I started my research by looking at the history of music videos, this helped me as I learnt how things have changed over the years and how music videos first started. (see blogpost 29.09.2010) After this, I started to watch some music videos and I analysed them to get an idea of how music videos use different forms and conventions. I analysed two famous music videos Madonna- Vogue and Michael Jackson - Thriller. From researching about the history of music video's I then only realised how important music video's are, the audience has to be interested which makes the audience want to watch a video for approximately 3 minutes, I didn't realise how hard it would be to produce a video that would last 3 minutes because 3 minutes doesn't seem a long time. After doing some research of music videos, it was then important for me to find out who my target audience would be so that I could start planning my music video around my target audience. I then decided to create a questionnaire to hand out to find out whether people watched music video's and what type of genre of music they listen to. It was clear that all the people I asked did watch music video's and the most popular genre of music was R & B which is the genre of music my song is. ( see blogpost 16/11/10)
I decided that my music video would consist of a performance and a narrative, I decided to chose this idea because I felt that I would be able to create some good idea’s for my narrative and having a performance from the artist is also a good idea because then the audience just see’s the performer singing. I watched lots of music video’s before, I realised that lots of artists have a variety of different video’s, most artist’s like to just have a performance video, this is so that their fans can just see them singing. Music video’s are so important to an artist as lots of people watch their favourite artist’s video’s on YouTube, the video helps the artist sell their song . My music video consists of two characters, a female who is the main artist and a male who is playing the role of a cheating boyfriend. I got the idea for my video from the song I have chosen, the song is about a cheating boyfriend who has been caught by his girlfriend and it’s the story about the girlfriend chucking him out.
The music begins with an instrumental then footage of my female artist singing straight into the camera, I decided I wanted my artist to not have a huge amount of make up as I wanted a more natural look so I challenged the forms and conventions of a particular music video from an R & B female artist. I did however put red lipstick on my artist, this was a form and convention as red lipstick shows that she has power and because my video is about the artist chucking her cheating boyfriend out I wanted the audience to know that she is the more powerful one out of the two characters. I decided to use lots of medium and close up shots of my artist singing so that the audience feel like they can feel close to her and so that the camera is showing my artist close up. The male character is trying to beg her for forgiveness but the female artist doesn’t want to know. Having a male cheating on a female is what most people expect so this is also using a traditional form and convention. My video shows the female artist chucking his bags out, this is showing she doesn’t want anything to do with him, I wanted to use an over the shoulder shot from behind the male so that the audience can see the frustration on the female artists face and I also hand held the camera so that it felt more real. At the end of my music video, my female artist blows out a candle and the screen goes black, I decided to use this idea to represent that the female artist gives up on her cheating boyfriend and having the screen goes blank shows sadness. The intention for my music video was that I wanted my female artist to show the audience that she is the more powerful one out of the characters.
As I carried on with researching and planning whilst creating my music video, I continuously used LIIAR, I realised from my AS year that using LIIAR is very important. I analysed five key areas ; language, institution, ideology, audience and representation. This helped me a great deal as it helped me realise how music video’s direct the video to a specific audience and how it helps promote the artist/artists song. From my AS year, it has also helped me this year with lots of different things. From AS I knew that I had to research conventions of existing music videos, I did this by using different categories such as ; cinematography, editing, mis-en-scene and sound. I analysed each area and posted them on my blog for each video I looked at. From my A2 lessons, I also needed to talk about different things such as intertextuality, self reflectivity and voyeurism as lots of music videos include these things. From analysing music video’s such as Michael Jackson – Thriller, Madonna –Vogue and Rihanna – Unfaithful. I then looked at the editing and looked to see what different transitions they used such as using, dissolves, fades, montages, slow motion, fast-forward and matched cuts, these are used in the middle of video footage and slow motion to slow my video down to make it more dreamy and romantic. My music video uses lots of dissolves as I want my video to have a dreamy effect to it and dissolves make my video feel this way, because my song is a slow song I needed my video to flow instead of jumping from shot to shot if it was a fast song. However I did not use any dissolves when it came to shots of the male artist because I went them to be sharp and not slow and flowing because the female artist is mad at him and I wanted my video to portray this. I also used lots of slow motion because I wanted my video to feel very kind of romantic and sad. I found it very difficult to get my artist to lip sync to the song, as I kept having to keep repeating the song until I got the lip syncing correct. I found this a very challenging task as I had never done this before and it was very hard to find the correct timing of the lyrics of the song and the miming of my artist.
Before I actually started doing any filming for my video I had to create a storyboard. It took me about 2 hours to draw as it takes a lot of time thinking of different ideas and different shots. After I had completed my storyboard, I then uploaded my pictures onto the computer and used Windows Movie Maker to create an animatic to see if my clips fitted in well with the song, this just showed me a plain idea of the idea’s I had created. I felt that my storyboard was a huge part of creating my music video as when I was doing my filming I could refer back to my storyboard and look at what I need to film and when I had filmed something I could then tick it off. The locations which I used was very convenient for me as they were my house and the location at the beginning of the video is close by. I decided that at the beginning of my video I wanted to show the female and male characters together with them laughing and smiling to show that they used to be happy together, I decided to use this at the beginning to show the audience that the characters used to be happy and loved up at the beginning of the relationship and as the song goes on it shows the relationship falling apart. The first footage I shot I thought that it looked good watching it back on the digital camera but when I uploaded it on the editing suite I realised that it was way too dark and it looked very poor quality so when I reshot it, I ensured that I had enough lights to make it bright enough. Quite a few of my shots are outside and in November we had really bad snow so I could not film for a while which was very annoying. After the snow had gone I then could start filming again, my first edit of my music video shows lots of dark shots which I only used to show my teachers my ideas as I knew that I had to reshoot these shots. After uploading my shots I realised that I needed lots more shots as I did not realise how many different shots I would need. After watching the old footage of my characters I realised that both characters needed to perform better to make the video seem more believable. My first edit and my final edit look very different. I feel that the footage of my video relates to the lyrics of my chosen song, for example the lyrics are “standing outside my house” I have a shot of the male actor stood outside the house. I have plenty of examples like this such as “grab your clothes and get gone” “trying to apologise” “now its time to go”. Looking back at my first edit of my video, it was very poor quality, I think it is very important to look back at previous things you did before so that you have something to compare to. I would definitely say that my final edit of my video is much better quality.
After I finished my music video, I then focused on my ancillary texts. I did lots of research on album covers and digipaks before creating my very own. After doing some research I realised that the main focus is the visuals of the product as this is what makes them appeal to an audience and also the use of colours. For my album cover I have close up shot of my female artist looking directly into the camera with very little make up on and her hair tied up as I wanted the photo to feel very natural and sophisticated. My artist represents the generation of 17-18 year olds. I used Adobe Photoshop to create my images, from creating a music magazine front cover last year , it defiantly helped me to produce my digipak. I decided to use a hand written type of font for the name of my artist and I decided to chose a light orange colour as this fits in with the colour of my images throughout my digipak.
The back of my digipak is also an image of my artist looking directly into the camera with her hair down with a smile. From looking at existing digipak products I realised that a convention of them was a bar code so I decided to put a bar code at the bottom right of the cover so it does not distract the audience from the image of my artist. I also used the colours black and red for the colours of my writing of the song names. I decided to choose these colours because red represents love and that is what the song is about. I decided to use the colour black because the song is about a couple breaking up which is sad.
The inside of my digipak contains another image of my artist, she is looking straight towards the camera with no smile on her face to portray a sexy and sophisticated image. The image is a medium shot with the artist on her side showing the side of her face and body. The image also has a hint of orange in the photo which is followed through all of my digipak photos. < p>
The design of my CD is a basic idea, I wanted my CD to be plain and simple as I looked at other existing examples and most of them were plain with writing on. I decided to use the colours white and pink because white stands out on the grey background, I used the colour pink because it represents feminism and I want that to be portrayed throughout my digipak.
The design of my DVD is also very basic, I have decided to go for a grey colour like my CD. I have included a world tour name on my DVD, I decided to use the colours red because it stands out on the grey background. On the bottom of the DVD there is copyright information included on it, as existing current media texts have copyright information on them. I have not challenged any media conventions for my DVD and CD templates. I have followed the codes and conventions of a DVD disc as I have the name of my artist, the name of the world tour and the copyright information.
The back of my digipak is a medium close up of my artist looking straight into the camera, this picture also has a tint of brown in as the tint of brown has to be continuous throughout my digipak. I have not challenged the forms and conventions of a back of the digipak because I have included a bar code at the bottom which is a convention of the back of a digipak. I have also put the songs which are featured on the CD on the left hand side of the image, I have put the writing in easy font to use and it is a bold font. I have put the font in a brown colour to contrast with the colour of my image.
The picture for inside my digipak is picture of the word love spelt out in stones. I thought this would be effective because my album is called love on the rocks so the stones symbolise the name of my album. I decided to use a different image instead of my artist because I thought it would break the digipak up as having pictures of the artist throughout maybe too much.
Another picture for inside my digipak is a medium close up of my artist looking straight towards the camera to communicate with the audience. My artist is slightly leaning towards the camera, this is also interacting with the camera.
My magazine advert is very simple, it has an image of my artist, the name of the album and “out now”. I decided to keep my advert simple as I wanted a sophisticated look to match my digipak look.
From my audience research I have found out that everyone I asked enjoyed watching my music video and they would watch it again. All my audience knew the narrative of my video. I asked open questions because I wanted feedback from my audience whether they thought that I should change anything and whether I could improve my video. I asked questions which gave me quantitative data, which was either a yes or no answer, these questions gave me a specific answer. I asked whether the audience was male or female because I thought this was important as males may not enjoy my video as much as females. I wanted to find out whether people actually enjoyed watching my video, giving a yes or a no answer was very simple because I want a specific answer. I asked “Would you watch it again?” to see if my audience that I asked would watch my video again. My main audience was females as I would say that more females would watch my music video. If people would not watch my video again or did not like it, I asked why not to see what could be done to make my video better. My aim for my questionnaire was because I wanted to know whether people enjoyed my video and whether I made the narrative stand out in my video. I also wanted to find out whether there was anything I could do to improve my video. Also I wanted to find out whether I used lots of different shots such as close ups and medium close ups as from researching R & B video’s they mostly have medium close ups and close ups. I mostly got positive feedback from my audience, however I did get some feedback on how I could improve my video. Some feedback I got was that the two characters could have improved their performance in some parts of the video and also some people would have liked to see the artist singing and performing some more. My target audience was young adults so I decided to ask my target audience what they thought to my video so then I am getting an accurate result. Most of my feedback was all positive so there wasn’t much I could do to improve my video because my comments were positive ones. However some of the negative feedback I tried to change parts in my video to the feedback of my audience. Some things such as “have the performers act more” I could not do because this would mean I would have to reshoot the shots and I did not have enough time.
