Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, and planning and evaluation stage?

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Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

We had teachers from different departments come and be our audience. Before the teacher asked the audience questions they were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

The questionnaire included a rate of how basic, proficient or excellent our variety of camera angles and frames, shooting material appropriate to the task set, setting, lighting, costume, facial expression etc. were. We got a mixture of basic/proficient/excellent for our variety of camera angles however it was more dominated by the excellent. The shooting material had been marked excellent throughout the different questionnaires, which exemplifies how well we have stuck to our research and planning. The setting, lighting and costume received basic, this was due to the fact that we had only filmed in one place and used clothing that was appropriate to our video. The lighting however was meant to be dark so that it could have shown professionalism, since the footage hadn't looked very appealing when the light was bright. Furthermore, we got proficient and excellent on how we've edited the video, the syncing sound, appropriate use of transitions, facial expression and body language. We would say that these were our strongest points throughout the video as the actresses really got into their role, especially the main actress who had lip synced. It was hard to place the clips on the right bit to where the singing was meant to be, however we've done it to a proficient level. Most of the audience had recognised the genre of the video which means we have done exactly what we've found out from our research. There was a subtle narrative to the video, however, the audience had still recognised we were going for a "strong, independent woman" as the narrative and some had recognised that R'n'B videos rarely have a narrative. The target audience had been reached as our audience recognised who the video is aimed at, which depicts us following our research. The weaknesses of the video was evidently the costumes, lighting and variety of shots.

If we had to do the video again we would have used a variety of settings - rather than just one - more appropriate costumes so that the actresses are more "glammed up" to match the R'n'B aesthetic. However, we would most probably still use the lighting we had used as it makes the video a lot more professional rather than it looking like a school project.

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

Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Directors commentary of Diva

Making The Video

During the making of our video we added a bare minimum effects as our video was too upbeat to add any transitions in it and the lighting we had used during the filming worked well in our video. Here is a screenshot of our opening footstep scene that was reversed. We had to import the same clip into our sequence in order for the reverse to work because the clip would have been too short otherwise. We changed the speed to 100 to keep up with the song as well as frame blending it with the other clip.

We had changed some of the brightness and contrast on some of our footage as the singer had camouflaged with the setting. It was a trial and error as we first brightened it to 10 but that was too light and made the singer look grey scale. So, to avoid that happening we've simply changed it to 4 and then rendered it.

This is a screenshot of one of the footages being rendered. This was our longest bit of footage which took rending up to 2 minutes max. While the clips had been rendered, we were unable to do anything else to the footage as it completely locked the video.

At the end of the video we decided to add a fade onto our footage and music simply by going into effect > audio transitions > cross fade. We then set how long we wanted the fade to be and changed the duration to 5 seconds. This allowed us to make the music fade out at the end of the video.

Music Video Coursework 2015: Diva - Beyonce

Poster

We have created a poster promoting our artists tour which would have been found around cities, for example, on the underground in London. We've decided to keep the poster plain and simple as we compared it to artists posters such as Beyonce. We've kept it simple without giving out too much information to keep the fans anticipated for the tour and album of their favourite artist. We have used a big and bold font to draw attention of fans and other people who enjoy the genre but may not have heard of our artist. We've included the album cover and wrote underneath "New album out Autumn 2015"which again, would bring anticipation of fans.

Digipak

This is the digipak I have created for my artist as a part of my coursework. We have decided to make the image black and white as we had compared it to Beyonce album I Am... Sasha Fierce. The reason we had decided to make the front cover image into the letter "A" was because we had looked at another R'n'B artists front cover - Rihanna - who has an album with only the letter "R." However, she doesn't use the same style we have used but we thought we could have a unique turn to it. We've copied the front cover onto the actual CD to show a clear link in the digipak. On the back cover we used a bold font and black colour to make the track list stand out. We picked titles for songs that would have been generically found on R'n'B digipaks, including a remixed song. Underneath we included copy rights, websites that you can find the artist on, record label logo and the barcode, which are all typical conventions of a digipak. We had used a nude colour as the background to have the track list and front image stand out.

Filming and Editing Schedule

Feedback from Survey

In order to review what went well in our auxiliary task, we sent an email to our Media class and asked them to fill in a survey we created on surveymonkey to receive feed back.

Most of the feed back was very positive and helpful, it has allowed us to see what worked well and what we should work on. After we received the feedback we haven't changed much on the website as we decided the feedback allowed us to see that the website works well enough without needing to adjust it. 

Ancillary Task - Facebook Page

 We created a Facebook page for our artists as our auxiliary task. We created this page so that the artists can keep in contact with fans by updating her statuses frequently and checking in to various locations. We have followed the typical conventions of what an artists is supposed to have on their Facebook page such as a profile picture, a cover photo and added information on her about as well as inserting her website.

Requesting Location Permission

We have emailed the schools dance teacher requesting permission to use the dance studio to record the main footage for our music video.

Ancillary Task - Website

We have created a website for our artist on weebly.com. We chose to do a blog rather than a site because it was easier to maintain and it looked a lot better, as well as suiting our genre. At first it was hard to get about and how to actually edit our site, but we ended up doing a good job. We looked at the typical conventions of what an R'n'B artists has on their website. Majority of them had an about page and a contact page, including an area where fans can submit anything to the artist; whether its enquiries, questions or fan mail.

Digipak Photoshoot

Digipak photoshoot on PhotoPeach

​ As an auxiliary task for our media coursework we have to make a digipak. Rather than just asking our model to quickly take one image, we decided to have a photoshoot. The first photoshoot we had done was unsuccessful, as we did it in front of a brick wall. When we went to into Photoshop to edit the background, it was deleting bits of the models hair and looked very amateur. We decided to re-locate and found a blank white wall which worked perfectly for the shoot. We had taken various photographs with different poses, one serious and some that were considered as "silly" poses.

Ancillary Task - Twitter Page

We created a Twitter account for our artists as Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms currently on the Internet. Many people use Twitter to follow their favourite artists to keep updated on them. On our artists Twitter we decided to tweet music related tweets to engage our audiences. In the tweets there are emojis and x's to relate to the younger audience who use emojis everyday. We've added 'official' to the username as stereotypically famous people have this in their name to differentiate from fake/fan accounts. We've added minimal information to the bio about the artist - just her age and profession. We have also added a little promo which is what a lot of artists usually do to promote themselves to a wide audience. We have also included a contact for any bookings, which is again what artists do on their social media accounts. Finally, we included the artists website in the links so that its easy for people to be redirected to other social media platforms the artist may have.