Lewis Hooper
8.9.2010
Music Video:
I have chosen to create a video to this song, because I have a strong interest in music. The song I have chosen has a deep message behind the song which gets shown in the video.
Song – ‘Love the way you lie’ – Eminem FT Rihanna. 4 minuets.
Use ‘Green Screen’ which enables us to use back grounds. – such as flames to create the illusion that someone is on fire, and to create different locations for the video.
For the first line on ‘You’ – can be in an argument, directing the words at somebody.
When the music starts playing I would like to have a close up shot on some posters and clothes to create the sense of what the song is going on about. We can also add words into the video as ‘Titles’ to make it more interesting.
Also have a story behind the video, and can use black and white to represent violence in the relationship and sadness, and use colour to represent happiness. – Moral to the story line in the song. Binary opposition (Love and Hate).
Close up shots are required to show the emotion of the characters in the video, this is because it makes the audience feel connected.
Our band name is ‘Better than you’. – This is because it reflects in the song and video.
Send out questionnaires on paper and Email to see what response is better.
The start of the film is going to start on the filming of some posters, then we are going to zoom in to one of them, with a dazzle effect zooming out on a pile of clothes on the floor moving up to a suitcase with clothes chucked into them, the camera will then move up to the girl crying then a zoom into her eye, where you see the man downstairs watching TV with cans of beer next to him, whilst drinking one, crunching one up and throwing it on the floor. The man will then go up stairs to where the girl is and bang on the door, she will then see that it is the man and try and close the door, he will then put his foot in the door and push the door open resulting in the girl falling onto the floor.
After we will lead into happy memories for the couple such as dates out, and romantic walks, to show that they were once together happy.
The ending will show from where the girl was knocked into the floor, and he will pick her up and push her onto the bed, then grabs an empty vodka bottle, and matches from his pocket, and then light one up and drop it onto the floor. we will use green screen to create the effect of fire all around the room. The man runs off leaving the front door open, which the girl escapes from just before the house blows up, the last clip will be the girl running down the street.
Date Task Complete
6/10/10 Research ideas Yes
13/10/10 Compose a survey yes
20/10/10 Analyse feedback from survey Yes
27/10/10 Design Album Cover yes
2/11/10 Start filming yes
10/11/10 analyse feedback from survey, and take camera out to film outside. yes
17/11/10 24/11/10 Work on album cover yes
1/12/10 8/12/10 Continue Filming and Start work on Website Yes
15/12/10 More background research on domestic vigilance. Yes
5/01/11 12/01/11 Take Camera out, and film some more. Yes
19/01/11 26/01/11 Use Green Screen Yes
2/02/11 9/02/11 Work on website and start to edit film. Yes
23/01/11 2/02/11 Work on website and Photo Shop. Upload some work to blog. Yes
9/03/11 16/03/11 Photo Shop and finish website. Yes
23/03/11 6/03/11 Finish editing film, shoot more scenes if needed. Yes
In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media?
My media product has used conventions from real media products throughout and the reason why is because my logo, CD/DVD cover Webpage and video are consistent to each-other. This is because I wanted my product to be recognisable for people so that they can associate the products with the band. For my web page I used a template from iweb, which enabled me to make the webpage more presentable, enjoyable and rememberable. The webpage relates to the band name as well as the CD/DVD package through the use of images and text, also on the front of the webpage there is a line from the song which relates to the moral of the song as well as the webpage which makes it recognisable and unique. Each slide of the webpage is laid out to look like a page from a book, as I am trying to tell a story which carries a deep message, this also relates to the first line of the song ‘On the first page of our story’, and this can also be viewed through the images I chosen to use. I also added some webpages about tour dates, biographies about each person in the band so that the audience could feel more connected with the band and also symbolises it to being part of a book as there is different information on each page.
The music video shows an insight on domestic violence in a relationship and tells the whole story in a short space of time, and starts of showing the happy points in the relationship, and keeping the story book theme, then moving on to how it turned bad. Green screen was used to create a more realistic effect as well as adding in animation to the video. In the video it shows how the women is the victim of domestic vigilance and the effects that it has on both her and him. In the original video it shows how they were hurting each-other physically so I decided to develop it in my music video. We used hand held camera techniques at the start to show the happy times which allowed us to capture the emotion and to make it look like real life. However this soon changes into frustration and we incorporated many different camera angles such as ‘over head’ to show who was the most dominant person in the relationship. The video ends with the flick over of the page which was the same style used in the beginning of the video to show the end of the story and the relationship. The music is added over the top of the video which enables the video stand out, and to tell a more accurate story. We have lip synced most of the words to the song, however some of the lyrics go over images which although it creates and shows everything which happens it still shows that the people in the video are singing the song ad tells a more accurate story.
For the CD/DVD package I chose to out the name of the band at the top of the page so that it stands out and the name of the song down the left hand side. On the right hand side there is a picture of the two artists and this had been carefully thought out as the male figure is standing and the female is sitting on the floor with the head in her hands, and this shows the male is dominant and relates to the song and is shown throughout the video and through text on the webpage. This complies with real media conventions due to the fact that many artists such as ‘Eminem’ who has released a new album called ‘Recovery’ which his songs talk about something that has happened in real life and he has linked and his album cover shows him walking down a long road with the recovery logo on the top right hand side, also in the video it shows him falling down a crack in the road and then bouncing back up again to show that although he has gone down the wrong path his is bouncing back up again, which relates/shows the relations in real media, and that I have used similar techniques and conventions.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The initial flat plan for the ancillary product included a colour scheme of Red, yellow, orange as well as many dark colours such as black and grey. We thought that these colours would link well to the genre of our music choice. However we realised that for the video darker colours would be more relevant for out video and lighter colours for website and CD/DVD package as the vibrant colours will attract people and the darker colours will show the depth of the story being told. With both ancillary products our video we branded as quite feisty and vigilant as well as depressive, and to do this we used specific shots of them in the video such as over head, as well as long shots to show independence and emotion, as well as making sure that the audience feels a connection with the character. this was also shown by using contrasting pictures on the CD/DVD cover. The genre is conveyed through the use of the font/colours/image, etc. The font makes the video look like it may be a dramatic as the font would not normally be used to represent comedy or an action videos.
The theme of our music video mainly consists of one strong topic which is domestic vigilance. We added some pictures on the website to support this, therefore the audience knew what they were buying into and that it was the right product for them. The codes and conventions of the film are taken into the design of CD/DVD package, and this had been done by using the same colours in all of the products, as well as the same people, which implies the film may cover a sad or depressing theme for the character, or may be filmed in a bleak location. Also the tagline on the poster carries the conventions of a Real Life genre onto the CD/DVD package by informing yet questioning the audience simultaneously.
One of the main advantages of this is that the target audience will be left with the feeling that they need to know more for example the website will create an element of suspense relating in the audience listening to the piece of music. The fact that the advertising spreads across a variety of media platforms means that is is to be more effective. The three texts will be used at different times during the marketing process in order to platform the different functions. It is more likely that the website will be released first as it advertises and shows everything there is to know about the band, the song and the members of the band. We have chosen it in this order as it will gain more recognition for the song / music video.
With our target audience being 18-21 made us determine to make our texts more appealing to this particular group of people, and to create a more serious and professional tone, as we thought that using an intellectual tone would relate directly to the audience, and the story line behind the video would also be able to do this.
Primary audience: Older Teenagers aged 18-21
Secondary audience: Young Adults aged 22-25
Tertiary audience: Organisations such as NDVH (National Domestic Violence Help-line)
To create our own music video we had to emulate the style of other music videos and make our own design appropriate to our film. The other music videos were interesting to look at and I was able to find out that they were focusing on teenagers and young adults mostly, and as our video was targeting a similar age group and I feel that watching other videos was a good guide on how to create an artistic video that would have mass appeal.
Overall I feel that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts works well together, I feel that a clear link can be made between both of them, because they carry a similar theme and the same message, which use the same conventions which can be used to help the audience see that they are part of the same product. This would automatically familiarise the audience with the film and encourage them to read on. Furthermore after conducting some audience feedback the content within the review puts a very optimistic mood on the standard of acting, directing and editing of the film. Reading this review, the audience will be under the impression that the film lives up to all their expectations after reading such positive feedback.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From audience feedback I feel that I have learnt several important points, ranging from the use of open and closed questions in questionnaires, what the audience is looking for so that I am able to make my product more sellable, focus groups and more.
Firstly the use of audience feedback from questionnaires became very useful in the planning stages of the music video as we were able to see whether or not the ideas which we had were worth carrying forward or whether we needed some new ones. We did this by typing up a questionnaire consisting of only ten questions due to the fact we felt that if we were to ask more than ten then people would start to loose focus. The questions ranged from the name of the band, to text style size and also some open questions to where people watch music videos too, the setting and what gets their attention.
After constructing the questionnaire we handed it out to a twenty random people which were all different ages and varied from being male and female. We also send the the questionnaire out via email, which we used monkeysurvey.com for this as when people responded to the questionnaire the results would get sent through to our account, which then comes up in tables of results which meant that it saved us time. However after constructing both online and paper surveys we found out that paper surveys were more accurate and effective.
From using questionnaires we learnt that we should use a yellow or orange background for our CD/DVD package as it will stand out and the use of black text means it will look vibrant and eye catching to people. Also that the name for our band, “Better than you” will be a good name to use as it relate to the song being about domestic violence, and a majority of people said that the name would sale as it will be intriguing to them.
Moving on using focus groups, meant that we were able to gain a large amount of accurate information in a short space of time. We had a group of six people which consisted of both male and females. We were asking questions ranging from the band name, ideas for the video as well as the home style we were planning on using. From the focus group we were able to find out that the band name was going to stay the same being “Better than you”, although the home style should change into something which symbolises the whole ideology of the song and to tell as story, which changed from our initial idea of using flames and bright colours throughout as we found out that it would not look as effective and not give as much detail and information.
Later on in the construction of our media product, we asked for some more feedback and used a peer review form which we asked six people to mention both a good and bad point about all of our products ranging from our website to video. One of the good points were “The website has a very good style to fit the genre of the band. A lot of information and detail has been added to describe the band to fit to their target audience. Was a very impressive, professional document.” However a negative point was “To improve I feel in the pictures the green screen could be replaced with a different background to add more creativity and fit to their song and genre.”
We decided to ask what people thought of our products at this stage because we would still have time to change certain things if they were not appealing. I feel that the comments that were mentioned were fair and I was able to improve on the parts that people felt needed improving to maximise interest.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used new media technologies in the constriction and research, planning and evaluation stages of our music video such as iMacs, photo shop, various equipment, and various internet websites.
Firstly we used iMacs as a form of computer during making this product as it enabled us to use software and programs which were not available on other types of computers such as photo shop, which we used for our initial ideas and ancillary texts, which we were able to illustrate the images and crop out green screen on the images were wanted to use. On photoshop we were able to use different tools such as the text tool, brush tool, eraser and pen tool, and more, which enabled us to get a more defined picture which we were able to use in both our website and CV/DVD cover.
We used iWeb as it allowed us to create a internet web page for our band, so that we can upload videos, blogs, tour dates and back ground information about the band and the songs. We used a template from iWeb which looked like a story book as this was the design we were going for as we wanted to tell a story from the start of the relationship to the end. We added allot of information about the band and tour dates. The front cover is meant to look like a photo album with the first line of lyrics in from the song so that it all matches. We used our own images and videos on the website to make it our own, as well as adding subscriptions and search bars on the website.
The equipment we used varied from the use of video cameras to lighting, as some of our video used natural lighting and the footage which was shot on green screen used flood lights, which enabled us to use a variety of lighting to create the atmosphere we wanted. We used the video camera in several ways which was hand held to create a realistic effect, as well as using a tripod for parts which we wanted to look accurate and from an outside effect. We researched green screen in order to discover whether or not it would be suitable for our video or not, and to do this we looked at all the equipment and research online to see what it would enable us to do. Using the green screen enabled us to take photos for our CD/DVD cover as well as film for our video which we then cropped out to create the final effect. The green screen was the most suitable as we wanted to add flames in at the ending sequence of the film as if we did not use green screen this would not be possible as it would be dangerous. We used a still camera to take photos for our website which were able to create a more realistic and overall professional effect. We also used iTunes which enabled us to use the song we wanted on our video and the sound was projected clear and this was also a quick application for us to use.
We used various internet websites such as youtube to view other videos of the same song which other people had made to gain ideas from as well as the official video, as we wanted to do ours along the same line but make it different. We also used monkey survey.com to compose our questionnaire to a high standard as we thought it would let us compose it without making it look to complicated. We also used many websites to conduct back ground research as it allowed us get a better insight on what to add into our video so that we can get across a deep message and this was mostly used in the research and planning stages.
We also used a table in pages which allowed us to draw up a filming schedule and allowed us to know what time we had to be at the filming destination for example the church, which meant that this kept us organised.
