Evaluation: Part Four

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

Evaluation: Part Four (Media A2 Music Video) from tommymahoney

Evaluation: Part Three

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

TRANSCRIPT AND IMAGES BELOW 

Both my music video and ancillary texts intertwine so well due to the fact that I kept it stylistically very similar. Using my key themes of vivid colours juxtaposed to black / dark backgrounds (see below) is a main house style I kept with my digipak and poster.

I keep ambiguity a consistent theme in both of my products as adds an enigma to the entirety of the product. With the digipak, I chose to take a 360 degree perspective of the girl I chose to have on my album artwork - the left and right sides of her face, hidden under low key lighting and then her face as the CD; representing the fact the face holds a story with everybody, it's your identity and very personal to you...Exactly what an album is like for an artist - that's why I chose that for the CD cover. However with the music video, the way I kept the enigma is with keeping the male character ambiguous (see below). I also kept the personal / intimacy by using close ups of the actress that appears on my album artwork: 

I also used both of the same effects in both my media products. The noise tool enabled me to reach that vintage / 80's feel as it looks like the poor quality of VHS cameras.  Using bright and unique typography in both my media products also reinforces my consistency with how both of them combine; I took inspiration from this after researching album artwork from the 80's such as Wham and Michael Jackson. 

Ultimately, I believe both of my products weave very closely with each other as I made it a priority to stay consistent as an artist. If I could do it again, I would rather keeping the appearance of the girl's identity a bit later in the music video.

Evaluation: Part Two

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation: Part One

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

Our media products use the idea of Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, since our song is called "Girl" and the music video is based around an obsession with a girl; we use close ups of areas like her cleavage, her lips, panning up her leg whilst she puts tights on and playing with chewing gum;' this adds a sexual vibe to the music video. It's typical for music videos that contain women to do this as it's a way of voyeurism for the audience to consume; as well, we understand our audience is sixteen to twenty-eight year old, so love / sex is a typical place of interest. We adapt Goodwin's theory of nation of looking and voyeuristic behaviour within a music video, the close ups and panning of the actresses' body is very alluring and seductive, as well to add to it, the eye-contact she has with the camera breaks the fourth wall with the audience.

The only lyrics in the song are, "I want your love" "Give me your love" these are all imperative sentences showing a need for sexual / romantic gratification, a similar way to the understanding of voyeuristic behaviour.  In the music video, we use pop-up graphics that type out the lyrics - doing so, follows Goodwin's theory of relationship between lyric and visuals. We also use a lot of POV camera angles, this along with close ups, add an intimacy to the music video; it's almost like the audience is playing the role of the boy that's obsessed with this girl as this is a relatable situation. With understanding Goodwin's music video theory, we follow the idea of the relationship between music and visuals on screen. We adapting this in post-production as we used jump cuts, short / long takes and transitions that suit the beat of the song. 

Using a lot of low-key lighting juxtaposed to bright vivid neon lights is following the typical genre convention, since you'd most likely hear this song in places like parties / clubs, they would be using lights and other equipment, so this is why we developed this idea. As well as implementing scenes from within a club, this would be an easily recognisable place for some of our audience. To conform to our genre convention, we use settings like the club, skateparks, bedroom, public transport and a diner as these all represent and connote the idea of youth. 

Another way we challenge the conventions of real media product, as our genre is electronic garage, the artist doesn't rely on their appearance to sell their music. They take a abstract / contemporary take on the music video. We imitate this ambiguity about who the artist is by using over-the-shoulder camera angles from behind the artist's head; this creates a curiosity about who this man is, making you want to find out. This wouldn't follow the typical need from a record label as they would want the artist's appearance to be the epicentre of the music video, therefore we don't follow the conventions of a music video analysed by Goodwin. Our record label, Young Turks, all have very similar artists in their roster who who adopt the same route we took with our music video; artists like The XX, SBTRKT and FKA Twigs all take a very artistic composure with their music videos. That is why we chose Young Turks as our record label, enabling us the freedom of artistry we wanted in a very creative and innovative way.

Since the genre of our song is considered a hybrid, it contains a lot of different genres within just one song; for example, the lyrics are from a pop song sampled from the 1980's - this is why we took an 80's adaptation of our music video - luckily with having different genres merged into one, we was able to take different conventions from each genre and combine them into one. For example, the teenage romanticism of pop, the garage / r&b vibe from the nightclub and then all the lights from electronic. This would be considered the future of music, taking different facets from each and combining.

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Below are artists of a similar genre (The XX is also on the same label as spctrm). Their music videos do not / rarely contain the face of the artist, instead they take a creative way to market their music within a video. A narrative or a montage of clip is the main function of their music video. They do not contain any wacky in-your-face stardom attributes music videos of other genres would contain, this is because they have a completely different target audience.

Not so glamorous costume, ambiguous about who's this character.

Young love.

Final Cut -

   

Feedback from our music video -

Evidence of our theme of colour -

As you can see below, there is evidence of the theme of colour we wanted to keep throughout our music video. We wanted the vivid colours to connote positive emotions and youth and I feel like we achieved that.

Typography Trial From Our Influence

As I love the typography from All Of The Lights by Kanye West's music video so much, here are some evidence of funky typography that we used in our music video.

Explanation of camera shots -

Close ups - 

The purpose of the uses of our close ups is to help portray the intimacy within a relationship. The close up of the eyes and lips gives it a very romantic feel to the music video. As well as the touching of the hands, as they touch. 

Pan up - 

The use of the pan-up in this scene is to show her lying down in a skate park, emphasising her youth. 

POV shot - 

Using POV reinforces the idea of intimacy we wanted to achieve. From being in the diner to being in the skate park, these are all times the boy is looking at the girl. 

Over the shoulder - 

We used over the shoulder camera angles to help hide the face of the boy, it creates a mysterious mood to the music video as you want to see his face; but constantly, the camera is hidden behind him.

Further Intertextuality -

Here's some screenshots of our attempt of intertextuality within our music video. What intertextuality is, is when a medium refers to something significant and that people would recognise. In this case, we  relied heavy on the shared knowledge in which we know our audience would like. From my audience questionnaire, I saw that the majority was of teenagers. Therefore, also being a teenager, I would use iconic iconography that I also know would be big in the 80s. 

VHS camera - going back to old school, the effect is very cool and is currently making its way back into popular culture. Since I filmed this on my iPhone using an app that you can download straight from the app store proves its resurrecting popularity.

Coming from our influence of Kanye West's All Of The Lights video in the above two images.

The above two images are of vinyl / tape players, these two formats are currently massive in the music industry. The old school take on playing music is coming back, therefore we adopted this within our music video. 

Copying foreign films, we imitated the subtitles that would normally appear on screen. As well, it enables us to reinforce our narrative.

The above two images are from two different famous cartoons, so we're capturing popular culture within our music video. 

Shooting - American Diner

We wanted to shoot in an American Diner as it gives us the vintage / nostalgia feel. We went to Five Guys in North Greenwich as we knew from personal experience that it was there and the decor is something we could include. 

As well, the intimacy between two people at a restaurant is really nice. This enabled us to use POV and close - up shots.
We also used a drink as a prop as it would be a typical item in an american diner.

Technical Fault - SD CARD

Unfortunately, the SD card we shot on seemed to dismantle and become unusable. We asked the IT technician in our school to hopefully recover the lost footage we was unable to attend to but he wasn't successful.

Forth Day Filming: Danson Park

At Danson Park, we were ensuring to cover a variety of camera angles. Mainly focusing on intimate close-ups of our actor, we decided to use a 50mml lens to ensure we got just that.

Getting our actor to lay in the grass to show her loneliness and also adds an intimacy to the scene. We also used props such as cigarettes as it symbolises teenage rebellion etc.

Fourth Day Shooting: Planning

We're deciding to shoot in Danson Park in Welling because we want a place that isn't too public. We want to film our actor lying on the grass and also playing in the fields to emphasise her youth. There is also a playground in Danson Park which will help us reinforce the youth idea.


We are planning to shoot on Monday, 22nd Feb as it's going to be sunny.

Third Day Shooting: Southwark

Shooting - 3rd February, 2016.

We found a tunnel that, conveniently, had a lot of vivid light that ran all the way through. We immediately took advantage of this and started to film.