Final Product - Music Video

 

 

 

 

Final Product - Website

http://genevievecorich.wix.com/repotage1#

 

Final Product - CD Digipack

CD Digipack

For the front cover we chose to use a classy photograph with the girls dressed in fashionable clothes. We edited the photograph with spot removal, and used various layers to make the photograph look more professional. For the name of the band "Reportage" we used an "Apple Cherry" font, and another font for the name of the album, because it is conventional for the band to have its name always written in the same font. This is done for the audience to instantly recognise the familiar band. Therefore the name of the album was done in font "Courier new" and with bevel and emboss tools the 3D effect was achieved. 

We used a photo of our full band for the left inside of the digipack. The photo is from the All you need is now track music video. We put the names of every girl above for the audience to become more familiar with them and identify with them! We made the image purple to match with the theme colour and thus other pictures. 

For the right inside of digipack (where the CD is going to be) we used a picture of the camera lens to represent the idea of girls being fashionistas and the idea about voyeurism as well. The photo was cropped from the initial picture of the video camera we used on the day of filming our music video, and you can see a stage reflection in it. It was also made purple to identify with other pictures. We edited the background on the Texture tool to make it more glamorous and unusual. 

For the back cover we used a black and white colour and added on a photo of a fabric. The "courier new" was used for the name of the songs in order to keep up with the idea of using the same fonts through out the whole digipack. Bevel and emboss were used again to create a 3D effect.  They were also made purple to go along with other purple pictures. The name of the album on the side bar was written in vertical but not horizontal in order to challenge the conventions of the CD Digipack. 

Task 4 - Director's Commentary

In out Director's Commentary we talked about :

• Idea creation/development
• Digital Technologies
• Hardware/ Software
• Online software
• Feedback

Task 4 - Script

Here is the script for the Director's Commentary we just filmed today:)

 

 

 

Task 4 - Post Production

In our post-production process I have used Final CutPro software to do the rough cut and the whole editing of our music video. The software was uploaded to a Mac computer. Final Cut Pro is a very convenient piece of software, which has all the necessary options for the professional editing. We binned all the shots and named them to know which shots are in which bin, and them lip-synced all the shots. I cropped, cut and swapped the shots as I needed(in groups to create more tension) to receive a perfect image. 

For the website I have used online piece of software Wix.com. It enabled me and my group to create a free design of the website for our band "Reportage", which is an essential promotional tool.

In order to create a CD digipack, I have used Adobe Photoshop. There are a lot of filters and tools to manipulate for the digipack to look as much of a 'real product' as possible.

After the video was edited perfectly, I converted it into the HD quality and uploaded to the YouTube, in order to contribute to the UGC and make our video become global and receive the feedback.

In conclusion, my understanding and the skills in using the digital technologies improved a lot, since I have never spent that much time with such a big variety of technological products. Especially, those I had had no idea how to use previously e.g.Adobe Photoshop, Wix. All members of my group put a lot of creativity in our coursework thereafter our progress is noticeable.I feel confident in using all the technological products me and my group faced during the process of the work on our music video, CD digipack and website and I feel i acquired a big progress in my technological skills, partly due to the convergence because all the software and hardware are much easier to use nowadays in the Online Age.

Task 4 - Production

Production:
During the production process I have used the professional camera Sony FS 100 to get the best quality of the picture. I have used 3 types of lenses, they were Zeiss prime lenses with no zooming option. 18mm lens for the widest shots, 25mm for medium and 50mm for Close-ups and Extreme CU.
Additionally, I along with my group used Canon 5D camera, with the same lenses as we used for Sony FS100, to film the 'photoshoot' part of the music video.
The Canon camera also enabled us to make a time lapse, as a part of the record of the process of us using the technologies (filming our music video). Here it is:

Task 4 - Pre-Production

Pre-production:
During the research and planning process of the music video I have used a lot of digital technologies that due to the convergence allowed me to make the music video, CD digipack and website successful.  I used wide range of technologies because it was essential for the developing of the work on the coursework. Firstly, I have use Google as a research platform for finding the song which was appropriate for the music video and researching the stars and their star images as an inspiration and ideas.

YouTube has been used as a platform with the User Generated Content I used to research the real media products, ideas from which I have used for the development of the video. I also have done the animatic as a part of research and planning which enables our group to understand and imagine our final product and how is going to look like. For this purpose I have used Sony NX5 video cameras in order to get the good quality which was necessary because I then uploaded the animatic to the YouTube.

Throughout the whole coursework every each of us have been using the EBlogger to record all the steps and progression we have done during the re-production. In order for the record to be more vivid i have filmed and took the pictures of everything me and my group did, my IPhone 5  helped me in that activity. Due to the convergence the pictures and video were very easy to post and make:)

Task 3 - What have I learned from audience feedback (Prezi)

Task 3 - Feedback from the survey

We created a survey on Monkey survey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3Q8ZL9J about our music video, using a multiple question design. This enabled us to collect the data in  such a way that it is easy to analyse and represent it in a graph. We emailed it to members of our target audience. 



From this data it is clear that most of the people who answered our questionnaire are females.

From this data we can see that all of these people who listened to our music video like pop music. However, some of them also like other types of music as well

All of the people who responded to our survey liked our music video, suggesting that we were able to create a music video that is appealing to our target audience.

All of them agreed that we represented the style of the music well through our video showing us that we were successful in creating a good pop video.

They also all agreed that we successfully chose our band members. This also shows us that we were able to create a good music video for our genre.

They generally tended to agreed that the cast represented the music genre well. Further ensuring us that we chose the right people for our music video.

Half of the people stated that they would like to watch the music video again.

For this we chose to allow them to write their answer as we could not formulate the question in a multiple choice question.However, this means that we can’t represent the data on a graph and we have to interpret what our audience is saying. From this question we realised that our audience did not fully understand our message, and we need to communicate it better through our other products.

From this we realised that a minority of our audience saw our music video as having a negative message. This was very interesting as we assumed that everyone would see our music video as being positive.

Task 3 - Survey Monkey

We decided to use Survey Monkey, which is a free online software, that enables people to do web surveys easily and quickly :) We are going to use it to create the survey we can send a link to to the members of our target audience, so that they can leave comments and answer our questions that can be easily analysed and put into the graph to identify the statistics about the audience and overall feedback about our music video!

Task 3 - Focus group questions

Questions

Do you like the video, is so, what do you like about it?

Would you watch this video out of choice? If so where and when?

What would you get out of watching this?

The overall look of the band is very different, having a female sing a males lead,  do you think this works in our favour?

What do you think the concept is for this video, the message and meaning behind it?

Do the girls present themselves in a positive way, if so, how?

Do feel you relate to the band, is so, in what way?

What do you think this band stands for?

What attitudes do they represent?

Do the band members look and work well together?

Would you show other people this video, sharing and linking?

In what ways do you think this video could be improved and why?

What is your initial thoughts towards our website and DigiPack?

Prezi - Task 3

Today, we familiarised ourselves with the piece of online piece of software -  "Prezi" ! Signed up to have an account and watched the tutorials in order to find our the mechanism of it and therefore be able to create my own Prezi on task 3!

http://prezi.com/index/

Task 3 - Focus Groups

A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.

Task 3 - Audience statistics from YouTube

We logged on to Hurtwoodmedia Channel on YouTube in order to investigate the statistics about the gender, age, nationality, frequency, demographics etc. of our music video. These findings will also help us to identify our target audience, which inevitable for creating of the questionnaire and survey process since we need to ask those people who we are targeting  but not someone who show no interest to our product!

 

Our video has been watched by people from Ukraine, Denmark, Singapore, United Kingdom and France! These are big countries from not only Europe but Asia as well, which means our video became global with the help of sharing and collaboration of audiences! Woohoo! 

 

 

 

It is clearly seen from the statistics(scree grabs above) that our target audience are females aged 13-17 years old (51,83%) which means our video was mainly watched by our peers, maybe students from our school/media students, which resembles what we were expecting, since our video is targeting to the fashionista kind of people, who admire beauty and 13-17 years old are those who are interested in that kind of activity. Another big figure(12,75%) is females of 18-24 years old, who are interested in rebellious kind of style and fashion, suggesting we identified right target audience previously! The number of males(4,9%) watching our video is quite small, although we thought males would like to have a look at beautiful models singing, however this is not the case, but that is not a problem for us, since we didn't identify males as our TARGET audience.

Task 3 - What have we learned from audience feedback?

In order to get the audiences' feedback and assess how effective was our video in representing the ideas we have tried to show, we uploaded it to the YouTube on Hurtwood House media channel. YouTube is video-sharing website, on which users can upload, view, comment and share videos.  Consequently, all students, friends and people interested in either Hurtwood house media portfolios or Duran Duran had a chance to watch and evaluate what we have done! Our video have got 658 views so far and we are waiting for more views and some comments on!


"All You Need Is Now

hurtwoodhousemedia·414 videos
422

658 views"

Evaluation Task 2 - How effective is the combination of our product and ancillary task

Task 2 - My Contribution

Since Task 2 is a group task we decided no to do it all together but separate all the points among each other and then put them all together in a presentation with the help of SlideRocket!. Every one gathered the information about particular important aspects of the combination of our Music video and ancillary task!

I have collected and prepared the information about the star image of our band and its importance for successful marketing of the band. Here it is:

Task 1 - Conventions of the music video

A Music Video is anexcellent tool to promote the artist as well as the song there fore it is very common to use close-ups of the lead singer.  Having many close ups of the singer in our music video therefore conforms to the conventions of a music video as it helps create the sex symbol of the artist. You can se this in many different music videos "Girls Aloud - Something New"

Our Music Video if filled with intertextual references to Robert Palmer’s video Addicted to love 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcATvu5f9vE 


According to Pete Fraser and Steve Archer: "Not all audiences will necessarily spot a reference and this need not significantly detract from their pleasure in the text itself, but grater pleasure might be delivered by those who recognise the reference and feel flattered by this."



We also used intertextual references to fashion, for example the close-ups of shoes and the photo shoot. This conforms to the conventions of music videos, as it is very common to reference fashion in music videos as the two industries are closely linked.

 

Our music video, similarly to Robert Palmers' touches on the theme of voyeurism. The use of the male gaze is very prominent as it helps create a sexy star image for our band. This also conforms to the conventions of a music video, especially for female bands as it helps promote them to both a female and a male audience. The female audience would like the band as they would aspire to be as attractive as them and the male audience would look at the video as they are all attractive and sexy artists performing.

We used performance shots in our music video. This means our video is conventional, according to Pete Fraser and Steve Archer:"The lip synch close-up and the miming of playing instruments remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it. "

 Usually, music videos are 3 minutes long, since  it shouldn't be too long as audience might get bored. However, our music video breaks this convention because it is 4:27 minutes long, therefore can be judged as unconventional, like for example 

Eminem - Stan