Evaluation Edit

Media Studies Evaluation Questions

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

My media product corresponds and coincides with typical products in the section of the media i.e. music videos. The typical conventions of our genre are shown according to our chosen genre, which is folk/ acoustic. Looking at similar artists such as Katie Melua (www.katiemelua.com) and Norah Jones (www.norahjones.com), they incorporate similar themes, such as nature or emotions. They use subtle editing techniques such as fades, soft focus and long takes. In order to keep close to the genre and to keep it recognisable we had to use typical conventions. A lot of the music is closely linked to nature and peace, so we have to incorporate that as well. Therefore a lot of the Mise en scene includes trees, fields, animals etc.

Musical Synaesthia is important in our genre, as want the audience to the feel that the music is genuine, and was actually written and performed by the artist; therefore our reverse cover on our CD case has a guitar resting on an old fashioned chair, on a stage with a black background. This challenges typical conventions of a concert, because most concerts have an audience at a fairly large venue, and because no one is in this tableaux, it gives the impression that she is a fresh, new and not well known artist.

The camerawork in most music videos of this genre is very minimal of movement, this is because the audience are on the fancy tricks, they are just looking for and listening to the music. We have kept this idea as not only does it make it easier for us during the editing process, it also means that it is easier to watch and it calms the audience down, which is that the music is supposed to do.

Our music product doesn’t really follow any theorist’s perspective because there is no example of voyeurism or exhibitionism. This is therefore challenging what is typically in a music video, although it probably isn’t the genre that theorists are focusing on. The only exception is Goodwin; despite his opinions on voyeurism and exhibitionism, most of his theories apply to our genre. Many of the videos from our genre use close ups to show emotion and that the Mise en scene will enhance the overall look of the video. We showed emotion in our video with a high angle shot of the artist looking down. This makes her look weak, vulnerable and fragile. We did this because she's remembering her ex-boyfriend.

Overall our music and digipack reflect most of the usual conventions in real media products. Our camerawork and editing are closely related to our chosen genre. The lyrics match the video’s Mise en scene giving a feel on synaesthia with the use of lip synching and guitar playing. The tempo links in to the editing and genre to give the audience a calming effect, as it is used on many videos of this genre.

These are examples of using these typical conventions for our product. By using the typical themes of nature, we have used this to our advantage by actually following these conventions. The tableaux in the middle is taken from our music video, and the other two are the booklet pages. We can see that here, the artist is in natural surroundings, with her guitar to give the impression that she is actually playing it.We included these also in the poster to accompany the CD with booklet. The poster has been designed to be set up in a music shop window to attract the attention of the consumer. We included on the poster details about the release date, the new single, price and the image of the artist, in order to let the audience know and identify who the artist is, and can therefore denote what kind of genre she is going to be by the Mise en scene used. The CD cover also links into the nature theme, as it portrays the artist hugging a huge tree. This can give the audience the impression that she loves being outside, and wouldn't be related to any sort of harm.

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

My ancillary task ended up not being what I originally envisaged, which was an Indie/Rock band. My plans for an Indie/Rock band gave us the benefit of what shouldn’t go into a folk/acoustic artist, such as lots of new technologies, recognisable people etc. It also allowed us to take away some ideas from other genres and marry the two together, for example pop, which sometimes uses a cartoony feel to the video, making it feel make believe. This therefore, challenges conventions. We too the stage idea and used it to our advantage by making it fit the genre by the Mise en scene. By using an old fashioned chair we can give a retro look to the picture. This idea links to the Indie/rock genre by the picture taken up on stage, one similar to that of a folk/acoustic artist.

This also allowed us to make comparisons and bounce ideas around. We looked at each others ideas and it seemed that the theme was generally feminine theme. The ideas for the CD covers included fields, clouds, horses and that sort of thing.

One of the questions that was in the short questionnaire that was handed out after the private screening (in the next section) was “would you see this artist at a gig/ concert?” This allowed to the people at the screening to decide whether or not they would actually go ahead and choose to listen to the artist, just based on the video, CD cover and poster. They majority of them said yes. Not only does this mean that we correctly identified our target audience, it means that our items worked well together. This could not have been done without the ancillary part.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Before we started to plan what we should be included in the content of our music video we needed to assess who are target audience was. The age range turned out to be 25-50 years old and preferably female. We learnt this from going to www.youtube.com and looking up artists that would match the specifications of ours. By clicking the link entitled “Statistics and data”, we were able to determine what demographic our audience would be. After we got that information, we needed to learn the psychographics.

We set out a number of questions of which to go into it. Instead of making the questions have yes/no answers, we made sure that audience would have to do a bit of creative thinking, instead of just filling it in for our sake. This meant that we could pin point that audiences preferences and what they wanted to see in a music video. We discovered that the audience tended to go for nature themes, as it is calm, easy to listen to, and they are able to appreciate the music, instead of listening to it because it’s popular.After looking and analysing the given data, we had to interpret it into what we should put into the music video. We examined the several music videos that linked back to our ideas. The 2 main artists that popped up were Katie Melua and Norah Jones. We examined the comments made on the videos, and discovered that the expectations given there, were almost identical to those we researched. This was an obvious sign that the record producers for both Katie Melua and Norah Jones knew what had to go into the video, the CD cover and poster to accompany. It seemed that the audience didn’t want a really flash video with lots of effects, but with colour, soft focus and smooth transitions. These effects can calm the audience down, especially with the addition of music, which is definitely not meant to be erratic or crazy.

After production, our video was showcased. We were told that there was one shot that was particularly shaky, o we went back onto final cut express and slowed it down, keeping in mind to keep it the same length of time that the original cut was, not only to keep the cuts to the rhythm, but to also make sure that the lip-sync was back to the way it was.

After we completed the video and digipack, we had to present it to our target audience. The keep with the theme, we sent our about 35 copies of this letter (show letter) to a random selection of teachers. We included a couple of males to give feedback from a different perspective. The letter was meant to based on typical Victorian handwriting, as I had learnt how to compose a letter in the 19^th century style. This gave the letter a feminine effect. After the viewing of both the music video and digipack, we politely asked the brief questionnaire to give feedback. The reason as to why is was brief is because people’s attention span nowadays is very short, and we didn’t want them to spend an hour doing a lengthy questionnaire. After the results were collated and analyse we confirmed that the majority of the music videos criteria matched the audience’s psychographics.

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

During the research stage of our product, we had the advantage of using computers to our advantage. We were using the most revolutionary computer available, which doesn’t have a tower which houses the hard drive and CD drive; it’s all housed in the monitor which means there are no excess wires. My only comment is that it was an Apple Mac, which aren’t the most user friendly.

Storyboarding didn’t use media technologies, as we just used pieces of paper. That went for everything before we started to look at audience research. Our ancillary task used pieces of A3 paper.

When it came to audience research, we had the entire internet at our disposal. We started with YouTube. Using it gave us a good idea as to who our target audience was going to be, and what sorts of things were necessary in a typical music video of our genre. We also looked at the forums. Looking at www.katiemelua.com and www.norahjones.com we were able to look at what the audience of real media products liked, disliked and commented on. YouTube helped again with determining the demographics of the audience. Taking for example Katie Melua’s “9 million Bicycles” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTy3WA0Pq8M we looked at the “Statistics and Data” link to find that the majority of her audience were female. This made sense, and they could probably link to the emotion that she portrays. This was important to the research as we could now use that that information to include things that would interest the female market.

In order to find a suitable song, YouTube wasn’t going to be good enough, so we used a site called www.jamwave.com. This site specialises in unsigned artists, as the exam board stressed that this was key, and that we couldn’t use any existing songs by signed artists. This meant we had to use the internet to find artists. Using JameWave, we came across artists that matched the genre of “folk/acoustic”. It came up with a list of songs and artists that matched the specifications. We came across this artist called Sydney Wayser. She had composed a song entitled “carousel”. We thought this would be a good song, as it had a circus type riff, and we could work with the circus theme for our video. But as we discovered more about her, we found out that her song already had a music video to it, so we probably would have been going along with the conventions of that video, and not to our own design. So we had to come up with another song. Suzy eventually found a song composed by a friend. She contacted her through Facebook, a social networking site, and sent her the song “Stronger Woman” as an mp3 file. This was our song.

After we uploaded our footage using the "Capture" process on Final Cut Express, we used this program to edit it. By using the razor tool, we could cut down the footage a considerable amount, and by cutting the shots to match the rhythm of the song, it established the video to be smoother from cut to cut, as the music would hide it, and it gave the video more fluidity. By using transitions such as "dissolve-additive", it allowed us to jump from scene to scene, with the link between both of them, which helps the narrative. I used editing techniques in order to achieve effects such as a man disappearing from the frame. By taking two pieces of footage and trying to make it so there are two cameras operating at the same time. We used this particular effect when the artist is cycling over the bridge. This gives the impression that she is cycling over the bridge at once, and not actually going over it twice.

We used "iDVD" to create our menu, and we chose the brush effect as the background is a natural colour of brown, and the brush makes it more feminine. We selected only a short part of our song to be repeated on the menu screen, as to not render the video clip link totally useless. We made so many mistakes after burning the DVD, had to use 5 discs before we got the correct one.

In order to make our ancillary texts look the part, we used the program Photoshop. Initially, using it was quite tricky, as wee needed to air brush out some telegraph poles, as they did not suit the Mise en scene. We selected the image we wanted to use, and we cut it down to a square, as it would match the dimensions of an actual CD cover. We took the reverse cover shot with my mobile phone camera. By setting up the scene and blacking out the background, we used Photoshop again in order to give it a retro look. It also inadvertently made the black parts look blacker, and even made the bits of lights seeping through the curtains look like stars. We added the same font text as the front cover, and came up with an entire list of songs that could have been on the real album. We also added a barcode in order to make it look like it should be on the shelf of a music store.

Disc Cover was the program we used to made a fake CD design. The nature themes were used in this, so that the the entire CD package all linked back to one motif, nature. We wanted to use the image of the artist looking to one side, as if we had just taken a picture of her without her having previous knowledge.

I found Photoshop to be tricky, as the Mac's setup was still very awkward and it took a long time to get things the way we wanted. However, we carried on and we got the result we wanted in the end. In the poster, we took the CD cover an included it in the frame, so it would actually let the audience determine which CD they were looking for. We used all the same tactics for the poster that we used for the CD cover, however we made the dimensions suit a poster, which was a rectangle. By using Photoshop, we added details such as price, release date and they artist's single.

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.

Slideshow

A slideshow of all our questionnaire papers

Video Clips

Here are a few of the video clips which will go into our evaluation

Ruby's Evaluation

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


Our media product is our music video that we are creating for the song “Stronger Woman”, by Beyond Victoria. Our music video uses Steve Archer’s theory. Steve Archer is a well respected theorist of music videos. The convention used is that of the shots of the stage performance cut with scenes from the narrative of the song. This shows a real connection between the music and the artist, as her lyrics portray what is being seen in the music video. Steve Archer believes that this relationship is a necessity for a music video to be successful.


Our music is not in keeping with Laura Mulvey’s theory, who believes that because filmmakers are often male, “women are solely for the purpose of display”. In our music video our artist is in many shots and lots of close-ups of her face are used. These are used to show emotion, rather than portray a sexual image. Our artist is the main focus of our video; however she is there to tell a story from part of her life, and is not just there for display.

Different costumes are used in every location throughout the video. This helps the viewers familiarise themselves with which part of the story is being told within the video. It also shows that Beyond Victoria wants to express her style to the viewer. She wears a bright red dress, which shows that she is a strong and confident woman and also a green dress, which represents elements of nature. Her other costume is simply jeans and a green top which is a casual look. Viewers can identify with this ordinary every day costume. Either red wellies are worn or she has bare feet in the video. This mise en scene helps to shows that she is in touch with nature.

Laura Mulvey’s theory states that in music videos a woman " facilitates a voyeuristic response in spectators, which presumes a ‘male gaze’, one that is a powerful controlling gaze at the female on display, who is effectively objectified and passive”. However our artist is in control of her actions and is not being exploited; she knows how she is being filmed. She is not being provocative and feels comfortable with what she is doing. If our artist were unaware of being watched then Sigmund Freud’s theory could apply. His theory is that of Voyeurism, “Pleasure may be gained by looking at a sexual object (preferably when the object is unaware of being watched)”.

Our music video sticks to the conventions of a typical music video of this genre, which is Country/ Folk. Many music videos of this genre are mainly filmed outside, using natural lighting and natural colours like green, yellow and blue, associated with fields, sun and sky. Music videos of this genre tend to focus on using long cuts, as they create a calm and peaceful atmosphere which flows with the music. Fade-ins and fade-outs also contribute to the calm and peaceful atmosphere. We have stuck to these conventions, which are demonstrated throughout our video. In all our outdoor shots we have filmed in the brightest and lightest parts of the day, using natural lighting, so all the beautiful surroundings can be seen clearly and the natural colours are expressed the best they can be, which is important as nature is the main focus in the video. We hope that as we have stuck to these conventions we are more likely to attract our target audience of twenty five to forty years of age, as this is what they would expect to see in a music video of this genre.

Low angle shots are used to show Beyond Victoria as powerful, as they make her look the centre focus of the picture,whereas high angle shots are used to show her vulnerability by making her appear smaller.

I think that our poster works well together with our CD cover as Beyond Victoria’s image is recognisable in both, as well as in the music video. The poster and CD cover are similar and the font used on both media to write “Lucinda”, makes Beyond Victoria recognisable to fans. This font was chosen as it is feminine, subtle and gentle, which will appeal to our target audience.

If people like the look of our poster they may be attracted to our artist and purchase her CD. Therefore I have inserted the album cover in the corner of the promotional poster. I thought that this was a good way of advertising as people will know what to be looking out for when they go to buy the CD.

Our poster also puts across Beyond Victoria’s image very well. It shows that she is a solo Country/Folk artist, who plays her own music as she is holding a guitar. As the guitar is prominent on the poster, it sends the message that our artist’s main goal is to express her musical talent rather than promote her image or make money.

The photo for our poster was taken outside, with the same natural lighting used as is on the CD cover. They are both outside because Beyond Victoria is perceived to love nature, which contributes greatly to her image.

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How effective is the combination of main product and ancillary text?

The purpose of our poster is to promote our artist’s debut single. As she is a new and upcoming artist, she needs to be made known. This is done by giving informative information including the release date, price, featured song and album name as well as the artist’s name in a large and bold font.

The album cover clearly states from which genre our artist is and what the target audience is. Beyond Victoria’s genre is Country/Folk and is predominantly targeted at females between the ages of twenty five and fifty. The font used (Lucida handwriting) illustrates that our artist is targeted at females as it is subtle and soft and this is typically believed to be a feminine handwriting style. I chose the props that we used for the back of the album cover; the guitar was used to show consumers the genre of Beyond Victoria and I chose the rustic chair as it fitted the genre, with it's subtle and natural look.

Beyond Victoria's album contains a four page booklet with the lyrics to 'Stronger Woman' printed on these pages. This booklet gives Beyond Victoria's fans a connection with her as they can learn the words to her featured song.

Our album cover is also used to promote interest in our artist’s work, as it lists all the songs contained within.

The album cover needs to represent the music that Beyond Victoria plays, so that our target audience buy her album. The album cover picture is taken from our music video. I feel that this is a good way to promote the album because if people have watched the video, they will have seen the album cover image within the video. Therefore when potential consumers, who liked the music video are in a supermarket, they will recognise the connection between the two and buy the CD. The same font is used on the album cover as on the poster. This makes people associate this style of writing with Beyond Victoria.

Our music video promotes Beyond Victoria’s image and music. Her image is promoted through the mise en scene. From watching our music video consumers can clearly see the genre our artist uses and her style.

The target audience for Beyond Victoria is twenty five to fifty; she is trying to appeal mainly to women of this age. However a small proportion of men may listen to her music as well. This age group can relate the most to Beyond Victoria, as a lot of her songs are to do with love and relationships. Although all age groups experience intensity of relationships and sometimes the difficulties that go with these, it is most likely that the target audience will be at this stage in their lives. Beyond Victoria will probably not appeal to 65+ so greatly, however, as the majority of this age range have already experienced this stage of life and don’t identify so strongly with these sentiments.

The plan for Beyond Victoria’s publication is to sell her albums chiefly in supermarkets. This is because the target audience forms the main age-range of supermarket shoppers. Beyond Victoria would also be advertised on the television, showing a clip of her featured song “Stronger Woman”,including the price of the album, release date and retail outlets. As Beyond Victoria’s music is not mainstream her album would not be sold in every supermarket, but in the market leader (Tesco) and market challengers (Sainsbury's and Asda). Beyond Victoria’s song would be promoted on BBC Radio 2 as this is the radio station to which the majority of our target audience listen. Here are a number of shows on which Beyond Victoria's music could be promoted.

The narrative for the music video relates to what is being seen in the video. When we see the artist waiting for her boyfriend, the line in the song says, “Now you’re out of time”, so we have the boyfriend figure disappearing when this line is sung. By doing this we have linked the narrative to the video.

In the first shot of our music video Beyond Victoria’s image is made clear straight away. Her hair is worn loose and wavy, which gives an effortless effect, even though it has been styled and taken time to create this look This style is kept throughout the music video which clearly states her image and makes her a recognisable artist.

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What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before we started filming our music video we gave a questionnaire to a range of people. We asked them to put their age and gender on the questionnaire and asked them to choose from a multiple choice of answers as to what they would expect to see in an acoustic/folk music video.

We then saw from the questionnaire that the audience that gave the most useful feedback and knew the most about this genre were women aged 25-50. Therefore we decided to target our artist at this age range, as this is the area of greatest demand for this genre.
The demographics for Beyond Victoria are, female, 25-40, married, having children, living in a detached house in the country and having a dog. The psychographics for Beyond Victoria are:- listening to radio 2, enjoying going on walks, enjoying television dramas and taking part in charity activities.

We then looked more in depth into the acoustic/folk genre and asked our target audience to list things they would expect to see within a music video of this kind that had not been covered in the previous questionnaire.

Research into other music videos from this genre showed that a typical mise en scene for this genre might consist of fields, trees, flowers or anything to do with nature. The artist’s appearance would be natural. Therefore the artist would be wearing make up that gives a natural look, subtle and effortless hairstyle and feminine, innocent clothes. This appearance represents the artist's connection with nature.

When our video was complete we set up a screening in one of the classrooms at our school, to get audience feedback. The audience that we selected were mainly from our target group so the feedback we got was as relevant as it could be and as useful as posible in helping us to improve our video ,if elements required change. Thirty-five invitations were sent out in the teachers' registers, to invite them to the screening. On the day of our screening we had 12 teachers attend; 10 female, 2 male. The questions asked in the questionnaire were,:-

Would you consider purchasing music from this artist?

Would you attend a gig/concert of this artist?

Would you listen to music of the genre usually?

Here are the results of the questionnaires, which I have uploaded. I uploaded the questionnaires by scanning them onto Word Documents. However as some of the teachers used a faint pen I went over their writing, so it would show up once the questionnaires had been uploaded. After this I had to screenprint and upload to the blog. This is because I had saved the questionnaires in PDF format, which is not compatable with the blog.

Generally the feedback was good with a common answer in the questionnaires being that our digipack looked very professional. Only one viewer raised some issues with our video content, namely the use of red wellies, the male figure and the prom style dress. The wellies had been included to illustrate a connection with the outside environment and the young man was supposed to represent the singer's boyfriend. The criticism of the prom dress could perhaps be justified and on reflection, we could have chosen a more casual looking dress in a natural fabric, but we had hoped to keep the image simple by lack of jewellery, accessories or make-up. The colour red had been chosen to be in keeping with the song title, "Stronger Woman," as red is seen as a dominant colour.

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

In the construction and research stage of planning our music video, I used Google Images to search for locations that could be used within the video. Here is one of Katie Melua's album covers, which was used in the research stage, to get ideas for an album cover.

I also used Youtube to search for female artists from the Country/Folk genre to get inspiration for our music video.

Heather Richards a singer songwriter, who writes songs to express her emotions has been very helpful in my research. In her music video for " I can't forget you", she is seen with bare feet, in beautiful surroundings. This frequent use of nature has been used in our video.

Christina Martin is another singer songwriter and has composed a music video for her song, " Hard Day in June". This video is very influencial for our music video. This is because she is seen to have bare feet, which connects her with nature. She is seen in different locations outside, these locations are all beautiful settings:- fields, trees, flowers. She is seen playing her guitar in parts of the video, which I felt was important for our artist to do in our music video as it shows her passion for music. She is also seen hugging a tree. We have used this action on our CD album cover. This is done to show her love for nature.

I viewed Katie Melua's music video "Closest Thing to Crazy", in the research stage. This song is about a relationship Katie is having with a man. It cuts between a performance of her singing the song to the music video. This video uses Steve Archer's theory, (as explained previously).

Google images



YouTube




MySpace was also used to help us find possible artists. MySpace is a great place to look for unsigned artists, as you can view a description of their type of music and have the opportunity to listen to clips of their songs. MySpace

A common theme throughout the videos that I watched, is that the artist is seen playing their guitar in parts of their videos. This is because acoustic artists want to share their musical talent with their audience. As seen in the video by Laura Marling - New Romantic

Facebook was also used to set up a group. The group was set up to get people's opinions of our music video. A link was attached to the group, where people could go to watch the video. However this type of research has not been successful as nobody actually discussed the music video, they merely joined the group.

When communicating with our chosen artist we used Facebook to ask for permission to use her song. Facebook was the chosen medium as it is more widely used than email accounts within the student population. We thought that this would be the quickest way to get permission, and once granted, we could move forward with planning our video. Here is a screen print of the permission given.

Jamwave was used to search for unsigned artists and we managed to find two artists on this site who fitted our genre criteria perfectly. I sent these two artists an email asking whether we could have permission to use their songs. We did not get a response from the artist Sydney Waser, who is a twenty year old singer songwriter. She was our first choice of artist, with her song "Carousel". However following my further investigation she appeared to have a music video on Youtube. It became apparent that she had been signed by a record company as she had a music video and her Jamwave site had not been updated. The other response we did get, however was from Feonais, another singer songwriter, with her song ' I would do Anything'. However by the time it had been received we had moved on and found another artist. Rachel Foxley was a friend of someone in my group. If we had waited any longer for a response from our initial choice of artist, we would have fallen behind and our music video could not have been planned without being rushed. In the research stage of our video I uploaded images of locations and props to the blog. This allowed all my group members easy access to the images, so decisions on which to use could be made.

The genre research helped us piece together a storyboard for our music video . Our storyboard was also uploaded to the blog. This was so everyone in my group could view and refer to it when they wanted, and if the storyboard got lost then we could always refer to the uploaded version.

In the planning stage I practiced filming with the camera. I practiced panning, tracking and zoom in and out, to perfect it for when the product was filmed.

Final Cut Express is an editing programme on the Apple I-Mac. It allows footage to be uploaded and manipulated. We used this programme to edit our music video. It enabled us to lipsync Beyondvictoria's lyrics with the miming throughout the video. This was done by placing footage on the time line with the corresponding part of the song placed on the audio line.

Final Cut Express also allowed us to speed up the footage of our artist cycling over the bridge. This was sped up so it would fit with the music. It is important in a music video for the images to match the tempo otherwise the video does not flow and is not easy to watch.

Blogger was the chosen media for my evaluation as it let me type up my work and save it as a draft. Once stages of my evaluation were complete I was able to publish posts, which meant that my teacher could view my progress. Blogger enabled me to easily upload pictures from the internet or desktop. Pictures appearing on the blog can be justified to the left or right or centered. A helpful aspect of Blogger is the hyperlink feature which facilitates a link between information or images from the internet to my text.