Audience feedback from Facebook

 

 

 

Above is a screenshot of when we put our finished music video on Facebook, to receive audience feedback. This was very successful as we received comments from only people in our target audience, proving that we have managed to successfully appeal to the audience we were aiming to appeal to. We received many positive and useful comments such as:

•  I really like it!! I love the strobe, it fits really well with the beat. And i like the fisheye cos it adds to the disorientation with the drugs etc 
• its reaaly cool 
• I like the silhouette part, there is a clear narrative and the strobe light shots look really cool
• I think where you flashback from the old ladies is a great idea

We were very pleased with these comments and they made us feel very proud about our video.

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

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

 

Throughout the project I have gained a much better understanding of new media technology and the importance of it for both music producers and consumers. As a consumer and an audience throughout my research and planning stage I have realised the importance of new media technologies such as web 2.0 which has allowed me to use websites such as YouTube to research existing dance music videos which helped with my overall production of my music video.

Web 2.0 allowed me to watch existing dance music videos such as Modestep - Sunlight, Ben Howard - Old pine, Nina Nesbitt - Stay out, Asaf Avidan - one day and Stigma - nobody to love, this helped me tremendously especially when deciding on and creating my narrative. Watching these videos also allowed me to realise the conventions within the dance and acoustic genre which i then cleverly linked creating a subverted multi genre allowing me to make my video more unique.

Web 2.0 has allowed me to use Blogger to document all my progress and share it with the world and help myself keep updated on how far I have come and keep track of my ideas and inspirations. I have also used websites such as Facebook to gain audience feedback which has helped towards planning my music video in order to decide what the audience wanted to be included in a video of this genre.

As well as web 2.0 I have also used media technologies such as cameras and software such as Adobe Premiere and Photoshop to create my DigiPak and Magazine advert, without these new media technologies the creation of my music video would be very difficult and more time consuming. Web 2.0 allowed me to instantly share my creations with the world and gain instant feedback rather than having to show people individually in person which would take alot longer. Web 2.0 not only helped me create my media product but it helped me organise my time and actors, with the use of Facebook I was able to contact my nan and arrange a date and time to meet and film the elderly lady scenes, this applies for meeting my co-producer Ella and my other actress Lucy, we were able to contact eachother instantly using Facebook chat and another webite called 'Twitter'.

During the construction of my music video I also used a software called Adobe Premiere Pro which allowed me to import my footage off the camera instantly ready to edit. The new media sofware allowed me to cut clips to make them short and quick to keep to Andrew Goodwins 'thought beats' theory which sticks to the codes and conventions of a dance music video. The software also allowed me to edit clips and brighten them as some clips were dark due to filming at night time making them gloomy and unclear, instead of having to re film some of these clips the software allowed me to brighten them up which saved alot of time and effort. Premiere also allowed me to create transitions in my music video which made my video run smoothly and enabled my video to transition from day time to night with the use of the 'fade' tool.

As a producer web 2.0 has allowed me to upload my music video onto YouTube and recieve feedback instantly, something which could not be done without new media technologies.

The development of new media technologies such as web 2.0 contributed enormously in turning myself into a previous media consumer into a media producer allowing me to make a music video of my own with a desired target audience and genre.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

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

In summary...

• Edited video to thought beats to make it exciting, fast paced and keep the audience engaged  
• Explicit drug taking - used in many media texts
• Dancing 
• tends to be a lot of sexual content in music videos such as provocative clothing
• Fun care free nature to the videos
• Younger people featured in videos (Teens to young adults) - helps the audience relate to the videos and aspire 
• Simple narratives, not serious genre all about having fun and friends and relationships
• featured in clubs, parties, lots of videos of people escaping their every day boring lives 
• Dance music is so popular amongst teens as it the years they start experimenting and going out
• NIGHT time, darkness bright lights/strobes

In summary

Develop

• 2 people on their own rather than big room full of different people, focussing on two girls which is different
• focused on their relationship rather than what they are doing
• Girls arent sexualised, it is baised on their relationship and fun
• Didnt feature club/bar - wanted to focus on the girls and how they can make their own fun rather than relying on places
• We used locations such as parks and a church which you would not normally see in a dance music video 

Challenged

A girl and boy typical love story, we made a same sex relationship rather than hetrosexual or just a group of friends, gave our video and edge 

also making lesbians widely accepted and seen as a normal couple

Usually just friends going out having fun

also girls are in a same sex relationship which challenges the codes and conventions of a normal dance music video

Old ladies - would not normally see in a dance music video but it works because it sticks and guides the narrative, also could appeal to a larger audience (older generations) 

Uploading the final video

When uploading my finished music video I ensured that I made it clear that I did not own any rights to the song, to prove that I was not plagiarising the song or taking and credit for the track in any way. I also ensured that it was obvious that the video was for my A-level media and not the official video for the song.

Camera format problems resolved!

BEFORE

AFTER

When myself and my co-producer started editing our video we realised we had clips which we in different formats meaning they were different sizes when we put them into Premier Pro. This was frustrating as it meant some clips were smaller with a black boarder round them and some fitted the screen perfectly. We managed to solve this problem by unlocking the frame of the one with the black boarder round it and carefully dragging it out to the correct size. 

If we had left the film as it was before the video would not look very professional and it would be difficult to watch for our audience as some clips would be in a small format and it would keep flicking between the two.

Lighting problems

Here is our original footage with no extra lights, as you can see the screenshot of footage is grainy and reddish toned. The singers face is not clear which would make our video difficult to relate too as the singer would not be clear

However, here is a screenshot of the footage after using the lights. Harrys face is now well lit up and clear so you can see the lyrics he is mouthing and his facial features and outfit which helps the audience relate to the video. 

Here are 2 more examples of how well the lighting worked for our music video...


In this image of Ella you can see how well lit up Ella's face is, the thing I like about using such a bright light on the persons face is that the rest of the shot is dark so you can still see it's night time. 







Here is another screenshot of Lucy, the light of this shot I think is really good as the whole background is black and she is so well lit up. I think the contrast between Lucys face being so bright and the darkness creates a really cool effect and shows clearly that everything is filmed at night. 
Overall I think this lighting worked really well and helped our video look more professional, I also think it helped our narrative as you can now see more clearly what is going  on in our video.

Feedback from my target audience

Jade - 18

"I think there was a really clear strong narrative and the upbeat, feel good aspect is really relateable to a young age group"

Elissa -

"I really like the lighting- I think the strobes were effective and the lips syncing was really good"

 

Harry - 19

 "The storyline of the old ladies is very good I like the way it links back to them at the end"

 

Lucy - 18
"As an actress in the video, I am proud of how the end product looks and the way the girls have edited it together to create such a feel good video"

Kira - 21

"I like the effect the fish eye camera makes in the video"

Above are examples of our target audience (17-young adults) giving us feedback on our video after watching it. I found the feedback very useful.

Finished Magazine advert!

Digipak!

FINAL VIDEO

Editing the lip syncing

Lip Syncing

Lip syncing was one of the most difficult tasks I encountered when editing. Firstly this was because we had to ensure that Harry, our on screen singer knew the lyrics to the song as well as the timings for them. To ensure that harry sang the lyrics in the correct timings, we played the track along side the filming of the lip syncing, allowing him to be sure that he was singing the correct lyrics and alongside the song in time with it.
Secondly, it was very difficult to cut and put the clip into the exact place alongside the track when editing. If the clip was even a fraction of a second out of place the visuals would not match the lyrics and it would be out of time.
However I think that I managed to get the clip in time very well with the lyrics in the song, making it look very professional. Below are images of harry lip syncing as well as a screen shot of when I edited the footage to the song.

Editing the music video

Here is a screenshot to show the editing my self and my co-producer have done. As you can see there are some gaps in my video which I still have to fill in with more footage, in the screenshot you can see the tiny seconds of footage myself and my co-producer have had to cut down and put together in the right place. The clips are so short as our video is of a dance genre which sticks to the codes and conventions of a real dance music video of having short fast paced clips to keep the audience engaged and stick to a thought beat. Editing the clips on thought beats also helps the audio and visuals work together, I am happy how the editing has gone so far and feel like the video is coming together. I am now excited to carry on editing and ensure the video is finished to a high standard!

How we styled our singer

WANKLEMUT

Here is a photo of Wanklemut, the dance remixer of the track I am using for my music video. He has a simple but quirky style which adds to the laid back conventions of dance music. I looked at various pictures of Wanklemut and the main thing i noticed was how casual his style was, in order to recreate this to make sure our singer followed these conventions we made sure our singer was dressed in casual clothes and looked a little rugged.

ASAF AVIDAN

This is Asaf Avidan, the acoustic singer of 'One day'. Obviously the track we are using has elements of both acoustic and dance genres in so I decided to show this through the singer in the video. Asaf Avidans style is very indie, with his denim jacket, skinny jeans and chequered shirt. 






For our singer we chose my brother Harry, Harry already has a quirky/indie dress sense which would work perfectly for our video as his style is similar to the artist who sang and who remixed the song.

Here is the photo of my brother in the way we styled him for the music video. He is wearing black skinny jeans which show he is fashionable and has an indie sense of fashion. He is also wearing a green beanie hat, a black leather jacket and a black t-shirt. His style is up to date and will relate to our target audience of teenagers to young adults as his fashion is quirky and different which is popular amongst teenagers. Harry also wears a necklace which could be classed as 'feminine', we made sure he wore this as our video includes same sex couples and puts out a message for people to be who they wants to be as 'one day baby we'll be old', Harrys necklace suggests he can wear want he want and he is up to date with fashion. 

Old ladies at last! (Actress profiles)

Here are the two old ladies that were kindly willing to star in the opening sequence in my music video, both ladies were over 80 meaning I had previously asked my nan to arrange a date and time we could come and film. Obviously we had to get the shots right first time as this took a lot of arranging and there wasn't another available date we could come back and film. We asked the ladies to wear what they normally wear as there wasn't a theme or anything in particular we wanted to focus on, we just wanted to show these ladies were elderly. Unfortunately we couldn't use the  bench we originally wanted to use (The bench at the church) as this was back 20 minutes away and we couldn't transport the ladies there. Luckily there was a bench close by to where the 2 elderly ladies lived meaning we could film there and create the graphic match there too. Choosing to include 2 elderly ladies completely subverts and challenges the conventions of a dance genre as usually according to my research, young sexualised characters are used within the video such as young girls in provocative clothing as seen in the video 'Seek bromance' by 'Tim Berg' and 'Nobody to love' by 'Sigma' as you can see in the screenshot the two girls are wearing little clothing and the low angled shot could be viewed as the 'males gaze'. 

We decided to not stick to this and try and make the woman we are using look powerful and self driven. That's also why we wanted to use two females rather than a boy and girl, we thought this would interest the audience and show that times are changing and same sex couples are normal and are not anything to be ashamed of. 

Why did we choose to film at a church?

The church at night where we have filmed

In part of my music video i decided to film at a church close to where I live, one of the reasons being for this was the lighting outside is really bright and lights up the outside meaning i will get good, clear shots when filming. Another reason we decided to film at the church was because our song 'One day' had the lyrics 'One day baby we'll be old, think of all the stories that we could have told', filming at the church in the graveyard emphasises the songs lyrics and story we have created as it is indicating that we are all going to die one day meaning we should enjoy life while we have it.

Representation within the music video

Representation of characters

The characters in the video are mainly represented by the way they dress also as there is no dialogue to represent the characters the way that they act is also very important to represent who each of them are as characters. Firstly, their clothing represents their free spirited, carefree outlook on life and their relationship. They do not dress to impress people and simply wear what is comfortable for them. However, building upon this the clothes they wear are unique and not mainstream fashion. Again building on the fact that they do not care about the thoughts of others as this doesn't matter to them. What matters to them is each other, their relationship and the fact that they are having fun.
Harry, the singer in the video is mainly represented through what he wears, as he does not do anything more than mime, therefore as he does not act you do not get to know him as a character though his actions. However due to this fact, it makes him quite mysterious as a character, as you do not know much about him throughout the video. As he doesn't represent himself as anything other than a singer, he is represented as confusing and mysterious, especially as the parts where he features, is filmed in a church/grave yard. He wears simple inde type clothes, linking him to the acoustic genre part of the song. However this could link him to the girls in the narrative as they are also wearing this type of clothing, again making him seem mysterious as the audience wants to try and work out what relation he has with them, a question which is never answered, leaving the audience wanting more to find out.
Representation of relationships
 My video shows representations of a lesbian relationship throughout it. At the beginning of the video the girls relationship could be seen as a friendship by the audience, because a homosexual relationship is not a convention of dance music and although the two are close in the video they could just be very good friends. Also as the relationship between the girls isn't a stereotypical lesbian relationship it becomes an enigma leaving the audience wanting to find out more about the girls, keeping their attention to the video throughout.
(Stereotypes of a lesbian relationship are that there is generally one more feminine and one more masculine girl in the relationship.)

Experimentation of lighting

 Here is a famous still from the film 'Terminator' in which the light is very different on both sides, on the left hand side the light is a dark blue and on the right the light is bright and has reddish tones to it. The lighting sets an atmosphere and helps emphasise the genre which is 'action'. 

TERMINATOR

EXPERIMENT 1

EXPERIMENT2

Problems encountered in finding actresses

In my music video I planned to use 2 elderly ladies to appear in the opening scene of the music video and the very end scene. I originally thought this would be simple to find 2 woman willing to do this as I would just need them for a short amount of time. I later found out this was more difficult than I thought, I emailed a priory with my co-producer and have written about this on a previous post. I also asked many friends if they had any grandparents willing to be a part of the music video, I had many people interested yet to lead to complications of how to get the ladies to where we needed them (The church bench where we plan to film). 

I even asked my own nan to film but due to her being 80 years old and living a half an hour drive away this proved to be difficult. I eventually contacted my nan who lives in a retirement building with other elderly people to see if any other 2 ladies where willing to be a part of the music video. We eventually found 2 woman who were interested! We set up a filming schedule and checked the weather before hand to ensure it would not rain as the filming we would be doing would be outside. 

Existing magazine adverts promoting DigiPaks

Existing magazine adverts promoting digipaks  
All of the images below are advertisements for the release of a new album/ single release. Each digipak includes a A4 picture of the band or artist themselves, each advertisement also includes the artists name, the single/album name, the date it comes out, the artists website and a sponsor/ the record label. These features are included on every advertisement i have seen and others I have looked at meaning I will make sure to use these to make my advertisement look professional and stick to the codes and conventions of the advertisements. 

Feedback about the track from the target audience

SOPHIE

Sophie, 19, female- personally I hate dance music and am more interested in heavy metal, but because I've now listened to it so many times I know the lyrics and can't help but shake ma boottay to it!

TAMSIN

Tamsin, 17, female- Its got a really heavy beat which is very useful when it comes to music videos and a really nice repetitive tune underneath. The lyrics have meaning to them when they repeat 'One day when we'll be old, we'll remember the stories that we told, and it also gives a hint of nostalgia.

LUCY

Lucy, 18, female- This song makes me want to go out and party. it makes me think about me and all my girls going out and having a laugh and making memories :)

ANNIE

Annie, 17, female-
This song is very uplifting and happy. The genre makes me think of dancing and going out. The repetitiveness makes it really memorable.

Annotated Lyrics

Here I have annotated the lyrics of the song I have chosen for my music video. 
I printed off the lyrics and scribbled down any ideas I had when reading through the lyrics, this was not a set in stone story board for the music video just ideas that popped into my head! 

1st Risk assessment

Here is a copy of the first risk assessment I created in order to ensure I create my music video in a safe way! I plan to film mainly in the dark which i discovered could have potential risks so I have carefully thought how I could prevent these risks. 

PRELIMINARY TASK MUSIC VIDEO

Beneath this text I have included my Preliminary task music video! The video was a copy of the popular dance track 'Afterglow' by 'Wilkinson' 

2nd Risk assesment

Costume change

We had to change our idea to dress our acctresses in 60's fashion this is because we realised that it would be difficult to set our music video in the 60's as there are too many modern looking things everywhere we would want to film. Such as modern cars, buildings fashion of passers by and technology. If we are to set our music video in the 60's we need to make sure that the setting and mise scene are correct otherwise it would not look believable and people would not be engaged by the video.
Due to this we decided to change our idea slightly by changing the elderly women in the first scene of the music video to be sat there in the future thinking back to when they were 18 in 2015. This way we don't have to spend money on costumes or have to be constantly wary about technology etc in the surroundings of the shots and will be able to film much more freely.
Therefore we plan to dress our actresses in fashionable clothes, but not the mainstream fashion. We would like them to stand out a bit from the crowd and look more unique then other people around them. This is to highlight the fact that they do not want to be like everyone else, and do not care what others think.

This is a screen grab from filming.. it highlights how the girls in the video are unique and do not wear mainstream fashion as they don't care about the thoughts of others.

Existing digi packs

Here are some existing digipaks for singles/albums by Wankelmut. In order for me to create my own digipack I needed to analyse existing digipaks to see what was popular in the genre and what codes and conventions are used in order to create a successful dance Digipak. Wankelmut is the artist who's track I am using and all the digipaks below are his too so this will help me see what sort of thing is popular for the dance genre.

This Digipak has an artistic blue and pinkish background which looks like smudges of paint or feathers in a pile. The background has no relevance to the name of the album cover 'Wankelmoods vol.2' as far as I know apart from it includes bright colours which could connote fun. The mix match of colours could also indicate a care free attitude as the smudges are messy rather than having an order to them, this relates to the dance genre as dance is associated with fun and a care free attitude as I have realised when researching existing music videos such as 'seek bromance'. 

The second DigiPak is similar to the first one as it includes an artistic background but the colours are a lot brighter and look like pressed flowers or smudged paint. The text is in white just like the first DigiPak, it is simple 

The third DigiPak is also similar to the two previous ones apart from the picture relates to the name of the album cover as the photo is of a jungle and the name of the album is 'My head is a jungle'. This Digipak is different as the picture is cut out in a circle which makes it look more interesting, it's almost like a fish eye lens which gave me inspiration to use a fish eye lens to film my music video

Initial ideas - Lyrics

This is an annotated version of the lyrics I plan to use for my music video. This is just a rough plan of how i would like my music video to plan out, it may not go exactly to this plan but this is just a general idea which will help me when filming so I know what goes in what order.

Filming the singer parts of the music video

1. Here you can see myself and Ella my co-producer filming our main singer, Harry. We chose to film at a church where there is lots of lights at night to light up the scene. The lighting was difficult to get right and we had to try lots of places to ensure Harry showed up well on the camera. The best place was a bench in the church which was well lit up by lights on both sides. 









2. We had various problems when filming such as not getting our shadows in the shot. This was difficult as we wanted to film in front of Harry and see how the shot looked but that meant our shadows were in the side of the shots. We resolved this problem by putting the camera in place then getting Harry to press the record button when he was ready.

3. To ensure Harry was mouthing the right words at the right time we downloaded the 'One Day' track on to a phone and got Harry to hide it up his sleeve and play the song so he could hear the words and mouth along with the song at the same time. This meant he could hear the song at the exact time so he would be in sync with the song when we edited the clips.









                               


4. Another problem we encountered when we were out filming was the freezing cold weather, to ensure our actor didn't get too cold and get ill we made sure he was wrapped up warm in layers of clothing, hats and 2 pairs of socks. We also brought extra clothing out incase any of us got too cold.

5. Here is just a shot to show where a bouts we were filming. We tried out different angles to see which looked the best and suited our song. We ended up going for a shot straight in front of Harry directly in front of his face as we thought this worked the most effectively because you could see him singing the most clearly, we also liked the symmetry as he was sitting in the middle of the bench and the scene was equal on both sides.

6. This photo shows us trying out different shots to make our video more interesting. We liked this shot filming from the side of Harrys face as you were able to see the cold air coming out of Harrys mouth which we thought looked really good and showed it was him singing. 

7. After setting up and testing out different shots we encountered yet another problem. When filming the camera would automatically stop after a few seconds and come up with this message 'Movie recording has been stopped automatically', this was very frustrating as we had put in all the effort into costume, set, lighting and getting our actor to come out and then the camera was playing up. After many calls to various people trying to figure out the problem we found out it was because the memory card was too small, we managed to get a few seconds of film which we were able to use in our video and that had to do till we got another memory card and set up another date to film.