WHERE... WHEN... TIME...

As this our final year of A LEVELS, we are so busy with all our other subjects that we are unorganised. Time is running out, so we have to agree on where and when we can film. Now that we have found our right song this time, we need to start cracking on!Sometimes 1 of us may be unavailble to be meet up and not do some work, so we have agreed that if 1 of us are not there we have to make up for the time that we have missed and take turns in what we do. As my main role was the camera women it was important that I am always there. If i am busy and can not make it, Chanel will take over. We did not start filming on time because we were still stuck on making a final choice of our song, so that delayed us and we had to quickly come up with good ideas for our music videos. We had a group meeting and spoke about when it was best for us to meet up and film, we all had a few free lessons, so we could do it then, We also had to think about where we would film, we had to go back and look at our ideas before filimng in places, once we had our destinations it was easy for us to film.

EVALUATION

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

Here is a powerpoint of all the media technologies that i have used in A2 alongside information about them.

Theresa powerpoint for evaluation 4

EVALUATION

Evaluation Question 3:
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

EVALUATION

Evaluation Question 2:
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary product texts?

After finishing our music video we had to design our own Digipak and Magazine Advert. Before we came up with the ideas and started planning we decided that we would  get ideas from our inspirations, and famous music idols whom share the same genre as my group. BEYONCE and RIHANNA. Their magazine adverts are outstanding and beautiful as well as eye catching and persuasive. As we all look up to them, we are inspired by their gorgeous work. We wanted our Magazine Advert to look really lovely as we put a lot of effort into it i personally think it was 5 stars! We put Corinne Vielle's name in big and bold font alongside the release date so that our audience are aware of when the album is available.

Beyonce's magazine advert is very similar to mine when it comes to the background colour. Both images are black and white, we did not want o much going on, so we kept it plain black but still came out effective. 




















Rihanna has inspired and persuaded us to use red lipstick on our magazine advert because we wanted our magazine advert to stand out as well as being immediately eye catching. This creates the same innocent  mood. The red lipstick is to represent love, lust and romance. All these themes are portrayed in our music video. The release dates on both magazine adverts are in bigger text than than the other text to indicate when to get the album. The lips were originally white so we made them red by using a special effect on Photoshop. We wanted the red lips to be bold, striking and bright.






















We decided to use the image on our magazine advert on the front cover our Digipak to show a connection with the advertisement  to persuade our audience to purchase our album. As a group we decided to stick to a specific colour scheme for our ancillary task and that was RED. By using red we wanted to show that the colour was being represented as love/romance. On the other hand the colour red is also known for danger or evil, so we wanted to make it clear that the reason why we used red was to symbolise intimacy, love and romance. On our digipak all the images are soft especially when it comes to the face expressions, lack of make up and the positioning of her body.













Finally, i personally feel that the combination of our main product and ancillary task were all made to a reasonable standard and they all met the requirements  that they were supposed to meet. My main product and ancillary task also complimented each other especially when it come to be being effective. Reasons being that the main image on our magazine advert had a message to our audience and that was love, romance and   bit of lust. All theses messages were shown on my digipak. When it cam to designing and creating both digipak and magazine advent, the use of colours were important. We wanted the colours to be soft by using by using a faded black and whit and then used the red on the lips so it would be bold and stand out. At first we just made the background a mixture of black and white and made the lips red but we did not get what we wanted and did not look attractive so we changed it, and from there it was just right. Black, white and red were the main colours we came up with and hose colour remained consistent in our ancillary task. We wanted the background of the magazine to black so everything else would stand out. In our digipak we used red quite a lot, we used a variation of images that had red lips to make the digipak more seductive and effective. We used red roses to represent romance and the text was red and white. As Valentines Day was coming up, I came up with the idea of when the album should be released and the main colour of Valentines has always been red. Our ancillary task prepared the audience for what they would see in my main product which is my music video.                          

                   

                    

EVALUATION

Evaluation Question 1:
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The finish product of my music video uses conventions and challenges them.
Before  thinking and planning my 3-5 minute music video, as a group we had to think of what our music video may consist of. So we referred to the conventions that we were taught by our teacher in class and they consisted of:

• Had to be an unsigned artist
• Any genre of music
• No foul language or violence

We definately wanted the genre of our nmusic video to be something that we all three like and that R'n'B.
As the genre of our music video is R'n'B we decided to make it a romantic love song. So the rhythm of the song was slow and had a soft base. We also made decisions together and wanted to use smooth transitions like fade ins and fade outs instead of just using straight cuts because it would not realistic enough or would not be effective.
Our song 'Therapy' is quite a slow song, so when it came to the editing part, we had to be careful when making cuts, because the lip syncing had to be in time of the song. Also when we were making cuts we had to ensure that when we made cuts they had to be in time of the beat in order for it to go well with the pace of the song.
My music video has a wide variation of shots  that are very similar  to real artist videos in the music industry. My video also shares some ideas regarding the same story line as other R'n'B artists. 
Before filming as a group, we had a discussion and spoke about what artist in the industry is similar to our artist Corinne Vielle, mainly talking about the sound. We came up with popular artists such as Rihanna and Beyonce. We also watched a few of their videos to help us get a range of ideas that would help us for our music video. As Rihanna and Beyonce both come under the category of R'n'B, it did help us as most of their songs are either to do with love, romance or sexual emotions.
Furthermore i went to do more research into Beyonce Knowles, she is an R'n'B singer in America and is known world wide for her extravagant music videos as well as for her beautiful singing. Beyonce's music video also consist of a variation of shots. By doing more research i found out that she is known for using close ups when it come to her romantic/love music videos. This shows to the audience that there are emotional references and indicates pure intimacy as well as communication. Therefore we thought that it would be a great idea to involve these kind of shots in our media product. 
Here are a few close up shots from her music video and here is a close up shot from my music video...



The use of black and white was important to portray in our music video as the black and white shots convey the past and shows the audience how much they love each other and what they have between them is special. In addition, the colour shots are to represent to the present and this shows the audience that they are inseparable and she always thinks about him. The use of black and white shots was a good transition to use, because it made it clear to the audience that the shots not in colour were flash backs.
The use of fades throughout my music video challenges real media conventions reason being, in a real media product fade ins and fade outs are barely used and if they are used, they are usually used to fade out the end of a music video. 


As i said before we didn't just want to use straight cuts all the way through because it would be less effective. A straight cut is a type of transition used to separate clips. A cross fade is emerging two images together, we used cross fades to soften the cuts and to also match the story line.




I did further research into another artist who i listen to often. Her name is Keyshia Cole who is also an R'n'B singer and known for her romantic videos. 'You complete me' is one of her best songs, and has romantic lyrics, even by the name of the song tells you that the song is all about the person she loves.
Here is the video...

As I have mentioned Rihanna's name before she is known for her touching lrics, she always produces 'feel good' songs and would always have a romantic feel about it too. So we thought we would develop our music video by getting a few ideas from her music video.
Developing more of the R'n'B convention
R'n'B music videos are often romantic as well as sexual.
Trey Songz- 'Neigbours know my name'
Video...

Nicki Minaj- 'See right thru me'
Vdeo...

Here are some screen grabs that show intimacy as well as sexual emotion form both of the videos above and from my video...






Trey Songz 'Neighbours know my name'  had a big influence on me personally because it was a really intimate song and that could have helped us develop more on our song but as a group we looked at other artist that had sexual scenes. Trey Songz had quite a sexy video as well as emotional communication just like towards the end of my music video. We wanted to leave the audience questions on what they thought would happen next. Furthermore, we didn't want the actors to go nude as that would be unacceptable or our task, so they kept their clothes on and it was an exception.
Developing media product conventions (Lip syncing)

One of the key conventions we had to follow in order to complete our music video was to lip sync. Lip syncing is not just a regular convention in the genre of R'n'B it is used in all types of genre whether it is Soul or Pop. Most of the artists in the industry lip sync in their videos so we had to get used to it. It was a fun and a good experience especially when it came to the editing.  As a group we had to ensure that the lip syncing in our music video existed throughout so that we showed we were developing  the use of conventions in our music video. 

DIGIPAK

MAGAZINE ADVERT

Audience Theory

The Effect Models
'The power lies with the message of the text'


The Hypodermic Model
The messages in the media texts are injected into the audience by the powerful syringe like media. The audience is powerless to resist therefore the media works like a drug and the audience is DRUGGED, ADDICTED, DOPED and DUPED.


Key evidence for the Effects Model
The Frankhurt School theorised in the 1920's and 30's that the mass media acted to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitilsm and governments.


The Bobo Doll Experiment
This is a very controversial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour. This was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura who was American.
In the experiment:
Children watched a video game where an adult attacked a clown toy called a Bobo doll.
The children were taken into a room with attractive toys that they were not allowed to touch. 
The children were then led to another room with Bobo dolls.
88% of the children imitated the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children reproduced the same violent behaviour.


The conclusion reached was that the children will imitate violent media content. There are many problems with the experiment. In my opinion children do copy what they see, they can not help it. This is reality, but on the other hand people learn in different ways.


The Effects Model (backed up by the Bobo doll) is still the dominant theory used by politicians, some parts of the media and some religious organisations in attributing violence to the consumption of media texts.


Key examples cited as causing or being contributory factors are:
The film Childs Play 3.. in the murder of James Bulger in 1993

Theory

The consumption of the media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience. Everything we watch and everytime watch something e.g a film we are effected. It is normally considered that the effect is negative for example a video game.
Audieneces are passive and powerlessto prevent the influenece.
For example i have put a few adverts below to shpw how much we can be effected and don't even know. All the adverts persuade people to buy their products, and suprisingly it works, most mums use Cilit bang or Shake and Vac.

Even today we are still inspired by using Shak n Vac. This advert was made 60 years ago and now as it was the 6oth anniversary of Shake n Vac, she decide to make a new hip version of it and people still buy and use Shake n Vac today. 

Critical Therory

Audience Theory

There are three theories of audiences that we can apply to help us understanding about the relationship between texts ann audience.


1. The effect model or the Hypodermic Model. (Way of describing what might happen)
2. The uses and graphications models. (To satisfy needs)
3. Reception Theory.


Why do audience choose to consume certain texts?

• Boredom
• Interested
• Popularity

How do they consume text?

• Internet
• Social Networks
• TV
• Magazines

What happens when they consume the text?

Model of the media
Text...Audience

• Film
• Advert
• Newspaper
• Website
• Computer games
• Magazines
• Radio

The institutions consume the text
For example instutions such as:

• Youtube
• Paramount
• Disney
• Sony
• Warner Brothers
• BBC
• MTV
• Cinemas(Cinewrold, Odeon,Vue etc

The roles of the institution:

• Advertise
• Promote
• Produce
• Distribute
• Exhibit
• The Link btween the INSTITUTION and TEXT is FINICIAL TRANSACTION

Audience Feedback

Our video is finished and now we want to show it off to people.They are many ways of getting audience feedback. For example having a focus grup, going on Survey money, having an ordinary questionnaire. An easier and trendy was would be posting it on popular social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.

  


As i do not have facebook, i have kindly asked Chanel to post the video onto her facebook and people can comment on it saying whether they like it or not.



Chanel said that most people said the song was catchy and the music video suits the song perfectly. That is exactly the response that we wanted.

February Half Term :)

After the term i am going start focusing on my exam in June.
Be back soon :)

MAGAZINE ADVERT COVER

We finally finished our MAGAZINE ADVERT. As a group, we had to think of a creative and the best way of creating our magazine advert. We thought of Photoshop. I have heard of it before, thought it had something to do with photos, i was kind of right. Photoshop is a software for creating and experimenting photos, this include people make photos 3D..motion graphics editing, and advanced image analysis features. As you can see below this is the outcome of our final magazine advert which was used by Photoshop.

DIGIPAK OUTCOME

These are pictures of what our DIGIPAK looks like


FRONT COVER
BACK COVER
CREDITS
INSIDE COVER 1
INSIDE COVER 2

Process for copying images on to magazine advert

We learnt that in order for us to get an image like the rating stars/ hmv logo and itunes icon to move from google onto our magazine advert, we had to save the images on to the desktop by print screen the images using Cmd, shift and 4 on the imacs. We then opened the images on to different layers on photoshop so that we are able to open them independantly and pressed a dragging tool to highlight the image, then cmd and c to copy the image, we then pressed the a moving tool and cmd and v to paste and drag the image onto the magazine advert and were able to move them independantly depending on the layer that was highlighted.

Process of producing Magazine advert

These are screen shots of when we were in the process of editing our photo and making it better. Photoshop was hard to use at frist but then we got used to it, we wanted our magazine advert to look it best :)
We decided to use out album cover for our magazine advert and have all the information including: 

• the artist name
• the name of the album
• the release date
• where it will be available  (HMV) (ITunes)
• the website 
• rating stars 

We made text box's on photoshop to add the above information. Each time we added a new bit if information, we had to add a new layer so that we could move the information around independently.

Example of Magazine Adverts

The name of the artist above is RIHANNA, she is a R'N'B singer and that is her magazine advert. Rihanna chose not took look directly into thye camera, her physical apperance is to be described as vulnerbale. I personally love the fact that she is not lookin direcftly into the camera. It give the magazine advert more ummmppphhh and spice!


The colours used in Rihanna's magazine advert are similar to the colours that we would like to use in our magazine advert because our video is about love and romeance and I came up with the idea for the album coming out on Valentines day and put the date in Red. The close up mid shot of Rihanna shows that she is not dominant which is also portrayed through some of her lyrics in her songs.


In her magazine advert the RED that is used stand out and is bright, so Rihanna has inspired us to also use Red. We want our Magazine advert to be eye catching, we will also use Red lipstick on Amanda and edit it to make it look very profession-able and beautiful.




The name of the artist above is Called BEYONCE. I have spoken about Beyonce in my previous posts, as I said before Beyonce is the best example similar to Corinne Vielle when it come to sound and lyrics. The chose of colours was very clever. She used Black and white, and gold/silver. The main part of her costume is in colour, that stands out, if you look closely her eyes are in colour too. Black and white images show glamour and class. Beyonce Knowles is an inspiration to all especially women and young girls. 


For our magazine advert, we have decided to combine the two of Rihanna's colour and Beyonce's black and white to show class and glamour and power for the Red. This will definately stand out if we combine the two colours.

Time to work on Magazine Advert

After taking pictures for our Digipak, we finally made our decision on what photos we would use....

Now it is time that we started working on or Magazine Advert. I've seen a lot of Magazine adverts in the past, especially from famous Artists such as Beyonce Knowles, Kanye West and Jennifer Lopez. A magazine Advert has to PERSUASIVE in order for people to purchase the single or album. So that is what we are going to do!!

Pictures for our Digipak

As a group  we went out to take pictures of possible images that we would use for our digipak. Once the decisions are finally made, we will use a programme call Photoshop on the Imac. From there we can alternate the images to what evre we like.

Ideas for our Digipak

As we are coming to the end of the process to completing our music video we thought we would take a lesson off to discuss what images we could consider having for the front cover, inside 2 covers and back cover of our digipak. In the end we decided that we would go for a black and white image with red lipstick because Red represents romance which is what our music video is about. We chose to have red lipstick so that it stands out rather than having the whole digipak red as that could come across as quite tedious and not so eye catching. 

The target audience that our digipak would reach would be expanded amongst females and males now that the red lipstick is involved. For most women, they are very emotional so will get drawn in by the name and the front cover pose as it gives a clear image of the song is going to be about without even listening to the track. 

For men, they may walk past the digipak and find that young lady on the front of the digipak attractive and look into the red lipstick as a lust figure rather than romance and may gain interest to the song and artist in that way.


This is the front cover of RIHANNA'S album, as you can see the idea of the red lips is what we want, it stands it very clearly as it a bold bright colour.

Survey Monkey after Music Video

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

On Youtube

This is a screen shot of outting our music video onto youtube.

FINAL A2 MUSIC VIDEO FINISHED :) ... THERAPY

DEADLINE APPROACHING

Deadline is soon, got so much to do. As a group we have worked so much on our music video, we still have to do other things,we are happy with what we have done but now is a good time to think about our ideas for our digipak and magazine advert. We don't have much time, so we have thought when we are free and come back after school or come back in our free lessons to do some work.