Situation with our video

As we have received an email saying that we are not allowed to publish our video online because of copyright a hard copy will be made available for examining board to view.

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3

Planning, filming and editing - 

    Our target audience ages are ranging from about 13-26 years old, this is a fairly normal target audience for pop music and videos as they tend to be very upbeat and light songs which tend to appeal to this age group, where we find as people get older their tastes change and tend to go far a larger variety of music. Through our research we looked at a lot of different types of music that we could use for our video we originally were going to go with the song Mrs Potato Head by Melanie Martinez as we all liked the song and thought that the message it gave was important that not one is perfect but you shouldn't change for anyone to attempt to achieve something so unrealistic.
When we had made our story boards we were adamant that this son g was a good choice but after asking some of our peers and looking back through the lyrics we decided to change it for something a bit more light hearted. We started our research again so that we could look at some more options and particularly songs that popular at the moment that have been released in the last 18-24 months.
   We finally came to a decision of using the song Symphony by Clean Bandit and Zara Larsson, we were debating between this song and What about us by Pink. As we could not come to a decision as a group we asked a peer and they were leaning more on the Lyrics and the versatility of using Symphony as we were able to use the song more to our advantage and could go down a range of different paths with this song in particular.
    Throughout the process of making our video we go a lot guidance from interviewing and getting our target audience to answer surveys. With this information we came away from what a lot of our initial ideas and used our storyboards more as a guideline than a instruction. The main reason for this was that when we were filming we wanted to make sure we had enough footage so ended up filming our storyboards and then more as we had more ideas of what could fit in our video. The feedback we got influenced what we did a lot throughout our music video and our media products particularly the colour and lighting that we used as it is conventional of a pop video to have bright colours and high-key lighting although we based the majority of our video on this convention towards the end we challenged it as well.
    We did this as after we had placed a lot of our footage into our video i felt like their was something missing and after going back through our video a couple of times and re-reading the lyrics i thought to fill the extra space and to give the song more depth as it would flow with the lyrics better we could use the footage that we already had and make a flashback scene before going into the suitcase scene.
After doing this i think it made the video look less amateurish and more thought out as it showed our interpretation of the lyrics more and gave our video a clearer message of a passing memory or a new chapter in life.
      Another thing our audience influenced was when we went back through our clips and changed the colour of each individual clip as we had asked for feedback by some of our target audience on what we could improve and this was something that was brought up on multiple occasions. To begin with we didn't understand what the problem with the colour was but after we had changed the colour/exposure/saturation we could see exactly what they were saying as our previous clips looked way too natural and raw, this colour change made the video look more professional and less like a group fo friends videoing each other.
    My favourite part of the whole A2 course has been editing our footage, placing everything and watching everything we had envisioned come together. We used a of wide shots accidentally as in some cases we weren't as careful with our positioning of the camera than we could have been. After we realised that we had too many wide shots we swapped some of the footage we had around and when filming on the last two occasions we made sure to take a larger variety of shots and angles. We also used some still shots as we only had one in our video overall, this was one of the main things we aimed to get when we had gone to film again.

As we were not able to upload our music video to youtube for copyright reasons we had to find other ways of getting feedback from our target audience, so instead uploading it to the internet we showed people that are from our target audience the video privately and asked them for their opinion on our video and what we could have potentially done much better if we were able to start again and improve on our current finished product.

Here is some of the feedback we had received for all of our media products -

 Magazine feedback 

Although i do like the black font looking at the advertisement, I agree that in white you may have been able to see the text better and it could have made it a bit bolder against the background. 

Digipak feedback

If we were able i would have liked to have used pictures from a photo shoot as Tim said it would have looked more professional and would have changed our digipak slightly from being nearly exactly the same as our other products and is maybe something we could have thought about when we were making our digipak. However, i do think that if our digipak differed from the rest of our media products that link between the three products may have not been as distinct and clear. 

Our music video - 

One of our main negative feedback was that all three of us were in the video when some of our audience thought that it would have looked more professional, when looking at our video i can see what they mean and if we were to go back and re-film it would have been better to only have had maybe 2 people in the friendship group and only one person singing.
Another improvement that was mentioned was the colouring in some of our clips which again i agree could have been improved and we did have a few issues whilst editing with the colour especially the colour of Riverside if we could have gone back to editing our videos colour is definitely something i would like to have focused on a bit more. Also would have liked to re-film some of our shots so that we would have had exactly what we needed rather than at some points improvising. Altogether, I'm really happy with the feedback we received from our target audience, there are a lot of things that if we were to go back and do it again it would look a lot more professional. On a general basis we got good feedback with one or two improvements that we could have worked on and looked at more. Throughout this years course we have used our target audiences feedback to influence and help us with our video and our other media products i think this has given us a bit more guidance for our video whilst filming and editing.

Evaluation - Question 2

Evaluation - Question 1

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

My group and I's finished music video uses and develops a lot of the conventions of a pop video. We have a lot of bright colours and high-key lighting throughout our video which is quite common in pop videos however, we have also challenged these conventions as towards the end the video it loses colour and our last few scenes are completely in black and white. 

 In our music video we have also followed the narrative of the song however we have interpreted it differently to how the original video did. Instead of looking at a passing love we looked at the friendship between three friends that then go down different paths and wanted it to give the affect of a fading memory. We thought that this worked very well for the video that we have chosen as we are all going to university as the end of the year. We tended to look at young girls for our music video as a lot of pop videos feature teenage/young adults who are female.
I think this will also help relate to our audience as they are mainly teenage girls and young adults, to see that in our video these are the kind of people we are featuring it will be relatable and i think will be received and interpreted in the way we wanted it to be.
With all of the different of places we went to for the video we saw lots of different cultures and people from completely different walks of life. I think that this will attract more people as they are able to look at the video as well rounded and isn't just based on one idea and one convention. 

Our attire throughout the video was constantly changing showing the passing of time and locations. In some of the more rural locations there was a different feel for the area than in the industrial areas as they are less tourist based and especially the shot of Jasmine sat alone started the video well and added a new interpretation of the video as she almost looked sad while she was alone. This gave the start of the video a bit more depth in my opinion as it is such a contrast from most of the other shots, there was also one similar of Paige when she was standing looking almost unfocused when we were in Rochester. At the end of the video all of the events that lead up to last couple of seconds of the song to show the suitcase scene.


All of the characters that we had in our video were different in their own way for example: Paige was almost a bit more reserved than Jasmine and my character as she was in a way more distant as a character. She also showed quite a stereotypical teenage girl as she wore fairly girly clothes and was always well presented. Jasmines character was pretty similar in what she wore but as a person she was more open and involved in being in front of the camera. I think my character was a mixture between the two as i wasn't quite so reserved but i wasn't as open as the other two. As a group we are quite unconventional as we are all very different from what we wear to how we present ourselves and act, but you could still see the friendship between us all in the video.

Although we focused on mainly teenage girls and gender in general we looked at the theory of 'the male gaze' by Laura Mulvey, this is the theory that the camera is shown through a mans perspective. This is why in the majority of music videos sexualise women as it is attractive to men and opens a wider audience instead of what just appeals to our main target audience. For example: Candy Man by Christina Aguilera. This video is every much based on women in a small amount of clothing dancing and performing for entertainment which is very typical of a pop video. As a group we didn't to sexualise our characters in anyway as the audience we are looking at and our age it is highly inappropriate to be short clothing that doesn't cover a lot. Also with the time of year that we filmed in this type of clothing was unpractical as the whether throughout was cold and was nearing winter. We were very lucky to not have any rain whilst filming as this wouldn't have worked with the lighting or setting of our video.


We used a lot of wide shots and close-ups throughout as we wanted to get up close and personal with the characters and their emotions in the video. Also we used quite a few wide shots because we wanted to show the background as well as the characters to emphasise when we had changed location and time of day. At times our lighting didn't work as well as we may have liked it to but we found Final cut very helpful when editing any imperfections we found. We did find that after we had placed most of our filming in to our filming that we had to go back through and re colour all of our shots as they were too raw and natural. At the time we didn't understand why we needed to do this as it was feedback that we had received on multiple occasions so decided to go through with it. When we had finished editing the colour we could definitely see what our audience was saying as this made a massive difference to our video and helped link our shots a lot better as it made our day to night theme flow a lot more smoothly.

Stereotypes are heavily emphasised by the media and are generally unrealistic as a very small minority of people actually fit into these categories. We wanted to show this in our video, as all of our characters are happy and generally full of life whereas the main stereotypes of teenagers are moody, lazy, disrespectful etc. We wanted to challenge this as teenagers ourselves because although we can not speak for all people our age group, but mostly of the people we surround ourselves are actually productivity and look at life positively rather than being negative and upset all of the times. I myself can not understand a lot of these stereotypes as they are very pushed out of proportion and aren't any where near as bad as what the media continue to go on about.

To conclude, i personally wanted to show that not every convention and stereotype are as exact as they are made out to be, as i am quite a diverse person, i recognise there are some that are not motivated and would rather be lazy and not do much but there are plenty of people of all ages that are that way inclined. Our music video was to represent teenagers from a different perspective and not what we are forced to believe by the media as in a lot of cases that is not a reality. We developed some of conventions such as high-key lighting and colour but overall we wanted to challenge these conventions and interpret the lyrics in a different way than the way in which they were written.

Magazine Advert

Interview of what our target audience thought of the three magazine adverts that we researched -

We found that a lot of people liked the Jessie J and the Olly Murs as they liked how different the Olly Murs advert layout but they liked the colours used in the Jessie J advert. I'm going to try an implement a little bit of both in these in my advert design. 

Our separate advert designs - 

 This was Jasmines design. I like the aesthetic of  advert however I'm not keen on the layout or the three figures on the front i do think it is a little too plain and could use more colour to match with the rest of our media products. I love how the font stands out and i like over lay of the pictures in the background but i personally do not think that this would be suitable for a magazine advert as it doesn't stand out as much as it could.

 I think out of all of them my favourite was Paige's advert because of the layout, i love how all of the colours stand out and the fact that she has put the reviews from other companies on there. The main thing i would change is the background image as i don't particularly like the images of us three or the fact that the background is completely plain. If it has a little more colour and she had used a different image then this would be the perfect magazine advert for our music video.

For mine i think i could have thought out the layout a bit more and changed some of the font as it is a bit plain. Although i love the effect i used on the pictures of Paige and Jasmine as i used powerpoint and found this effect emphasised the colours in the pictures that links directly to our video as it ties in some of the colours that we have especially towards the end of our video in Winter Wonderland. Also the grey on the other two boxes matches when we fade to black and white for the flashbacks and the suitcase scene.

Here is our discussion as a group of the three magazines -

Our final design -

We found that although we really liked all of the designs we particularly liked the image the lay out of Paige's Advert but the colours in mine as they match well with the digipak and the music video.
In the ended to use a bit of both in our final design and wanted to change the background image and use the idea of the colour to black and white. We took what we had for our digipak so that the image was split in half and we also took the main layout from Paige's magazine design but changed it slightly as it was too big for the image we had chosen and we went for black and white font rather than black and red to tie everything together.
Jasmine had used photoshop to help us see what our final design would look like properly to see if it would fit well and stand out, this worked better than we had hoped and are really happy with our final design.

Digipak Research

Copyright

For our video everyone in our class was told to send an email to the record label that produced Symphony so that we did not infringe on copyright and had permission to publish our video online. Unfortunately we had received an email saying that we did not have permission to publish our video as we did not have a license to use the song, and that if we wanted to use the song we would have to fill in a form to get a license. After apologising for the letter as I didn't want to come across rude at all and to fill in the form I sent another email but unfortunately haven't had a reply back so will not be able to post our video online. Instead we will be showing people in our target audience range our video on our computer before asking them what they thought and what we could improve if we were able to go back and redo or edit our video. 

Dio Disciples return Tour - concert and review

https://myglobalmind.com/2018/01/14/dio-disciples-o2-academy-islington-december-2017/

Out of three concerts that I have been fortunate enough to be able to go to Dio Disciples was my personal favourite as I loved the support that the fans from the previous leader singer Ronnie James Dio who unfortunately passed away in 2010. It was a complete privilege to be able to be there on the night and although it was very difficult to take pictures of the hologram of Dio because of the pixelation, it was still an amazing performance as the band incorporated the hologram in the concert well.

Uli Jon Roth - Concert and review

https://myglobalmind.com/2018/01/14/uli-jon-roth-o2-academy-islington-december-2017/

On the 12th of December i went to see Uli Jon Roth at islington to review the band for there performance and photograph the band. Although difficult as i was only allowed to take pictures for 3 songs i was very lucky that there songs can range between 4-8 minutes long with the instrumental solos included. As i had stated in my review the band was amazing and was well worth the watch. The crowded room at islington really highlighted the respect the band have from there fans as some had travelled all day to just see the concert and clearly it was worth there time and money as the band passionate performance and clear love for what they do was really visible throughout the show.

Sending the owners of Symphony a Letter

Individually my group and I all sent the owners of Symphony (Atlantic Records and Epic Records) a letter to confirm our ability to use the song in our music video as without the permission we are not allowed to do so as it will be classed as copyright.  This is mainly to ensure there are no issues with us using the song but we know for sure that we will be able to with their permission.