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

Editing Diary

For the editing of our Music Video, we decided to use "Final Cut Pro" for MacBook Pro. We felt that this was an advanced software that would enable us to be more creative with our editing decisions. All three of us contributed to the editing of our video as we met up regularly in order to discuss ideas and possible effects we could use in the final product. We found that "Final Cut Pro" wasn't as hard as it would have been had we not first used "Pinnacle", yet we thought that the different effects that we wanted to use would have to be tested first in order for us to achieve our desired result.

 

 

 

Rough Cut Feedback

Rough Cut

Before publishing our finished product, we decided to create a rough cut that we would receive feedback on, and make the necessary changes before uploading our final video-

Final Costumes For Remaining Scenes

Final Costumes For First Scenes

Final Make-Up

Final Locations

Montage of Images

I decided to create a "Flipagram' of our pictures of filming to enhance the planning and construction work we put into our video. This app enabled me to choose a variety of images and combine them together to create a video montage.

Final Character Profile

Filming Diary

Filming Days

The first day of re-filming our music video was located in a school class room with a white background. On this day Amber was filmed miming the whole song in front of a white board, this footage will be used for parts of our music video. This was a successful filming day as we got three different films of the whole song, this way we can view each one and pick which was mimed or acted out best. 

The two pictures above show Amber in front of the white board whilst miming the song. 

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Our second day of filming for our music video was on Monday 13th January, the location for this was my house. My room was used for Amber waking up, getting changed and going to meet her friend to go London. The room was also used for when she came home after her outing. This was all filmed in a day and we got plenty of footage.

The images above show the different locations of filming we got on that day. The first shows Amber coming home after an outing. The image below it shows Amber waking up in the morning before her outing.

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On Wednesday 15th January, our media group spent the day in London. Here we filmed the majority of our music video. We used many parts of London in our filming like Covent Garden, Leister Square, Oxford Street and Regent street. The filming went very well and we got a lot of footage to fall back on.  The only problem was the weather, it began to rain half way through filming in the day but this luckily didn't show on camera other wise it would have been confusing for the audience watching our final music video with a sudden change of weather.

Whilst we were filming we made sure we took a lot of pictures for our digipack. These pictures involved famous landmarks of London and others were to relate to our song and genre.

The pictures above show the variety of different places we filmed to make the music video more exciting. 

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The image below shows the amount of filming and photos we gained from these three days of filming. 

Final Actors

Risk Assessment

Intended Institution Analysis

Demographics and Psychographics

Final Pitch and Brief

Final Storyboard

Storyboard by elleestephenson on GoAnimate

Enquiry for Permission Email

 
 
As we have now changed our song choice, we have had to contact Cyndi Lauper’s current record label, “Downtown Records”, to check that we will be able to use the song.

Downtown Records is an American record label based in New York. It was founded in 2006 by Sony Music RED Distribution. They represent artists such as the Scissor Sisters, Duck Sauce and Gnarls Barkley.  

Weather Check

 


















When we had created a schedule for our days of filming, we decided to do a weather check on the morning of the shooting days. We used the IPhone weather app that uses the search engine "Yahoo" for its information in order to receive accurate results.
As you can see, on Tuesday the weather was sunny and clear, which was crucial as we were to film in the evening, at the "house" scenes. The weather predictions were accurate as we were able to film without disruption. However, Wednesday's weather forecast was less accurate as half way through the filming day, there was heavy rain in central London. We filmed through this however and we will be able to pay close attention in the editing process in order to compile with the necessary continuity of the video.

Marking Other Students Work