The End

“Everybody thinks pop videos are glamorous but it is almost 100% full of bastards” Keith Richards.

I disagree as my pop video was pleasant, I had a good group of people to work with and we were all very aware of what needed to be done, so we all got on with it. However I did not work at the same level as him and therefore I may be wrong. But then again Keith Richard is a rock star and they are known to be very temperamental, so I am pretty sure I am accurate in saying that not 100% of pop video are bar-stewards. In fact my experience on a whole of the pop video has been testing but always interesting and challenging.

I have really enjoyed the creative process of this pop video and loved putting together and creating an idea and really bringing it to life, through the Digipak, the video itself and even this blog! This blog has explored everything from the research and development, the first pitch and ideas right through to the production/shoot day and the final result of the pop video. It has truly been a seven-month labour of love. However as much as it saddens me that this process is over and we will have to move on, it will bring me a slight joy to know I can finally put this project to rest.

It was not all smooth runnings along the way; we did run into a few problems. For example we had originally planned to have several band members into the video and have lots of shots of the band playing together, however unfortunately on the day we realised that the band members did not work as none of them could play any of their instruments and in fact were very uncomfortable in front of the camera. However we managed to make it work without them in the end.

If I was to do this project differently again I think I may have thought out a narrative element within the video as I think the video is quite plain on its own, however that may be because I have watched it through several times! I just think it would have been more interesting to explore the narrative of the lyrics and do something out with the black box set. Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed this project and I am sad to move on, although at the same time I am glad to put it to rest and move on to my future projects.

Blog Task Three: Audience. What I learnt from my audience feedback.

To assess our audience feedback we collected a variety of data for our pop video and ancillary products from members of the target audience and from our audience demographics – via YouTube, a Focus Group, our peers and our family. For our focus group I tried to use open questions throughout to gather a more effective response from the viewers.

Our target audience is 15-25 years olds and I can also apply Jictar groups A, B, and C to our audience as they could probably handle the serious message of woman in society. Group A are intelligent and would be interested in social issues such as the one we are conveying in the video, group B would also be moderately interested and group C is the majority of people who would probably find the video interesting to watch. I think our pop video would mainly apply to females as the artist is female and the message of the video does portray woman trapped in society or perhaps feeling lost and I believe a lot of females would be able to relate to this, however I also think that perhaps we may have a market for gay males or males who are attracted to our female artist.

On Youtube we had 456 views and five likes. As well as that we also had two comments one was from ‘caz2435’ that said:
“This is really cool”
Another was from ‘dkeofhazard’ which said:
“Whoever made this video is amazing, I love them!”
This is a first hand response to our video directly from our target audience and was good to see how people where reacting to our video. Yes is does not tell us whether or not they got the message of the video but it does tell us that people are enjoying it and are interested in our artist and brand. I think this is very important.

We held a focus group with ten people, six males and four females. Six were eighteen years of age and four were seventeen. We held a focus group instead of giving out a questionnaire as a questionnaire can be very passive, when people don’t have to give a direct answer they can sometimes not take it seriously or be very vague. Where as with a focus group we were able to get a first hand response to the video and also so that we could pin answers down and press for more information that we wanted, as well as that it is a more comfortable environment to be able to chat to our target audience about their initial response. The questions we asked our focus group were:

1. Did you enjoy it?
2. What did you get from the video?
3. What message did you get from the video?
4. What persona for our artist did we established?
5. Did you identify wit the character, if so how?
6. Did you feel a personal relationship with the character, if so how?
7. Were you informed by the video, if so in what way?
8. Did you get the idea of women being ill treated in society?
9. What did you think of the video not having a narrative?
10. Ways it could be improved could we have done in differently?

Our group on the main was very helpful, some were quiet however some were very good and made some insightful points. I think that possibly the group could have been slightly intimidated coming into an A2 class and trying to give an intelligent response to the video however I think on the whole we managed to make them feel comfortable enough to give us a good response. This is again another good reason to do a focus group instead of a questionnaire.

We tried to use the theory of Blumer and Katz on ‘uses and gratifications’ to assess our audience response. Blumer and Katz say audiences respond in four ways: Personal Relationships, Personal Identity, Surveillance and Diversion. These uses and gratifications is what an audience expects when they watch television: a personal relationship, where the viewer feels they have a close personal relationship with the artist. Personal Identity, the audience feels like they can identify with the artist. Surveillance, the viewer feels informed by what they are watching. Diversion, the viewer feels diverted from their normal everyday life by being distracted by what they are watching.
The question was, did ours respond to our pop video in this way. Well our definitely applied to personal identity:

1) The audience identifying with characters on the screen.
We were trying in our pop video to get the viewer to identify with the young, modern, innocent female artist. It worked in the main. Of our focus group (six male and four female) six identified with the image. Hannah a down to earth 17 year old from Surrey said, “living the dream, who wouldn’t want to be a star”. On YouTube we had, as mentioned earlier, 456 views in six weeks and all the comments were favorable. One viewer ‘caz2435’ said, “This is really cool”.

2) The audience feels a personal relationship with the characters on screen.
We were trying in our pop video to get the viewer to feel a personal relationship with our young female artist in our pop video. We did this by using close-ups and other techniques and I feel this worked on the whole. Of our focus group seven felt a relationship with the artist. Natalya a young 17 year old, fresh teenager said, “I definitely felt I could relate to her.” This shows that people can feel connected to our artist in some way.

Stuart Hall has a theory that producers encode a preferred message that the audience decodes in the one three ways. These are where the audience accepts the preferred reading and message, or rejects it by being oppositional, or negotiates their own interpretation. Our preferred meaning was the women are constrained and society keeps woman in cages and we need to break free. Out of the ten all the females and two males got the message and four didn’t register the meaning at all. Lively Hannah said “You can tell she is trapped and wanted to break free out of the cage.” Where as Patch a male student who’s appearance didn’t fit our target audience said “She looked pretty but I didn’t get why she was in a cage or the message.” This shows that we are roughly hitting our target audience correctly.

Aristotle had a theory that obviously did not apply to poop videos or television as they were not invented in his time but his general categories can be used to analyze how media texts work on audiences. His theory is based on three main areas: Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Ethos is how an audience responds to characters and stars credibility. In our pop video we created an image in the singer, she is serious, lively and carries a bit of gravitas and this helps us establish our brand. Pathos is appealing to the viewer’s emotion; star status can influence and persuade views. Logos is persuading audience through words. Our pop video definitely does this through lyrics.

Director's Commentary - Audio Recording

This is our director's commentary we have done to show an audience how we created our pop video and what we were intending with each shot. This gives the audience an insiders views as to how it was created and makes them feel like a part of the process and like they are involved. To do this we went through the video and explained the purpose and effect of each shot, we filmed this sitting in front of the screen so that we could 'hit the screen' in time with the video.

Blog Task 2: A Powerpoint Presentation To Explore How Effective The Combination Of My Main Product And Ancillary Text Are?

I created a powerpoint to address this question by exploring four key areas:

THE CONCEPT OF STARDOM THAT RICHARD DYER HAS DEVELOPED. I wanted to explore how we could use the ideas of a star, including being youthful and rebelious, and the two paradoxes to create a star and a brand.

THE IDEAS OF THE FILM THEORIST CARLSON, as he explores the idea that singers and bands are one or more of a commercial exhibitionist, a telivised bard or an electronic shaman. Our singer was the middle one of these with perhaps a touch of the last.

THE CONCEPT OF UNIVERSAL MYTHS THAT LEVI-STRAUSS ORIGINATED. Since our singer was exploring serious messages in her song i wanted to see how you could apply such big ideas to pop music.

SYNERGY. I argue in the slideshow that it is vital for the pop video to play of the magazine advert, to play off the digipak cover and all of them to work together to develop the brand of the singer.

Blog Task 2

View more presentations from hurtwoodhousemedia5.

Blog Task One: In what ways do your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For our pop video we researched online and analysed the major conventions of a pop video. We also looked at other pop videos to give us an idea of how these conventions are used.

http://www.slideshare.net/jamsjamsjams/conventions-of-music-videos-2935597

These are some of the pop videos we looked at:

Britney Spears-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Xp6mmLvLk&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brYTO6JHMHs

Madonna-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWTDR6ztcnQ

Florence and the Machine-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SmxVCM39j4

Mumford and Sons-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCg_QEHtkY


Through looking at these pop videos we could get a good idea at how some of these major conventions are used in real pop videos. For example in Britney Spear’s ‘Circus’ music video she noticeable uses some of the major conventions for example:

You can see in this shot from the video that it already covers the obvious convention of featuring the artist in the video. As well as that it is using a range of shots as you can see here there is a close-up of Britney and as well as this there are mid-shots and full length body shots of her in this element of the video.

In this shot you can see that more conventions are used in the video such as a performance element of Britney dancing, it also covers the convention of high impact instantly and also special effects of lighting. As well as that it also covers having a carefully constructed mise en scene appropriate to the content of the track as they are in a circus and the track is ‘Circus’.
In this shot here you can see Britney putting on her perfume which just so happens to be her own brand of perfume so she is in fact not only promoting her image but also promoting her brand.

Britney Spears ‘Circus’ video in fact covers just about every major pop video convention that Keith Negus mentions. These are:

• The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption
  
• The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)


• A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement


• Repetition of reoccuring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)


• A possible narrative structure


• A possible performance element


• The flexibility to disregard Realism!
  
• Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track
  
• Use of special effects (lighting, annimation, CGIs, in-camera effects)
  
• A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track
  
• High impact instantly! (Don’t forget that competition for airplay on the main music channel outlets is intense)

We hope that within our pop video we can imitate and subvert the conventions set up by Negus and follow Barthes theory of plaisir and jouissance. By imitating the convention we essentially would give the audience the expected pleasure of what they want to see and then by subverting the conventions we would give the audience jouissance that is something new or unexpected in Barthes terms.

In our song I believe our message was about the guilt and secrets this girl hides. I believe we tried to convey this through the use of our giant birdcage set. I believe the birdcage is almost a metaphor for the girls mental state. The cage is a representation of her mind and how she is trapped by all these secrets and her guilt. I.e. trapped by the cage. It can also be seen as how we as society are trying to break free from expectations set up by people and we want to escape from that mould. Our image and brand is set up to be quite modern and mysterious and our singer is quite dreamlike and mysterious. In the video she appears very innocent and vulnerable as if she is lost or struggling to find her way in a dream, this is set up at the beginning of the video by her being shown but not singing suggesting she is in a dream or that it is all in her mind. However as the song progresses you see her build strength and a larger sense of power and freedom that hopefully a lot of people will admire and look up to as a good quality of the brand.

In this shot here you can see that we imitated one of Negus’ conventions of the flexibility to disregard realism. You can see that we did this through using a diffused glow effect to give a more ethereal look and a more dreamlike atmosphere. As well as that we imitated another major convention of featuring the artist in the video that goes without saying. This again reinforces the brand and the idea of mysteriousness and innocence.


A convention that we do subvert is the possibility of a narrative structure. Within our pop video there is no narrative and by challenging this convention we follow the Barthes theory of jouissance. This reinforces the fact that our brand is modern and willing to challenge the regular conventions of pop videos. This can also refer back to the video I mentioned earlier as Britney Spear’s ‘Circus’ video does not include a narrative structure either.

In this shot you can see that through slow motion, camera angle and tracking the video is conveyed in dreamlike and upbeat way. This helps show the audience that again our brand isn’t afraid to try something new but as well as that we are giving to different elements within our video. A relaxed, soft innocent girl and then a rebellious, strong and courageous girl. Again this helped set up a great image for our artist and our brand. You can also see that within the frame there is a nice depth of field that leads the viewer’s eyes through the shot to the singer. This follows the composition rules that can reinforce some of the major convention rules.

Another convention that we challenged was the performance element. In some ways we allowed the artist to perform through dance and song however as a musical band performance we didn’t show any of the band members. By doing this we subverted the regular performance element of a pop video and changed to something more modern. We did not show any of the band however we did have fades into and out of a guitar playing with no musician. This is again suggestive of the dreamlike quality of the video.

I believe that the front cover of our Digipak, or the album cover helps to set up the image of the artist and brand quite nicely as it has a modern, mysterious feel to it and has the central focus point as a birdcage again being suggestive of breaking out from society and being different, or a sense of innocence being kept forever. The smoke perhaps implies the darkness outside the cage and what would happen if you break free. This has connotations that if we did refer to the cage as a metaphor for society or the artists mental state then if she broke out of the cage perhaps darkness is waiting outside. Or it could be a metaphor for her secret as the smoke has a mysterious quality to it. The writing I believe also gives a nice edge to the brand as it is simplistic yet it still has a modern, bohemian feel to it, just like the image of the brand we are selling. However again even within the Digipak we challenged Negus’ convention of having the artist present, however we do imitate that convention on the inside two pages of the Digipak. I believe we also imitated the convention of a carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track as the birds representing music notes goes in theme with the song ‘Bird Song’.

Our magazine advert and our Digipak cover followed the normal convensions for these media texts. The magazine advert used the rule of thirds, the suggestion of art through mainly a black and white image and a convential font to grab the attension of poeple flicking through the magazine who might be interested or intrigued by such an image. The rule of the thirds takes the reader to the tour dates on the first hot spot and to the empty swing on the fourth hot spot which gives an air of mystery.

The Digipak cover covers all the basics of providing information of the songs, the lyrics and the background of the artist, using the same key images, colours and shapes as the video and the advert to achive synergy.

Magazine Advert: The Making Of

The magazine advert is simply to put into magazines to help advertise and sell the album. We decided to stick with the front cover of the album as our magazine advert mainly because if we heavily advertise the cover of the album it will be recognised for its imagery. Relating back to Kuleshov everything we register is 70% visual therefore consumers will remember the album cover visually and if they see it in a magazine they will remember that image and by association remember the artist. However if we were to have changed the mage it might take the consumer longer to register the product we are trying to sell.

We made the magazine advert by getting the original image of a birdcage and creating the same look as the album cover. However we decided to add a picture of our artist to the advert to sell the brand more. As well as that we also added a list of all the tour dates and venues so that the viewer can buy tickets for the tour. The reason we advertise the tour in the magazine advert is because that is where the band makes the most money. We also added the ‘Island Record’ logo to establish again the record company and as well as that we added the website name so fans can buy tickets and help learn more about the artist and possibly buy merchandise.

Digipak: The Making Of

The Digipak is produced to sell the album. By producing a Digipak consumers can have something within their album to connect to the band, be it through the lyrics or through a small description of the band and their hobbies. By producing a Digipak the consumer feels closer to the artist and feels as though they have a more personal relationship with the artist. It helps to sell more albums. More importantly it is aesthetically pleasing instead of selling a plain CD case.

This is the Album Cover.

This is actually the middle two pages of the Digipak but as you can see they piece together.

This is the back of the album cover.

We produced the Digipak by looking through a range of pictures we had taken of our artist and o our set and after a lot of deliberation we decided to produce a cover with the image of the birdcage on the front. This is because it is not to over the top but it is simple enough to catch somebody’s eye. The idea was to help sell the single off the album that would be the original selling point of our artist. So by association they would see that the band that has an album with the song “Bird Song” on it might have a connotation of a birdcage and therefore pick up the album. We decided to add smoke to give the cover a more mysterious, edgy look. This is to enhance the image of our artist as unique and edgy. As for the inside of the Digipak we decided to show the artists face and also show the lyrics of the song. This is so that a consumer can learn the words of their favourite songs and if they go to any of the concerts they will be able to sing along. As well as that we also put in music notes shaped liked birds, again to reinforce the ‘Bird Song’ as the first single off the album. For the back of the album we wrote our all the copyright information and found the island records logo online to stick on the back as well. We did have to change the colours to blend it with the album and as well as that we also added a barcode for authenticity.

Task Number Four: A director’s commentary on how I used new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

New media technologies are evolving within our media industry more and more each day. Everywhere we go we are hit by new media technologies in some way even in small things such as a mobile phone like the iphone. Back in the day everything used to be done in Analogue. Analogue used to capture the image, scramble all the data and send it through the airwaves and the data would then unscramble on your television this whole process is only one way and an analogue camera cost about £60,000-100,000. Because the data is so large the televisions only had room for about five channels on the frequency and as well as that if you filmed with analogue whatever you were filming had to be lit perfectly. However nowadays we have converted to digital, digital means tht it is all done with binary codes, i.e. 1 & 0. Because it is done in binary code all the information is compressed, it is so small that it allows for far more channels, for example Sky has about 1000 channels.

Digital also allows you to edit footage and change the lighting if you didn’t get it right when filming. It cost far less at £3,500-4,000 and as well as that it can work both ways, people sitting at home can interact and place bets on horses or switch between what event at the Olympics they want to watch. The advantages of digital are fantastic, it is fast, cheap, easy and has a much better quality. Another way of putting this is QPCI. Quality – it has about 50 picture quality and 100 sound quality. Proliferation – number of channels. Convergence – merging together. Interactivity – allowing viewers to interact on programs.

New media technologies have helped with our music video in all five stage of production: Research and development, Planning Stages, Construction, Post Production and Distribution and Evaluation

Research and development has improved with new media technologies with the invention of the Internet. We used this to research our target audience, the competition, and the music industry and also to find props, costume and location. We also looked at TV, DVDs and watched videos on our iPods to get ideas for our music video these are other new media technology. As well as that we also watched several YouTube videos to get a better idea of other music videos and again check out the competition.

For the planning part of our music video I believe new media technology helped us a lot. We used digital stills taken from a camera and created a digital storyboard. Before digital technology we would not have been able to see if our music video would piece together and with this new technology we can see if the whole concept and idea of our video would work and if it didn’t, it would allow us to change it before it was too late. We could also camera test our band members to see if their faces worked well on camera. And once again the internet helped us again for planning as it was very easy to email all the cast and crew the call sheet with maps, pictures etc. which was far easier than printing it out and sending it to them. For example it was very simple for me to email the call sheet to the cast and crew, instead of printing it all off and sending it to people where it may get lost in the post.

New media technology has changed the way we can construct and shoot a music video for example in our music video shoot we filmed with the JVC 1500 and the Sony 21, these cameras are easy to use, speedy, high quality and allows you to shoot a great deal of footage. We probably shot about 192 shots and only used about 62 of those. This means we shot on a ratio of 3:1 which is fantastic. The higher the ratio the better, as cameras are smaller and easier to carry around and they have a longer tape it is so much easier to film nowadays. For example when we were filming our feather shots we had to constantly shoot, pick up all the feathers and redo it. Because nowadays shooting is as simple as pressing a button and shooting we could easily shoot a variety of shots and be more creative. Analogue cameras were huge and far more difficult to carry round so shots had to be good. They also didn’t have a long tape so you had to be accurate. However with digital you can just stick the camera where you need it and press the button to film. For example we were able to do a number of tracking shots several times around the birdcage, which wouldn’t have been possible with analogue. New media technologies also make green screen and blue screen possible. The 0,1 binary numbers are simply downed to erase green or blue and you can simply place in another image.

The invention of Photoshop, Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro, we can now edit our music videos a lot quicker and more effectively. It is simple enough to assemble a rough cut and then also allows you to be creative and detailed in your final cut. For example when editing our pop video we put in all our favorite shots very roughly and then edited it down and made it all work together. As well as this the advancement of new media technologies allows us to add special effects and other interesting elements to our videos such as better sound and editing the lighting. For example we were able to used colour correction on our video as our lighting was all uneven at parts, we were also able to apply a diffused glow to some of our shots to make the video more ethereal.

The distribution and evaluation thanks to new media technology has been made so much easier. We can get our music video to our viewer minutes after we have finished editing it thanks to YouTube, MySpace and other websites. The distribution is also made much easier thanks to email, there is no chance of it getting lost in the post. It is quick, easy and has good quality. Also by posting it on a website everybody can access it.

For evaluation new media technology or digital technology has changed the media landscape. On youtube you can reach tens of millions potentially, get their details, comments and reactions and change your product accordingly if you wish. Using facebook and twitter, email and a website for the singer you can drive people to the youtube offering of the pop video and get more and more reactions as you go. If you can place your pop video and song on an electronic download site again you can get reaction from many people really quickly. All of this in terms of evaluation was impossible before new media technology arrived.

Overall thanks to new media technologies creating a music video has become far more efficient. Not only is it quick, easy and has far better quality but it also allows us to be more creative and experimental with our work. Creativity is the key word here as the film industry thrives on 'originality, value and purpose in creativity as defined by a government report that stated that these where crutial and depended greatly on new media technology'. (A Brighter Future, Department of Education 2006).

Bird Song - Music Video