Progress Review: The End

Now that it has come to the end of the blogging period I can finally relax and say that I have done pretty well. AS was just a taster of what blogging was going to be like in A2 and with my sheer will power and determination I pray that my best was good enough to get me the grade that I so want. This year my initiative has been on top condition, I've blogged almost every step of this process, I followed the blogging checklist and also blogged independently, I have used a lot more media technology in my blogs and also included a lot more colour which I hope will show off my creativity. One thing that I found VERY useful and will continue to do is PLAN!, When I knew that a blog was going to be really long I sat down and planned it before I actually started to construct it, this was very useful :). One thing that I would go back and tell my self to improve on is my timing. I really should of blogged as early as possible instead of last minuet because when I blogged early I had time to go back and change it if something was wrong, whereas when you blog last minute you find yourself rushing and this could lead to a lot of mistakes.
Overall I enjoyed blogging this year even though it was the longest thing on the planet I honestly did enjoy it and enjoy looking for different ways to express my answers and blogging about a new thing every week, I will Miss you Blog but its time for me and my pillow to go and get comfortable
PEACE OUT! X

Christelle Belinga.

Evaluation Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation MP4 from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

MUSIC VIDEO

Our target audience was mainly teenage girls and guys that are more in touch with there feminine side.

As you can see the majority of the feedback we received was quite positive, everybody complimented on the artist the editing and the overall style of the video. One of the comments we received was about not using external shots, a member from our wider audience member stated that we should of added more external shots, more shots that didn't have the two artist in them. When I heard this I watched the music video back and realised that it was something that we didn't do, there wasn't one shot in our video that didn't have the artist in them and now I think that, thats something that we should've done. Looking at real music videos I notice that they all have minimum of 5 shots of anterior clips which were sometimes scenery, people and anything that didn't relate to the artist so now that I’ve looked into that point that is something that I would've included into my video to improve it. Another thing that a few people said was the chemistry between the two artist was low, they had energy individually but when they were together it kind of seemed like they had been put there to just move around. Thinking about this I realised that as the outsider, the only person in the group that wasn't in the video, I should've seen this and advised them to be more interactive with each other so the chemistry came out well in the video.

It was a really good idea getting feedback from our audience members,  everyone I asked was either our target audience or a part of our wider audience. Making films and music videos  is something that id like to do in the future and I want my videos to be aimed at this kind of audience so receiving feedback from them and hearing about the kind of things that they want to see in music videos was really good for me as I now know what I could improve on when it comes to making music videos in the future.

A thing that I have learnt from getting this audience feedback is that there are certain things that audience members expect and look for, One person said that there should've been dancers and it made me think about my video having dancers in them and when i vision it i see our audience becoming more interactive whilst looking at the video like bobbing there heads more and dancing around and just enjoying it a lot more and as a producer its taught me that its important to tailer the expectations of our audience as they will be the reasons for our success and therefore if they don’t like it or enjoy it the video wouldn't mean anything. Looking at this feedback has made me realised that there is a lot more to making a video and attracting a target audience then adding enthusiastic artists and bright colours. I realise that there is a huge improvement to be made on my current music video but I did pretty well for a first attempt.

Ancilary  Products

The audience feedback for my ancillary products was   all really positive , getting the reaction that I received has taught me that if you are aiming your products to a young teenage audience you need to make the product exciting and engaging  enough for it to catch there eye. All the people that I asked said that they liked my use of colour and  the structure and layout  of my Ancillary products , because of this reaction I now know that this is something that I should do in the future  when I make media products that are aimed at audience members who are mostly teenage girls and guys that are more in touch with there feminine side.

Evaluation Question 3

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

Some ways on how I used Final Cut Pro

Other Ways

solid block from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

Opacity from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.


Underexposed edit from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

Some ways on How I Used Photo Shop

 <<Using the quick selection tool to  outline the artist in different images so I could use the figures on my digipak.

Pasting the figures onto a white background and then using the magnetic Lasso Tool to create an outline. 

Used the Lasso Tool to create an outline over an image.

The Outcome

Use of Gradient

If you look closely you will see that the Graffiti image in the background has been faded out. This was done using the Gradient Tool. The red xo strip at the top was the result of the tutorial I found  on the internet.

The Red Stroke (Coloured Outline)

Normal Text

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)

Synergy = Sunglasses

How we planned to use it.

 Originally we planned to use colorful sunglasses, we said that our duo would be wearing the sunglasses throughout the music video and also during photo shoots, public appearances, interviews  and anything else they would do to promote themselves. Another reason why we chose sunglasses is because we dont really have a large budget and during our research we were looking for a product that would be cheap and effective to use. We got the idea from rap artist Kanye West. He used sunglasses as his Synergy Item for his graduation Album, particularly the single stronger. The sunglasses were seen on the single cover, in the music video, during performances and out and about. By doing this it made him easily recognizable by his fans.

Combining our Products using Synergy

I think that I did a pretty good job ensuring that my promotional package linked to the music video. We made sure that in each verse and chorus there was some shots of our artist wearing there chosen sunglasses and in every image on my promotional package the duo are wearing there sunglasses.

Sunglasses in the music video

Sunglasses on the digipak

Front Cover

Advertisement & Inside

CD Disc

Not only did I rely on our synergy item to make sure that my promotional package linked with my music video, I made sure that the costume and hair was the same swell. On our filming days we took out a camera so we could take images for our digipak. The main reason we did this was so we had images of our artist with the same hair and costume they have on in the video. 

Costume in the Video

Costume in digipak

Another thing that links the promotional package is the Red strip seen at the beginning and ending of the music video. At the beginning it says 'Excuse My Rude' and at the end it says 'XO' repeatedly to establish the Duo's name. I put the 'XO' red strip on all items of my promotional package so the as are bombarded with it a know that if they were to see that red strip anywhere else it would be related to the duo.


Red strip seen in the video 

Strip seen on Digipak

Advertisement

CD Disc

Front, Back & Fold

One more thing that makes both of these products link is the urban theme & Iconic locations. We shot the video in an area that has a lot of graffiti i.e. Brick Lane and places that are well known to the world like London Bridge and Camden . What I did to make sure that the 2 link was made a well known graffiti image 'Hackney Peace Mural' from a well known area 'Dalston' and made it the focus for the front and back of my album covers. I Also used an image that we took of the duo in front of a colourful graffiti piece we found in south bank

Graffiti in the Video


 Graffiti on the Digipak
Graffiti From Waterloo South bank

Hackney Peace Mural in Dalston

Due to all of these links between the video and my digipak, I believe that our target audience will recognise the 2 as linked products and therefore I believe that the outcome of my products is a success. What I managed to do is something that me and my group planned to do, we wanted to create a pop video and ancillary product that kept to the conventions of the pop genre but has an urban feel to it so it would reach out to the younger audience. Overall i feel proud of my designs, i think they would appeal to the audience members because the design is very bold and quite in your face, they stick to the conventions of ancillary products and the pop Genre at the same time and it also represents the youth which is something that we wanted to do.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Laura Mulvey

'The Male Gaze'  (Taken from my previous Blog)

We chose to completely challenge the idea of a 'Male Gaze' in our music video. After doing a lot of research about the pop Genre and finding out that its mostly young children and teenagers who listen to this genre we agreed that it would be totally inappropriate to even try and make an attempt of attracting the male gaze. Instead we made our artist/Duo relatable to our audience. Our target audience like most target audiences for pop music was young children and predominately teenage girls, Our duo 'XO' are both teenage girls so we tried to make them come across as real as we could whilst keeping within the conventions of a music video. We did this by dressing them in clothing that we would see a teenager wear i.e. Casual blouses & Jumper's, Converses and varsity Jackets etc... and other small things like the way they slyly danced to the music. Unlike the 'Male Gaze' our duo dont do anything provocative and sexual to try and attract a mans attention, they simply represent the youth of the present day, casual, fun and heartbroken.

Example - Images from Our Final Video

Carol Vernallis
There were quite a few things that we used from Carol Vernallis's theory and there was some things that we couldn't really do to a degree.

Continuity broken to keep viewers attention

Previous Example. 

 

Watching many other music videos I found out that this statement is correct, by music videos breaking the continuity and using a variety of different shots in a matter of seconds it really engaged me to continue watching. This is one of the reasons why we chose to apply this statement to our own work. 

An example of how we applied this is below. This clip is from the beginning of our final music video, our aim of these couple of seconds was to use the broken continuity technique to engage our audience, I felt that this was a really good way to put it because not only did it keep our audience engaged but it went in time with the beat of the music. 
  

Edits become obvious so it draws attention

Previous example

 The technology/Software that has been used to create the above clip was something that we didn't have so we chose not to include special effects to this extreme, it would've taken up much time and it wouldn't of been necessary to the lyrics of our song and the video that we were trying to make. What we did do on the other hand was decide to add video filters and simple effects that we could find in Final Cut Pro, going through all the effects was very time consuming as we repeatedly had to add an effect, render it and then remove it to test out another, Lucky for us one of the girls in my group found a video on youtube that somebody made showing all the effects on final cut pro and what they were called.

This was the video.

One that really stood out for us and the one that we felt was the only one that seemed suitable for a music video was an effect called 'Bad TV', we put this effect at the beginning and the end of the music video to mark the start and the finish.  

Result...

Other examples of how we applied this theory to our video

These are a few obvious edits that we added in to attract our viewers and we believe that these edits will draw attention to the video

Not so Obvious edits

One thing that we did that wasn't so obvious was add a colour correction. We chose to do this because we wanted our pop video to be visually bright and in most of our original shots the colour came out quite dull. When we found the colour correction option in our video filters we started to experiment with the controls until we found a look that would be quite nice to use.

Result...

 

 As you can see the colour has been slightly enhanced to give our new clips a nice bright look to it.  

Jump cuts are frequently Used

 

Altogether my group had over 30 different base tracks from different verses, different locations and different costumes. This gave us plenty of opportunities to add as many jump cuts as we could and this is what we tried to do. The above clip is taken from the beginning of our second verse, as you can see we never stayed on one shot for too long, all the way through we was jump cutting back and forth from one base track to another.

Camera moves in time with the music

It was quite difficult to include this in our video because I had to think about weather the camera was moving in time with the music and making sure that the artist were both shown clearly, this being said all the clips in our video were shot handheld using a fig rig and in some base tracks we slyly see the camera move in time with the music, this is shown in the sequence below, the base track where both the girls are standing up making gestures towards the camera and singing at the same time. if you look closely you see that the camera sort of moves towards the artist then away from her.

Andrew Goodwin

 This is my Prezi that I created on Andrew Goodwin's theory.
 

 How we applied this theory to our video.
- The main characters in our music video are the artist and throughout the whole video they predominately sing towards the camera

- Base Tracks & Locations are repeated consistently. The clip below is from the second verse of our song, there are 6 base tracks and 2 locations. You can see that a few of the base tracks are being repeatedly shown for example the one where the artist is sitting down facing directly to the camera. Although there is only one base track that was shot in Granary Square and 5 in Piccadilly circus we did we did show both locations at least twice.

Beginning and Ending
We showed this through our use of effects and lighting. Our video opens with the Bad Tv effect and a red bar with transparent text saying the title of the song 'Excuse My Rude' going across it and the same thing is done at the end except this time the duo's name 'XO' on the red bar. Also we start our video in broad daylight and after the second verse all of our clips have been shot at night, we did this because it was something that was mentioned in one of our lessons when we was doing our research and we thought that it would be a really good technique to use to be able to follow this part of the theory.

Beginning = Bat Tv effect, Red Bare with title of song & Shot in Broad daylight

Ending = Bad Tv effect, Red Bar with the duo's name & shot at night time

Easily recognizable Item

  

Sunglasses
We chose to use sunglasses as our synergy item, in most of the clips in our video our artist is seen with these sunglasses on, We planned to make sure that our duo would be wearing there sunglasses in our video and in the images that will be on our digipak items.  

What videos influenced us

Rizzle Kicks - Down with the trumpets

Many of my ideas came from this video. I decided to focus on the Rizzle Kicks because the duo was similar to what I thought our duo should be like, young, british, cheeky and normal, these all come across in this video and when I was watching it I was also looking at the framing and the way that the video has been shot. A specific idea that I got from this video was the artist walking towards the camera and the camera moving backwards giving the artist space to walk in front, this is seen at 0:31, 0:38, 0:41 and other places in the video. 
Our Example


Another technique I got from this video was the camera circling the artist while they sang to the camera, this is seen at 1:40 - 1:47 .
 Our Example



Also the way the duo sings each others lines, in this video when one of the artist is singing or rapping there verse the other is behind them dancing and sometimes saying some of the lyrics of the other persons verse.

Our Example
  

 What we Challenged
In the end what we decided to do is keep most aspects of the Pop Genre and challenge 'The Male Gaze', We wanted our video to be as relatable as possible to other young children and teenagers so we kept it quite normal and innocent.

What we Developed
Another thing we challenged was the variety of shots used in the first verse. Instead of having loads of different shots we thought it would be a good idea to take the risk of having most of the shots from the first verse 'In your face' so we made majority of these shots close of up of the artist singing to the camera. We did this because of the meaning of the song and the lyrics, the song is referring to somebody who is quite selfish and arrogant and the verse comes in quite forcefully so we thought by having many close ups in the beginning would make it more effective 

Ancillary
Reminder of the Do's and Donts

My Ancillary Work

 How I Applied the Dos and Donts
The Dos and Donts state that you can use a maximum of 2 fonts, what I've chosen to do is use one font in different ways. The Font that I used was 'Century Gothic', as you can see above, I used it normally, I used it in Bold and I even changed the colour in some cases but the font has stayed the same throughout. I added no extra unwanted effects to the font, the only thing that I have added is a simple 5xp stroke to the title of the songs on the track listing and this is hardly a special effect.

I did Challenge the rules of the text a little bit. The Checklist mentions that text shouldn't be over an image or the artist's face and what I did was put the album title 'Excuse My Rude' over an image at the bottom, I did this because I thought it was a nice area to put it and there was barely any space left to place it. 

I kept within the colour limit by only using red and white as my main colours but it can come across like i challenged this rule because I used an image on the back panel that is very colourful.

All the Images that I have used are all in Focus and haven't been stretched or altered to make them look weird. A risk that i have taken with an Image that I have used was adding an effect. In the inside panel i have used one image to cover both sides, I added an effect to enhance the colours to add to the pop genre but in the list of dos and donts it says nit to use unnecessary Image effects.