T1-27

Matthew, Harriet and Katie

media evaluation comments

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before planning our music video we undertook some extensive planning and research and looked at every area possible to find ideas and clips, we ended up with a mixed range of different themed videos ranging from romance and love down to young countryside folk style music this was good for us as it left us with plenty of open options and allowed us to vary from shot to shot during our experimental stage (planning). As an example, we filmed Katie standing almost under a bridge across the water just to get one shot, this shot consisted of natural lighting reflections and a decent low angle shot that really set the scene and ended up being really effective in displaying early stages of the genre. The dress code consisted of our blonde actor being dressed in brown boots, a light coloured dress and a brown guitar around her neck, now if you hadn’t yet seen it then that already describes a folk, older sort of styled genre that comes across as a western singer on a road trip, but i think the way we’ve shot it really takes that hint away from the video and so it almost remains a folk style as opposed to western. We’ve used every shot angle possible and plenty of character views and expressions, this was to insure we’d keep the attention from the audience throughout the video.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
This combination of both the product and the ancillary tasks proved to be very effective and with the use of constructive visuals and texts the ancillary became a bold advertisement and a good marker to advertise our product. With the use of soft colours and images alongside small amounts of contextual visuals the ancillary tasks were presented to a high standard and as it formed a connection with the main product they then worked together to form high quality portfolio of work. It also represented the genre to a well produced standard and gave strong characteristics and good stereotypical representations of our genre. Our feedback then backed this up as most people recognised what genre and forms we had gone for, we’d also publicised our product in a respectful way considering the viewers their comments, i.e. we changed a few colours on the ancillary tasks to improve the visuals and this enabled us to get a finer detailed advertisement and a much improved overall product.



What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Overall our feedback was balanced, constructive and very helpful it gave us the opportunity and the chance to improve areas of our work and tweak shots and transitions that then made connections in the video and the work a lot more fluent and rhythmical. Comments among our feedback was most pleasing and consisted of, “sophisticated piece of work, simple yet effective designs, includes a lot of information without looking cluttered” this was the feedback from our ancillary task, and the key thing we’d learnt from this was that it’s often better and more effective to keep things simple and develop them from that as opposed to going straight into something to complicated.
From our music video people noticed the “folk” genre straight away and complimented the likeness of the lyrics with the visuals they also mention the range of shots we used and this showed us the effectiveness of our close ups and our mid-shots. We wanted a warm loving, country feeling and so we didn’t want everything being shot from a distance, the days we chose were luckily sunny and bright and so that already provided us with a bright, warm and happy atmosphere all we needed to do then was to capture and develop that atmosphere into something constructive and meaningful. All the shots ended up being more or less a success and had meaning and passion in them, the genre came across boldly with our extravagant ideas being dramatically developed in the country surroundings. The area we ended up working on most was the editing, and weeks after our initial capturing of the footage we were still working on the transitions and the slides between the shots, finally with the added help of the audience feedback we decided to stick with the dissolve ideas and our video become fluent and relaxed very quickly.(yet again keeping it simple seems to be a very good idea).

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
From the start of the task right through to the end we were using new media technologies almost all the time, we were using the digital cameras for the filming, then we developed and edited the footage on final cut and the images were edited on Photoshop. The preparation works was done weeks before the shooting, and the internet was a key role in our investigation and development period, the internet was a key source for our initial ideas and brainstorms we also used online sources such as Wikipedia, MySpace and Google search. The original use of the internet was to find representations of our genre were we found existing videos on YouTube, here we found random and well known artists that became useful for information and development ideas through a transitional stage of the task. We also used MySpace to find information, pictures and present song from our artists Charlene Soraia. This became very useful as we become to get feel for her music and ideas come through that related to the genre of music she was representing. By this point we had strong ideas and became very precise in what we wanted.
When we came to work on the ancillary tasks Photoshop and Google became very useful, Photoshop enabled us to use high quality images and allowed us to work on them and edit them without losing the initial high pixel quality, we used image layering and darkening to create a soft calming effect, we didn’t want anything to sharp or bold because that would simply go against the genre of our original production.
The work on Photoshop became a success and looks appealing, professional and respectable, all of the work we had done has been edited in one form or another and because of this computer software our work has developed since it’s been on the computer and so without this software our work would probably just look like some homemade amateur movie. With the capabilities of Final Cut being so varied we were amazed at how much we can do, but as we are all now quite familiar with the software it came naturally and even though we’ve used a decent amount of transitions and effects we intended to keep it fairly simple to keep the effectiveness of the shots as natural as we could. At the end of the task i was relieved to find we’d just managed to get it finished, and we can appreciate how lucky we are, as without the software and the sources we’ve, we would have been here for months, planning and editing!
The task has also made me realise that nothing ever runs smoothly! And you always have to be prepared for the worst that can happen, I’ve learnt that it is better and often more effective to keep things simple to create natural effect instead of wasting time trying to complicate things that don’t actual work. So what i mean is, never attempt to spend a long time on something if you don’t know how it’s going to turn out, not if you have deadlines anyway! Overall i am very pleased with our finished product and I think the sources and software have proved to be a priceless asset to our project.

music video commentry

Our digipak

Here are our digipak finals. Excuse the excess content - could not crop properly, thanks.

music video,Poster

What We Need To Do After the Rough Cut

Here we have composed a list of what happens or will need to happen after the rough cut after half term:

- We will need the extra day of filming to improve/add to our music video sequences. This will include footage of the road and singing while driving.

- Improve and add certain transitions to enhance the mood and atmosphere of the completed music video.

up to date props/costumes

basic props.
- yellow car(traveling experience)
- guitar
- torch
- fairy lights
- road trip(music)
- picnic blankets
- picnic basket
- sunglasses (weather depending...)
- use of clocks (to show the times through out the day)

costumes.
- white dress
- blue tights
- Brown Boots
-Blue scarf and hat

response to feedback

really good constructive criticism, helpful for future blog work.
we can use some of the feedback to develop our blog into more visual and appealing pages that consist of various bold images and videos.
we intend to extend our blog and improve our quality and quantity of visual i.e. videos and images fro the internet that relate to similar artists and genres.

our result, we are pleased with the feedback and understand that constructive criticism was needed, we now know what is expected and can fulfill that before we end up to far behind.

Early storyboard ideas

We wanted a performance based video where a story is also incorporated.
Here are some examples of this and videos that have inspired us:








We also looked at the way animation can be put into a video with live footage.
We like the way this was done, but decided aainst it as we thought it would be extremely challenging.

Reply from Charlene Soraia, the Artist of Daffodils.

yeah that would be fine! would you like a full quality version of the song?

what's the video? id love to have a look once it's done!!!

much love x x x x x

Track choices and intitial ideas.

TRACK 02- home video style, with a girl driving the car with the window down.
- plays guitar, whilst on the road in different locations.

TRACK 09-a church service/wedding ceremony, when the service is over as we meet the climax
of the music, everyone bursts out of the church laughing/madness/FUN!

TRACK12- the pictures stutter as the disc is scratched, and its performance based.
A story will cut in between shots. to show more of a detailed video.



MAIN IDEA.-Track 02

-solo road trip, early morning(view the clock)-(6am) next shots. the singer travelling through meadows and countryside. with the occasional city/town or village.(another shot at the watch or car clock to show the times through out the day. other shots to include her playing the guitar outside of the car.

Sara Bareilles-Gravity

Goodwin's Analysis

Genre Characteristics
Sarah Bareilles song Gravity is a pop-ballad and demonstrates certain genre characteristics by moving along to a slower tempo than a usual pop song. This helps to gives atmosphere and meaning to the music and lyrics which is necessary and vital in a stereotyical pop-ballad. The video also incorporates bold colours which attract the eye and make it interesting although these are kept to a minimum as to not contradict the meaning of the song; this is also very stereotypical of this genre.

Lyrics and Visuals

The lyrics tend to link in with the visuals all throughout the song although through a play on words; for example the song is called Gravity and there are lyrics such as "I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity" but in the video there are objects such as aeroplanes, clouds and planets which supposedly defy gravity. Also when she sings "here on the ground" and "one thing that I still know is that your keeping me down" is contradicting as she is actually the furthest away from the "ground" that she has been since the beginning which indicates that she has already succeeded but doesn't realise it yet.

Music and Visuals

There is also a relationship between the slow tempo of the song and the slow pace of the video. The artist imitates the slow pace by walking slowly forward which also has the connotations of progression and development which again immitates the song's own progression and movement.
The artist's costume/clothing is not provicative in any way which apart from complying to the genre, appeals to the target audience. Also with the lyrics, music and visuals combined, this gives us a greater impression on what the artist's emotions are supposed to be. The delicate melody balanced with the piano and strings has connotations of her being melancholy and showing her vulnerable side which also helps with the connection to the audience.

Selling the Artist

As for 'selling the artist' there are many ways in which this music video achieves this area. There is a constant tracking shot of the artist which includes two major close-ups: one at the beginning and one at the end. Also there is a lot of central framing which helps up to focus on the artist throughout the music video.

Intertextuality

As far as we are aware, there is no intertextual referencing as she is not connected to or associated with any other musicians, movies or tv media areas.

Voyeurism

Although it is not concidered provocative or 'thrilling', the artiat maintains a nearly constant direct gaze with the camera. This achieves a connection to the audience which draws them in as it gives the impression that they are who the artist is looking at.