Advanced Portfolio A2

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

My chosen song is ‘Umbrella by Rihanna ft. Jay-Z’, the song is within the RNB genre. This song already has an established music video, which inspired me a lot when coming up with ideas for our own video. Not only was the original video an influence but we also looked at other RNB music video’s such as; Beyoncé – Dance for you. This mainstream artist has had a very successful career and is very established within the industry. The song ‘umbrella’ has a range of fast and slow pace, the fact that the song is about love and a relationship and protecting someone is very meaningful and then including ‘umbrella’ with sort of a abstract meaning. After looking at different RNB artists and videos, I preferred the idea of an abstract type video and not a story-type video. I preferred an abstract type video because I thought it worked better with the genre being RNB , and with the typical convention of including dancers and dance routine, it’s easier to not have a story line with RNB music, especially with the an artist like Rihanna because she’s meant to be a sex icon, and the big aim of the video is for her to appeal to the audience and look incredible and sexy. I wanted to create a video that was nearly all performance, to do this I used a range of long, medium and close up shots of the main artist, I also used a lot of lip-sync throughout the video, I think this makes it a lot more effective and realistic, more interesting for the audience to watch.

After researching thoroughly in the codes and conventions of RNB in general and then my chosen song in particular I found that the most common things that are within an RNB music video are; minimal clothing, to create the sex appeal for the audience. Expensive jewellery (or a lot of it), there is examples of this in the beginning of the original video when Jay-Z is performing, this is typical within an RNB music video because jewellery means money and money suggests to the audience that they are rich and powerful and that’s how they get that point across. Dancing is a big typical convention and is highlighted throughout the original video, it’s important because it shows off the artists’ skills and makes her look very appealing to the audience, quick cuts and fast paced editing helps to make the dancing and her performing more interesting and effective because it fits well with the song pace.

These are some screen shots from the original ‘Umbrella’ video that influenced us on how we wanted our video to look and come across to and what type of shots would be best for the finished video to look effective;

This shot influenced us a lot because it says a lot about her as an artist. It gave us a lot of thought about what type of outfits are going to be appropriate and will best appeal to the larger audience. How she is positioned is a big thing to think about because she has to look physically attractive to the audience, therefore possibly showing some flesh. Really loved the lighting to this shot, as I think it makes her seem mysterious and a powerful woman.

Here we have a close-up. We decided we wanted to add quite a few close-up shots in our own music video because we felt it really highlighted the main artist. Her looking straight into the camera we felt really connected with the audience and made her seem believable. It also highlighted her beauty and attracted the audiences attention. We liked the idea of the dark background with good lighting on her face to make her stand out more and then the attention is all on her.

We took particular notice to this shot because when we watched the original video this shot caught our eye and made us think ‘wow’ that’s brilliant. What we thought was particularly intriguing was her body movement. We wanted to include something like that within our video. We did in fact ask our performer if she would be practically naked in the shot because we thought it would be great to go with the convention of minimal clothing and appealing to male audience. However, unfortunately our performer wasn’t comfortable with doing this so we had to change the plan, and came up with the next best alternative which we thought would be to wear a leotard which is still very sexy and tight and would still appeal to the audience.

Here is an example of a medium/long shot, we wanted to include quite a few of these shots within our music video because we were basing the video as a performance video. Therefore long shots are vital to see some performance of the main artist and not just her face.

I think that the original music video for ‘Umbrella’ gave me great inspiration and ideas for my own music video. Once we had a good idea of what we wanted our video to look like and what type of things we wanted to include, we had to choose the locations for filming. We liked the idea of having plain type of background because we wanted the main focus to be the main artist and for her to be the main part of the shots. Therefore we came up with the idea of filming in the green room at college because it enabled us to edit in any type of background we wanted, which was perfect. We also choose to use the theatre for the dance sequence, this was an ideal location because there was enough space for everyone, it was again in college which made organising things easier and getting all the performers together easier.

On the first day of shooting, we decided to start of shooting some of the easier shots of just the main artist in the green room, shooting mainly close-ups. We had asked a girl that was one of our friends which didn’t go to the college; we had set up all the different types of lights such as the magenta light and the tripod and camera in the green room for everything to work with the filming. After filming and watching it back on the edit suite we realised it hadn’t quite gone how we had hoped, the lights were quite set right in the green and so there were still some green patches in the shots that we were unable to get rid of. Then unfortunately when we had rescheduled with the performer, she later told us that she was unable to carry on being our main artist. This brought us to a standstill of been able to carry on doing anything until we found someone else that could perform for us. We decided it would be best to ask someone that went to college with us that would be in college everyday and wouldn’t have to travel to come film for us. We quickly found someone else that was willing to do it; she was part of the dance team in college, so she was perfect for the part as she was really enthusiastic and confident. If I could re-do this I would of picked someone that went to the college in the first place to be in my music video because this effectively made us lose time and effort, on the other hand it was a lesson in how to set the green room up with the right lighting and wouldn’t make the same mistake when filming next time.

When filming we had to do things like writing out the lyrics on paper for the performer to learn them in depth, to make sure she was accurate with her lip syncing and generally more confident when performing.

At the beginning of the production we created an animatic for our chosen song, with all the shots in the right order and what the shots would include. We found that once we had started to film, a lot of things changed, we came up with new and better ideas for the music video that we hadn’t put into the animatic. Therefore the finished music video isn’t quite like the animatic exactly but creating one in the first place did help a lot with coming up with ideas and working out how long shots needed to be for it all to come together. A big thing we realised when we actually started filming and putting the film on the edit suite for us to them watch back and start editing, is that the shots were far too long to what we had planned them to be in the animatic. So realised we would need more shots than we anticipated.

The part I found difficult when making my video was making sure there was lots of varied shots and different things happening in the shots, to make sure that the audience wouldn’t lose interest when watching the video especially because it is a fairly long song been 4 minutes 13 seconds and making sure all dancing and movement in the shots were quick enough to keep up with the fast pace of the song.

Looking in depth to what the typical codes and conventions are to RNB music videos definitely helped a lot and influenced quite a few of the ideas in my music video. It made me more aware and gave me more knowledge about what would work best for my chosen song.

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

To begin with I started off by making drafts on plain A4 paper roughly with a pen, sketching out a few different ideas of how to lay things out on the page. I then went and took quite a few images of my main artist that was featuring in my music video. I took a variety of different ones, because then thought I would most likely not have to arrange another day to take more if some of them weren’t quite right for either the magazine advert or the digipak.

I then began to make my magazine advert; I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create my magazine advert. I picked the photo that seemed most appropriate and which I thought would fit well with how I wanted to lay out everything on the advert.

This was the image that I chose, I picked this one because I felt the black and white effect really went with my music video style, therefore keeping continuity throughout the video and the magazine advert I thought was a really good and effective idea for when coming to showing the products to the audiences. I then looked at some different types of text fonts for the text that I was planning on including on the advert. I decided I didn’t want too much writing on it because I wanted to keep it simple and clear as possible with including just the most important information such as; the album name; artist name; release date; and website. I chose to include these details on my magazine advert because I felt like these were the most important and all the information the audience needed to know. I felt like keeping it quite simple was the most effective way of creating it because I believe the audience would take more notice of it and be bothered to read it. I decided to link the album name and artist name together, with the artist being called ‘Georgia Red’ and then the album name being ‘RED’, it meant it was less wording on the page and it was quite unique. It did mean I had to make it clear to the audience that ‘RED’ was not only the artists surname but also the name of the album. Therefore thought it made sense to have the ‘red’ text in the colour red, this made it stand out and look more like the album name because it is different to all the other text, I also enlarged to for more emphasis. After creating the first draft with the artist name and album name at the bottom left and the release date above it on the left, I decided that didn’t really look right and didn’t really make sense that the main part of the advert (the artist name and album name) was not actually the main feature. Therefore decided to go with draft 2, and have the realise date under the artist and album name, also to put the release date in the centre, as it looked more eye catching to the audience. I included a website on my magazine advert because I felt it would create a sense of realism and made it look more professional. I particularly think the main image works well and fits the ideology because I wanted her to look attractive to attract the audience’s attention just like she does in the video. Overall I was really pleased with how my magazine advert turned out, I thought it looked professional and linked well with my music video and digipak. One last change I made to my magazine advert was; I changed the from the ‘20^th’ to the ‘23^rd’because after looking at the date on a calendar I realised that the ‘20^th’ was in fact a Wednesday, and I just thought that normally nobody really goes out to buy an album in the middle of the week. Therefore changed it to a Saturday, when people do go out and buy albums. I did this to simply make it more realistic.

What I have learned from creating my magazine advert is that if I was to do it again I would make more drafts of different types of layout, to make sure I created the most effective one.

Here is my finished and final draft of my magazine advert.

I then began to make my Digipak, I again used Abode Photoshop CS5 to create it. My original idea was to use some of the photos that I had taken before, the ones that I hadn’t used for my magazine advert. After looking at them, I wasn’t really keen on many of them and didn’t think they would fit well all together, as I needed at least 4 different photos. So instead I came up with the idea of taking screen shots of my music video and using them as photo’s, the images were far better suited for the Digipak, looked a lot more professional and also carried on the continuity between the 3 different products, which was a lot more effective. I began with picking what images would go best on which side of the Digipak, taking into consideration things such as; track list that had to go on the back cover; the album name on the front cover. I used 3 different snap shots from my music video for my Digipak and one image that I had already taken previously when taking the photos for my magazine advert. The one I had taken myself I used for the front cover, I felt it worked well because she was looking straight into the camera connecting with the audience, it was also a close up of her face which was effective because it draws the audience in, I feel it’s important for her to connect with the audience especially on the front cover because it’s the main side and the first side the audience look at. This was the only image that was not in black and white, I made a draft of the Digipak with the front cover image still in colour but I wasn’t really keen on it and didn’t feel it worked with the rest of the Digipak because it didn’t carry on the continuity and sort of stuck out and looked stupid. So I changed the image into black and white with the effects tool and it looked so much more effective and linked together well with the other images that it was next to. I tried to make sure that all the images that I used showed the artist in a different position and looking attractive in each one, ones that I believed would intrigue the audience with each one they looked at. I included a bar code, track list, copy right and website also on the back cover. I did this because I felt it made it look a lot more professional and kept with the typical conventions of over CD digipak’s.

My main aim throughout creating my music video, magazine advert and Digipak was to make sure they all linked together and that was clear to the audience. To keep continuity throughout the products is important to be successful in what you are producing.

Here is my final finished draft of my Digipak.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In the first stages of producing the music video coursework we decided to ask some pupils in college some questions about the typical conventions they would expect to see within this type of genre of song (Umbrella – Rihanna ft. Jay Z). We got video evidence from 1 person that said… The second person we got video evidence from… The third and final person we got video evidence said that…

This feedback helped us have an idea of what the audience would be expecting to see within the video from listening to the song. It meant we knew what things we shouldn’t include because it didn’t fit the conventions of typical RNB music videos but also the things we knew wouldn’t be popular with the audience and it appealing to the audience was one of our main important aims. As if it didn’t appeal to the target audience then the album would fail to sell. It was useful for coming up with ideas for costume and cast ideas, what type of scenes would be appropriate and what locations would be best. After we had interviewed the students and established that they thought having dancers and dance sequences would be appropriate for an RNB music video, we decided to include this as it was obviously popular with the audience but also after looking at other RNB artists and videos such as Beyoncé crazy in love, you can see that the main artist does a lot of dancing and is wearing little clothing because she’s meant to be a sex icon just like Rihanna. We also looked at the original Umbrella video version to see what conventions were included and how Rihanna was portrayed. So decided that we would include a dance sequence, which would be best filmed and performed in the college theatre. We knew that the dancers needed to be wearing little clothing and look attractive to appeal particularly to the male audience, because the female audience will hopefully like the video because they inspire to be like the main artist and then the males are attracted to her. Getting both genders of audience on side with the song and video, therefore in the end selling more of the end product.

After uploading my finished music video onto YouTube and then my blog and watched it back I realized that there was a few errors and things that could look better so I went back and changed them. I firstly changed a spelling error which wasn't a major issue. I also saw a quick blip in the middle of two shots that was a black shot, so went back onto the editing suite, zoomed in one the two clips that were slightly spaced out and pulled them together so there wasn't a space anymore. And my third and final change was fading the shot of the four dancers that was being used as a background behind the main artist, I wanted to do this because I felt it didn't look quite right and realistic and fading it made it look a lot better. It also made the main artist more see able rather than looking straight at the dancers in the background.

The videos above are of students that are giving me positive and negative feedback. They watched my finished music video so then they were able to answer my questions and give me feedback for me to reflect on. A lot of the positive feedback I got were things like; the use of two shots in one, using one for background effect; using effects such as the reverse shot; that the black and white effect was good. The fact that some of positive feedback was repeated shows that obviously people agreed and shows they were the things I did successfully. The things that people said I could of improved were things such as; more of a dance routine; used more of the nature environment. I agree with critics, I would of created more of a dance routine if I had started my filming early, I wish I had done this now. I wish I had also not only just used the green room, mainly because the video would of had more background variety and would of looked more interesting, but also because we would of had more room to perform.

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

In the beginning stages of producing my product, when researching I used YouTube to look at different types of RNB music videos and to also look at the original ‘Umbrella’ music video by Rihanna. I found YouTube very useful in my research stage because it influenced and helped me form ideas for my own music video. If I wasn’t able to watch the videos on YouTube I’m not sure whether I could have been as successful in creating my own music video. YouTube also helped in my planning stage because when you watch a video it shows you each different shot there is and how long that shot is, which was extremely helpful in giving me some guidance into how long shots should be before becoming too long and therefore losing the audience’s interest, which I didn’t want to happen. If I could of changed anything then I would of definitely gone back and used YouTube for audience feedback, I would of liked to uploaded my video to YouTube and being able to get comments from other YouTube users to gain feedback, to learn how successful my final product actually was.

I also used Google in my research stages to look at different types of magazine adverts and digipak examples from various different established artists. It helped a lot with influencing my ideas and giving me knowledge of what actually is included on a professional realistic magazine advert and CD digipak. I also used Google to research into the copy right code that I needed to include on the back cover of my CD digipak. To also look at different types of track listing, giving myself an idea of how many tracks there should be for it to look realistic.

I used my mobile phone in the research stage to record other students giving me feedback about the type of genre of my chosen song, I did this by asking them various different questions. I used my mobile phone because it was a lot easier than using a digital video camera. It didn’t need to be great quality so using my mobile phone made more sense, as it was quicker to use and easier to upload to the computer. I also used my mobile phone in the evaluation stages after completing my final products. I again filmed with the built in video camera students asking them for feedback on my final finished product of my music video. I got them to watch my music video all the way through and then give positives and negatives and what I could have done differently to improve my overall finished products.

A main component with producing my ancillary texts was Adobe Photoshop CS5. It enabled me to open images on to it and then edit then how I wanted them to look. I was able to cut and crop bits that I didn’t want, add different effects such as black and white which was essential for my photos so I could keep the continuity throughout all my products. After editing my photos to how I wanted them, I was then able to put together a magazine advert and digipak, including text on top of the images and the template of the CD digipak that helped me size and place all my photos correctly. Without using Adobe Photoshop CS5 I wouldn’t have be able to create anything as professional and realistic to what I have done. Photoshop is fairly hard to use, but I felt quite confident after learning and using it for the past year.

To edit and put together all my clips of filming for my music video I used Adobe Premierpro, which looks like this. I found it quite hard to use at first but after some lessons on using it and experimenting with different tools I got used to it. After each day of filming I uploaded the shots immediately onto the edit suite (Adobe Premierpro) and put the shots into folders of what shoot it was, eg. The folder ‘Shoot 1’ had all the shots of filming from day 1. This helped me because it meant all the shots were organised and I could access them easily and not lose any. Creating my music video on here meant I was able to cut and re-size clips, add special effects such as slow motion and reverse edit on the clip, increase and decrease the speed of clips to match the pace of the music and many other different effects.

We used a Sony Handicam with a memory card to film all the music video; we used this camera because it was recommended. It was really good quality and battery life was fairly good. Very easy to use and understand. The only problem with using a camera from college was that we needed to know quite fair in advance when we would be needing the camera because of having to book it to make sure the camera would be free to use, as we weren't the only people needing the camera. Ideally I would of liked to have had my own camera that was just as good as the college one, to have been able to use that. Which would have been easy because I could of used it whenever I wanted.

Finally to show my work and put it all together I uploaded it all in posts onto my blogger site. It was an easy way for my teachers to see my video and other products I had produced.

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