Mix4Mation

Names and Candidate Numbers:

Katie Tancred      8243
Celine Dior          9541
Lewis Gollop       1236

Centre Number: 61221

Please click on the tabs above - Thank You!

Q4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Q3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Q2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Researching different Music Videos at the start of this coursework really helped us gain an idea of what conventions are needed and expected from real media products today. We analysed a few different Genres. However we particularly looked at music videos from the Pop Genre.
Here are some videos we looked at (in GIFs) ;

• Music Videos by Taylor Swift - like Shake It Off

• Music Videos by Meghan Trainor - like All About That Bass

• And then we looked at 'Royals' by Lorde - which is the song we eventually used and based our music video on.

From looking at these music videos, we discovered that as well as all being different in the way they have been produced, they all have similar conventions therefore putting them all in the POP Genre. The conventions of a Pop music video mainly comes from the theorist 'Andrew Goodwin'.  We took into account, the conventions noticed by looking at other Pop music videos and researching Andrew Goodwin, when producing our music video. 

Here are a couple of convention similarities between our Group's music video for Royals, and Lorde's music video for Royals:

(added the captions when creating the GIFs - so don't take notice of them) Here the two shots are similar because:

1. they're both close-up shots of the artist (convention of Pop music videos)
2. a similar background of a plain white-ish/grey-ish wall
3. the way both Lorde and Celine are positioned (centre of the camera - mid shot)

They are not similar because:

1. In Lorde's version, she is more further away from the camera than Celine is in our version.

Here the two shots are similar because:

1. they're both of a street
2. they're both moving vertically down/up the street (even if they are going opposite ways)

They are not similar because:

1. in Lorde's version it seems quite quiet, but in our version the street seems quite busy (with the cars parked on the road)
2. Lorde's version seems more smoother when moving backwards, whereas our version is a bit more 'rugged'.
3. Also compared to each other, this scene is later on in our music video than Lorde's version where it is at the beginning. 

We obviously haven't copied Lorde completely as we wanted to make our music video for Royals unique to us, our own version. However we have still taken into account the conventions needed to create a good pop music video.

Another convention theorised by Andrew Goodwin is that sometimes their is a part of the song where the lyrics match the visuals. We have done this in our music video, in a few parts.

One part we have done this in, is where the lyrics are "We're counting dollars on the train" - during these lyrics there is a train moving past at a train station. 

In another part we have done this but also used Juxtaposition - so have related the lyrics to the visual but in a contrasting way.

It's during the part of the song where it says "We're driving Cadillacs in our dreams"

The member of the lower class is getting onto a bus, therefore contrasting the lyrics "we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams" as he's using public transport, not driving a Cadillac - which he may be dreaming of.

We think this shows that our Music Video for Royals does use the conventions that are expected for Pop Genre music videos. And without our knowledge of these conventions, I don't think our music video would be much recognisable as a Pop video.

FINAL Music Video

Here is our FINAL Music Video. We have had to re-film the scenes where the two classes (higher and lower) walk towards each other on the street. We have also taken out the phone sounds and replaced it with the start of the song. 

FINAL Ancillary Tasks

Here is our finished product for our Ancillary Tasks including our Digipack and Magazine Advert.

After much trial and error with our design we finally have it all together. The most challenging stage of this process was putting all the art for the Digipack together to create a CD case. To see the design more clearly, please scroll down to find the finished products of each stage including the front art, back art, CD art and inside art.

Finished Digipack

Inside Digipack

In this image you will see our design for our inside cover for our digipack. Our original idea was to have silhouettes of our actors when they met. After going through the layer options, we decided we liked the 'Subtract' option and chose to use this instead of silhouettes as it kept details such as shading. 

CD Art Work

In this Image you will see our design for our CD. Even though it is simple, I believe it is effective and even detailed with all the necessary text at the bottom. There isn't much else to say about the design except the text. We chose to use a font called 'Old English Text MT' as it seems very 'fancy' suggesting royalty perhaps form tutor or Victorian times.

Back Digipack

In this image you will see our completed design for the back of our digipack. We have included the spine of the case, the track list for the original album, our group logo and of course we have included all the disclaimers and original copyright information to make sure the credit goes to the correct company.
The inspiration for this design of course came from the original album so we could make it look as real as possible.

Narrative Theories

This is a presentation that shows the Narrative theories we have used in our music video:

examples of GIFs to use for Evaluation Question 1.

We could create GIFs from our music video to answer question 1.
Here are a few example GIFs that Katie has made.

GIF of Timelapse:

GIF of Train:

GIF of Celine:

Evidence of communicating with each other

A lot of the time throughout this project we have communicated by talking to each other around school and in lesson. However we have also Facebook messaged each other a few times. Mainly to make filming arrangements.

This is part of a Facebook conversation me and Celine had regarding making arrangements for filming the higher class/lower class street scenes in February (we didn't use this street in the end, and we also ended up using different people due to others being unavailable.)

Film

As a group we feel that our Music Video is completed at the moment. We might change our minds when we look at it again in the next few weeks, in which case we may have to re-film or re-edit parts. HOWEVER at the moment we are pleased with this film.

Today we added iphone sound effects at the beginning, so that its not just completely silent as the audience is waiting for the song to start.
We got these effects from 2 YouTube videos and a website that transfers YouTube Videos to MP3.
The YouTube videos and website we used were:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=johVa_3lnmY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNz4XtZ-XMs&spfreload=5
http://convert2mp3.net/en/index.php

And here is our Finished Piece:

Evaluation Research Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages
Media technologies we used:
          Research and planning

• Blogger- We used Blogger so that we could post all of our research and planning so that we had somewhere to store it and go back to it should we need to.
• Search Engines- We used search engines such as Google and YouTube to find research to help us create our film and give us ideas.
• Google Maps- We used Google maps to post location shots on the blog to show people where we were filming.
• Magazine adverts- To give ideas for our advert.
• CD covers- To help us in making our CD cover.

          Construction

• HD Camera- Standard camera we used.
• Advantages
• Easy to use
• Good quality

• Adobe Premier Pro- Editing program we used to create our film.
• Advantages
• More editing techniques
• More effects

• Disadvantages
• Confusing to use

• Adobe Photoshop- Editing program we used to create our logo, CD cover and magazine advert.

• Advantages
• Easy to use
• Experienced

• Mobile Phones- We used mobile phones so that we could organize everyone together.

• Advantages
• Easy to communicate
• Simple and basic

Disadvantages

Required Wi-Fi to receive messages

Magazine Advert

After reviewing our plan for our magazine, we have now come up with what we believe to be our final magazine advert. The reason I say 'we believe' is because until we finish our music video, nothing is final so this may change if we come up with a new idea to improve it. This goes for our digipack as well. Our final ancillary tasks will be presented together in one image in one post .

Evaluation Research Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

At this current stage we only have our information from our questionnaire which we used to determine our exact target audience.
Once we have finished our finished product we will produce another questionnaire and film our audiences response. From this we will be able to talk about what we learned from our target audience.

Perhaps we could create a small News-like broadcast for this question. We can film our media class watching our music video.
We could use two cameras, one at the front to the side, and one behind the audience showing the back of the audience as well as the footage being shown to them. During this we could record ourselves talking, explaining what's happening and so creating a narrative over the visuals.  This could be the intro to the News Broadcast. We can then record some members of the audience giving their opinion on our music video. We can then record one of us talking to the camera whilst walking down the corridor perhaps (?) , giving the overall result.

The quote below is from our target audience research, we will be using this conclusion in our evaluation as our feedback from our audience enabled us to realise our target audience.

"Considering the fact that we did not ask an even amount of people from each age group, we can still clearly see that our target is teenagers or woman aged 16 to 20. This will be taken into consideration when we make our music video by asking girls from that age group to give feedback on our video as we get closer to completion."

Evaluation Research Question 2

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

So far we have have a front case for our digipack and a magazine advert. As far as we are concerned these parts of our ancillary tasks are a successful combination for our main product as our ancillary tasks feature our music video in order to present and advertise. For example, for both you can see Celine as she is playing the part of Lorde for our music video. Not only does this represent our video, but also creates a star image. On top of this, we believe that our magazine advert would not look out of place in a real magazine advert but our front cover for our digipack may need some work.
When we come to actually doing our evaluation, we will sum this up and of course we will have more details as everything will be finished.

Updated Location Report

We weren't originally going to film here. We originally planned to film on Sundridge Drive but given the short amount of time we decided to use somewhere that was slightly closer.

Storyboard

Rough Cut 2

Here is our next version of our music video. We still need to film a few more shots, and still need to do more editing, as you can see. Also you may notice that we have changed the start of our video.

Magazine Advert Plan

This is our plan of how we want our magazine advert to look. We have started putting it together and this is how it will look like almost once it is done. All the writing on the image is to show where we are going to put everything. For example, the 'Title' is saying that is where we are going to write 'Royals'. Another example is the word 'Glow' which we have written four times to indicate we want a white glow coming from the CD cover to separate the cover from the actual advert making it stand out.

Digipack First Draft

This is our first draft for the front of our digipack. To create this we took a screenshot from a scene in our music video. We used fonts Britannic Bold and Old English Text MT for the titles on this digipack. We used a grey background just like in the original cover and a photo of Celine as she is posing as Lorde for our music video.
For our final digipack we will take a new photo of Celine as this photo is rather out of focus. We may have the same pose but it is likely we will create the same pose as Lorde for her cover. We will now start to work on the back cover for our digipack and a CD design. 

Update 03/03/2016

We had planned to film our last scene on Sunday the 28th of February which would have taken no longer than half hour but unfortunately things did not go to plan as the people we wanted to film with had become unavailable. We then rearranged to film on Tuesday the 1st of March but the weather did not allow us to get the shots we wanted. We have now decided to now film on Monday or Tuesday next week (the 7th or the 8th of March). We can then finish our final piece and start putting together our evaluations. We have already started research but there is only so much we can do prior to finishing our film. Once we have our final rough cut we will get some audience feedback encase we need to change anything and we will then get another final audience feedback once we have put together our final piece.

Evaluation Research Question 1

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

In our media film, our conventions were mainly based of Andrew Goodwin's theory. He stated that all music videos could be broken down into six Features. These were; 

• Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. (e.g. stage performance in metal videos, dance routine for boy/girl band, aspiration in Hip Hop) [this is also known as iconography]
• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
• There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
• The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
• There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, mirrors, stages, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
• There is often inter-textual reference (a relationship between two texts or films, tv programmes, other music videos etc).

For the purpose of our evaluation, when we put together our response to this question, we will break these points into five just to make it easier to discuss. These are;

• Thought through beat (Seeing what the lyrics mean in your head)
• Relationship between the song and visuals
• Narrative and performance of the song
• Technical aspect of a music video (Mise-en-scene, special effects, sounds and editing hold together the video.
• Star Image (The artist’s image/appearance/reputation)

In our music video, we have used these conventions by first having our cuts in time with the beat. Although this currently isn't the case as we have only put together our first rough cut at this present moment, we aim to achieve this and mention it in our evaluation.
We are linking the song to the visual by having some of the lyrics being played out on screen. The first example you can see us do this is when you see a track shot going down a worn down road while the lyrics play 'in this torn up town...'. Linking to this and the narrative, we decided to show the difference in classes to show how Lorde feels when she says that they will never be royals but then goes on to say that they don't care. Our group of lower class people are more carefree but at the same time, sometimes when we see them during our video,  they may not seem as happy as the group of upper class people.
We have created a star image by having our lead singer the main star of the video by having many shots of just her in front of a white wall just like Lorde in the official music video for 'Royals'. Celine is also dressed in a similar modern costume including a grey jumper and skinny jeans. We also wanted to have her hair curled like Lorde's hair but we were short on time and we didn't get any hair extensions as planned but we did get the make-up similar to Lorde's.

Perhaps we could create GIFs from our Music Video to answer this question?

Update 26/02/2016

Today we had a meeting discussing what we had left to film and when we was going to do it. We agreed that we would do a lot of filming over the weekend. Over the weekend we will be filming pieces such as higher class and lower class walking towards each other which is our most important shot of our music video. We also need a few more shots of higher class people going about their everyday lives. We also need a few more lower class shots such as them hanging out and 'fist pumping'.

Update 25/02/2016

We still need to film the important shots that show the differences between higher and lower class. We hope to do the majority of these shots this weekend.
Once we have as much footage as we can get we need to edit it all so that the shots change on each beat.
The drawings on the storyboard have been completed. Tomorrow we will scan the storyboard into the computer and then upload it onto this blog.

Screenshot of Tweet to Lorde

We attempted to contact Lorde via social media to ask permission to use her song 'Royals' for our music video. Celine used her Twitter account to tweet Lorde, asking for her permission.
Here is the screenshot:

First Rough Cut

This is our Rough Cut.  We haven't got all the filming yet so some shots are longer than intended to be in the actual film and in some parts of the song there is no visual what so ever. We have left them parts blank for now.

Analysing Our Target Audience Research

In the first graph, you can see the proportion of ages of the people that we interviewed for our research. When analysing the data we can clearly see that in a way our research is bias as we mostly interviewed 16 to 20 year olds. However, we did still get plenty of of responses from 21 to 25 year olds and people over 31.
This graph also shows the gender of the participants in ratio to their age. For example, you can see that more females were willing to take part in our survey then males.

The next graph shows us people's favourite genre in relation to their gender. For example, we can see that nine participants liked pop and all of which are females so we can clearly see that our target audience is most likely to be females.

Because we could see that females were more likely to listen to pop, we also analysed the age of the females so we could relate our music video to an age group as well as a gender.
Here we can see that five females aged 16 to 20 liked pop as well as two 21 to 25 years olds and woman over 31. So for the sake of being specific, we will assume that girls 16 to 20 are more likely to watch out music video. 

To make sure we got it right we also investigated what gender were more likely to listen to Lorde and we found out that three more females said that they would listen to Lorde than males. However, five females also said that they did not know who Lorde is. On top of this, two males said that they would not listen to Lorde but only one female said that she wouldn't.

In this final graph we wanted to show the age group of people that would listen to Lorde. This does not relate to gender but is an over all view of the age groups which are likely to listen to Lorde. From this graph, you can see that about five sixth's of the over all percentage are ages 16 to 21 and the rest are aged 21 to 25 and 31+.

After getting all this data together and putting in into graphs, making it easier to see and analyse, we can clearly make out our target audience. Considering the fact that we did not ask an even amount of people from each age group, we can still clearly see that our target is teenagers or woman aged 16 to 20. This will be taken into consideration when we make our music video by asking girls from that age group to give feedback on our video as we get closer to completion.

- Celine Dior