Final Music Video

Evaluation 4: How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

 

Evaluation A4

Evaluation 3: What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

Evaluation 2: How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Evaluation 1: In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Change Forms and Conventions of Real Media?

Character/Star Image

To inspire us for the main character of our video, who is a lone young female, we watched two main videos that we thought displayed the main character in a way that would relate to our video.
The fist video was Cyndi Lauper’s original video of our chosen song, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. We thought that, as she has performed our actual song, she would convey the type of character tat we ourselves with to convey. We liked the part when we first see her dancing down the street towards her house as it introduced the song in a fun and exciting way, something we wanted to achieve. It also introduced the character in a light-hearted and carefree way. We therefore decided to have Amber coming home as a way of introducing the character and the audience are immediaty aware of who is the main person in the video and thus, we established our star image quality to the video. By doing this and opening the video in this way, we have agreed with the typical codes and conventions of real media products as we draw all the attention to our main character.

The second video we watched was Taylor Swifts recent single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”. We liked that at the start of her career she came across innocent and vulnerable almost, yet this video showed a different side to her, an edgy side that we want in our main character. Swift conveyed a confident and takes no nonsense persona as she disregarded the man that seeks her attention. We wanted to show this in the bedroom scene at the start of the song as our characters parents are angry with her. Whilst her Father cries in desperation, Amber shakes her head to disregard the efforts of her Father. This is a rebellious quality that we added into our video as the song itself does have an unruly feel to it. Namely from the lyrics, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, meaning that she disregards everything else and just concentrates on having fun without taking anything too seriously. Again, we have used typical codes and conventions of a music video by presenting our main character as having an edge to her, showing that she is not as innocent as we first think. This enables us to appeal to our target audience as young teenage girls look for that rebellious quality to gain new experiences.

 

Mise en Scene

Locations: We wanted our locations to reflect the theme of the song. We therefore watched a number of videos to get us prepared for filming.
The locations we chose that went with the typical codes and conventions of a music video were as follows:

We used London landmarks as the main location for our video. We decided this as we watched Will I Am’s music video to the song “This is Love”. We were amazed at the way the video grabbed our attention, without having multiple locations. We enjoyed the video as we recognised the famous London bridges and River Thames in the background of the action. This inspired us to use different London landmarks in our video as we were surprised at the positive response of Will I Am’s video, even though it had a low level of complexity involved. This proves that we have developed the codes and conventions of real media products as we have used similar locations yet we have developed them by using multiple landmarks which people recognise. For instance, we used Trafalgar Square, London Eye, Big Ben and Leicester Square as passing locations in the idea. This gives us more of an edge as we are able to show our audience different London locations that they would recognise as supposed to just one, this captivates their attention and we are able to appeal to an even wider target audience.  

We did use a location that challenged the typical codes and conventions of a real media product through the setting of a ski resort. Whilst here, we participated in “Tubing” which consisted of travelling down a hill in a rubber ring. We decided that this was enjoyable and mindless, which are fun attributes that we wished to include in our video. We decided to add this location to go against the typical codes and conventions as we wanted our video to stand out which, due to the action filmed at this location, we achieved. 

Make-Up and Costumes: We initially researched into typical 80s clothing and make up for our video as we wanted to stay true to the songs decade of release. However, we eventually decided to have aspects of 80s clothing, such as bold colours and statement jewellery, yet we added a modern take to the costumes. For instance, in our second main character, who is played by Steph, we used an 80s image of pop icon Madonna to base her costume on –

 As you can see, we kept the leather jacket and statement necklace for our own character, yet we updated the image by wearing bold, silver top and disco pants, which have recently come back in fashion. Steph wears a statement necklace that is also more current than Madonna’s original image. This proves that we have developed traditional codes and conventions by making our choice of costume unique and developed from our original inspiration. Therefore, the costume choices for our music video do go with the typical codes and conventions of contemporary music videos. Yet we have made it unique by taking inspiration from original 80s clothing and adding a modern twist which, we believe, sets us apart and makes audiences want to watch our video as our costumes choices make it eye catching from the outset and throughout.

For the make-up of our main character, Amber, we decided to take inspiration from Rihanna’s album cover image from the album, “Loud”-

We thought that this was such an iconic image of Rihanna that we could use her make-up and alter it in a way that would make it relevant to our video. Obviously, Amber wasn’t going to have the bold red hair as it would be too striking for the video and it was unnecessary. We therefore decided to add a theme of red through our video through means of the make-up and costume. Amber is usually seen with bright red lipstick, which automatically makes her stand out. Furthermore, it is a feminine colour which represents love and fun, typically feminine traits which female’s value. The font colour for Digipak cover is also a deep red, reinforcing the red colour theme. Amber is also seen next to a red telephone box, whilst wearing a red coat which further symbolises the idea of fun and appealing to a typically female audience. 

Camerawork

We used a mid-shot of Amber’s face against a white background for the main lip sync parts of the video. After watching Miley Cyrus’ controversial video to her song “Wrecking Ball”, we thought that it would be a good idea to use the white background for ours as it was our favourite part of the video. We would also be able to show that we can edit lip syncing to the correct lyrics of the song, which we thought would be challenging when we first began to venture into making the video. We decided to keep our version of the shot as one mid shot, so we didn’t move the camera into a close up, which Cyrus did. We did this as we wanted the illusion of Ambers bare shoulders to be on show and having a close up of her face would disrupt the shot whenever we went back to it after another shot. We ended up using this shot to break up each location which made it easier to create a flow to the video.

Although we used this shot as a main inspiration for our camerawork, we also thought that the aspect of voyeurism in her video would make ours look more professional, as most real media products these days have some aspect of voyeurism included. We therefore decided to make Amber’s shoulders exposed in the shot to become to the codes and conventions of real media products, such as Cyrus’ video.  

Editing

Again, we used Lauper’s original video as inspiration for our final product. The main aspect we liked was the split screen used when Lauper is on the phone to one of her friends. This is something we incorporated into our video with Amber and her Dad. We thought it was really effective as we didn’t need to create two frames to show each action as this would disrupt the flow of the video if we had to use rapid editing to quickly cut between both. We initially found this challenging yet we experimented with the editing software, "Final Cut Pro", and we were eventually able to create an effective split screen. We felt this was an advanced editing technique that we wanted to incorporate into our video as we wanted to prove that we had progressed since the editing techniques used in both our AS Thriller video.

Evaluation  
Although we have taken inspiration from a number of real media products, we believe that we have made our video unique and original as we have combined each idea and developed them to go with our modern day setting. We have taken an older song from the 80s and researched in to ways the song has been presented through the original video and taken inspiration from certain aspects of the original video. We have stayed with the codes and conventions for most aspects of the video, most notably, the star image and character qualities in our video as we have moulded her personality by researching into other young solo artists such as Taylor Swift. The main aspect that challenges the traditional codes and conventions of a music video is the Mise En Scene aspect, namely, the location choices. The location of Tubing being the main location that opposed the traditional views. We did this to be original and unique as we haven’t seen a video, other than Christmas videos, that included a ski resort in the action. We found this a fun activity for us all to participate in and, as a result, we were able to let our audiences experience fun also.                                    






 

Blog Reflection

Editing Decisions

Editing Decisions