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

There are many music videos which show sensual females however very often these females are then shown being close with males and the male figures being protective over the female and holding her in a very stereotypical romance way however our video aims to show the strength of the female over the male, there are some songs in pop music today that have lyrics and aspects that represent powerful strong women such as Jessie J’s song, Do It Like A Dude where Jessie J is grabbing her crotch and wearing her hat low like a man however whilst performing in the video she is still conforming to stereotypical views of a female pop star, dancing quite sexually with bold makeup and revealing outfits. We used aspects of modern pop videos such as the deatailing on the lips of the performer which has become like a trademark for Jessie J. This adds glamour and depeneding on the colour of the lips, dark purple can make the performer seem gothic and quite deadly while red lips may represent lust and romance. There  is quite a large divide in pop stars in the modern day for ones that are trying to appeal to men in their videos through what they wear and their movements on screen whilst there are some that are challenging the conventions of a stereotypical pop star, such a Lady Gaga who though her crazy outfits and style and love for everything wacky detract men, along with pop stars such as La Roux. We wanted to go down this route and produce a video that sometimes is similar to the likes of Beyonce and Rhianna but then also bring in parts that are the total opposite this is how we thought of using the same female as a very femanine character as well as quite a masculine one. In our video we are challenging the approach of having a very “pleasing to the eye” female in a music video which has become the norm in popular music videos today and stripping our performer from any thing glamourous from make up to costume. One costume we chose to use is a mans suit with bowler hat and bow tie, suits for women have become very popular and we see it quite a lot in the media.

We have used many jump cuts in our video, this gives a very jerky effect that is a popular technique in music videos, it can look edgy and modern. The inspriation for the jump cuts in our video came from the fast and jerky movements of vampires that are seen in the huge global giant that is the Twighlight films. There are strong women in twightlight that are deadly to males and have super fast movements, while the vampire is usually dangerous films such as Twighlight and the other numerous programmes such as True Blood( for which the advert below takes the classically sexual picture of juicy red lips and perfect white teeth but giving it a vampiric edge) that are to do with vampires portray the female vampires as quite sexual with long flowing hair, piercing eyes and animalistic charateristics. We wanted to give this effect to Jess, not by giving her razor sharp canines but making her move jerkily and excentuating her pale face and dark hair in post production.

The colour red is often used as a statement colour in many aspects of media, from films to TV to music videos, it has lots of meaning and is often a colour to describe lust, love and passion or danger, violence and death.

The long red dress represents and ultra femanine look and we then contrast it with the black suit which is very mush related to men. Most popualar female artists have very suggestive moves in their music videos, often caressing their own bodies and making questional hip movements and this has now become the norm with artists such as Britney and JLo, here is an example of this in JLo’s I’m Into You:

In our music video we didn’t want to conform to this so we used a sort of alter ego to our performer, who acts in a lot more of a scruffy way that is often related to men. We have seen Lady Gaga in the media with her masculine alter ego and we watched the movements on Jo Calderone in the video ‘You and I’. In this video Jo (Lady Gaga) is in a stained and grubby white tshirt, smoking a cigarette with greasy slicked back (Danny from Grease style) hair. He often has his shoulders hunched over, spits onto the floor and is very ungraceful, this is the kind of effect we wanted for Jess’s alter ego.

In our video Jess is wiping her nose with her hand and itching however in most conventional videos the man is very handsome and appealing with slick movements that would be appealing to females, this tends to be in pop music videos. Whereas in more Indi music and heavy metal the men are much more scruffy, with an unshaven face and tend to have a bit more of a ‘rough and tumble’ vibe.

This is more the type of male we are aiming for in our music video, one that might not be as appealing for most girls however does have an audience of people that are into his (Pete Doherty) music and style.

In many pop videos today the women wear very little clothes and show lots of flesh but we wanted to make Jess more sophisticated as we are trying to show that Jess is a strong and independent woman and that she is not just trying to appeal to men. There are many women that are like this and despite not showing off lots of flesh are still known for being very sexy women and a good representation for women. Icons that both men and women can adore, such as Audrey Hepburn. This is the type of woman we wanted to portray Jess as and we did this through the outfits she wears and the way she moves. Jess’s moves are quite slow and sensual but not so suggestive like many artists such as Britney and Rhianna. When Jess is wearing the long red dress we had her moving slower and more sophisticated than when she is dressed in a short black dress and red high heels.

Many artists have developed trade marks that they have played upon and used to make fans and get into the public eye and have incorporated it into their music videos. They are things that make them noticed, for example JLo’s bottom has become a trademark for her and she is often known as the one with the good behind, she knows this and therefore shakes it about a lot in many of her music videos. Jessie J also has a trade marks and i would say that it is her lip art, in many of her videos she has studs and glitter and multi colours on her lips and if anyone else does it, which they have tried to it doesn’t seem to work. Icons in history such as Marilyn Monroe also had her trade mark stance in the white dress over the air grate and this is often copied and straight away people realise who they are trying to imitate. We have started to try and develop trade marks for Jess however there is no movement or costume that actually defines her and this would have worked well to make the video more memorable.

Overall I think we have challenged the idea that popular music that involves a beautiful women has to include her in tiny outfits and moving in a suggestive way, we have taken ideas from artists such as Lady Gaga who are changing the way we see female artists by creating older egos and being in touch with her masculine side. We are trying to show the strength of the women and that the male doesn’t always have to be holding her up.

2. How effective is the combonation of your main media product and ancillary tasks?

Our main media prodcuts focuses a lot on the differences between genders and we needed to carry this on in our ancillary tasks. The main themes in our music video is the contrasting balck, white and red, the femanine movements with the masculine ones and the layering. We researched several images that related to our music video and thought about things that can work as a static image. We ddint want to simply take an image from the music video as the quality of the images we could get from the video aren’t as good as what we could acheive from doing a totally new photoshoot.

We looked at the outfits we had used for the music video and found something similar that would look effective on a picture. Instead of a red dress we used a long black one which looks a lot more gothic, we also used dark purple lipstick that is also quite gothic and deadly. We also use the fact that Jess’s hair is very dark long in the music video quite a lot by putting it in different styles. When doing the photoshoot we took lots of images on Jess throwing her hair about. This makes for a very striking image one that becomes more 3 dimensional as there is movement in the shot and you can tell that she wasn’t static. We focus a lot on movement in the video so the CD will suggest this. A recurring theme in our music video is the use of the colours red black and white as these colours are very vampiric and can look either modern or old and gothic when put together. Despite this we haven’t included the red as much in our ancillary products, I think if we had had Jess with red lips this would have been unorigional as red lips are always used on women to suggest sensulaity however we wanted to have an element of deadliness so used dark purple lipsitck which makes Jess look even paler. As Jess flicked her hair her hands are in a position of authority that suggests she is allmighty and powerfull and not trying to hide away, this is also what we have done in our music video, Jess does moves that are big and bold that show off her power.

Our initial ideas to have a image that was more literal to the title of the song where they was a deadly female that has power over a female however we then decided on having a more simple one as the concept and look of our video was only simple and we never really had a very busy shot. I think that an audience would put together our video, CD cover and poster but maybe only becasue Jess in on all of them, I think that we may have made our anciallry tasks too modern for our music video as our song and video is quite old fashioned as our song ‘Female of the Speceies’ is from the 1990’s and video is quite noisey and blurred which gives it a retro 90’s vibe. Then our ancillary tasks have turned our to be quite modern, having said this many older CD covers that is they were used for a current album they would automatically make it modern.

There are several things that link our products together from the gems on the lips to the bowler hat, I think the products work together very well as, combined, they create a whole identity and vibe that is obviously about sensual females, I think that a sketchy design for the CD cover or magazine article would not have suited the video as the video is quite mature and doesnt really suit the playful style of a sketchy design. I don’t think that a painted design would work either as the era that the song was bought out the CD covers were more graphic images rather than paintings and we don’t want to get rid of our interesting factor that we chose not to use a modern song as this has helped us choose our target audience and how to portray our characters. I think that a kaleidoscope design could have worked for our ancillary products as we used alot of layering in our video as this looks very effective and can create interesting patterns and imagery so the use of patterns in our CD cover could have worked quite well. I did choose to include layering in one of our magazine advert designs, I layered the two images we have used for our CD cover and back cover for the magazing an layered them on top of eachother and reduced the opacity on the close up image of Jess in the bowler hat, this made Jess look as if she has hair over her eyes like huge eyebrows and a colourful beaded necklace where the gems on boy Jess’ lips and on the neck of girl Jess. I like the way new shots and patterns can be made through layering. As our video is quite simple we didn’t want to use fancy writing that took attention away from the imagery as in our video we didn’t want to include a big story line that would take attention away from Jess’s costumes and mise-en-scene.

Overall I think the combonation of our music video and ancillary tasks works very well as despite the background in the music video being dark and quite gloomy and our ancillry products haveing a crisp white background the contrast of atmosphere can relate to the contrast between the two types of character in our video,  the use of mise-en-scene such as gems and the bowler hat link the video to the products making them a very effective and eye catching group.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To start with we asked an audience of adults such as our mums and dads and older friends to view our music video to get different perspectives on it. The feedback from out younger audience showed us that the song was not popular with teens as it is not of their era and they can’t enjoy our video if they are put off by the song. People of a different generation of music may enjoy the song better as they might recognise it.  This is the feedback we got:

1. Did you enjoy the music video?

Well this is pretty positive, it makes our initail thoughts clear that our video is suited to an older audience. We need to think or reaons why the 25% didn’t like the video, was it becasue they got bored and thought that technically the video wasn’t good or they just didn’t like the song. In theory we could have chosen s song that would suit a wider reange of people and ages however we wanted to try something that we aren’t familiar with and that we wouldn’t choose to listen too. We wanted to go out of our comfort zone and these figures show that we may have pulled it off. We realise that it isn’t going to be too eveeryones taste as some videos I watch, I like and some I don’t it just depends on the person. We tried to think of everyone, for exmaple having a seductive female may appeal to the male audience as many female artists of today take this approach in their videos of writhing around on the floor however we wanted our female to be strong and dominant, this would appeal more to the female audience.

2. Did the pace of editing suit the style of the song?

I was quite hard to edit to the beat with our music video, however there were some bits in the song where a turn of her head or a jump cut could go with the beats that were at the end of each chourus, during the slower and more powerful bits of the song we wanted to keep the movements flowing as we used lots of jump cuts in other places and didn’t want the video to be repetative. We tended to keep editing at the end of lines in the song rather than with the beat which may have been a mistake. However more than half of the audience said they felt it was edited to the beat which is good as sometimes our video suited longer shots of her movements rather than fast paced editing.

3. What age of person would you target this video at?

The song female of the species was bought out in 1996 so if people who were around 25 heard the song and became a fan of it in 1996 then that would mean we need to target at around 40 year olds. We did try to cater for our age group as well however it was hard as it seemed if they didn’t like the song then they instantly took no interest in the video. There are aspects of the video that our age group would enjoy as the performer is of a similar age to them however I think the song put them off. We should use this information that more than half of the older people that viewed our video believed it suited best 30+ year olds to help with our CD cover and magazine adervtisements as picking the right imagery and font could help to atrract the target age we want to sell to. However this result that not all under18’s wouldn’t like this video as more and more genres of music is being invented so people are beginning to diversify their choice of music which could work in our favour.

4. What aspect of the music video did you enjoy most?

This is quite a positive result as we did try to focus a lot on costume changes and making what she is wearing a big part of the shot. However obviously we didn’t have as many resources as a porfessional producer would have such as a huge wardrobe with numerous different styles and looks or professional make up artists or hair stylists along with many hours to film the video. We were only able to hire the video out for a couple of hours at a time, and we was able to incorporate a few of my dancing costumes into the video. As we only had a simple location we needed to work hard with the mise en scene and Jess’s acting to make the video work well. You can see in many pop videos such as Beyonce and Lady Gaga that there are so many costume changes and every single one is so detailed and interesting too look at, everything has been carefully thought about from the eye make up to the footwear and that is what we wanted to do for our video. We was very fortunate to have Jess in our video as she is very comfortable behind the camera and was good at the movements as a male as well as female. She has the look we wanted of seductive and vampire like with pale skin and dark hair whcih we enhanced in editing. It may be that what you see on screen is more important than how you see it on screen as in the composition and camera angles to the everyday public.

5. Do you think there was a clear representation of the power of the female over males in this video?

This is a postive response to this question as really this is what it’s all about. The title being female of the species and nearly all the lyrics about the power of the female ae “when a girl like you has cast a spell on me”, “one kiss and I’m zapped” all lead back to the females power. However I believe we could have done more towards pushing the meaning of the song out to the audience by including  things to do with females having power over males in nature such as the black widow spider who is often shown in documentaries as deadly insect with no fear of the males, it is often found that the female of an animal is bigger than the female, we could have included something to do with this however it is something to think about when producing our CD cover, while remembereing to link to our video.

6. Do you think there was a wide enough range of camera shots used?

We did need to focus a lot on camera work as our location is so simple. I think we could have used more camera angles however we was limited with height, it may have been beneficial to take a step ladder to our shotting location so we could ahve got a better range of shot heights and angles. We used many close up shots to show the detail of her facial expressions and make up. We did use the dolly however the floor was quite uneven so we used mats to get a smoother shot. 65% of positive feedback it quite a good result however I can see ways of improving the range of camera angles. I think it is of the upmost importance that we made everything on the screen interesting to make up for the lack of interesting location.

Overall we recieved some positive feedback and I have learnt that is was beneficial to spend lots of time on costume changes as this is what the majority of the audience liked most. I have also learnt that we could improve on the pace of the editing as 30% of the audience thought the editing didn’t suit the song. We have also founf out the age group we need to target, 30+, as they are more familiar with the song. This will help us decide how to go about advertising our video through the magazine advert and CD cover, I think we need to take aspects of CD covers from the mid 90’s to appeal to the age group we are targeting at.

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

Our main source of research for our music video was the internet however before we had even chosen our song we looked through our music devices such as ipods for what kind of music took our fancy and what song we could use that we liked but we wouldnt get too sick of listening too. Ipods enable us too listen too any music we want and have many good and bad points. Downloading music to put onto ipods have meant a decline in the CD industry hence why CD covers have got more and more innovative and tactile. The CD era took over from LP’s which along with the radio were at one point the only wany of listening to your favourite music and this poses an often asked question of is the experience of listening to music become less special as it becomes so much easier too do? However as LP’s are now a lot rarer and people are finding it fashionable to be in a niche market and have begun to buy them more meaning as they are now “cool” too have as having just an ipod is too common so there could be hope for the LP.

So looking through my ipod is a very quick and easy way of finding songs that we thought would be good to make a music video too. Using YOUTUBE we searched for videos that inspired us and we thought were extremely effective, there are many ways of seeing music videos, on the computer on the TV there are many music channels devoted to showing non stop music videos and using an Ipod/Ipad so it was pretty simple to get our hands on pleanty of music videos.

After choosing Female Of The Species I looked on their website to see what their vibe is like and to see what other songs they have and look at their discography. Websites are a very simple and easy way of finding information out about bands and what going on, they are a super quick way of updating fans about tour dates and new songs however the Space website wasn’t too up to date as Space were no longer a band when we were researching.

Researching and planning didn’t involve that many new media technologies, mostly just the internet and our brains, however as we began to construct our music video we were using a lot of technology some we could manage and some we couldn’t. As music videos focus a lot on the quality of the shot so that all details of the mise-en-scene are extremely clear this meant that the lighting had to be top quality, we needed more than just the media lighting so we got hold of some industrial sized lights that would give life to the dark places we were planning on filming in. Obviously light isn’t exactly the newest thing in the world however the way it is used is constantly being adapted and the thought put into lighting is increasing, we used these lights to create shadows and outlines.

We have learnt from filming previous footage that having two cameras can make everything a whole lot easier as continuity can be mastered a whole lot easier and you can pick and choose between angles that look best. At the begging of filming we tried to use my camera which is a Fuji Finepix s200 EXR which is brilliant for taking pictures however after time without a HD setting for recording movies we found that the shot was often very noisy and not as clear as we would have liked.

This camera is only 12 mp as it wasn’t bought recently and with the crazy pace of constantly improving camera technology it has already become dated but will still be useful for the ancillary products. Like many things in this day and age buy something new a year later there will be versions ten times better, it has become very hard to keep up with media technology without breaking the bank. The school cameras shot a better image than mine so we used that to film most of the music video sometimes using the fuji alongside. We also attempted to use a steadicam which despite being invented in 1976 have adapted and evolved to become a brilliant media technology.

http://www.steadicam.com/

There are many tutorials on the internet to help us get the hang of using it but we only managed to get about half an hour of practise compared to the years of practice professionals have. We did try to use the steadicam during the constrsuction process however we didn’t manage to get any useable footage using it, hopefully now we know the absolute basics of using one we will eventually be sucessful using one as the outcome can be very impressive.

“Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizing mount for motion picture cameras that mechanically isolates it from the operator’s movement, allowing for a smooth shot even when moving quickly over an uneven surface”

We also wasn’t using the most appropriate location to put a steadicam to full use as the theatre was onlu small and no long smooth movements could really be made without running into a chair or something. We also used a tripod to make our footage smooth, for some shots we mounted the tripod on a dolly so that we could do some long panning movements circling around Jess wshilst she was dancing, many of our shots were very static so we had to do lots of work in post production to make our video work and look interesting.

We used many new media technologies in the editing of our music video, we used programmes such as final cut and mpeg streamclip to convert our footage to make it work on final cut. We have now had lots of experience of using this software, we aren’t quite geniuses on it however our skills have developed and we have learn’t lots of new techniques and we used many of these in our music video.

Our video is very playful with editing and we could mess around with effects and layering to create the look we wanted. We didn’t want to make our video look at all tacky but we did want to make it look cool and stylized. Here are some of the techniques we used throughout our video:

We also introduced ourselves to photoshop and we realised that it’s not at all like paint. We needed to use photoshop to create our ancillary products which was our CD front cover, back cover and insert and magazine article. We started out reserching other products on the internet. We looked at a BBC article of the best album art of 2011, this is an example of convergence of media in the online age where newspapers and magazines are now avaliable on the internet creating a whole new experience but maybe loosing its inital attraction of something that is physically there to read on the go that is freshly printed keeping you up to date with goings on. Anyway this article gave emaples of CD artwork that works very well. We could get inspiration from these and see how modern artists present there work and how album covers are constructed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16400044

This is where we found the Cults CD cover which inspired us to use the technique of capturing a movement in a picture in this case the hair.

We then did a photoshoot with Jess using the Fuji camera which captured some brilliant images that we was sure would work for our CD art. We then started the construction process using photoshop whcih once we got the hang of using it went quite swimmingly. We used tools such as:

Throughout all stages of the making of the music video and the evaluation I have used this wordpress blog to record whats been going on and how the video has progressed how I have used other artists work to inspire me. A blog is a relatively new media technology  that came about in the late 1990’s and are an interactive journal and has become a way for many people to express themselves in a way more exciting than just writing them on paper. Having a blog has enabled me to show videos and pictures that relate to my work and has helped me realise the progress I have made in a fun and unique way.

Magazine Advert

We started off by researching other magazine covers as we wasn’t entirely sure what kind of thing you included on a magazine advert.

RESEARCH AND CREATION OF CD ARTWORK

SIMILAR ARTISTS CD ARTWORK

Our initial idea is to base the look of the CD cover on the single title Female Of The Species. So we were thinking of ways to show dominance of the female version of Jess over the male. However we could make our artwork not directly link to the theme of the album. Our initail ideas were to incorporate things such as clowns and puppet strings to show the control the female has over the male. We could use a shot from our music video and use editing software such as photoshop to edit it to give it the impact a CD cover needs. I have noticed that most popular female artists such as Beyonce and Alexandra Burk have their own face to promote their album. 

There is lots of black and white and close ups of their faces with neat make up and hair back. However these women are all very feminine and conform to what female pop stars look like and our video is trying to challenge these ideas. However people are attracted more to the artist than the music and the cover sows this. As the song we are using is from the 90’s we can incorporate this into the look of our cover. Here are some CD covers of bands from the 90’s, some of them have links to our ideas for CD covers in terms of feminine figures or things linked to lust or love.

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We also needed to look at fonts for our cover as this finishes off the look and needs to work well with the image. Having said this making the font totally opposite can also work. We were thinking a very simple font for ‘female of the species’ and then a complex detailed font for Space. All of the fonts here for Space are taking the name quite literally.

 

Here is the discography of Space the band, I do really like them and the bright colours mixed with contemporary design and retro imagery. The covers are very eye catching and I would be drawn to looking more at the cover.

Space Discography

This collection of photos focuses largely on mise-en-scene and not as much the shot legth and angle as they are pretty much the same.  The reasons why these adverts work is due to the colour palette and interesting surroundings, the images are highly edited and would not look haif as interesting post edit. The black and red image is most interesting to us as there is the sexy burlesque theme we are hoping to achieve. The high slit on the long black dress, the red polished apple and long red draping curtains all ass to the burlesque vibe.

The new era of ablum art.

People are becoming bored of the same old album covers. Popular music normally shows an image of the artist singing or in a seductive pose and this has not chagned since the early days of album art. The reason why things have changed is we now see our favourite bands and artists every waking minute of our lives. We can see them in many magazines, on TV, there is also more oppurtunities to see them live. So we have a relatively good idea of what they look like. We now expect more from an album cover, we expect something so contemporary and origional that it will persuade them to choose that album cover over downloading their tunes from the internet. We now also want a keepsake from an album, if we are going to go to the effort of buying a CD it needs to be something special not a picture that you can find on the intenet. Music downloading has proved very damaging to the sales of CD’s so artists are going to new levels to keep the CD on the shleves. The clean smooth images of 10 years ago no longer appeal to music fans, well not as much, so innovative designs are being produced that are much more gritty and surreal, many more painters are being used with the use of well known paintings to represent the CD. Here is some examples of this:

Using an image such as this for an album cover may not instantly catch your eye when on its own or amongst others of the same nature however when amongst all of the modern colourful contemporary covers these will stand out as they look traditional and are pale colours. Many of these covers do not include the title on the cover, this may be to not spoil the beauty of the image and to keep it looking like an origional painting. Covers such as these may also not give any clues as to the genre of music, this can work by intruiging possible buyers or can mean people who are set in their ways in terms of genres of music may not look twice at this CD.Another theme that seems popular with modern CD covers is having a centre piece normally circular shaped that draws the eye in to the album. Here are some examples:

These ablum covers work well as personally have a circular shape in the centre of a square looks slightly hypnotic and hard to take your eyes of, it could be symbolising the vision through a target on a gun or looking through a spyglass. It is also very effective when the image in the circle if extremely detailed and the surrouding space very plain. There are many covers that go for the look of a kaleidoscope and this can also be hypnotic and eye catching.

Sketchy album covers are also becoming more and more popular as they give the raw and not so polished look of CD covers in the past. The sketchy pencil lines look interesting and detailed and are never the same as each other.

 

EXPERIMENTING WITH CD COVERS.

After looking at other CD covers and targeting our audience we have come up with an initial idea for our front cover back cover and insert, we have taken what we know looks good and is effective from the music video and we are going to do a photo shoot to get a collection of images that are crisp and effective.

For the front cover of our CD we have decided to use a symetrical image of  Jess in a long black dress and glamourous make up, this idea came from the adverts with Katy Perry in for GHD. We think a black dress and dark purple lipstick will make her look quite deadly but at the same time sensual. Having an image duplicated and flipped is used quite often and can be seen on quite a few other cover art and music videos. Lady Gaga uses a huge amont of symetry for the opening sequence in Born This Way. We have also used this technique for the scenes in our video when Jess is wearing the red kamono. By doing this shapes can be make in the space between the two images of Jess that can be interesting to the eye.

We have done a photoshoot for our CD cover after decided we wanted something new and fresh rather than a shot from our video. In the beginning we wanted to do our photo shoot in a church somewhere to innkeep woth the gothic vibe however we didn’t want to disrespect anyone and didn’t know who to contact for it also our deadline was getting closer and closer, we then thought about using the theatre again where we filmed some of our music video but the theatre wasn’t avaliable when we were, our last resort was one of our houses and just use a big white sheet to create a backgroud and it turned out this may have been the most effect option. The costumes and props we used are:

Long Black Dress

Dark Purple Lipstick

Black High heels

Diamond Necklace

Hair down and messy

……..

white shirt

black bow tie

black bowler hat

black waistcoat

gems (green, blue, white, gold, red) for lips

hair up

Here are some of the shots we took:

Here is some initial ideas for a CD cover I made at home just using paint:

And here are the edits we made to the pictures we decided to use for our CD cover and insert.

This is the picture we have chosen for our back cover and here is a few things we did when editing it.

– Exposure up

-Hue and saturation of the gems up

-Inserted white text on the hat and black text on the face.

-placed a barcode over the image

I think the composition of the back cover works well as all of the image and text in placed in the center with white space either side, the black hat contrasts with the clinical white background, and the gems add detail without making it too busy.

This is our final design for the front cover and to produce this we increased the exposure, used the lasso to delete the creases from the sheet, we kept the shadow to give the image depth and make her come out of the cover towards the viewer. The image looks quite creepy as the hair looks like it is floating when in fact Jess just flicked her hair and I had to capture the image at the precise time. We have kept the font simple and small so as not too distract from the image as we know that from our research it is not vital that the name of the album or band is on the cover.

Here are the pictures we are using for the booklet:

I think the CD cover works very well

FILMING THE MUSIC VIDEO AND THE FINISHED MUSIC VIDEO

Our first attempt at filming didn’t go down very well as we were not prepared for filming in the theatre at, there was a production underway at the time which meant the seats in the theatre were covered in costumes and props which we werent allowed to move meaning we couldn’t do as many long shots as we had planned. We had a problem with lighting in the theatre as the lights were directed towards the stage and we were hoping to use the chairs so our idea couldn’t really come to life which was annoying, however we did find a spot on the stage that had brilliant lighting, we used a chain from the prop box at the theatre for Jess to use whilst singing. We did try to do some filming outside but it didn’t work our too well due to poor weather conditions and a lack of quality lighting, our lack of planning and organisation had made our filming a bit dissapointing.

We then had a rethink of what we would need to make filming more sucessful and had a ring around to find a suitable location. We had got some usable footage from the theatre so we had a start. We found the Community Centre would be a good place for us as it had the space and look we wanted however it was quite costly to rent out so it was paramount that we used our time wisely and got on sticking to our story board and shot list. We had also got more equipment this time and I borrowed a good industrial standing light from my Dad’s workshop. We also used a dolly to get a smoother shot. The lighting and effort we put into mise en scene meant that this filming went a lot better and we were sure the footage would be good enough for our music video. We did try to stick to our shot list however as many people do we thought of new different ideas when we saw it all in front of us.

 However I feel that we still could have gone that one step futher with the amount of effort we put into filming I think we could have been a lot more creative with our camera angles and shot lengths as well as how many shots we did, we tended to stick to one distance and wasn’t very imaginative with our cinematogrpahy, for example a worms eye/birds eye view or crane shot may have provided the diversification required to achieve the higher marks.

 

 

Here is our finished music video, after many hours of editing using Final Cut.

SHOTLISTS, DRAFTING, STORYBOARD

SHOOTING SCRIPT:

– 3 x shot of cobbles- l0w angle

– 3 x shot of cobbles – heels walking through

– 3 x shot women walking away, stops, crouches down

– 3 x close up women’s face

– 3 x shot woman walking off (jump cuts)

– 3 x shot silhouette hands

– 3 x close up cat’s eye

– 3 x close up mannequin face

-3 x close up candle

– 3 x close up cross

– 3 x silhouette dancing

– 3 x close up hands – different angles

– 3 x close up man’s face – eyes open

– 3 x mid shot – man through window washing up

– 3 x mid shot – camera pans through door

– 3 x mid shot woman sat in throne

– 3 x mid shot woman with snake

– 3 x shot woman ‘shock’ tilt head

– 3 x close up blood down face

– 3 x mid shot man singing

– 3 x close up faces coming towards camera

– 3 x close up mans face

– 3 x close up hands in face

– 3 x shot man in old bolingbroke – high angle

– 3 x mid shot silhouette dancing

– 3 x different angles in junk shop

– 3 x close up woman laughing

– 3 x close up vase smashing

 

STORYBOARD

 

 

 

There had to be some changes made to this inital plan as the locations that we were hoping to film at were not avaliable. The weather was not in our favour for a long duration of time time so we werent able to do any type of filming out side, meaning our planned opening wasn’t going to be able to happen as well as the filming at Bolingbroke Castle. It was also very hard to find a suitable male to play the role as no one we could get into contact with fitted the bill as it would have been too confusing to have an older man however we knew no boys that had the time to be in our video. This is when we had the idea of Jess in fact playing the male role which could work very well if we reearch other artists who have taken this route. We were also not able to use Great Expectations junk shop as we were not allowed to film in there becasue of other people who have done before and things have gone missing. After finding a new location at the local community centre we needed to come up with a new plan.

So we had a rethink of our shotlist and this is what we came up with:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACTORS LOCATIONS COSTUMES PROPS

ACTRESS: Jessica Littleworth (Drama Student, 18 years old, dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin, feminine features, dancer). The reason we believe that Jess suits the part of our female performer is that she is very confident so will not shy away from the camera but will put a lot of effort into over reacting the miming of the song and will be fine with becoming this sensual powerful character we think our video needs. She has very dark hair with extremely pale skin, this will also link to the vampiric side to our character as this shows her dangerous side. Jess is also an experienced dancer so will look professional when perfoming the movements we ask of her.

PERFORMANCE ELEMENT: We have made this quite hard for oursleves as obviously we can not get Space to perform the song for us and the contacts we have in terms of bands do not play this 1990’s type of music. I think it would look quite professional is we did have a band performing the song however the organisational side of this would be difficult.

LOCATIONS: We think that we need to have several different types of locations from big open spaces to cramped areas with lots to look at, we would then dress Jess according to her surroundings. We want to use an old cobbled street in Horncastle with St Marys Church in the background as the opening to our music video and then switch between Great Expectations junk/antique shop and Old Bollingbroke castle. Despite this being quite an adventourous location plan we think that as the video will be mainly based on movements inspired by Jessie J and O Lande videos, then we need to have interesting locations to keep as audiences attention. Some music video create a location in post production, using a green screen and special effects, this creates a modern vibe and is often colourful such as this video for Rude Boy by Rhianna.

However obviosly we don’t have the technology to take this path for our music video so we need to try hard to get a location that is interesting and flexible to film in. We will be filming our music video in the following locations:

– Red Lion theatre Horncastle, this theatre is a very old traditional theatre will red velvet seats and it also has a bit of an eerie spooky feel that along with lighting will make for the perfect setting for our video with the red curtains acting as a glamorous back drop.

-Horncastle Community Centre, this is a very large open space that we will be able to use to get the long shots and will enable Jess to move about and dance. The floors and decor are very dated which will suit the era of the song.

-Surroundings of St Marys Church, there is an old cobbled street that leads up to the church in horncastle and this would be inkeeping with the traditional vampiric theme however that location is very dependant on the weather conditions as we are filming during winter and only have time to film after school when the sun has set, it may prove too difficult to get a good quality shot so we might have to stick to the inside loactions.

COSTUMES: is is very important that we out a lot of effort into the costumes we use in the music video as we are not planning on having a strong stroyline to our video, obviously we do not have the recources that the professionals have and the extensive wardrobes and professional make up artists however I have got many dancing comstumes and props that we have accumilted over the years that will be useful for our video.

RED LEATHER JACKET: we will use Lucy’s red leather jacket to give that biker look however there is also an association with leather and bondage, obviously we don’t want it too be quite that wierd and sexual however this slight suggestion adds to the dangerously sexual vibe, despite my views on this association many pop stars are seen in videos wearing lots of leather cat suits, Britney is often seen in this attire.

MANS SUIT, TROUSERS, JACKET, WHITE SHIRT: this will be used to give the ambiguous and opposite gender look that we want to achieve that is seen used by Calvin Klein and in Lady GaGas music video as her alter ego. This suit will be over sized for Jess however this will make her seen slightly innocent, If we team the mans trousers with high heels this can also look glamourous and is often the look celebrities go for such and Kelly Rowland.

RED LEOTARD WITH FEATHER SKIRT AND FISHNET TIGHTS: this costume will bring the element of glamour to the video, and the quirky feather tail exentuates the female body and creates an interesting shot with the twinkle of the sequins and the fish nets as sensualtiy.

RED PROM DRESS: This dress is floor length and is extremely femenine with glamourous jewels and embeleshing, if we get the lighting right we will hopefully make them catch the light similar to the way light hit the jeweles in Florence and the Machines video. Movements will need to by slow and sensual in this dress.

BLACK LACE DRESS: this dress is more modern gothic and leans more towards the sexy vampire look as seen in TV series such as True Blood, movements in this outfit would be more stern and strong, invading the camera.

ORIENTAL SILKY DRESSING GOWN: this teaming with heavy eye make up and sparkly gems on Jess’s lips with look interesting and intriguing for both the female and male viewers, the silk also is very sensual, the way it feels and the way it flows is very feminine and the red and gold together looks royal and bold.

PROPS: we will use props to show Jess’s strength and power over the male with chains and to show her mystery a black mask over her eyes, we got the idea of this from the florence and the machine video. We will incorporate our studies of semiotics into the music video with lots of reds in the video such as a single red rose which is associated with lust and love. We will use for the male Jess a walking stick and bowler hat to show the male is weak and hiding.

POTENTIAL TARGET AUDIENCE FOR OUR MUSIC VIDEO

Our research into olther artists have shown that our potential target audience could be two segments of people.In one way our potential target audience would be 16+ year olds as there would be fans of modern pop music and artists such as the ones we have researched ( Jessie J, Florence and the Machine) that would be interested in the different costume changes and the glamourous side of the music video where young teenage girls can aspire to be like the females in the music videos, there is then the attraction of the sensuality of the female we use in our music video which would appeal to younger boys who are attracted to these powerful and erotic women. The movements in the video would be quite sensual and suggestive however not too over the top that it becomes unnapealing for the female audience. Looking at fan websites for artists such as Jessie J, Rihanna and Shakira we see that there are many young teensge girls that are obseesed with these pop stars.

 

We could also attract a totally different audience of 40+ year olds this would be down to our song chioce. Anybody that were a fan of Britpop would also find our video appealing as the song would be recognisable and would take them back to their youth. This is another reason why we wouldn’t want the dancing and movements in the music video to be too sexual as adults that would be a potential target audience may find it all too much and even sleasy. We need to find a happy medium where we make the video appropriate enough for adults to watch and enjoy it however similar to more modern artists that use movements and mise-en-scene to show a sexual side too appeal to the 16+ age range.