1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
A way in
which we used forms and conventions of real media products is through the use
of camera shots. In particular one of our artist looking over her shoulder and
looking straight into the camera. It is used fairly often but works so well as
the artist is directly looking at the viewer/fan. This gives a sense of femininity
through flirtiness and confidence. The nearly barely naked shoulder gives sex
appeal to the artist and makes her more appealing to the eye which is a bonus
for the artist. The fact that she can look at a camera so easily brings us back
to the pop genre as it could even mean that due to the fact they have become so
successful, she has gained her confidence through being an artist. ~Taylor
Swift uses this camera shot in 'love story' has a very similar approach she does exactly
the same, she also looks directly at the camera from over her shoulder. The
fact that she has her back in the shot also shows sex appeal which is always
important to have in the pop industry as the female pop artists generally have
this.
Another way that we used
conventions of real media products is through the use of the narrative. The
location of our music video is set in a field which strongly conforms to both
pop and country genre for different reasons. It conforms to the pop genre
because it is a fantasy place, of which she wishes to be there instead of being
in her class. It is a very normal situation for a girl to be in, to be dreaming about the one she loves as generally pop songs refer to love most of the time. In particular with the setting we liked
to use the rule of thirds and have our artist at the edges the majority of the
time to make sure that the setting is incorporated and acknowledged as it plays
a massive part in our conventions. Taylor swift uses this is her song 'i knew you
were trouble. The long shots are done purposefully as the setting plays a huge
part in knowing why she is there, and the narrative tells a story of her struggle much like our artist Adie Gentry- Falling hard.
A convention
in which Tash and I developed was the split screen method which we were able to
do on final cut express. The song 'who says' by Selena Gomez uses the split
screen effect which, when doing research about micro elements i came across and
felt like it was such a good effect and would improve any music video as it
looks so complicated and high tech, when in fact is extremely simple to do
which i found when experimenting with final cut and looking on tutorials on YouTube.
We developed the split screen even more by not only having 2 screens but in fact having 4 of the girls footsteps and various other shots of her as she is the
main focus in the video. We also included the girls crush into the split screen
by splitting the screen into 2 (one on the top left hand corner and the other
on the bottom right) to show that in the girls fantasy world she is actually
teasing the boy and almost playing hard to get. To make it even more fantasy
like, we used transition effects before and after each split screen to give a
softer shot to fade in and out. I think that this is one of the most effective
edits included in our music video as it is not greatly used in the country or
pop genre as much so it gives a new and interesting touch to the video.
Another way in which we
challenged forms and conventions of real media products is through the use of
extreme close up shots. From my knowledge of pop/country music videos there are
generally close ups of hands/ faces etc however we took this close up to
another level and used an extreme close up on our artists lips. This was
effective as not only did we read her lips but from this actually take in what she's
singing about which in this case strongly relates to love which is the main
theme of our narrative as we want to give out the message as to why she is
singing this song. Another artist that uses this but on the hands is Rihanna in
her song 'diamonds'. She uses extreme close ups on her and her lovers hand
which shows that she and the other person share a strong bond so by using close
ups actually enables you to find the meaning in a song, even if the artist isn't
actually singing.
A convention
that we challenged was the fact that we
didn't have any performance in our piece. Typically in pop/country genre they
have particular scenes in which they are playing an instrument or singing by a
microphone, however we wanted to make our video different by just having
narrative so that it would be more like a story, we almost modernised ours a little so having a chnge instead of seeing instruments all the time.
This is challenging part of Firths theory of the performance in a video being
the most important part of a music video. Shania Twains 'man i feel like a
woman' includes a the complete opposite to our music video as her video is
totally performance. We made our narrative on the other hand look realistic as we have a
natural setting and the actor and actress Mike and Abi are as natural in front
of the camera as they can be, as if the cameras aren't even there however man i
feel like a woman is completely set up and is an unrealistic setting and has a completely different meaning, as it has connotations of other songs however our narrative was our own idea and used simplet yet effective ideas for a narrative that would be easy to understand.
Finally the second way that our media product challenge conventions of real media was again from the narrative as usually its the girl chasing the boy, but we thought due to the song choice that the boy would chase the girl. I think that this has been effective as in this modern day, it is no longer just boys chasing girls but in fact a lot of girls chase boys too, so we added a modern touch to the narrative to make it seem obvious to whoever watches the video that the girl is dreaming about the boy. In Taylor Swifts song 'you belong with me' it shows a cliché scene of a girl that likes a boy and she tries to be with him however in our artist- ~Adie Gentry's dream it is in fact the opposite.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3.What have you learned from your audience feedback?
On our second cut of our video we added annotations on YouTube to show what feedback we received from questionnaires and other peoples opinions. This is extremely useful as it is a guide on what to change and what worked etc. We learnt a lot from this. For example we learnt that in order to make our video more of a professional and believable one, we needed to include more lip syncing, especially on the chorus parts as they particularly emphasise the reason why she has made and sung this song, so for a love story and how she feels like its going. We needed to be more aware of shots that were put in, that they had a purpose, they they had a meaning behind why they were there which we made the mistake of putting a scenery shot instead of the artist lip syncing which we found from looking at ourselves and from various comments that it didn't work. However we took all of this into consideration as without this feedback we would not have known how to improve it so it has helped us a lot.
4.How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
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