Kristen Faulkconer FUN

I have had problems uploading videos to Blogger so i place my production on youtube 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU6eWWN66iY&feature=youtu.be

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

Media technology played a vital part in this project, it is used throughout the whole project in various forms to achieve what was necessary.
In the beginning I needed to choose an unsigned artists track to produce a music video and ancillary tasks for. This proved fairly hard because many artist that are unsigned are not very good. I had to use the internet and a computer to search for unsigned artists. I looked on unsignedbands.com for any possible artists. After using Microsoft Office Word to create a list of a few songs and artists that I found reasonable and had ideas for. This was then followed up by me downloading the music audio and then is started drawing up plans for the song, using a word document with a table once I had a story board written up I then created a shot time line in relation to timings of the song. Once this was done I could then start to research
   how pop music videos are shot, what their mise-en-scene is like and how the transitions are.
This lead me to a problem, I knew that this project was designed to demonstrate our ict skills. The problem was that for the most part the transitions were all the same... jump cuts. Which was a bit restricting which is why I chose to develop this convention of the music genre.
After I had decided how I was going to run through all the clips I need to make a list of things I will need for the shoot. I did this on word because it was the most convenient. I then needed   to see what the prospective audience thinks of some ideas I had so I created a power point with slides dedicated to asking a few questions each. I had three cars that I needed to decide from and I need to see of the actress would fit the role.
I spent hours looking at and evaluating other pop music videos on Youtube and Vimeo to help me understand the genre and the conventions that go with it. This lead to some minor changes in the shooting script and the story line. I then used my camera to take location shots of the locations I had identified on google maps and street view. This meant I was able to choose the best locations out of the ones available to me. Once this was done I began to film I had set everything up then disaster struck my original actress hurt both her legs and her recovery time meant there would be no time to shoot. I had to get another actress so I did we started shooting and ran into another problem the temperature it was draining our batteries and freezing the actress so the shots had to be done quickly often being shot only once. After the first day of shooting I had an RX8 car scene and a few parts of the song so I started editing on Imovie. This went well my newly learnt skills on the macs meant I was able to quickly sync the song the the clips I even got the door of the car to close on the beat of the drum. I continued to film adding parts from each location. I then needed to edit the car audio to make it sound more sporty and make it fit well within the song so I coped, altered some of the engine note peaks, removed some of the background noise and altered the volume to fit in the song adding to the song without being to loud. After this the filming was nearly complete I had noticed I needed a few more shots for some of the song and found that some shots were useless so I went out re filming but was unable to use the same car so I had to re shoot the whole start of the music video which made a lot of the syncing a problem. I spent around three hours just re syncing after it was finished.
I then used Idvd to put the finished music video onto a disk and I gave it a menu which contained a title and had the same genre as the music video and also had some stills from the video on it.
Since the preliminary my media skill have vastly increased, in the preliminary the syncing was out and the effects were poorly used. I had also developed better ways of shooting the video to make it easy to sync and merge. Because of the difficult macs' which work differently to every over computer on the planet it is important to be proficient in the function of a mac it was also important to practice with many of the transitions that are available in Imovie. My media production in AS was so bad it has now got legendary status at school almost the whole school has seen it. They find it funny. This is why I tried so hard to improve and create a well thought out professional music video, I believe I have improved vastly from last year and there has been many skills that I have seen develop from the preliminary to the actual music video mainly my Imovie skills and camera work.

I had to get all the clips to a similar lighting level which meant I had to alter carefully lighting levels and adjust the colours to make it look like they are all at night. The lighting was also thought about a lot when choosing where to place the powerful flood lights I used to light specific shots if they were place incorrectly the shot would have been badly lit and shadows may have been created that would have ruined the illusion of the video. When I was back lighting I had to be careful that I didn’t glare the camera but gave enough shadow to the actor to make him look suspicious. The footstep sound is digetic sound however I have altered it slightly so it fits the song better the other sounds I edited are non-diagetic because I set out to record them and change them extensively to fit the music.

I have used Blogger to show most of the work I have done it works well because anyone can see it and maybe give helpful comments.

I have used Imovie's coping software to crop down some of the shots  I also added transitions from the list (at the right of the image). I also used photo shop to create the ancillary tasks the problems I faced with this was I had never used it before. I had to learn how to use the layers and colouring software. This meant they took longer to make than expected. Once I had got the layering right I was able to create the magazine advert and digipak.

Questionnaire graphs and answers

This shows the age of the people who answered my questionnaire

This question asks the audience if the genre of the video fits the music's genre

This question asks the audience there gender.

This question asks the audience what their normal music choices are.

The other questions were not multiple choice which meant I received an array of answers;
what could have been improved?
The answers I got back:
shakiness / the camera is shaky/ the amount of shots and variety/ the locations/ length of shots/ shaky shots/ I think some of the singing is not in sync/ lighting/ some of the transitions look messy.

Some of those answers are now not valid because the problem with syncing has now been resolved the rest are fair responses which show me that more time should have been spent on placing a larger variety of shots into the video.

What do you like most about the video?
The answers I got back:
The bit under the bridge/ The car was nice/ The police hat bit/ The car shots/ The singer/ The car revving as its going/ I liked the transitions and one shot in particular the shot where the rev counter dial overlaps a shot/ overlapping rev counter.

What would you like to have seen more of within the video?
The answers i got back:
Action/ More cars/ More narrative parts/ Effects/ Car scene/ more variety of shots/ More overlays

these all show me just how important it is to get every bit right the more that is right the less chance there is for the audience to get board and stop paying attention   

Interview of target audience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unT22pCeHco&feature=youtu.be

This video shows an interview with a teen who fits our target audience he has some media knowledge so he was able to give us some good feedback. his input was important because as he was watching the video he noticed some syncing problem which I promptly resolved after the interview was finished. his comments are the view of the general public and match the results the questionnaire graphs show.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

This is my magazine advert it is designed abiding to
the golden mean rule to attract as much attention as possible 

This is my digi_pak it consists of five individual pages all the same size(14cm by 12.5cm)

I have learnt a great deal about the views of the public about my my production using a camera and a mac I interviewed one teenage boy who gave feedback on the music video, I also created a questionnaire which lead to me producing graphs on excel to help demonstrate how the audience reacted to the video. The reactions I saw from people who saw the movie really like the addition of the car and some of the editing like the overlay and the cross dissolve  in general the reactions were positive. They did however have some problems with it many of the shots have camera shake and the lighting doesn’t stay constant throughout.

My  promotional video has similarity to an array of other promotional videos within the pop genre. Some of the props and camera angles are identical to the ones used in the other videos  for example the car I used is the same make and model as the one used in Cover Drive's Explode. Which is useful as a promotional piece because it means that the music video instantly increases its target audience many of the audiences reactions to the car  was positive and for most it was their favourite part.  I have used very similar editing techniques to keep the videos tempo up, and I have made sure every shot change happens on the beat.
The camera work varies from being hand-held to being placed on a stand this helps me increase the shot variety because I was able to get different shot angles holding the camera. This is a convention that many of the music videos in the pop genre have Kesha and Cover Drive both use tripods in their music videos but they also use hand held shooting as well because it give the audience the feeling of being there. From the feedback I have discovered that the audience have picked up on the camera being shaky as well as some of the shots being too long they feel that if the shots were shorter and there was more narrative then it would be much better they also noticed the lighting changing. This was a constant problem for me because of the time of year the lighting was often fading much faster than expected and this lead to some shots being lighter than others I tried to correct this  but found that everything went red if I corrected it too much. However they have said that the mise-en-scene   fits the genre perfectly and many of the shots done with the car are excellent  they especially like how in the darker scenes the car lights are used as background lighting. This is different to most of the shots which have powerful foreground lights on.
The magazine and digi-pak are within the same genre as the music video, the audience have said that they like the way it has been produced but in some of the photos the actresses eyes are closed they think that it would look better if they were open they also felt that it was very simplistic but worked well. The magazine advert is well produce and catches peoples eyes we have tried to make it follow the golden mean rules to make it as eye catching as possible. This view was also held by the target audience who really like the photos and how the magazine had reviews on it they said it looks professional and well made.

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

Our video is used in conjunction with the dig-pak and the magazine advert, as sales pitches for the music, all of which are designed to increase the target audience which intern increases revenue produced from the music. To successfully market the music every marketing product must be kept within the same genre as the music if it isn’t people will not find it interesting enough, to look for the music.
Traditionally a music video will be shown on TV music channels like; MTV Viva and 4 music.  The music video will also be placed on You Tube Vimeo and iTunes, which helps increase the target audience. As this type of advertising is extremely effective because it enable billions of people to watch view and hopefully buy the product (the music audio). Each advertisement works on a slightly different target audience and helps to increase the target audience as a whole. The music video for example stimulates more of the audiences senses which helps keep their attention for the whole duration of the audio product. With out it the first time an audience wants to view it they may become board and change to the next song. With this the song is able to be watched more often because it does make it more interesting so it can become catchy and stay in their heads making it sell better.
The magazine advert is a very useful tool as it can be displayed in street shop windows and on big banners. This if the advert is created properly following the golden mean(an imaginary line of interest from the top left to the bottom right of a page it is said that this is how our brain processes an image). it can work almost subliminally because the human brain picks up vast quantity’s of data from the eyes of which only 10% is processed consciously the rest is discarded or processed by the subconscious. Either of which we want to pick up the poster and sometimes the subconscious is the most effective part because it can make you remember parts of the poster, like the name of the artist which will then cause interest and the audience may research it which will bring them to the music video or iTunes where they can buy it. Its audience often has more expendable money than other target audiences, we know this because it is displayed in magazines which are for sale, they often only have music in and have no real need to know information this means the target audience has expendable money to spend on music. As well as targeting this audience it is placed into magazines that reflect the genre of the music so for example it would be placed into “NME” instead of say “Glamour” which although has higher sales has an older target audience and the genre of the magazine is focused on fashion not music which NME is. This magazine advert can also be placed on sites like facebook and twitter this reaches out to a more varied audience but reaches out to millions and therefore should not be underestimated many parents buy albums as presents and if they see it online they are more likely to buy it than having to go out and buy it from the shop this leads me onto my next point the product will be advertised online for sale as well as being sold in supermarkets HMV and other music stores it will be sold in Amazon, play.com and hardware company s online music sites like 'sonystore' and 'Nokia store'.
The final piece of advertisement is the digi-pak which can be released as a special edition to boost sales by making it a collectable and often many fans will want special merchandise.

4 musics logo

One of NME's front cover pages

My music video will be shown on 4 music at around 4 pm this is because the show at this time is all about music which is the same genre as my music video...pop. This means that the video will appeal to the audience who want to see pop music when they change to this channel. This is a hugely effective way to advertise music because nearly every one in England has a TV and the same is true in other countries like Norway and Germany. So millions of people get to view the music which often they may not get to view. This is also very good because they always do a new track alert which gives new tracks an introduction to a larger target audience, this is in some ways better than online advertisement like that of YouTube because unless it appears in the recommended or you actually type the name of the artist in then you will not find it and end up look at other videos. 4 music is owned by Bauer media group which has a huge corporation who also own kiss, and smash hits radio both of which play mainly pop music which is the same genre as my music video although they do not own the magazine NME the company music genre is a match to my music. NME is owned by IPC media which is in-turn owned by time inc. this magazine has been around for  decades and has a great following the magazine works through a wide range of genres and does many spreads on the pop music genre. Although this is not a dedicated pop magazine the fact its audience is so much bigger than other magazines means there is greater exposure.

Prezi on advertisement

http://prezi.com/gns6-p2y4f0x/untitled-prezi/

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

My media product task was to create a music video for a piece of music that does not have a copyright. The music video I have created uses and develops the normal conventions of a music video within the pop-rock hybrid genre.
My production uses and develops many of the conventions I have come across when researching my media production. Many music videos within this music genre are hybrid videos, mixing narrative and performance on a parallel course throughout the song. I tried to merge the two in a new way, making the narrative happen around the performance. This was not done in many of the videos I have reviewed and make the transitions easier from narrative, to performance. The digi-pak and magazine advert I created follows the conventions of the norm for this music genre… Pop, which is an amalgamation of many successful genres this is why 'pop' is an abbreviation of popular and as such many of the other genres share the genres and conventions:


My music video is designed to increase the target audience of the music video by increasing the number of people able to view or listen to it. Its target audience is teenage women who would listen to the music video and watch the video hopefully understanding the hidden meaning behind the clips. This is done to increase the audience that was highest. The target audience for the music itself is teenage women due to the very pop like tempo and lyrics.

my imitation to dont you want me baby

 Dont you want me baby screen grab

The shots I have used in creating this music video are very similar to many of the shots used by other pop rock music videos. In the shot to your left the camera is directly facing the actor who is on the phone to the actress this is an establishing shot for the whole music video. This shot is homage to a really famous song, ''Don'  t you want me baby'' by the human league, where a similar shot is used; this shot however is the only shot to develop the conventions to such an extent.
In many music video within this genre the director will use close ups and extreme close ups to either show emotion or mystery, the close up shot of the actresses feet try to emote mystery in the audience ‘who is this person’. This shot was difficult to get because it needed the camera to follow the feet but be as smooth as possible to get a work-able shot.
 The Mise-en scene is a very important part of any music video in any genre, and I have tried very hard to find the correct locations to fit my music genre, pop-rock. The mise en scene is not just the surroundings but the objects costume and any set within it. This is why when choosing the car for my music video I chose one that followed the conventions of the genre; I know this because it was in Cover Drive's new song ‘Explode’.

Cover Drives song Explode

I used the same make and model of car in my video

In my music video I have included an extreme close up of the actress's face, this is of similar distance to the close up of the feet, but this puts emphasis on the actresses face and her emotions it also help for sale purposes. It allows the audience to view the singer of the song which helps the audience to connect to the singer a lot easier than trying to make a connection with a video comprising  other shots not showing the face.

this is a shape disolve i used 

this is a pin whole transition i used 

this is a cross disolve i used

this is a fade to black i used

Many shots are linked with simple jump cuts, because they allow the scene to change easily. However I have used some transitions to improve the video: cross dissolve/ fade, fade to black, spiral dissolve, circle opening and fade to white. All of these are used to help the momentum stay constant between each shot I have seen the majority of these transitions in pop-rock music videos. A video that uses some of these transitions are displayed in ; kesha's “die young”. However many music videos within this genre use jump-cuts almost entirely for most of their music videos transitions. Instead of using clever transitions they use a higher number of clips and use a lot of special effects within the clips for example in the DNA by the little mix the background cityscape it green screened into the video.
The hardest editing challenge I faced was lip syncing which had to be perfect, in order to maintain the illusion. If it isn’t then the video is ruined because people will see that it is lip synced, I think I have managed to lip sync successfully. The next major thing I did was to overlay the rev counter onto this shot this took nearly as long as the lip syncing to get right because I was not very good on IMovie. In most music videos within this genre the narrative outweighs the performance 70/30, (this does not include the singing), as this is a key part of 90 percent of Katy Perry’s 'Wide awake', which is a great example of this and is very similar to my video unlike. Cover Drive that has a 60/40 split performance to narrative. The general rule for narrative and performance in this genre is there needs to be more narrative than performance my media production is comprised almost entirely by narrative, with singing through it, this is because there we few moments when anything more could have happened.
I believe for the most part I have used the conventions of the pop-rock music video genre. Because many of the music videos I have looked at have inspired me to use shots from them, this means also that the conventions are upheld. The editing within this music genre is often very lacking when it comes to the transitions. This has lead to a development of the music genre in these parts. I did this because the whole point of the music video is to show our skills at using the media equipment effectively. I have used the genre conventions with the other effects I have used on the clips, I have seen all the  effects  I used on the clips used on other music videos; Gray effect are used on little mix's DNA, blur is used on Kesha's Die young along with some overlays which are also used on Celo Greens song forget you.    
The sound within my music video has been edited only very slightly, the first thing I did was crop the ends of the clip because there was a lot of silence towards the end of the clip. After this I added two dietetic sound clips I created that were edited to remove any background noise and enhance the sound I wanted I also raised the volume of these pieces the first one you hear is the footsteps, these were the sound captured from the foot shot, all I did was remove any spikes of background noise by simply selecting the unwanted part and deleting it I then increased its volume and checked for unwanted noise again and cropped it once I had done this I added it to the video and synced it up to the steps. I then lowered the sound to a level that complimented the existing music. I did this again with the engine noise but I had recorded this from a different vehicle and merged it in using the same method as before but I had to copy and paste more parts together.
I have tried to develop some conventions of the music genre, by trying to have a hidden message run through this video. Which is that she knew the person on the phone was not at an airport but in fact doing something seedy. This meant she was upset and feeling betrayed and alone which is why no one else is seen with her in the video. This challenges the normal conventions of a music video where you don’t just see the actress in the narrative even in sad, melancholy videos like Christina Perri - A Thousand Years. Dis juncture runs throughout the entire video because it is meant to show how she is feeling not how she actually is. I have tried to produce a video with a meaning running all the way through it however the semiotic signs I have put in the video are not very transparent unless you are looking for them. One of the more obvious signs is that she never smiles. I did this to try and emote thought which is a very powerful tool, if for example you see a advert on the TV or You-tube that is very obscure you have an interest to find out what it meant and what product they are trying to sell. It’s the same thing you will remember the video and the song more if it makes you think.
The shots above are from the video and the digital, showing that the conventions are held  throughout the ancillary tasks as well as the movie, this is important because if they didn’t match the association will be lost and less people will remember the important information like the name of the artist or even the name of the song.

Little mix DNA

This music video is fast paced using many jump cut transitions which increase the pace of the music video. Often the cut will be on the beat of the music which helps the video flow through from clip to clip. The genre running through the video is pop rock but it has a 60’s Chicago theme that is enhanced by the gray-scale colour effects that run throughout, this adds to the imagery that the artists are trying to create. The Mise-en-scene plays a vital role in this, all of the cars, clothes and building sets are vital in maintaining the illusion that it was filmed in in the 60’s in Chicago. One of the sets is a shot of the girls standing on a skyscraper that is not yet finished which fits with the time when the city had extensive building work done making taller metal skeleton buildings. Another shot shows one of the girls climbing out of the window standing on the ledge. This also fits with the more unfortunate side of the time, where many of the bankers and high end businessmen were jumping off building because they were depressed. The shot itself is a very well composed shot, the lighting is from a steep high to low angle, which draws the eye through the golden mean captivating the audience’s attention towards the little mix singer. On the same side there is a fan which is blowing her hair dramatically helping to keep the illusion of the little mix climbing out of a window many stories high, when in fact it is only a few inches off the safety mat.