Dear Moderator

Dear Moderator,

I have now finished my A2 Advanced Portfolio. I hope you enjoy reading through my blog leading up to what is now my final construction. 

Thank you.

Evaluation #4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning & evaluation stages?

I've included a short video just demonstrating some of the work I did on FCPx and the websites that were involved for the process of my work.

Evaluation #3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Gathering feedback for anything is vital. Especially in the media industry. 

When gathering feedback for my rough cut and final cut it was important that what I was producing matched with what my audience wanted to see and listen to. Not only was the music video itself a crucial thing to market correctly but the digipak and magazine advert had to be on point too, as these are the advertising techniques the audience will see in order to establish brand identity and to recognize the artist. My target audience was mixed genders, aged between the ages of 18 - 25. I chose this age as I wanted to be able to market digitally and in order for this to be successful and to reach my target audience they had to be digital natives or digital immigrants who were accustomed to the latest technologies. When producing my ideas to my target audience I also had to take into account that I was getting feedback from the appropriate audience as this would alter the results. Stuart Hall, another media theorist, had a theory on reception and how audience would respond to certain media texts. Those who would either be 

Dominant Reading: where the audience will fully accept and match the producers intentions of them reacting; this makes the feedback more organic and natural. This is also known as a preferred reading

Then there is the Opposition Reading: This is where the audience will disagree with the producers intentions, rejecting and not accepting the media. This could be down to their social position.

Finally there is the Negotiated Reading: This is where the audience is middle grounded on the coding. They either agree or disagree with the producers intentions or they modify it in a way that reflects them more appropriately

With that in mind I went into looking into social positions and used Michael Maffesoli's theory on Urban Tribes. 

(link to my post on urban tribes HERE)

Each tribe has a group and their own subgroups. I had to decide which group my music genre of Pop/Electro-pop would fit into and would recieve the best response. The groups are Aspirant Mainstream, Mainstream, Urban, Alternative or Leading Edge. 

Eval 3 - Trendies by mlknight93 on GoAnimate

Eval 3: Trackies and Fangirls by mlknight93 on GoAnimate

Eval 3: Emo by mlknight93 on GoAnimate

With this research I decided the target market I was going for would be within the tribe Aspirant in a sub-culture of either Trendies, Rah's or New Casual. I decided this because the Trendies are always searching for the next big thing, New casuals like underground beats and understated fashion while Rah's are well off 'rich kids' who are likely to listen to most pop music and most likely to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram.
My style in video would appeal to these social groups as it shows a mature, contemporary aesthetic and holds a professional feel about it. The Aspirant tribes are also very digital native and find themselves spending a lot of time browsing online stores such as Urban Outfitters, scrolling through Twitter and Facebook and wasting time watching endless amounts of YouTube videos. This works well for me as my target market are within the ages of 18-25 and my ideal style of marketing is through social networks and digital platforms. They are also more likely to have disposable incomes due to parents, being students or working jobs. This would mean they have the income to purchase my digipak. Using websites such as Facebook and YouTube to advertise would be the appropriate use of marketing and magazines such as 'Company', 'Elle', 'Cosmopolitan' and 'John Lewis' would appeal to my audience.

I'm aware these are statistics for America but I believe the statistics are like this for many first world countries. As you can see watching television and going online on the computer, not for work, are the highest statistic at 3.9 hours a day average and reading online is around 1.4 to 0.9 hours a day. It's clear from these statistics that society is consuming media daily for a long period of time. This would mean my marketing strategy for my target audience would definitely be either watching TV adverts, music channels etc, watching music videos and browsing social media sites online or reading magazines online or via app on their smart phones. 

Written Feedback:

When looking at my feedback for my final product and my rough products I can discover what my audience wants.  I made sure to get feedback for my music video throughout different parts of my editing to make sure that what I was producing matched what my target audience wanted to see and that it was relevant to my chosen genre.
The first lot of feed back is below:

I had my peers watch my video and comment on different aspects of the video such as use of the camera, construction of mise-en-scene, editing, use of sound and my individual contribution to the product.  The audience were asked to mark it out of 4  (4 being the highest mark and 1 being the lowest.) From my self assessment I marked myself as around a 3 for the most part as I felt there was room for improvement and my peers seemed to agree with me. This was very helpful when editing my rough cut as it shown me that I was on the same page as my audience and that what I was doing was good I could just do more of it. I feel this method of feedback was the most beneficial as it wasn't just positive criticism but also constructive. As I was alone in this project it was easy for me to just think "yep, I like this so I'll do it" without having to discuss with someone else what they thought so having this feedback shows me that my ideas, although they were my own and I didn't discuss them with others, I was doing the right thing and appealing to my target audience.

I wanted to continue this method of feedback as it was beneficial for my progress. I continued to ask for people to watch and comment the more I progressed with my video and the feedback only got more positive which I was so proud and happy about. In the image above I had audiences mark my work out of 40 on the same criteria as above and to comment what they liked, disliked, how to improve and a total mark. As you can see it was a great response and I was hitting high marks.  The constructive comments I really appreciated as it was unnoticed by me that some of my lip-syncing was off so I quickly corrected this!  Without this feedback my work would of definitely not been up to par and I would of been clueless as to what looked and worked well for my target audience.  It was extremely important to me that the colour scheme worked (monochrome with pops of gold) and from the feedback it was clear people enjoyed this aspect and it worked with my final product.

Online Feedback:

One of my most crucial techniques for promoting my digipak and music video and how to get in touch with my target audience was to connect digitally. I used Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to link with my audience. Below are the statistics and comments from each platform. This was also very helpful as it show me who was watching, how many were watching, the likes, the criticisms and much more. This all went towards perfective my final product and really made me understand my audiences wants and what they expect of the  connotations with the genre.

I made sure that I not only posted my music video but also font choices and a sneak peak of my behind the scenes to keep people interested. I really like the feedback given for my rough cut it made me realise that not everyone will understand or appreciate the juxtaposition of the black and white with the colour so that shows me that perhaps he isn't from the target audience I was aiming for however others understood and appreciated it and that tells me they are the correct audience and have the preferred reading of my production and not the oppositional reading.

 

Seeing this feedback from only my behind the scenes video really inspired me and pushed me to make something really great. I made the BTS video similar to my actual music video so people could recognise the style and genre or my own I also used another Kate Boy song titled 'Way We Are' to distinguish this connection. From the amount of likes and views it told/tells me that I was heading in the right direction for my final product. I then uploaded my font choices onto Facebook and Twitter.

 

 Above is the feedback or my font choices. I found this step extremely useful when picking the typeface for my album and digipak I even included it in the opening of my music video. I created a pie chart to show more visually the response and choices of my peers.

The most popular choices were fonts 4, 5 and 6. This helped me in my decision for my digipak and music video a lot.  From this I understood that these fonts attracted my audience the most, they found these to be fitting for my music video and genre and for their tastes and this was extremely important to me that I got this right. I took this information and decided to choose font 6. Although this wasn't the most popular it spoke to me more, I liked this font, others did and it fit with my album nicely. 5 was more arty and took away from my simplistic feel but I appreciated that my audience liked that and liked difference and more abstract fonts. This also reflect my feel for the music video, but challenging the popular choice by using a less popular one it worked with me and gave more emphasis on the abstract nature of the music video.

The feedback for my digipak again was very positive. I got a lot of likes from my peers. I found that people liked the black and white theme and that it flowed well between the platforms of music video, digipak and magazine. Overall I learned that getting feedback is extremely important and influential when trying to attracted a particular audience.  I found that I had successfully filmed, edited, created a professional and convincing final product that was easily recognisable by my target market. Although there was a couple exceptions it made me realise how important Stuart Hall's theory is when reading audiences reactions. The right audience will give the right reading.

Evaluation #2: How effective is the combination between your final product and ancillary texts?

Below is a short presentation on how effective the combination between my final product and ancillary texts is. Enjoy:

Evaluation #1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media texts?

One of the first media theorists we looked at was Andrew Goodwin.  In 1992 he published a book titled "MTV: Dancing in the Distraction Factory" where he identifies a variety of ways to distinguish music video as a form. His theory includes 6 steps that allow us to recognise a music video and what we should look out for as an audience. 

Using Goodwin's theory I applied some of his steps to my own music video to create a professional and realistic media product.

One of his 'steps' is that the lyrics should either illustrate, amplify or contradict the visuals. As my music video genre was electro-pop I chose to go down the route of abstract over performance and narrative structure this was a little more challenging for me.

I decided in the end to link the visuals with the lyrics "everything we touch turns to gold". To bring this image to the screen I chose to use coloured smoke grenades which also merged into my 'arty', 'abstract' theme.

The song is about a connection between two people and how that connection is rich, limited and exclusive much like the connotation of the word 'gold'.  The smoke illustrates the colour but not so much the connotation. So in order to allow some relation in further detail I used gold metallic paint and painted mine and Sam's hands to illustrate "everything we touch turns to gold". 

Goodwin also states that there should be relation to music and visuals and I feel that my music video flows very well and the matching of the beat to the visuals I concentrated hard on. I wanted the visuals to follow the music in order for the audience to understand the way the tempo was heading. So leading up to the bridge the music slowed down and the main beat dropped, for this I used medium close ups from a tracking shot and also a medium side-shot with a soft bokeh effect gliding over, this indicates a slowness in the tempo before the long shot in front of the sunset which I then used another effect on Final Cut X called Bad TV to make it static and reflect the static electronic change in the music. I think this effect illustrates well to music. 

I mentioned a lot in my research into planning that my iconography and genre-style was to be as minimal and simplistic as possible. I wanted to infuse influence from the film 'Tron' and from other artists such as Charli XCX into my own style for the music video. Goodwin states that a a "genre related style and iconography is present" and as most abstract, electronic and contemporary music videos are now stripped down to being quite minimal and embracing the colour black I decided my costume and main attribute for the video would be black. Thus the black and white studio shots, use of silhouettes and black costume design.  Another huge convention in music videos that Andrew Goodwin mentioned was the amount of screen time the artist gets. It's clear that a media product form is music video when there are multiple camera close-ups of the star. This is so the audience identify who the main artist is and that they are recognisable.  I use a lot of close-ups, extreme close-ups and kept main screen time on myself as I was the star. I also kept it visually stimulation by switching the shots between locations and using lighting to my advantage and only showing one side of my face then cutting it to another shot where light is hitting the other side.

Voyeurism is another key theory which Goodwin stated, mainly in women more than men. This is because of something called the 'male gaze' which is a theory from Laura Mulvey. The 'gaze' deals with the audience viewing the people in a media form. The main features of the 'male gaze' are:

• The camera concentrating and lingering on the female body - specifically their curves or 'sexual' features e.g. eyes, lips, chest, waist, legs.
• The regulation of women being objectified

I wanted to bring in this theory in a much lighter tone than compared to Miley Cyrus's 'Wrecking Ball' video as it's an effective and commonly used aspect in music videos.  And as I am female I think it would be appropriate and more 'professional' looking if there was a sense of voyeuristic 'male gaze' shots. 

I decided to film medium shots of my legs and wearing the short front and long back skirt to express this 'gaze' and also some shots were close up and slightly out of focus of my face which was to represent a 'home video', 'hand held' voyeuristic feel. It's typical for women in pop videos to be shown off in this way and as my genre is 'electro-pop' I wanted to incorporate some of the traditional 'pop' connotations in there for more audience appeal.

As you can see from the above images I selected my camera angles specifically for this theory. I personally like the way the camera has focus pulls every now and then and feel this is an effective method to create the illusion of being watched or recorded.

[mention narrative and why it doesn't fit, include screen grabs from other music videos to support ]

Post-modernism is a concept which we have looked into in relation to music video. A famous example of post-modernism being used in music video is by The Death Set 'They Come to Get Us'

With many popular culture references such as The Simpsons, Batman and Back to the Future. I used intertextual references in my music video inspired from the film Sin City; where they use a black and white theme throughout and then pin point a select colour to highlight something during the film. I used this effect with the gold metallic paint on our hands to emphasise the lyric "everything we touch turns to gold." You can see it in the trailer below:

Overall my music video follows the codes and conventions of a real music video, especially within the genre of 'pop' and 'electro pop'. It is a music video of mainly conceptual, abstract and performance based. (a theory introduced by Sven Karlsson). My video showcases the performer (me) as a materialised commercial exhibitionist, which simply means that the artist is often seen selling an item and fans find themselves wanting or desiring to be them or to have what they have. It includes a sleek, contemporary theme with the black and white which is often seen in electro-pop videos such as Kate Boy's 'The Way We Are' video with a post modern inspiration from hit movies like Sin City and Tron.

In relation to my digipak the codes and conventions are again of a typical genre. I spent a lot of time on photoshop editing and airbrushing to give it the professional look. I wanted it to stay black and white with the pop of gold text to link it back to the music video and lyrics as Goodwin suggests. Some of my influences for my album cover we're artists in the electro-pop genre e.g. Kate Boy and then Adele who is more of a 'pop' artist.

(Adele left, mine middle, Kate Boy right.)

As you can see, some of the typical conventions of these genres on albums are black and white, crisp profile shots of the artist. In Adele's album the main focus is her face and there's a pop of lime green in the title '21' this brings in some focus the album. I wanted to include is pop of colour as previously mentioned to relate to the lyrics and so my target market will be able to find my album easily as it links to the video. In Kate Boy's album again, it is black and white with her face blacked out from the lighting and the use of a hat. I incorporated this idea into my album too but with just lighting as I think this is a really effective, abstract way to have an album. I didn't choose to hide my whole face as I wanted it to be recognisable and again to attract the right audience.

This style has to be consistent throughout the entire digipak so the audience can easily recognise the artist. Another key part of any digipak is the font used. I went with a very modern, contemporary type face as this is seen more and more in album covers today; especially in electro-pop. It gives a mature aesthetic vibe to the digipak. As you can see, another one of my inspirations, Lana Del Rey, used the same image for both her album and promotional poster:

Analysing my digipak:

Front Cover -

The front cover of my album is a profile shot of myself facing the camera. I chose to position the camera slightly at a high angle so it's looking down on my face. This creates a voyeuristic effect and my expression is subtle yet sultry and flirty.  I challenged the typical conventions of these genres (pop and electro-pop) by showing more of my face than usually would in an abstract album and expressing a more 'sexy' facial expression which is more related to pop. I chose to look straight at the camera as it gives of a aura or intensity which will draw the audiences attention. 

The use of lighting also attracts the audience as it is hiding the rest of my face this causes a sense of curiosity and would make the audience want to see more. The use of my font choice is to attract my target market age which is 18-30. As it's a sophisticated style and appearance. 

Middle and back covers-

The choice for my middle and back covers was quite difficult to pick in the beginning. I ended up choosing a side profile photo of myself for the inside next to the CD and then for behind the CD and on the back I used my own original photo from on the set of day 3, filming with the smoke grenades. The colour pallet works well and is synchronised throughout my digipak with pops of yellow/gold and the use of one photo on the inside in colour adds definition and challenges the consistency within reason. Not challenging too much to take away the relation to the music video, album and poster.

My promotional poster -

I found the magazine the most challenging part to create. Through thorough research I realised a lot of artists choose to have the same or similar images on their albums as they do posters/magazines (as seen above). Nine times out of ten the image used is the same as the album cover, however, I chose to challenge this convention by using a different image for the poster. I made sure to use different, unique images for each of my adverts. In the album I used a front cover photo, a different photo for the inlay and for the poster another different photo, however, they don't differentiate from the style and theme of the music video thus the consistency is still there and the audience are able to recognise and link the digipak together. I find this an effective way of advertising as it isn't all the same and keeps the audience interested.

All the images used hold a 'voyeuristic' feel to them, again related to Goodwin and Mulvey's theories of sexualising the female artist in order to achieve the male gaze.  Although mine are very subtle as in the genre 'electro-pop' there isn't a obvious amount of voyeurism and it's very effective. I love how lighting can create an emotion and this I used throughout my digipak and in my music video. On the poster/mag advert I included the album cover so audiences could find it easily, a smart phone barcode to take them straight to amazon or iTunes to purchase it, a quote from the Guardian relating to the album along with a 4 star rating and lastly the web address for audiences to click onto to find out more about the artist and their songs. I went into a lot of research to make sure I could achieve a very realistic and professional looking digipak and tried to include the right amount of information to fully attract the audience.

Construction-Final Cut Video

Above is my final cut for my music video of Kate Boy's 'Northern Lights'. It feels like a relief to have finally got my video finished but at the same time a little sad. Although I worked on this mainly by myself i'll miss filming and coming up with my creative thoughts and ideas and asking for the assistance for the equipment and the laughs that we had filming and messing up and how it took Farhath a billion times to get a steady tracking shot of me standing still haha. Overall though it's nice to be finished and today I shown my class my video and as I was watching my own work I couldn't help but feel proud as i thought it would be difficult and turn out a bit rubbish having to work on my own but although it was difficult it definitely didn't turn out how I expected it too.
Below is the feedback from the class with an overall rating of 9/10 which is so great and shows me I'm doing something right when it reaches such a high rating.

"Outdoor shot in the beginning doesn't look very well lit"
"More animation performance in the chorus would make the song look better"
Very good editing; matches to the beat well."
"The treatment matches the song nicely."
"The gold hand effect looked good; liked it."
"9/10"

I think the comments are fair and minor adjustments would be required to alter it in the way they suggested which is good and doesn't mean I've gone really wrong anywhere it's just aesthetic elements. 

Construction-Final Magazine

Above is my final construction for my magazine advert. 

I decided to keep the black and white theme as it matches the album. I also highlighted some words in gold to catch the audiences attention.

I'm happy with the result and thought it would be fun to put my magazine up in billboard to see what it would look like.

Here is my advert in a train station billboard and I think it looks pretty convincing. I chose this location as train stations are popular places and a lot of people will see it on their journeys. I put a smart phone scanner on the advert so my target audience will be able to scan it while travelling or on the go.

Below is a gif on how the different steps went into making it. 

Construction-Final Digipak

(click image for original size or right-click and open image in new tab)

Above is my final digipak product. It is a 4 panel base with spine. I opted or just 4 as I noticed a lot of people doing 6 and dare I say it, I wanted to be different. :p But in all seriousness I thought 4 panels suited my theme more. It's simple, yet effective. All images are my own and I even put in my own production company logo which you can see larger below:

It says 'MK Productions' which stands for Michaela Knight which is my name, hello. I love the font which is the same as the album cover I chose it as it matches and it expresses my style and if I was a production company for real I'd have a logo that shown my tastes and styles as well as this one.

Below are some images I did to show what my adverts would look like in real life scenarios such as bill boards and magazines themselves.

I posted my digipak on my Facebook and here is some of the feedback:

10 people from my Facebook liked it which is great news. It shows I'm doing something right an that my approach is something my target audience in interested in.

Digipak Ideas #4 - Album Cover Trials!

EDIT #1

I went with the theme of black and white for this edit as it reflects the theme of the music video. I also chose the most popular font from votes held on Facebook and Twitter and I think it works very well. I chose this front facing close up shot as most album covers, especially of females, feature a close up of their face. I really loved the lighting in this shot too. It looks very mimimal and effortless, but trust me, it wasn't so effortless!

EDIT #2

Edit 2 I tried out a little colour. I do like this edit and I like the placing of the title on the side to fill the space, it balances nicely. Although I think the black and white image is a bit more relevant to my theme and has a more stylish feel to it.

EDIT #3

Finally, edit 3 is my favourite. I chose this one to be the album cover as I adore the black and white and the flawless skin editing works so well with monochrome. I love the lighting it hits the side of my face perfectly and leaves just enough room to fit in the title of the album and the artist name. I chose to keep the same font and the reposition but I added a pop of colour to the word 'light'. The colour is gold in reference to the lyrics in my song choice 'Northern Lights', "everything we touch turns, turns to gold". I think this has worked really well and I'm very proud of it.

Below is some screen grabs of my process through photoshop on how I achieved these final images.

 In the above image the skin is heavily airbrushed this is one of the steps before toning it down and changing the opacity I had to take to achieve a more natural look.

I used a lot of layers and groups to soften the skin and 'perfect it' without taking away to much realist imperfections. I change the brightness and contracts, colour selection, levels and curves in order to get this effect. I used blur filters, noise and sharpen and high pass.

Here are some before and after shots: