Suzy Evaluation

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products because, it incorporates theorists such as Dyer who says ‘stars represent shared cultural values and attitudes, and will promote a certain ideology, Audiences interest in these values enhances their star quality, and it is through conveying beliefs ideas and opinions outside music that helps performers star quality’. This has helped us decide what it is about our artist ‘Beyond Victoria’ that is different to anybody else, her beliefs, ideas and opinion is the basis of the song ‘Stronger Woman.’ We want or artist to be unique by including beliefs and opinions the song is more about the artist rather than just a song that anybody could write, we want people to be able to relate to the song and our artist, not just the song
The narrative in our video is backed up by Steve Archers theory ‘music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song.’ ‘ Sometimes the artists will be part of the story acting as a narrator and participant at the same time, but it is the lip –sync close up and the miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos.’ This is showing a connection between our artist and her music, her lyrics are portraying what is shown in the music video. Voyeurism- pleasure may be gained by looking at an object i.e. our artist, we have challenged this idea because men are not looking at her in a sexy way, they are looking at her in awe, at her independence, her strength and uniqueness, but of course beauty helps with this illusion. This relates to Laura Mulveys theory. ‘The presence of women is solely for the purposes of display’. There are many close ups of our artists face to show emotion rather than ‘provoking a male gaze’ she is there to tell a story not to be on display. ‘ Give the audience what they want they want, but not in a way they expect it’- McKee.We have decided to use the colours yellow because it reflects sun, intelligence, light, and energy and attracts attention, Green because it reflects earth mother, tree and plant, nature and growth, green calms sooths the mind and stimulates creativity, Brown reflects thought, strength and gentleness. Orange reflects warmth and self-awareness, orange helps see clearer and larger. Red reflects courage, power, romance and career goals. The represented colours are background behind the music video to promote, youth, nature, earth and independence. These colours are the reason why we decided to set our video outside, the colours are also reflected in the Mise en scene for example the costumes. Starting the video off in the red dress and ending it in the red dress shows the artists courage and power. We used the green dress because it shows nature and growth, particularly when our artist is walking down the leafy path in bare feet giving the audience the impression she is close to nature. The genre of our music video ties in well with our chosen setting because it is country/ folk.

The narrative of our music video is that the girl has split up from her boyfriend and realises that she is better off without him, we used close ups to show reactions and emotion, low angle shots to show the strength and power of our artist, we also used long shots to establish the setting and vulnerability we didn’t use many of these as we wanted to promote strength and independence. We decided to use lots of fades and overlays as the video didn’t need lots of special effects and these would fit in nicely with the genre as we researched the style of music and this is what they mainly seamed to use. In Katie Melua's video 'nine million bicycles' there is nature settings where they use fading and they use overlays as she is being d

ragged from each scene, there is also close ups to show her expression and high angle shots to show her vulnerability.

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2.
How

effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?I feel the combination of the product and ancillary texts go really well together. I particularly like the digipack, which I have created the front and back cover of. I have taken the images and edited them on Photoshop to make them look more appealing and professional.

The front cover of the digipack is of an outside setting in the centre is a tree with our artist hugging it wearing the red dress showing her power and love for nature. The lighting gives the impression that the sun is setting, the font on the bottom right hand corner is Lucinda handwriting it is curly and girlie standing out in white.

The back cover of the digipack is an old chair on the stage with a guitar propped up against it ready to be picked up and played. In the top left corner is the list of songs and in the top right is the barcode to add authenticity. At the bottom of the back cover is the record companies legal rights, the entire font is Lucinda handwriting in white

to make it stand out and keep the same theme throughout.

Our booklet consists of four pages excluding the front and back cover. Three of the images are of out artist in the same location but different spots and in different positions and costumes, the other image is setting the scene with a landscape view, each

page has the lyrics to out song.

I have also created a CD disk cover using a program called ‘Disk Cover’ which consists of the image of our artist ‘ Beyond Victoria’ in the red dress with the guitar side on, slightly looking over her shoulder showing a coy side to her. The background is foliage keeping with the nature theme. It has the artists name and and the title of the album on the left next to her and around the outside the disk it has the copyright laws information and the compact disk logo to make it more authentic. I have carried out the same colour scheme throughout to keep the nature theme. The compact disk is similar to the poster I have used the same location but with our artist in a different pose it has the artists name, featured song and release date to the left of her, it also shows a picture of the album cover in the corner of the poster this will engage the audience to look out for when the album becomes available. we have kept a continuous theme throughout our production as in our CD cover our artist is wearing the red dress we decided to incorporate

this into the video as well, we also used the same tree in the video as audiences like repetition, to keep in with the theme we thought it would be best if we used the dress in the poster aswell.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The questions we asked are: 1. Does the artist’s image fit with the chosen settings in our music video? 2. Does the artist’s image reflect the genre of music of the music video? 3.Does the artist’s image reflect the genre in the poster? 4. Would you purchase/ download or attend a gig of Beyond Victoria?

We approached people who were in our target audience of 25-45

A group of media specialists generally liked the music video and thought the scenery used fitted the genre perfectly, they liked the way the music video ended with a close up of the artists face, then a fade out to black. The shot where it zooms in to the artist standing underneath the tree has a noticeable tilt in and they wondered whether this could be changed, we experimented with slowing the shot down but it messed up the lip syncing, so we had to leave it the way it was, they also said the guitar featured in too many shots and they would of preferred her to be doing other things in the music video to give it more variety.

We also organised a screening at lunchtime to a randomly selected sample of teachers

where thy completed a questionnaire after viewing the video and digipack. All our feedback was positive apart from one. Generally people thought the digipack was well presented and impressive. The music video was laid back, chilled, boho chic, it has a country vibe but 21st post modern elements- e.g. red wellies, the soft autumn mood fits in, very authentic. The image was coherent throughout the production. The video held my attention and and the ‘feel’ was consistent, it is relevant to the genre and the lip sync is good. The negative feedback was getting rid of the wellies; the man in coat does not fit in with the rest of the video. Why the prom style dress? The wellies are to keep her country routes, with the red dress because, we used the dress in the album cover it was nice to see it repeated in the music video, the man in the coat is the boyfriend of our artist this keeps the narrative showing that she is stronger now because she doesn’t need him anymore.

Red Wellies The Boy Prom Style Dress

I also made a group on Facebook to promote our artist and get some feedback on the music video.

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

In the construction and research stage we used new media technologies such as the Internet. We used myspace to see if we could discover an unsigned artist that could represent us but we had no luck. We researched on youtube artists that related to our genre of music like Katie Melua and Vanessa Carlton to see what styles their music videos were in and what editing techniques were used, also we looked at the statistics and audience feedback. We used a site called jamwave where we created an account and searched for artists. We found an artist and we downloaded her song, we wrote her an email to ask permission to use her song but we had no reply, out of curiosity I searched her on you tube and I discovered she had already

had a music video and was a signed artist.

I decided to get in touch with an old friend on face book who I knew had experience with singing and as it turned out she had just recorded a song and she agreed we could use it in our music video.
For the planning

stage we took the camera outside to do some shots to make sure the area that we had chosen had the right amount of lighting and the right vibe. We also practised various transitions such as tracking, panning etc. In the scene where our artist rides the bike over the bridge I tried to do a tracking shot by following behind on a skateboard but there were two issues with this. One was the camera was too shaky the other was I couldn't keep up with the bike.Images of the locations and props were uploaded to the blog and our storyboard this was so we could refer back to it whenever we needed to.

We uploaded our footage to a program called Final Cut Express, where we could edit it, we cut the shots to be in time with the song and the lip-sync in time with the lyrics, we used transitions to allow smooth transitions between scenes.

We used IDVD to create our DVD we decided on the brush effect menu because it had natural colours like Brown and Green and kept in with the nature theme.

Disk cover was a program i downloaded especially so that i could make the template for the CD, it was really easy and straight forward to use, unfortunately i didn't have the required technology to actually burn the image to the disk.





Photoshop was the program we used to edit our photos for our digipack, we were able to edit the telegraph poles out of the front cover as we wanted the setting to look like it was in the middle of nowhere.

Before After
I believe that having the use of the Macs at our disposle was really helpful, they are user friendly and brought the timescale of our production down i would defiantely use them again.

In the evaluation stage, I have used the blog to go back over the whole process and put down relevant points that related to the production of our music video.

To view the videos please scroll up and you will find them there.

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