Link to my AS blog

http://marie-chantel.blogspot.co.uk/

 

(AS blog school magazine)

 

 

http://marie-cmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/

 

(AS blog music magazine)

Evaluation question 4

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

evaluation question 3

http://voicethread.com/share/5697144/

(if you cannot see the video please type the link into the search bar where you will be redirected to the website in which you can view and comment on the link)

above is an unstructured interview I did with one of my target audience members, I texted her the questions and allowed her to video herself talking about my product in a comfortable setting, so that she would feel no pressure in giving me honest feedback including any constructive criticisms (luckily she didn't give me any) 

I used two social media platforms in order to gain feedback from my audience. I felt that this was a good platform to gain audience feedback because it demonstrates how technological convergence is a prominent thing within my target audience, proved by the fact that they can access my music video through an app on their Iphones. As well as that I wanted the audience to feel comfortable and be themselves when talking about my music video, because my target audience were frequent users of instagram, a photo/video sharing social netwroking app, I felt that would be the best place for them to be able to express how they really felt about the music video. You can see the fact that they were comfortable in the use of colloquial language and iPhone emoji’s, I would argue that this same comfortable feeling wouldn’t be able to be achieved with a method of gaining feedback such as a structured interview, as they would probably feel like they had to be formal. I exported my music video into youtube which enables people to leave comments on your video, so it was fitting to to get research from that online platform also. 

Questionnaire

from my questionnaire I learnt that:

•    8/10 people liked the video. 
• 9/10 people preferred the fact that the video was played on vevo rather than a TV based show such as MTV. 
•  On a scale of 1-10 70% of people voted 7/10 in terms of how much they liked the digipak. 8/10 said they could see the link between the poster/ digipak and the video. 
• On a scale of 1-10 90% of people said that they would buy the album

Evaluation question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks

In order to ensure that both our digipak and poster linked as much as possible to our music video there was several different elements we had to consider which include; colour scheme, Fonts, mise-en-scene, and the use of the main characters themselves.

colour scheme 

We had a stringent colour scheme of four main colours both in our music video and our ancillary texts which were gold, black, white and red. Our music video was quite a dark and depressing one, we felt that the use of a wide array of colours would not fit the general the theme of our music video and ancillary task. We wanted each colour on our ancillary texts to be iconic and associate with a different element in our music video. [White – links to the female character in our video, she is young and pure and this is reflected in the white colour, as well as that white is associated with the colour of angels, which brings up questions as to whether she is dead or alive. Black – the black links back to the whole general mood of our music video which is has quite a gloomy, depressing feel to it, (we made the decision to make the male character wear black on the front cover to reflect the dark mental state he is currently in).  Gold – the gold has two meaning, one is that it shows that love was once vibrant and alive between the main two characters in our video. The second is  that it relates back to our research in which RnB/Rap artists include Gold in their promotional texts to show of the wealth which a lot of them tend to speak about in their songs.] the use of such a strict colour schemes created synergy across all of our products.

font

The use of font was also a big part in ensuring that our ancillary texts and our music videos all linked together to create one collective product. To ensure continuity we use the same Birch STD font at the start of our music video, and then on each of the 5 different products of the ancillary texts. This ensured that our audience would then be able to associate the font they have seen on the music video to the font they can see then see on the digipak and poster, the repetition will helps to guarantee that the audience will identify that specific font is with our artist overa long period of time. The font for us was also important because it was manly yet had a gothic type of look to it, which relates with the tone of our music video, if we had used a font like Comic Sans for example which is quite a fun and bubbly font it would have been misleading to the audience as to what type of genre our music video is.

In this collage you can see the strict colour scheme and font come together in a way that links all the ancillary texts back to the video 

mise-en-scene

For our digipack and poster the mise-en-scene was essential in linking the ancillary texts back to our main product. We maintained the iconographic image of bottles throughout both the music video and then carried this on to the front cover in order to create synergy between the two. The bottle was also used as a symbolic tool to engrave the message of alcohol dependency that derives from the plot line and the music video. The use of the rose next to the lit candle relates back to the end of our video where he begins to burn the images of the female character, we wanted to get our point across that he had now burnt the pictures in a bid to forget about her and now maybe he can get some peace which is signified by the use of the candle on the back cover. The use of the rose also was significant of the female character in our music video because roses are seen to be a feminine flower which connote love and romance but also danger and fatality with its red colour, this audience is able to identify the use of the rose back to the plotline of the video where the audience assumes that the male and female character were once romantic before something fatal happened.

use of the main characters 

Lastly what better way to combine the music main product with the ancillary texts than to use the main characters from the music video on the ancillary texts? We used the image of the main characters on our front cover and our poster as a form of connecting the ancillary texts back to our music video. Even though the audience cannot see the female characters face, because of the fact that they are aware of the plotline which tells the story of the hold she has over him, they immediately recognize that it is her as her arms  are wrapped around his neck, to visually represent the confinement within the mental state he is under, in the music video. To conclude I am positive that our combination of our main product and ancillary texts link together effectively, to portray the message which of alcohol dependency and depression which we anticipated.  As well as that my audience feedback assures me that the audience understands the basis behind the choice of the colour scheme and can link the digipack and poster back to our music video, which leads to me to argue that we have been successful in achieving a digipak, poster and music video which combine effectively to create one collective brand/product. 

Evaluation question 1

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

For our media coursework project, collectively we made a final decision to construct a music video for the song ‘Swimming Pools’ by Kendrick Lamar, we later did a digipak and poster for the album that the song would be featured on. After researching into the forms and conventions of music videos and specifically into the genre of music videos were focusing on (RnB/Rap) we were able to gain an understanding of what we should be striving to achieve when we created our own music video. I began by looking at the music videos produced by similar artists to Kendrick Lamar. Videos such as J-Cole ‘power trip’ and Wale ‘Bad found on the vevo channel on Youtube helped me gain a better knowledge of the forms and conventions of this genre specific music videos along with what a makes a music video effective as a piece of promotional material along with their digipaks and posters.

Andrew Goodwin was the director of music and organist at Bangor cathedral for thirty seven years whom established a theory regarding the key features, characteristics and conventions by looking at six main aspects which he argues we look out for as an audience. One of the first aspects Goodwin discusses is how in all music videos there is a relationship which illustrates, amplifys or contradicts the lyrics. Whilst researching existing music videos of from the RnB/Rap genre the re-occurring aspect were narrative based videos. I noticed how a lot of the music videos’ visuals I looked at had a complete similarity to the lyrics of the song although the words were being spoken quite fast, when read on a piece of paper there was a lot of meaning behind them and this was transpired in the music videos as there was always large emphasis on the story lines.  

I have included the above two videos as evidence of how the RnB/Rap genre use narrative based music videos. In the first video the audience follow J-Cole’s story about how his daughter was shot and died by a policeman raiding his house, essentially this is why he has a crooked smile,  J-Cole has used this video to promote this true life story of what happened to a little girl from New York in America, at the end of the video the titles are dedicated to her reading ‘FOR AYIYANA STANLEY-JONES’. In the second video, Lil Wayne tells the story of young ladies who are unaware of how to love, The young girl didn't have a father figure in her life and was abused by men growing, so she takes the wrong path and ends up becoming a stripper so she doesn't know how to love. To end the music video he tells the reverse story of what would have happened if she had a father figure. 

We decided to follow on with this convention, This is to start with why we printed out the lyrics of the song and annotated each verse with our understanding of what the lyrics meant, and how we felt it should be depicted, As well as that every time we filmed, we made sure we had knowledge of what verse we were filming so that we could take shots that were in close relation to what the words were saying. From what we gained from our audience feedback they felt that the narrative of our video was closely matched to the lyrics of the song. He also identified that the visuals within a music video may be edited in time with the change in pace of the song He also stated that these visuals are commonly repeated within a chorus to place emphasis the repetition in the lyrics. This links to closely with our music video because we have used a mix between slow pace visuals and fast paced visuals because to match the beat of our song, and also to match the mood of our song and depict how the male character in our music video is repeating his daily routine in his depressive state of alcohol dependency day in day out. 

  I have compared my music video with Eminem’s video who is a rap artist like Kendrick Lamar. In this voicethread you can see how the lyrics visually relate to what is going on in the music video, for examples when he says ‘their throwing roses at my feet’ you see the crowd throwing roses at his feet. This is similar to my video, the lyrics say ‘okay now open your mind up and listen to me kendrick’ indicating that he is going insane and trying to reach out to his inner conscience and just as you can see in the footage you can literally see him going insane thinking about this girl. 

http://voicethread.com/share/5696867/

(if you cannot see the video please type the link into the search bar where you will be redirected to the website in which you can view and comment on the link)

  Goodwin’s theory recognised that genre related style and iconography is conventionally present in music videos, arguing that artists have a trend of repeating certain actions within their music videos in order to establish this as their ‘trademark’ action, and therefore making their songs recognisable due to it re-occurring so often. In our music video the constant use of iconography was essential, to get across the message of alcoholism there was frequent and constant use of alcohol bottles along with the constant actions of the male model putting his head down, or running his fingers through his head to show that is distressed, this is then transferred to the front cover of the album so the audience immediately recognises that the album cover links back to the music video.

Goodwin also discusses the re-occurrence of multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist to show the importance and create the star and promote a recognisable brand image he argues that this a tool which record labels use in order to promote sales figures. He states that this convention is used throughout videos but is most common with female artists as provocative angles are often used to sexualise the artist, he argues that voyeuristic angles of women are used in order to entice male audiences. This is backed up by Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory which argues that this use of close up imagery causes a fetishation from the audience towards the artists. Although this is true for a lot of RnB/Rap music videos, this is an example of a convention that we challenge, instead of filming lots of close-ups with our male model, we filmed lots of close-ups of our female model, however the audience doesn’t see her in a sexualised way because she is dressed in all white connoting purity and with minimal make-up on. Instead she is used a tool to add mystery and a dramatic element to our music video. The audience see her and wonder who she is and why she keeps haunting this male character, however we have developed this convention in some aspects because she becomes a recognisable brand image later on on the front cover as her arms are over the male characters neck holding a bottle of alcohol, the audience recognises its her without even seeing her face.  

you can see how we have challeneged the convention found in typical RnB/Rap music videos, in the whats my name music video rihianna is highly sexualised, the red hair and heavy make-up, along with the fact that her mouth is slightly open is very sexy and leads to the male gaze. Whereas in our video the female character looks natural with mousy blonde hair and no make-up on, she look innocent, but at the same time she looks quite haunting .

Lastly Goodwin speaks of how intertextual references to other media texts may be present in music videos, he recognised that it was not uncommon to recognise either the visuals or lyrics of a song to be a direct reference to another media text, he argues that this is used to engage the audiences and provide them with gratification if they recognise the link. This is true for the more humerous RnB/Rap videos but our music video was a more more serious, with deep, dark meanings so we decided to leave this convention out of our music video. To conclude it would be correct to argue that our music video uses a lot of already existing media and Rnb/Rap genre conventions throughout the entirety of our music video, whilst only challenging a few conventions, I believe this is a good thing because conventions are a set of stipulated, or generally agreed standard, norms/social norms ways of doing this. We wanted our video to be accepted by this genre of people so it only makes sense to use the conventions whilst adapting some elements where we see fit 


Ancillary tasks 

front cover

I would argue that my CD front cover is conventional. Firstly it features a large image which predominantly shows the male main character, my research states that this enables the audience to immediately recognise the artist and relate the artists’ face back to the music video. Our male artist looks exactly the same in the music video as he does on the cover of our CD, we did this because the general mood of our music video and digipak is quite dark and gloomy, therefore there is no need for glamorisation, The glamorisation element is incorporated in the use of the Gold colour text which is included in a lot of RnB/Rap style artists’ albums. We have incorporated iconography on our front cover by having the female character hold the bottle around his neck, to show that our artist is confined in the walls of this alcohol dependent depressed state of mind. We made sure that the singer’s name is large and bold so that it would immediately grab the audience’s attention, but also show the masculinity of the artist. We used an image as the background of our front cover; this is an example of how we challenged a convention because this isn’t common in the research we found, however we felt that the image was necessary because it meant that there was continuity between the CD/CD case and also from the video where the male character begins to b.urn images of the female character, hence the reason for the smoke

back cover 

 I believe the CD back cover is conventional because it holds all the information which would typically be found on all CD back covers, in terms of copyright information, record label trademark signs and the serial number which we have included on our spine. Also on our spine you see the singers name and album title. The image in the middle of the page of the rose and the candle which looks as if it is illuminating the whole page, This is a strong design element which we discovered when doing our research, you can see that only his face is illuminated on the back cover. We felt that this was a strong design element and wanted to incorporate it into our back cover. However we adapted it by using a rose and a candle.

pamphlet

our inside cover, when researching into RnB/Rap artists we found that it was conventional for this genre of artists not to have an image of themselves on the front cover, but instead to have a meaningful image which related back to the general tone of their album. We also found that they kept a simplistic layout hardly any writing at all. We took this into consideration when picturing and editing our front cover. As you can see we have three candles, candles are often used in prayer when something fatal has happened, or to represent peace. On our pamphlet, we decided on candles because we wanted it to be as if the male character has lit candles in her memory and with hope that one day he will able to forget about her and finally find peace.

You can see by the simplistic design of our media product compared to the simplistic design of the products we have researched just how conventional our CD front cover is. 

CD cover

I personally believe that the simplicity of the CD cover is what adds to the professional look of our CD cover. The fact that the name of the artist and the album title is the only thing written in large text is an eye-catching feature which immediately grabs the audience’s attention. Our copyright information is included on the edge of our CD following the circular CD shape, we decided to include this on our CD cover we noticed it was used in a lot of the genre specific CD covers that we researched. Our CD cover had a black and white smoke design as the cover, the black and white colour scheme is typical of this genre. However we have challenged convention by incorporating an image, I felt that it was a strong design which would add to the design element of our CD cover but also it enabled synergy because it was also the same image as the CD holder and on the front cover meaning that the three images linked together in a visually powerful way. 

Poster

The continuity of the colour scheme from the digipak on to the poster is conventional In this poster I’ve only included the colours, white, black, god and red, real magazines such as the drake one use this to make the promotional poster identifiable to their target market. It would have been wrong to challenge this convention because the whole point of a promotional poster is to promote the album, each colour on the album links back to an aspect of the music video or of the general mood of the album, To use different colours would destroy that sense of continuity and association. Another way in which we followed convention is the fact that we followed the landscape design which all but one of the posters we researched used. We felt that the landscape design gave our media product a more professional look, as it’s a popular choice with real promotional posters.

 the small picture of the album with the iTunes logo above it  is a form of synergy because it links both products together, the audience become aware of what image they should be looking for when they go looking for the album on iTunes. Although it is conventional for artists to include an image of the front cover on their promotional posters, it’s not convention in the RnB/Rap genre for artists to include the iTunes logo. However we felt tht this was necessary as Kendrick Lamar is a mainstream artists who appeals to young audiences. Statistics show that around 70% of young people aged 15-25 are using iTunes to purchase their music, therefore for us it was essential to ensure that those potentially 70% of people are aware that they can access this music on iTunes

We included the parental advisory sign which challenges convention, none of the posters we researched includes the parental advisory sign, however I felt that the sign was necessary because the song swimming pools contains explicit content, some younger audiences may not be able to cope with this, therefore it was important to warn customers before they buy.

 I included the debut release date (on the red strip) along with the fact that he has won 8 Grammys and that he is 37 weeks number 1 on the chart list. The audience is provided with solid reasons why they should spend their money to buy this album; this information proves to them that he is a talented, respectable music artist. This convention is useful on promotional posters because that is the whole reason for a poster to tell the audience why it is essential that they have/buy this album hence why decided to incorporate it onto our poster.

Lastly I used the same image which I used on our front cover on our poster this is conventionally done by real posters because it acts as a form of synergy, linking the poster back to the digipak, by using the same picture over and over again, the audience eventually have it engrained in their memory which helps to promote the album.

final digipak

final poster

Creating the poster

research

when making the poster we were highly inspired by this poster in particular, because we felt that colour scheme matched in the best way with the colour scheme we were trying to go for, secondly we wanted out image go across the full canvas of the page just as this one did, so we felt that features from this layout, along  with adaptations of our own would look best on our poster. 

we took a lot of inspiration on what to write from this poster

Construction

We decided to use the same image on our album for the poster, we found that this was commonly done on promotional album posters so that the audience without even knowing the name, recognise the artist and if they are interested in buying the album, they would immediately know the different avenues they can use to buy the album.  

Our first draft

Using the gradient tool, I tried to re-create the gradients which are seen on the Micheal Jackson and Drake poster because we felt that it gave these posters a strong design element that the other posters did not have. When i actually created the image, both myself and Cally agreed that the gradient fill clashed with the actual image, it just didn’t work as well as we anticipated, so I continued to play around with it on Photoshop. 

I began adding text into the poster, first I had to type out the text into the text box, then using the transform tool, and I then had to rotate the text to the angle which the banner was on one by one so that I could control precisely where it went. We decided to have a slightly see through banner so that the banner wouldn't over-power the image. The information which we chose to include in the poster was highly influenced by the information written on the Micheal Jackson poster, we thought that it was a strong design effect the fact writing ranged from big to small as it descended and decided to incorporate this into our album poster. 

To begin with I did a draft where all of the text was written in Gold on the black banner, however both myself and Cally agreed that if we wrote all the text in gold, we would miss out on the most important pieces of texts that needed to be read by the audience such as the text which reads ‘PRE-ORDER THE MOST HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ALBUM OF THE YEAR’. As well as that the contrast of the two colours worked really well to make our front cover stand out even more

After creating the main aspects of the poster I then went on to create the bottom half of the poster, I included the parental advisory logo which was also featured on our pamphlet, I included the twitter and facebook logo as this is how our target market would spread the word about the video by sharing it with their friends, and also following the artist on twitter or liking his page on facebook. As well as including the facebook and twitter icons, we also included the artists twitter name, along with his facebook website and online website, to make our artist more accessible to his fans, and to make it easier for them to find the artist on the internet.

The iTunes logo alerts fans of where they can buy or pre-order the album, this is why I incorporated and placed it directly on top of where I placed the album front cover, so the audience knows what type of image they need to be looking for on iTunes. Lastly The red banner which is a direct colour match with the red rose on the back cover, I believe is a strong design feature. It adds some colour to the black and white page but doesn’t ruin the design, I placed the date on top of it because it means that the date is very eye-catching, meaning the release date stands out and because of the fact that this is a promotional poster, we want the release date of the album to be one of the first things that the audience see’s. Overall I think our poster looks authentic and has a professional feel to it, I think we managed to achieve this professional look because throughout the time spent making our poster, we made sure we kept referring back to our research when we felt unsure about a certain element. 

  

final front cover

 

creating new front cover

Research

Old front cover 

We also had to change our front cover, because the background of our original front cover uses the roses which were from the internet, we liked our layout and felt we had strong research that related to our front cover, so we thought of some ideas in order to change the background. 

Planning

Construction

Using the same image that we used for our CD cover, we placed the image on a square canvas and edited and played around with it to fit in the correct position which we felt looked best. Using the same image ensures that the front cover relates back to our CD cover, we’ve seen this design feature being used in our research of the ancillary design for example in the drake album where the same image is used throughout the digipak. Continual use of this image makes it become an iconic feature of our of our digipak.

The image was then placed into the middle of the CD, in order to frame it and ensure that the design behind the image could be seen evenly on both sides, placing the image in the middle also meant that the rest of our text and images line up symmetrically in order to give a professional finish product. We then created a Gold boarder similar to our original idea and our research, the Gold relates back to our research, the CD cover and back cover. We ensured that the border colour was the same colour as all the other Gold writing that has been used in our music video and on the ancillary tasks, we wrote down the red, blue and green numbers and typed them in manually. 

We then added text using the font Birch STD which is the same font we have used throughout our digipak and in our music video, we then made it the same gold colour and lined them up symmetrically to the edges of the border in order to give a professional finish. On the bottom of the image we added three roses to give an edge to our design. We tried to use the roses Cally pictures but it just wasn’t giving the same design effect so we referred back to our old CD case and used those roses. To ensure that there was no copyright infringement we emailed the owners of the image to ask for permission to use it and they agreed. 

The lighting wasn't right in these photos, it was quite dark when the photos were taken so the light balance just wasn't correct, hence why we resulted in using the other images of the rose on our front cover. 

Above is how we added the three roses to the bottom of our images.

Final album back cover

Reasons why our new front cover is better than the old front cover

re-creating the back cover

When we were told to change our ancillary tasks due to the plagiarism, initially we tried to stick to our original plan. As cally is a photography student we felt she would be the best individual to try and take these photos, she got her mum to buy her a rose and a bottle and she tried to take images which we could possibly edit to still keep the main features of the back cover the same but with photos we had actually physically taken. several different angles were attempted but the bottle just didn't look right and there was no images which we felt was strong enough to be able to edit as our back cover. these are some shots of some of her attempts.

After having no luck with the bottle just being by itself, she then attempted to take images with the rose in the bottle similar to the computer generated image that was found on our previous back cover.

This is a second attempt

Even though they are good pictures they just didn't look realistic or ‘dramatic’ enough for our back cover. With the second attempt cally tried to control lighting by placing a black background behind the shot.The technique worked, as you can see the light which is being held behind the camera illuminates the rose making it look theatrical and full of meaning, however the shot didn’t work with the bottle so it completely ruined the whole image. Consequently even though we were under a lot of pressure as the deadline was looming over us, myself and Cally felt it would be best to change our design in order to achieve a better quality photo and a better quality back cover.

 Planning 

Before we completely started again, we went back to our research to try and find some new inspiration and ideas that would work better this time around, we looked especially at the John legend back cover of roses and the drawing we did and expanded upon it, we thought that maybe instead of it being a a bunch of roses by it self, we could have one rose which symbolises the mysterious young girl next (as flowers especially roses are very feminine) and they also connote fatality and death with the red colour of it signifying danger but also signifying romance which is hinted at throughtout the duration of our music video and ancillary tasks.  to a candle which could symbolise the hope that the male character has that one day he will stop thinking about this girl, and make himself better by not drinking anymore. To further plan our work, I did a sketch of four different images so that we could get an idea of how we wanted to set out our work.

As you can see the first picture on the right hand side is similar to the first layout we did, the second links back to the rihanna back cover research where her text is behind her writing, the third came from some new research we did, however because we only had 10 song titles at the time, it would only be able to go in two columns, however in the research we did on the artist 'The Weeknd' he uses three columns so I thought it would be a good idea to maybe add 5 more song titles and see how that would turn out. 

new photographs

As you can see this image is far more successful than the images with the rose in the bottle, the rose and candle link together in a theatrical way to portray the messages of fatality and hope, whilst the darkness around the image represents the depression the male character is currently in, however the candle is illuminating the darkness, indicating that he still has hope. There was many problems that occurred whilst taking the photos for example because the lighting was so bright the camera tended to not be able to focus properly, when it did focus it would focus too much on the light and over-expose the candle light, because of this control of the camera lens needed to be very specific.

research

construction

Using Photoshop I placed the image on to a square shaped canvas, and transformed the scale so it was a perfect so it was a perfect size, similar to the size of the main image on the above back cover. The image was perfect, so there was really not much editing to do apart from cut Cally’s hands out of the picture, and correct a few anomalies on the picture. When compared you can see how we have used our research and taken inspiration from it, the only features being illuminated are in the middle of the page, making it look like it is being consumed by the darkness, giving it a dark and eerie feel.

I tried to re-create the same layout which we created on our old blog by moving the image over to the left side of the page and keeping all the writing to the right side of the page; however myself and Cally felt that it just didn’t look right. It looked too overcrowded; the writing seemed too big, nearly touching the bind so it just gave the back cover an unprofessional looked, we could see that it needed to be changed. 

After I changed the layout and added 5 more song titles, we began to look at the colour scheme, at first we were worried that the gold colour text wasn't working with the background, however, our previous research and planning ensured us that gold text works with the black background, whilst researching we found it was a conventional thing for rap artists such as Kendrick Lamar himself, Rick Ross, Jay Z, to incorporate gold with a black background, as it’s a sign of the wealth they have. For us it also shows that before the fatality occurred love was once vibrant and rich between the male and female character. 

I then went on to add the final touches to the back cover, I added on the excutive producers information but left out the record labels information because it would have looked too crowded, however we ensures that it was on the inside pamphlet and on the cover of the CD. Even though I didn’t add the writing about the record labels I included the trademark signs of the record labels, and re-created the spine. Once the text had been moved over slightly to stop it from almost touching the spine of the CD, we felt that we had achieved a professional looking CD back cover