video 1, it seems that the audience were mainly interested in the bird and found it difficult to take turns, which made it come to light that we had used a very interesting prop, and whilst there was a lot of concern with the use of it, it turned out to be a brilliant subject to provoke interest. This has been mentioned in all the other videos, it seems that this is what made our video distinct, although on another note, it shows me that these were the video’s strongest points as many people didn’t comment on the fast cars shot, or most didn’t even mention the dancers except for Eleni. I would have thought, looking at our target audience that the dancers would have been appealing however, it turns out that this wasn’t as memorable to the audience as we thought it would be, as it didn’t make that much of an impression. Whilst all three were talking at the same time in feedback video 1 I did manage to pick out Evies comment ‘I liked it black and white’ which was something that made our video outstand from the rest a bit more, making it slightly ‘unique’ and the ‘wash out effect’ which was actually a simple flicker tempted the audience to the darkness of the video as Stephanie had said in feedback video 2. Feedback video 1 and 3 also share similar taste in liking the effect of ‘erasing’. This was the scene in the video where the singer said ‘erase’ and the words disappeared off the page, the audience found this effective and I’ve learnt that through its repetition. I think this may have something to do with the use of amplification, linking certain sections of the video with lyrics does prove itself useful as the audience finds it easier to remember. Another thing that I have learnt, was whilst it’s good keeping your video to yourself and waiting for the big cinema moment to reveal it to an audience, it is also good when people have seen your draft as Lashmi mentioned in feedback video 3 that she noticed an improvement between the draft and the final, which made me feel that we had accomplished something for the better during the weeks before the final deadline and it felt to good to see people notice those changes.
Vimeo was another form of getting feedback, the video was uploaded to see whether or not people were going to watch it, if they enjoyed watching it and if they were willing to watch it a second time. Vimeo is a safe website because it has been created for this exact purpose, however the video is not as easy to access as it would be if it was on Youtube. By it being on vimeo, it limits the audience to whoever has a vimeo account. This way it is also safer for us as we won't be hassled by copyright permission. Also, we had uploaded the video to facebook however, because Jess knew the artist we had previously asked her if it was alright to put the video up, and the artist said yes as she herself wanted to see it and left comments saying that she liked it which was pleasing for us. What I have learnt from posting my work up on the internet was that it is more interesting when a lot of people have access to it and can leave comments telling you what they think. Also my friend Olli commented on facebook explaining a little error that he had noticed in the timing and being the computer wizard that he is gave an example of how it can be fixed which was really useful.
HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?
Over time camera development has been a big part of a movement in modern day society. Luckily we have been offered to used some of the most updated technologies of the century, such as full HD camera's and memory cards, giving us the opertunity to create professional looking videos that reflects our ideas almost as art, letting people see through our own eyes, and giving them a controlled peek at our ideas. Using memory cards has made our life a lot simpler, having all footage in one place and being able to erase footage right after filming, having a look through them on the spot and knowing weather you need to re-shoot or if your work is best quality. The use of camera and memory cards was a big part of our production, however even through planning we used flipcams, or my Pentax DSLR to capture images and record evidence of our work and put it up on the internet (blogger) to be able to keep track of what we're doing and keep everything flowing up to date. The internet also came in handy when researching ideas, trying to widen our knowledge on the subject. Programs like Youtube, was were we found inspirational videos, google search for general research of theories and wider reading, all of these things were a good start for our planning so that we had a bigger perspective on what we can find out there, the likes of current audiences and a variety of styles and genres that could potentially be of use and could later be reflected upon in the evaluation and how all this research came in as inspiration.
Here are a few videos that I have prepared to show how some programmes work and what we used as a team to work on our main project - video, and ancillary products.
This first video is an introduction to Final Cut Pro, which was a major part of our editing to create our video and also before that we had used it to create a digital storyboard, just a series of images that consisted of our prior locations and an angle for where about our main subject will be to become the main focus:
When filming our video we also wanted to experiment with a different section of final cut pro and try to understand how to use a green screen. This we were going to use for filming the bird, and her release however we failed to get the shot not including shadows as we used a portable green screen and it didn't work to the effect that we had hoped. However it was an experience non the less.
The next video that I have created is to demonstrate the use of iPhoto, that I used to edit the image before uploading it to Photoshop to add to the ancillary package design. Also in this video I show the use of Photoshop and what sections of it I had used to make my ancillary products like the digipak and advertisement.
Furthermore, I have created another screen cast, voice-over to demonstrate my use of the various programmes on the mac, hope you enjoy it:
Q2. HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT (VIDEO) AND ANCILLARY TEXTS (DIGIPAK AND ADVERTISEMENT)?
The combination of both my ancillary and main product have very clear links to each other in order to represent our artist. Its important to note that I've used the same artist in the video as well as within my ancillary. This is to instantly create a well known face to our target audience.
There are many links between my ancillary and video to show a connection of the two. The most obvious link between them are the colour schemes. The running black and white theme throughout the video is also reflected in my ancillary. However, I've played with the effect a little within my digipak as I wanted a more subtle effect than just plain black and white. In the end I resulted with a sepia effect running throughout my digipak. I changed the colour just a little as when I researched other artists work, they didn't relate to just one of their videos they kept a certain theme throughout and focused on the picture of the the artist mainly. Therefore, I incorporated this into my own work so that my target audience would identify with our artist much easier.
I also stuck to the location of Regents Canal (where we filmed quite a bit of our video) for the images on the album cover; especially the back panel. I zoomed into one the pictures so that I had just the image of the trees to write my song titles over. Looking at other digipacks artists rarely use their own face on both the front and back cover. So I chose to follow this convention and use my artists face for the front cover as its the first thing my target audience will see.
Another link is the use of extreme close up's on the artists face. Which is predominantly used in the video and is a main focus throughout my digipak. In doing this, my target audience can clearly recognise Lilia and make references to the video. I chose the close up images as I thought that these were successful in promoting my artists mood throughout the promotional package. Such as, we created a gothic/ dark atmosphere within our video. I tried to keep the serious tone throughout my promotional package with the use of artistic photography. Such as, using a varied amount of shot types (extreme close ups). In doing so, we kept the gothic atmosphere consistant and built a certain demographic for our fan base.
I think my target audience would like my promotional products; as our artist is attractive, she's fresh and new to the music scene, plus the posters are very noticeable and give out just enough information about our artist. Nothing about my digipak is light hearted, its quite heavy with emotion which is, effectively, what draws my target audience in. She has a very unique sound so people who prefer the 'underground' type of music will be able to relate and so buy her album online or off the shelves of HMV.
Here is a video of me explaining the links between both my Ancillary and Video products:
IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTION USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
Initially choosing our song was a hard decision, moving from ‘the clash’ slowly developing onto completely different genres, unfortunately not very know or conventional ones. But that was our choice because we love a challenge! Originally ‘Emel’ our artist is not particularly known. The song that we have used does not have a published copy, CD, or even an advertisement. We were starting from scratch. The original artist did not have any inspiration to give us except for her voice, not even an official genre. So we have used our imaginations and have decided that she was unconventional. She is unique, her music is an updated version of electronic music with beats called ‘dubstep’. The reason our artist doesn’t fit into this genre exactly is because of her voice which is somewhere between soul and R&B. Considering that this music is not as mainstream as say pop, adjusting the style of video was incredibly difficult provoking us to challenge conventions of the genre. This genre has a particularly niche audience which adds to the lack of influence from typical conventional pop videos. However, we used a pop video conventional strategy in terms of 'editing to the beat', where we'd mark the timeline every four or so beats and and adjust our imagery to those cuts. We turned to other artists that were most similar to ours reflecting on their style, one artist in particular that was recommended to us by teacher Dan, was Burial. His music is also very unique involving a similar style.
We then also turned to artist such as Lykke Li, she isn’t a particularly well know artist either (hasn’t made it to the charts yet) but her video ‘Get some’ was perfect idealistic. The variety of camera shots made it interesting to observe, and promoted her as an artist belonging to a particular style. The close ups helped us to identify with the artist’s face and look closely at the pronunciation of the words, which was something that we later put into our own video. Cutaways in the editing to medium shots of her body levels reflects on her emotions and what you ought to feel when watching the video, we had also used this effect in our own video, because we found that having a variation of shots was really effective to watch and also kept us interested as an audience. Other great factors that make the video brilliant, is the variation of speed; fast and slow edits.
They add to the mood and movements of the artist. Our video contained slower motion where we wanted to dramatise the scene and faster edits where we wanted to add on anticipation and tension. Mirror frames are used effectively in this video to provoke curiosity making the viewer want to watch it again. The image of the artist has been conveyed through mise en scene. The creators used the lighting well as the singer is constantly on a spotlight to draw full attention to her-self but also using split screen edits so that she is always in the shot using a variety of ways. The video I believe succeeds through the use of amplification, giving it the right amount of illustration “like a shot gun”, the artist hand gestures shot gun and it adds dramatic effect to the video making it all feel interlinked, or using the bird in a cage to express of 'entrapment' because of the connotations that the bird carries, similarly with our own where we’d use heavy make up to make our artist look desirable and have a contrast to make our black and white shots look intriguing giving the artist almost a Gothic feel, mixing its current styles to make it more appealing to a wider range of audiences. The same dedication went into the artist’s outfit all of it balances out and has a feel for the music and representation of the song.
Looking at my previous study, the typical conventions of a digipak are to include the artist’s name, album name, a spine that includes both of those characteristics. Track listing on the back, a barcode, production at the bottom, the artist’s label/ sponsors, where you can buy the CD etc. The advertisement should also consist of artist’s name, album name etc, but doesn't need to go so far as the sponsors.
When working on my digipak, I thought about the imagery carefully, as I had over 150 photos to chose from, various locations and the big part of all this was trying to put it all together and make it flow. Every move that I made in the making of my digipak I thought everything through carefully. For instance, the font, what type of font I was going to use and how effective it will be, the front cover image, will it be capturing enough to the person who is browsing in store, are the letters big enough on the spine to be able to tell which CD you’re looking at from the side. When taking all this into consideration it took a while to put everything together, but I am proud of my finished product. What I could say it that I personally think that colourful CD covers are more effective, however, the reasons for mine being greyscale is because I wanted it to fit in with the music video, so that the ancillary work and video are interlinked in some way (not just including the same person). Looking at the Christina Aguilera cover, it seems that her eyes follow you around the room as you look at the cover from any angle I have tried to use this same technique in my digipak. The back and inside panels were a lot easier to work with, the only challenge that I found on the back was making sure that the writing was clear enough for the buyer to read the song titles easily and not forgetting to include little things that were crucial, like the bar code or the artist’s label. On the inside panel it was important to adjust the size of the circle where hypothetically the CD would be placed. To add a bit more creativity to it I added a quote that could have been from one of the songs on the album, but the imagery that I used on the inside panel didn’t include the artist’s face because I didn’t want to take the main focus off the front cover. This brings me to my advertisement. It is a convention to put the digipak cover on the poster, but I was afraid with it looking too clattered and possibly ‘tacky’ so what I decided to do instead, considering that it took me so long to find an effective video for my digipak I had decided to use the same image on the advertisement, this way it would be large memorable and most importantly, in a shop, recognisable. I decided to keep the advertisement simple because I wanted to show the release date, and ended up including a small amount of facts at the bottom , again following convention like the artist’s main website, or where you can purchase the album etc. My advertisement reminds me a lot of Rihanna’s advertisement for her album ‘loud’. It consists of the same simplicity and fulfils its purpose.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product is immediately regarded as unique because the genre of our music video is different and is not mainstream,it is Dubstep which is a new found genre of electronic dance music that has a prominent heavy bass. However our music has a melodical feel due to the soulful voice of the singer Emel in our track 'Falling'. The artist is unsigned and the song is not very well known so I found that making a video could allow us to be completely creative and perhaps stretch the boundaries for conventional pop videos and challenge these.
In dubstep music videos there aren't any particular forms and conventions because these artists are not mainstream or well known so therefore they do not have any actual music videos for their songs, this is because their audience is niche and they access any new music through the official websites itself.
This is a video of Burial 'Archangel' who is signed to hyperdub.
It was hard for us to find particular videos to directly inspire us because the genre is so different, so we included aspects from videos that did not exactly fit our genre, but aspects we could use in order to help with the meaning of the lyrics.
The main inspiration for our music video was 'Get Some' by Lykke Li. This was because of the technicalities she used and we tried to replicate this for our own video and certain shots that she did that were incredibly effective. Ultimately the biggest similarity is the use of the black and white and the gothic feel of the video, although ours doesn't go fully to the eccentric extent of hers.
Typically I would say that our video cannot challenge any particular conventions of real media products as it is a genre that is very different, although for our artist's image we have been heavily inspired by female artists such as Lykke Li, Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson. However it can allow us to enhance ideas and present new ideas for our video and ancillary work.
This is the original video for 'Get Some'
We replicated the use of the close up shots to immediately establish the artist to the audience and so they can recognise her easily if 'Lilia' was to appear on an advert or on the front of her own album. The use of the dark makeup around the eyes is iconic and is very effective in black and white videos as it is more noticeable. Although we changed the opacity of this shot to reveal slightly her silhouette/ shadow in the back round to try make it look more intriguing.
We were also inspired by the use of Mise en Scene in Lykke Li's video.The use of the different candles is an amazing effect as it adds another dimension and allows it to look more sophisticated, it is a shot that effortlessly always looks good. I regret us not having an image of the artist with the candles like the Lykke Li example above as it is a great shot. However our shot just relies on the single word that is written on the sheet to convey the emotions of the song, not the craziness of the artist themselves or their actions as it may look over the top and we did not want that to be the case in our video.
We really liked the use of writing words on the page as it does look authentic and especially because it is handwritten by the artist. The jagged lettering looks very real, and we also speeded up the action which looks effective. The words also depict the meaning of the song, as well as repeating the words of the lyrics.
The use of crossing out the words is effective in emphasising the heartbreak in our music video. It acts as a bold statement too and is a simple way of showing the emotion of the artist, the symbolism works well with the theme of our video too, as the footage we have is repetitive and conveys more through the use of simple actions and movement (eg the bird trapped in the cage then being released.) It was more easier to do this rather than film actions of a girl who is heartbroken. As this image of crossing the words immediately draws the attention of the audience.
Another feature we used was the mirror tool to create different patterns and shapes with our hands and have the shadows against the wall to emphasise the black and white contrasts we have used throughout the music video. These cuts are very fast but look edgy and mysterious, its just when you stop and pause both the Lykke Li video and ours that it may appear to have subliminal messages, which also different artists embed within their videos.
We have stuck to the conventions of pop videos based on Carol Vernallis' theory, through the use of editing. Our track has a very prominent base in which we stuck close to whilst editing, and made sure we edited to the beat every single time. The edits draw attention to one another, as there are frequent fast paced jump cuts to change to different locations, some of the cuts are so fast they look like flashes which immediately draw the audiences' attention, the style of our video is very bold and simple so we did not feel the need to use transitions as this would draw attention away from what is on the screen. In our music video we also have the use of a master shot, which is a close up of the artist as she is lip syncing. Based on Andrew Goodwin's theory, we used the narrative analysis of amplification so the shots and footage we chose are significant in adding layers of meaning to the lyrics, but not contradicting them. This is why we used metaphorical concepts to emphasise heartbreak, such as the bird trapped in the cage and effectively being set free at the end of the song.
In conventional media products there is not usually an image of the artist on the back panel with the tracklisting, however I decided to place a picture of 'Lilia' on the back to further establish her image also because I have not used a prominent piece of abstract work to carry on to the back, so I thought an image of the artist would be more effective. In enhancing the colour of her eyes, it is an idea that I wanted to develop because it matches the name of the album 'In My Eyes' and also in our video and images 'Lilia' uses heavy eye makeup. The enhancement of her eyes is quite mystical and makes her look more intriguing. I also wanted to continue the use of the blue colour scheme as it is different and not yet really tried in the media with this type of genre as it is generally quite dark and the simple black and white, sepia or green colour schemes are used.
My advert is conventional as it inclued the correct information and use of different logos, such as the record labels and the places available for download. The use of the blackberry barcode however makes it look more modernized and it depicts the younger teenage audience. In adding the reviews and the image of the album cover, it sticks to the conventions of music adverts.
