KG - Evaluation

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

The Music Video :

• I think our music video uses forms and conventions of music videos as it is entirely centred on the artist and focused entirely on her, this emphasised by the lack of any other characters in the video and the large number of close ups or ‘meat shots’.

• We also have a fast cutting rate which is conventional; it is also in parts in time to the music. However, we are challenging conventions as some of our shots are long for a music video, but we wanted the cutting rate to reflect the tempo of the music and so we started off slowly and built up as we hit the crescendo of the song, whilst in the middle of the long notes of the song having some fairly long shots to break up the video and get the full impact of the note and the artist’s voice.
  
  
  

• The costumes and makeup in our video are very quirky which reflects the artist’s nature, character and previous videos, along with the rest of the mise-en-scene, which it is safe to say was the thing we most considered when planning the music video, as we felt it was more important to get the right style and feel for this particular artist than having a real narrative. We wanted the video to look good with little things so that people would want to watch it again to see her costumes and to spot new things in the set designs that they may not have noticed before. Regardless, the quirky use of mise-en-scene, particularly costume, is something that is becoming increasingly popular amongst contemporary female artists, such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna, and so our use of this can be seen as developing the newly emerging forms and conventions.
  
• In order to answer this question fully I looked up some of the conventions of the indie genre so as to determine whether or not our video conformed or challenged them:
  
  Forms and conventions of indie genre:[music video]
  • Typically simplistic yet effective.
  • Lo-fi feel,
  • Balance of performance and narrative shots.
  • Performance and narrative shots are normally in alternate locations.
  • Close ups of artist and instruments.
  • Aspects of ambiguity or abstract.

• Our video conforms to the forms and conventions of the genre as it has a very lo-fi feel, obviously as it was made on a low budget, but also because that is an effect that we felt was suitable for our artist and we wished to create a quirky sort of handmade feel rather than a sleek polished movie quality video.

• The video is simple yet effective, particularly with our set designs being made up of everyday objects found in our houses that we have just put outside so as to look interesting and innovative.

• The simplistic nature is also evident in that we only have the one character meaning that it is a very simple video and yet it works well and the actress is capable of holding an audience for the duration of the video, this is because it is exciting to see what her costume will be next and in which location she will be in.

• The other conventions we are keeping to are those of the close ups of the artist, but this is of course typical of all music videos and not just this particular genre, we do not however have any close ups of the instruments as the artist is purely a singer and doesn’t play any instruments, and in addition her band are never featured in her videos and so we wanted to continue the theme. We do however have close ups of just her mouth, which can be argued as being a close up of her instrument as this is what she uses to create her music.

• Our video is challenging the conventions as we have chosen to have an entirely concept based video with no narrative and so there is an absence of narrative shots, meaning that our video is not balanced.
  
• This then also indicates that there is no alternation between the narrative and performance locations; however we have a number of different locations throughout the video that we are constantly cutting to and from which helps keep the feel of movement and variety in the video.

• Our video does have a certain sense of ambiguity but not so much in the sense that I think this means. It is more about her personality and character that is ambiguous as opposed to what is actually happening in the video, we aren’t trying to reveal anything as there is no set narrative but people may interpret the video differently.

• Our video is abstract in a sense particularly with the set design of placing the furniture outside and having the balloons in the graveyard, there is definitely a sense of why, but ultimately I think it works very well and fits with the video, and creates a sense of mystery around the song and the artist that is exciting and will add to the repeatability of the song as people will want to watch it again and again to try and understand it.

Dyer:

• Applying Dyer’s theory to this video we view the artist not as a powerful female, as the use of our camera work suggests, but as a marketing tool and in that she is very striking and leaves an impression on the audience. This is achieved through our choice of costume and makeup as it is of an avant-garde style giving the artist an air of mystery about her.

• Some of the materials we have used to construct her star image are the quirky costumes and makeup and the use of locations and the mise-en-scene included, such as placing an armchair outside. This makes the artist seem exciting and different and appealing to the target audience as she is a new and interesting product.

• Applying Dyer’s two key paradoxes we can establish that the artist seems both ordinary and extraordinary as she looks and sounds innovative and is so different to her audience, but she also seems down to earth in her dancing and casual attitude throughout the video, this is also evident in the shots of her smiling and not lip-syncing, and the use of the first person mode of address, she seems like an ordinary likeable character.
  
  
  

• In terms of Dyer’s second paradox, that of being both present and absent, it is fair to say that she dominates the entire video as it is all about her and primarily consists of close ups of her face, and she also dominates the adverts and the front cover of the digiPak, which can be seen as unusual as it has become increasingly popular to have the artist highly present in the video but then absent from the album artwork and thus the artwork used in the adverts. However, we felt that this was inappropriate for our artist and that it should be all about her, there a couple of panels on the digiPak in which she is not present which adds a sense of mystery again, and makes the digiPak seem less overpowering by not having so many pictures of her face. But ultimately it is an even split, with her being as present as she is absent, particularly on the digiPak as highlighted below.

Goodwin:

• Using Goodwin’s critical framework we can see that we have used many of his characteristics such as the notion of looking with there being photographs of her surrounding her in the studio shots and in the mirrored images:

• Which is something we chose to create in editing particularly for the thinking about Goodwin’s framework as we thought it would be effective and allow a more prolific consumption of the star.
  
• We have intertextual references as the idea for the photographs hanging around her came from Taylor Swift’s music video for her single ‘Mine’, and the mirrored images are very reminiscent of Queen although this is not the reason we made that creative decision. The use of the paper umbrella is taken loosely from Paloma Faith’s video for ‘Upside Down’, although we have not used it in the same way, we did experiment with using it in the same as Paloma’s video but it wasn’t as effective as we had hoped and so we made the creative decision not to include it.

• Her costume and makeup is very typical of her band image and we have utilised this style to our advantage to make a more visually interesting video and to add to her star image. The main motif of her star image is her red hair, and so we made certain that we had a wig for the purpose of our music video as a Florence video would not have been the same without the long red hair.

• I feel that we have also been effective in complying with her star image of a powerful, quirky, organic artist which is evident in her previous videos, by use of our locations, costumes and camera techniques.

• Our video is more concept based as we had the location designs before a storyline and decided that a storyline didn’t seem appropriate for this song and that we were instead going to focus mainly on creating the right style and feel, and creating something that was artistic and visually exciting.

• There is some relationship between the visuals and the lyrics in the graveyard location as this links to the idea of coffins but that is ultimately it:

• We chose this location partially for this link so as to have something so the video didn’t seem entirely too random, but also because we wanted to create a quirky gothic effect and we felt this location was perfect with the overgrown graves and the fallen leaves, and to add to the effect we did film on a very wet day although it is not evident in the video.

• The relationship between the music and the visuals is in the cutting rate, as mentioned above, and also obviously in that the majority of the song is lip synced and in places where it is not, things like her hands and feet taping are in time to the music and at the end when she pops the balloon and closes her eyes it is all in time to music.

Postmodern:

• Our video is postmodern in form as music videos themselves are a form of postmodern media, but it is also postmodern in style through its use of intertextuality, as already mentioned above.
  
• And perhaps primarily so in its use of bricolage, the layering together of different ideas and style, which is evident in the use of several different locations, costumes etc. it is as if 4 entirely separate videos have been merged together to form this seemingly random one.

• There is a playfulness about this video in its style and in the artists’ body language, attitude and general character, which I think makes it exciting for an audience to watch.

• There is definitely narrative fuzz in the video, partially because we didn’t write a narrative but because a narrative can be interpreted by different people and because we aren’t revealing anything there is the mystery and the want to know what it actually means, meaning there is repeatability.

Semiotics:

• For this I am going to look primarily at her costumes and makeup as that is where most of the connotations and representations lie.

• Costume One:

• The dress here has a very mystical feel with the shape giving the artist an interesting silhouette particularly through the batwing shape.

• The colours seem very organic particularly in contrast to her fiery hair, even though they are quite dark. The reason for them being dark is that we wanted to create a sort of gothic feel without being too obvious, this is also evident in her dark lipstick, which complies with the star image we are trying to support of a very naturalistic artist.

• This is why we filmed primarily in outdoor locations, in fields surrounded by a lot of nature, and particularly with this costume as she is barefoot which again is reinforcing her connection with nature.

• The makeup here is different but quite subtle, it doesn’t show up on camera which is the effect we wanted to achieve, we wanted it to be evident but not too obvious. As we are trying to, again, create an organic feel. But at the same time the use of gold makes her seem exciting and futuristic and extraordinary to her audience, particularly as it is all around her face in an unusual manner.
  
• Costume Two:

• The dress here is very colourful which connotes the artist’s colourful personality and character.
  
• The dress has a vintage feel to it as it is made up of strips of ribbon all sewn together, this fits with the artist’s meta-narrative as away from her videos she is spotted in magazines as a very stylish person favouring the more unique and vintage pieces so it seems fitting for her to wear these in the video as well.

• The shimmering nature of this dress signifies an extraordinary nature of the artist, it makes her seem unusual and contrasts the organic feel as it makes her seem almost futuristic, much like the gold makeup in the first costume did.

• The use of the belt here has no particular connotations, we used it to give her figure a shape that would otherwise have not been there, it was more for aesthetic reasons than anything else.

• The makeup here is very striking. The red band is like a continuation of her red hair, we chose red specifically as it is very symbolic of her, because of the red hair. And the two together emphasise her fiery personality and character and reinforce the idea of her being a strong and powerful female.

• They are so vivid that they dominate the whole video, it is perhaps this costume that has the most affect on the audience, which is why we chose it for the print texts as well, as we felt it would have the most lasting impression on the audience. The red band is also symbolic of a mask, like that of superheroes which can signify a further mystery about her character, and also reinforces the powerful female status that is so evident in this video.
  
• Costume Three:

• This dress is very reminiscent of a circus particularly through the harlequin style. This is something that I considered when I made it a while ago, which is why I thought it would be perfect for this video. We wanted to get across the playful nature of the artist and so a dress that reminds people of the circus seemed perfect.

• The black and white emphasis of this dress fits with the gothic theme we were exploring and the segments of coloured panels help to break this up, and reiterate the colourfulness of her character, as seen in costume two, and help give an edge to this particular costume.

• The shape is very unique and gives an interesting silhouette, the skirt does fan out in a circle when spun, which is what we wanted to film but unfortunately the weather meant that this was not possible as the wind would not allow it, so we filmed the closest thing we could and we still feel that it was effective.

• The heels were in fact the artist’s choice as she wanted to add some ‘glamour’ to the video, so we allowed it, as a star image does entail glamour and so we were quite happy for this connotation to be associated with our artist. Our choice would have been to have her barefoot again, but for safety reasons she needed to wear shoes, and we thought Florence would go all out with her footwear rather than wearing something basic and hence the gold heels.

• The makeup for this costume is very basic to contrast the rest of the video, we wanted something much darker than in the previous shoots and so we went for some heavy black eye makeup. We then wanted to keep the theme of red in the video, other than her hair, and so we chose a vibrant red lipstick, which compliments the black eye makeup and gives the artist a very striking face that is visually interesting and helps to reinforce the powerful female image we are constructing.
  
• Costume Four:

• This costume is the least organic of them all, with the silvery colours being obviously very metallic, there are connotations of a futuristic style and a sense of her being beyond human, verging on a kind of mechanical style. It makes her seem even more extraordinary to the audience, and primarily the silver compensates the black better than any other colour could. This reiterates the connotations previously seen with the use of gold.

• The use of these metallic colours could signify the worth of the star, and emphasise the fact that she is worth more than say people in the audience and it is sort of distancing the star from her audience making her seem more exciting and surprising.

• The flowery silver dress is to counteract the mechanical signifiers and bring back the organic feel of the artist even if ever so slightly.

• The makeup is again keeping with the same silvery mechanical theme, with it fairly overdone as with all her makeup to add to her quirky extraordinary representation.

• The use of the little stars connotes that she is the star and reinforces the idea that she is the powerful female, particularly as they too draw attention when they are caught by the light in the close up shots.

• The long eyelashes are very feminine and connoted her female status and their long length could represent her own presence as they are in themselves very striking and the attention is brought straight to the eyes which show that the artist has all the control over the audience and we have emphasised this by the close up shots of her eyes.

• The blue lips reiterate the mechanical connotations and make her seem inhuman as they are of an unnatural colour, this again making her seem distanced from her audience as she is extraordinary and so unlike them.

Representation:

• I have mentioned several times about how we are presenting the artist as a powerful female, and we do this through the use of having her as the sole character and so all attention is on her.

• And through the use of the camera techniques, in which we have chiefly close ups of her face making the video seem very intimate which is then reinforced by the first person mode of address that runs throughout the video.

• We then also have in the cutting rate several glimpses of her and her body parts, such as her hands, feet and eyes, which is something the theorist Sut Jhally considers Dismemberment and says "detracts attention from the women and makes the audience think of her as body parts rather than a women." This is not what we were aiming to show but unfortunately it cannot be avoided, what we wanted was to create a mystery about the track and to reveal things slowly to the audience to create an enigma.

• Considering the other feminists theorists we can see that our video does represent the artist as a powerful female figure as we do not give her an artificial look, she is wearing make up but it seems natural and organic rather than airbrushed. There are no men in our video and so she cannot be seen as being used by them or a commodity for them, and to contrast most contemporary female music videos she is wearing a significant amount of clothes, there is at no point where she is showing any large part of flesh apart from her legs occassionaly, which I believe is not making her seem like a commodity but purely emphasising her organic nature.

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

The digiPak and adverts:

• Our digiPak is conforming to conventions as the artist is on the front and is dominating the space, with the attention being drawn straight to her face because it is the largest thing but also because of the effective use of the red band.

• The digiPak is unconventional because it doesn’t actually have the album title on the front cover but I felt that it was unnecessary as the emphasis was on the artist and her band image and there was space enough for the title elsewhere, which is why it is on the second inside panel alone.

• The adverts are conventional as they reiterate the album artwork, with the one on the left being a similar photograph but not quite the same and the right being an entirely new photograph but similar to one inside the digiPak, but all from the same photo shoot. Meaning there is a link between them and a reinforcing of the star image.

• They both have the band name and the album title but one offers more information than the other meaning this is more conventional as it tells the reader that the album is out now and gives the band website, whereas the other offers no indication about where or when to find the album which is highly unconventional, particularly in terms of an advert as its objective is to sell the product. However, it does create an aspect of mystery and an enigma about the artist.

• Again in order to answer this question fully I looked up the conventions of the indie genre in terms of print texts.

• Advert/digiPak forms and conventions:


• An image or background linking with the music video or album cover


• Information of release in bold
  
• A continual font with the exception of the band’s name
  
• So we can determine that the digiPak is conventional as the image on the front is taken from a photo shoot that we did during the filming of our video, as are all the photographs used for all of our print texts, and all taken from the same shoot. And so all the print texts and the video are linked in terms of the visuals, as the artist is in the same costume in all and so it is instantly recognisable and therefore can be argued as being an iconic sign.

• The advert that offers information about the release date does comply to this convention as the ‘out now’ is in bold and is fairly large on the advert so as to attract attention in order for the information to be given.

• There is a continual font with all, with the exception being on the digiPak as the artist name is in the closest font I could find on the internet to her copyrighted font. Ideally we would have all used this font for the band name as it is the Florence and the Machine font and is copyrighted to them and so it was difficult to find in order to use. So we had to settle with fonts that created the same effect whilst being different and all using the same fonts in all our texts.

The Iconic and Linguistic Signs:

• On the front cover of the digiPak the iconic signs are the photograph of the close up of her face:

• The semiotic analysis is the same as that for the costume as mentioned above in terms of the music video.

• The red band is a image that is instantly recognisable and we hope would become fairly iconic to Florence and would be a sign of her band that people will recognise in years to come. It also has connotations of a mask and superheroes reiterating the air of mystery and playfulness of her star image and the powerful nature of her presence.

• The fact that she is not looking straight ahead is important as it is less overbearing to a potential buyer and again makes her seem more mysterious as she seems far more interesting in something else than in having a first person address from her album cover.
  
• I have drawn on the markings so as to analyse the use of the rule of thirds, and you can see that we have placed Florence slightly to the right, and the band name to the far left, meaning that the eye is drawn straight to the black circle and that the cover is balanced.

• The image to the right is of the leading line showing where how the eye moves around the album cover, starting with her eyes and the red band then moving to the band name and back to her face.

• The back panel has no iconic signs other than the continuation of the red band, and the linguistic signs have no meaning other than to inform the audience the tracks on this digiPak.

• The panel to the left, the iconic sign is of the location of one of our shoots without the added mise-en-scene, this has no particular meaning other than reiterating the organic feel of the artist. The linguistic signs again have no real meaning just to inform the title of the digiPak.

• The remaining three inside panels have no linguistic signs save the note from Florence on the far left. I felt this was a nice added touch for the digiPak that seems like something Florence would do and adds to her down to earth representation.

• The iconic signs then serve to reinforce the same representations as already mentioned and the middle panel is of the location for part of the music video and so is recognisable. It also adds to the artist’s organic and vintage loving reputation. The two outer images have been saturated slightly to add to the exciting quirky presence of the artist, and to match the adverts.

• The iconic signs in the adverts are of similar images to the digiPak and so have the same connotations and representations and have also been saturated for the same reasons as above.

• The linguistic signs in both offer information about the album title, the artist name and the release date, but have no real significance or connotations themselves as it is what you would expect an advert for this album to say.

• The combination of all the three texts is effective as it creates a very powerful band image and is creating a recognisable brand that is fore-fronted by the colour red, in the hair and the effective use of the red band, it is something that is instantly noticeable and bound to be remembered and the continuation of this imagery through all of the texts helps to reinforce the band image and create a well made brand.

• The band image that is being promoted is one of a quirky, organic band with an affection for the vintage and avant-garde, and a brand that is visually interesting and exciting to an audience. It is something new and innovative and is attractive to the target audience.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• I am looking specifically at the rough cut stages:

• During the editing process we exported several rough cuts to test to our audience for any feedback they might have and any suggestions of what they felt could be done to improve our video.

• We uploaded these onto youtube and then distributed the link via Facebook and asked for any feedback to be posted as a comment or on our wall. We then took the comments and made any amendments necessary. Mostly the comments were positive with people at all stages saying that they thought it was really good. This was encouraging but not particularly helpful as it didn’t offer us any improvements to make. However, we did have some comments like some shots being too long and tedious and the part where she slipped seeming a little random so we made those changes accordingly by removing the slight fall by inserting our jump cutting towards the end of the video and making it more choppy and exciting. And we continuously changed our cutting rate around and made the shots shorter and added movement to make it more exciting.

• The most useful feedback from our rough cuts came from the teachers as they were the most critical and told us honestly where the problems were, whereas our audience were too polite to actually mention anything. This meant we could make the changes that we needed to create our final product. The problems they commented on were the static nature of the camera and that some of our shots were too long, as spotted also by our audience. We then continued to make our cutting rate shorter and to add movement and more clips to make the video more jumpy and more interesting to watch. With every feedback we continued to add more and more cuts and movement until we were happy with what became our final product.

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

Construction:

• In the construction of our music video we used the hd cameras to record our footage which worked effectively and were far more successful than the dv cameras last year. They have better sound and picture quality and are far easier to use particularly when capturing. It also meant that we had more memory space and so could afford to film much more than we needed so as to be safe.

• We all worked collaboratively filming this year with each of us doing an equal amount across the whole filming process and helping each other with the framing and composition.

• We then used Adobe Premiere Elements 8 to edit our footage, this is the upgrade from version 3 which we were using last year, and was much the same to use. Through editing our reccie footage we were able to get used to the new version so as to be accustomed to it before editing our final piece. The editing process was much easier this year as we didn’t need to worry about continuity or sound; however we had difficulties as our footage seemed too static once we put it on the computer and began to edit.
  
  
• But we managed to solve this problem through the use of key frames in post production, however, we did not edit anything else such as the colour or opacity of the clips which was something that we had planned to do but once we began making our video we decided that this was no longer suitable.

• The one constraint we had was the time limit as this video was much longer than last years it meant that we needed to allow more time to edit and so we gave up the majority of our frees and lunch time until we had finished it.

• For our print texts we used Adobe Photoshop to create the final pieces and the photographs were our own, however we did use the internet to look for inspiration and for fonts [from dafont.com] and other such amenities that we required. But mainly what we produced was our own. Photoshop was effective for the creation of our print texts as it allowed us to create exciting pieces utilising the effect of layers and it’s brushes and other tools.

Research:

• In the research for our music video we used the internet as a source to gather all of our information and resources, with the main websites we were using being Blogger and Youtube.

• We used the blog collaboratively as a group to gather information, present it and comment. This was effective as it meant that the group could stay well informed and in contact at all times and it is an easy and effective way to present out information whilst using ICT and is easily accessible.

• We used Youtube to watch our music videos that we deconstructed and analysed whilst researching techniques, motifs, and conventions for our own music video.

• For our audience research throughout the project we have used primarily SurveyMonkey. We first devised a questionnaire to ask our audience their responses to our initial creative ideas and our first concept. We then used Facebook to distribute this questionnaire to the largest number of our target audience available.

• After making a couple of rough cuts we then used Facebook again to distribute the link to our video and just simply asked our audience to comment on our walls with any suggestions or improvements they might have, this was effective and we made the necessary amendments and continued to test our product throughout the whole process, meaning that we could make it something that suited our target audience well.

• We then on publishing our final cut devised a final questionnaire on SurveyMonkey asking what they thought of the final product and how successful it was and again used Facebook to distribute the survey and reach the maximum number of people.
  

Planning:

• Throughout the planning process we used Blogger to collate our ideas and research and to comment on each other’s posts and to give any feedback that was necessary. This was effective as it meant we could all share ideas and collaboratively ascend the creative process before deciding on our final ideas.

• We also, as a side note, used BBC Weather to check the forecast for the oncoming weeks so as to plan the best times to film so as not to be limited by the weather.

• We did all the filming in our frees and lunch times to utilise the most of our free time and effectively planned this by comparing everyone’s timetables and schedules and fitting it in around everyone else’s plans. We then put all of the dates on a calendar and used Facebook and mobiles to keep in contact and remind each other and our actress when we were filming and what props and costumes to bring in.

• We used Microsoft Powerpoint to create the slideshow for our pitch and I used Adobe Photoshop to create the images on the slides, this was effective as it meant we could make a unique and visually interesting slideshow that offered all the information we needed to reveal in order to gain green light status.

• We then used SlideBoom to upload our pitch and share it on the blog.

Evaluation:

• As already mentioned we devised a final survey on SurveyMonkey to collect further audience research on our final product.

• We are all using Blogger to present our evaluation as we felt there was far too much information needed in each question in order to answer them fully and that it would not be suitable for a director’s interview as we did last year. It also meant that we could each contribute individually and our efforts been shown.