By Jasmine, Kat and Emma.
Spitfire Magazine Advert - By Kat
Front cover of DVD combo - By Kat and Emma
Spine of DVD combo - By Kat
Back of DVD combo - By Jasmine and Emma
Inside DVD sleeve- By jasmine
Inside cover by All
Wednesday 31 March 2010
Sunday 21 March 2010
Evaluation - By Kathrine Nielsen
1. How does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
For this project we as a group aimed high, even if this wasn't realistic for a 'College' project. The brief asked us to produce a music video to a song of our choice - using creative commons/no copyright. Me and Em had spoken for very long before and throughout this project about how we didn't want our video to be stereotypical or cliche, we wanted to do something that had not been done before at Ludlow College, which therefore meant to consider locations much more carefully and mind not to use either Ludlow Castle or the Drama Studio as this has been seen and done before. Instead we solved this by hiring a room at the local Assembly Rooms, we filmed in an old School room and various off site locations. The song we selected
was from a Creative Commons website named Jamendo.com, the idea of having a song with no copyright at first annoyed me, but now looking back and reflecting I believe it was a very good idea as our group had to think out of the box and come up with something original instead of relying on ideas from a proper band. The song is by unknown artist "spitfire" (Do you) I immediately felt a connection to this and very strong ideas came along, as I couldn't help but feel this genre of music was almost historical. 
It reminded me of 50's/60's artists such as Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, The Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis, so my initial thought was that we could re-create this era. Going to break I spoke to Emma and she too had strong feelings about this song and we started talking about what we could do with this, when Emma suggested re-creating the mad world of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedwick and the Factory. This was a great opportunity to put all our strong sides into action. As my stronger side was of creativity I did a lot of research on costume, iconic people and came up with the groundplans for shooting. I did a major blog on icons of the 60's and the 
'fashion' of the early 60's which i believe benefited us extremely much because when we went into the wardrobe of costumes at the College I and the group had a very clear visual understanding of what we were looking for, especially considering hat this is a period piece we wanted to get the feel of the early 60's right, e.g. not mix it with flowerpower as that was the late 60's and therefore avoid any confusion. 
Emma and myself watched the film 'Factory Girl' to get an idea of how this whole world had been interpreted compared to the real one, for this I did notes on just about anything of interest such as notes on costume, angles of camera, people ect. All this research showed itself being of great support in our work as whenever we went filming we knew exactly what to do. Casting for the video was rather difficult as we had a lot of people on mind but no one seemed to fully suit or work the characters. 
In media I and Em asked Owen Lewis to act as Warhol because his way of behaving was rather camp, he was build like Warhol, looked fairly much like the part and having done Art and Design he actually knew who Andy Warhol was. He agreed and we ran some costume and make up tests and finally agreed as a group he'd do perfectly. Compared to the real world of producing and directing a music video, I believe we've handled our project very similar, very proffesional and we've been very mature about what to do, we've all developed major skills from this project, casting was a long process itself, and so was the initial background research, but we couldn't have made our video the way it is without it. When you switch on MTV what the viewer usually sees is a woman dancing against a boy, or a large flashy car... We challenged this idea of mainstream video by taking the true story of Edie Sedwick's rise to fame being Andy Warhol's muse, then followed by her major downfall and eventual death. We added a character to this who in the film Factory Girl is Billy Quin 
and in real life is rumoured to be Bob Dylan, because we wanted to make this video into as much of a love story as a serious, sinister, shocking real life story, basically, we wanted to shock the audience and give them something unexpected. 
In the video we've used Band shots which are shown in very contrasting black and white because its a way of dividing the two worlds up in half in a symbolic manner, in the video itself it shows an introduction with our musician (Matt) entering a place where he is about to perform a gig with his classic rock'n roll band. 
Instead of using the mise en scene of the early 60's beatles with same clothes and hair, we converyed the idea by letting Felix (Guitarist) David (Bassist) and Luke (Drummer) wear their own clothes, only Luke had a minor costume change and we put him in a plane white shirt due to a very anti 60's t-shirt. Performance wise and exterior wise, Felix was very energetic and in many of the shots we've used he almost comes across as a Jimmie Hendrix, Luke was drab and mad, whereas David showed a very neat and tidy side. Matt (Singer) we gave a costume because we had an idea of him being almost rustic, he needed to have a bit of a folk edge to himself. For this scene we used the A2 Drama class and whilst Emma was filming Matt's entry I sorted out costume, I felt that here it strongly benefited us all knowing about the costume because we had an amazing contrast of 
vividly colourfull, patterned and simple dresses for the girls, the boys were mainly put in the background because at a gig like this the girls want to be near the star.The main plot is the 'musician' reflecting back on the time when he tried to help his lover Edie leave the Factory scene before it was too late. The musicians perspective is that he wrote a song about the events occuring... The colour scenes reflect the past. In the video we will attempt without intend to insult anyone to show how Warhol used and drained Edie -then pushed her out... Alas by the end, we have a shot of Warhol mourning Edie's death. This is not something I believe has been done before and we convey the stereotypical music video in the media by having followed this idea, usually when a story is told through music videos it is because they are film soundtracks and therefore the video shows clips from the film. Our video I feel has been done brilliantly and is in no way similar to any other music video done in our media group. To polish off the video and make it look more presentable and proffesional, we did the colours very strongly to suggest the colourfull world of Andy Warhol. We've chosen to use short snappy clips for many of the scenes, mainly the factory scenes, because this symbolised and conveyed the idea of the lifestyle Edie (Sara) was leading, whereas the contrast is clear when it comes to the band shots which are very smooth and delicate. Editing wise we've tried to keep a strong link between on screen action and lyrics, every clip has a lyrics and meaning it goes with which is what we've discussed that we had to do in order to make the 'story' the singer is telling understandable and believable. We chose to use a 40/60 when it came to band scenes and on screen action, 60% of the video is mainly the story of the singer and Edie
but we felt we needed this in order for it to make sense, but I feel in contrast to this we've made up for that with some extremely strong bandshots, e.g. a lot of close up and general action, we've tried to show that each band member has a personality such as Felix our guitarist is the flirtatious one whereas Luke the drummer is very energetic, silly and pulls drum faces. In the average high quality production the band are all very similar, especially compared to the early 60's beatles, where they all looked alike and acted the same, and it is something which we've strongly tried to convey.
2. How effective is your combination of your main product and ancillary text
For our Dikipack and advert we've used still shots from our video without giving any of the storyline away. We sat down and had a long talk about what to include in our digipack picture and font wise. Then we set each other homework analysing a cover of our choice -music, DVD or video case. And I chose the Hildebrandt brothers who did the original star wars poster. Jasmine questioned this asking whether we were now doing star wars or not which I just had to simply say "No..." to. I decided to analyse the Hildebrandts work because it appealed to me how everything was build up in scale and I strongly believed we could do something interesting with that idea. What I came up with for the front of our case was a build up of the band members in black and white. The singer (Matt) being the main focus and the rest subtly blending in. This I took further and started editing on a program I used to use when I studied and carried out my A levels in Graphics corelDRAW 13. In this is used contrast and light further to smoothen up the pictures, then I added each picture needed and used a transparency tool to blend them all in. My initial idea for the font/name was bold white thick text with red and yellow to go with the idea of the name Spitfire... But I found it didn't work, it looked very tacky and too modern for what we were aiming at, so I changed this to red and framed the title with some border lines making it look fairly modern but it also links to the idea of artists in the 60's like Jackson Pollock, Vasilly Kandinsky and Andy Warhol. I chose to put a warm yellow/golden border at the bottom of the case to make the text in the bottom stand out further and also to give the case much more contrast. For the spine I did almost the same thing, I used red text and chose
a font which seemed like a handwriting, then used pictures of Warhol (Owen) Edie (Sara) and the singer (Matt) Edie in the middle looking almost angelic but it is to show the contrast of the two worlds and tconverying the idea of her being torn between two men. The back of the case was made by Jasmine and shows the tinfoil which is an idea she took from the factory, she used the painting of Warhol's famous banana which I'd painted as a prop and used a picture of Edie, this contrasts with the front cover because it shows the to vividly different worlds. The Advert was designed and constructed by me, it is intended to go in a magazine as advertisement for gigs and Spitfire's 'greatest hits' collection. For the advert I thought that we've stuck to the cool exterior 50's-60's rock'n roll facade, and therefore I did a very warm design using 2 black and white photos merged together (Matt and Sara - Singer and Edie) and on top of this I've chosed warm pop artsy colours in the name of Warhol. I got my inspiration from a poster made for 'Factory Girl' in which Edie's face is overlapped with a strip of yellow paint, only in mine I only used the idea of overlapping onto the original image, the rest was about linking it to the digipack. The font is very bold, I chose to do this to keep it pop artsy, original and for people to be able to read it. The overlapping is very simple, I build up colours blending them together using the transparency tool in corelDRAW13, I added shapes like boxes and circles, it's bold and very pop artsy! I chose to not include the whole band because I felt this was a cliche idea and if people knew who the band Spitfire were they'd know them mainly by the lead singer, and also they'd know their minimalistic and simple style when it comes to marketing.
For this project we as a group aimed high, even if this wasn't realistic for a 'College' project. The brief asked us to produce a music video to a song of our choice - using creative commons/no copyright. Me and Em had spoken for very long before and throughout this project about how we didn't want our video to be stereotypical or cliche, we wanted to do something that had not been done before at Ludlow College, which therefore meant to consider locations much more carefully and mind not to use either Ludlow Castle or the Drama Studio as this has been seen and done before. Instead we solved this by hiring a room at the local Assembly Rooms, we filmed in an old School room and various off site locations. The song we selected
was from a Creative Commons website named Jamendo.com, the idea of having a song with no copyright at first annoyed me, but now looking back and reflecting I believe it was a very good idea as our group had to think out of the box and come up with something original instead of relying on ideas from a proper band. The song is by unknown artist "spitfire" (Do you) I immediately felt a connection to this and very strong ideas came along, as I couldn't help but feel this genre of music was almost historical. 
It reminded me of 50's/60's artists such as Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, The Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis, so my initial thought was that we could re-create this era. Going to break I spoke to Emma and she too had strong feelings about this song and we started talking about what we could do with this, when Emma suggested re-creating the mad world of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedwick and the Factory. This was a great opportunity to put all our strong sides into action. As my stronger side was of creativity I did a lot of research on costume, iconic people and came up with the groundplans for shooting. I did a major blog on icons of the 60's and the 
'fashion' of the early 60's which i believe benefited us extremely much because when we went into the wardrobe of costumes at the College I and the group had a very clear visual understanding of what we were looking for, especially considering hat this is a period piece we wanted to get the feel of the early 60's right, e.g. not mix it with flowerpower as that was the late 60's and therefore avoid any confusion. 
Emma and myself watched the film 'Factory Girl' to get an idea of how this whole world had been interpreted compared to the real one, for this I did notes on just about anything of interest such as notes on costume, angles of camera, people ect. All this research showed itself being of great support in our work as whenever we went filming we knew exactly what to do. Casting for the video was rather difficult as we had a lot of people on mind but no one seemed to fully suit or work the characters. 
In media I and Em asked Owen Lewis to act as Warhol because his way of behaving was rather camp, he was build like Warhol, looked fairly much like the part and having done Art and Design he actually knew who Andy Warhol was. He agreed and we ran some costume and make up tests and finally agreed as a group he'd do perfectly. Compared to the real world of producing and directing a music video, I believe we've handled our project very similar, very proffesional and we've been very mature about what to do, we've all developed major skills from this project, casting was a long process itself, and so was the initial background research, but we couldn't have made our video the way it is without it. When you switch on MTV what the viewer usually sees is a woman dancing against a boy, or a large flashy car... We challenged this idea of mainstream video by taking the true story of Edie Sedwick's rise to fame being Andy Warhol's muse, then followed by her major downfall and eventual death. We added a character to this who in the film Factory Girl is Billy Quin 
and in real life is rumoured to be Bob Dylan, because we wanted to make this video into as much of a love story as a serious, sinister, shocking real life story, basically, we wanted to shock the audience and give them something unexpected. 
In the video we've used Band shots which are shown in very contrasting black and white because its a way of dividing the two worlds up in half in a symbolic manner, in the video itself it shows an introduction with our musician (Matt) entering a place where he is about to perform a gig with his classic rock'n roll band. 
Instead of using the mise en scene of the early 60's beatles with same clothes and hair, we converyed the idea by letting Felix (Guitarist) David (Bassist) and Luke (Drummer) wear their own clothes, only Luke had a minor costume change and we put him in a plane white shirt due to a very anti 60's t-shirt. Performance wise and exterior wise, Felix was very energetic and in many of the shots we've used he almost comes across as a Jimmie Hendrix, Luke was drab and mad, whereas David showed a very neat and tidy side. Matt (Singer) we gave a costume because we had an idea of him being almost rustic, he needed to have a bit of a folk edge to himself. For this scene we used the A2 Drama class and whilst Emma was filming Matt's entry I sorted out costume, I felt that here it strongly benefited us all knowing about the costume because we had an amazing contrast of 
vividly colourfull, patterned and simple dresses for the girls, the boys were mainly put in the background because at a gig like this the girls want to be near the star.The main plot is the 'musician' reflecting back on the time when he tried to help his lover Edie leave the Factory scene before it was too late. The musicians perspective is that he wrote a song about the events occuring... The colour scenes reflect the past. In the video we will attempt without intend to insult anyone to show how Warhol used and drained Edie -then pushed her out... Alas by the end, we have a shot of Warhol mourning Edie's death. This is not something I believe has been done before and we convey the stereotypical music video in the media by having followed this idea, usually when a story is told through music videos it is because they are film soundtracks and therefore the video shows clips from the film. Our video I feel has been done brilliantly and is in no way similar to any other music video done in our media group. To polish off the video and make it look more presentable and proffesional, we did the colours very strongly to suggest the colourfull world of Andy Warhol. We've chosen to use short snappy clips for many of the scenes, mainly the factory scenes, because this symbolised and conveyed the idea of the lifestyle Edie (Sara) was leading, whereas the contrast is clear when it comes to the band shots which are very smooth and delicate. Editing wise we've tried to keep a strong link between on screen action and lyrics, every clip has a lyrics and meaning it goes with which is what we've discussed that we had to do in order to make the 'story' the singer is telling understandable and believable. We chose to use a 40/60 when it came to band scenes and on screen action, 60% of the video is mainly the story of the singer and Edie
but we felt we needed this in order for it to make sense, but I feel in contrast to this we've made up for that with some extremely strong bandshots, e.g. a lot of close up and general action, we've tried to show that each band member has a personality such as Felix our guitarist is the flirtatious one whereas Luke the drummer is very energetic, silly and pulls drum faces. In the average high quality production the band are all very similar, especially compared to the early 60's beatles, where they all looked alike and acted the same, and it is something which we've strongly tried to convey.2. How effective is your combination of your main product and ancillary text
For our Dikipack and advert we've used still shots from our video without giving any of the storyline away. We sat down and had a long talk about what to include in our digipack picture and font wise. Then we set each other homework analysing a cover of our choice -music, DVD or video case. And I chose the Hildebrandt brothers who did the original star wars poster. Jasmine questioned this asking whether we were now doing star wars or not which I just had to simply say "No..." to. I decided to analyse the Hildebrandts work because it appealed to me how everything was build up in scale and I strongly believed we could do something interesting with that idea. What I came up with for the front of our case was a build up of the band members in black and white. The singer (Matt) being the main focus and the rest subtly blending in. This I took further and started editing on a program I used to use when I studied and carried out my A levels in Graphics corelDRAW 13. In this is used contrast and light further to smoothen up the pictures, then I added each picture needed and used a transparency tool to blend them all in. My initial idea for the font/name was bold white thick text with red and yellow to go with the idea of the name Spitfire... But I found it didn't work, it looked very tacky and too modern for what we were aiming at, so I changed this to red and framed the title with some border lines making it look fairly modern but it also links to the idea of artists in the 60's like Jackson Pollock, Vasilly Kandinsky and Andy Warhol. I chose to put a warm yellow/golden border at the bottom of the case to make the text in the bottom stand out further and also to give the case much more contrast. For the spine I did almost the same thing, I used red text and chose
a font which seemed like a handwriting, then used pictures of Warhol (Owen) Edie (Sara) and the singer (Matt) Edie in the middle looking almost angelic but it is to show the contrast of the two worlds and tconverying the idea of her being torn between two men. The back of the case was made by Jasmine and shows the tinfoil which is an idea she took from the factory, she used the painting of Warhol's famous banana which I'd painted as a prop and used a picture of Edie, this contrasts with the front cover because it shows the to vividly different worlds. The Advert was designed and constructed by me, it is intended to go in a magazine as advertisement for gigs and Spitfire's 'greatest hits' collection. For the advert I thought that we've stuck to the cool exterior 50's-60's rock'n roll facade, and therefore I did a very warm design using 2 black and white photos merged together (Matt and Sara - Singer and Edie) and on top of this I've chosed warm pop artsy colours in the name of Warhol. I got my inspiration from a poster made for 'Factory Girl' in which Edie's face is overlapped with a strip of yellow paint, only in mine I only used the idea of overlapping onto the original image, the rest was about linking it to the digipack. The font is very bold, I chose to do this to keep it pop artsy, original and for people to be able to read it. The overlapping is very simple, I build up colours blending them together using the transparency tool in corelDRAW13, I added shapes like boxes and circles, it's bold and very pop artsy! I chose to not include the whole band because I felt this was a cliche idea and if people knew who the band Spitfire were they'd know them mainly by the lead singer, and also they'd know their minimalistic and simple style when it comes to marketing. 3. What have you learned about your audience feedback?
The audience feedback was very helpfull, overall we've grown to like our video because we've worked so hard on it, so therefore we see the flaws less, so letting others have their input whether we liked it or not gave us an insight in what our target audience wanted to see.
the majority wanted for example more band scenes and factory scenes, so we sat down and tried to find places to edit this and add. Eventually we knew we had to cut out some extracts which we found very hard, but having completed the video we now see it was for the best and it would in the end have benefited us all much more. On another scale letting the cast viewing our video was also helpfull as I saw it as a process in which we'd asked them to help so we'd have to make sure they also were happy with the shots we used of them, for example Owen wasn't too keen on some of the shots of him and he told us, so we could then change it. Main changes we changed involved the lip synching being off or adding more shots.
the majority wanted for example more band scenes and factory scenes, so we sat down and tried to find places to edit this and add. Eventually we knew we had to cut out some extracts which we found very hard, but having completed the video we now see it was for the best and it would in the end have benefited us all much more. On another scale letting the cast viewing our video was also helpfull as I saw it as a process in which we'd asked them to help so we'd have to make sure they also were happy with the shots we used of them, for example Owen wasn't too keen on some of the shots of him and he told us, so we could then change it. Main changes we changed involved the lip synching being off or adding more shots.4. How did you use Media Technologies in the construction, research & planning, and evaluation stages?
For the project comparing it to last year, where we individually produced music magazines we've this this year used a larger range of technologies. Last year the main program used was Publisher and in some cases photoshop, but this year we've made great use of computer tech for example for our blog and editing. In the construction process we used digital cameras and cam corders, lights (Spot lights and stage lights for band scenes) laptops, phones and portable music players. 
For editing the video we used the College Apple computers provided and Final Cut Pro, a program on these computers used to edit films and songs. Having only used this sort of advanced technology once last year for our sample video of 'Ghostbusters' I felt I was out of my comfort zone, I knew how to use Windows Movie maker but have never used anything so extremely complex or high tech in my life, so I basically spend a few hours on my own getting to know Final Cut Pro by doing some minor editing which wasn't constructed or something which we added to the video, I am just a strong believer that if you can't do something learn how to and then do it. Eventually I got the hang of it and grew better, so myself and Emma spend unanimous hours on 
editing, Jasmine couldn't do much outside of lesson unfortunately due to her timetable being full. The editing process gave us an idea of the awareness and made us plan every major scene carefully because of the dangers describes in Jasmine's risk asessment and because of all the cables and cords surrounding the major outcome of extras and us. For the main research we spent a few weeks doing individual research in to music genres and previous music videos made which eventually would give us a wider perspective and greater idea of what we intended to produce. For this I researched Marilyn Mansons famous song and video for 'Coma White' which I chose to do because we sat down and agreed to do 3 very different genres and video types, Jasmine analysed 'Disturbia' by R'nB singer Rihanna and Emma did 'Bad Romance' by starlet Lady Gaga - the fact that at the time the video and song were new gave us a fresh input as mine and Jasmine's choices had been around for longer. 'Coma White' I found was a classic example of breaking the boundaries and music video conventions, the lyrics were about drugs and how they wont help solve your problems despite anything you do. 
Yet in the video Manson himself portrays JF Kennedy and the video, which is concept based, evolved around the day he was assasinated. What fascinated me about the video was the strong message it carried forwards, the people surrounding the 'President' all seemed somewhat like puppets, remaining still. Despite the fact that this eventually wasn't our chosen path song and genre wise I like to think and I do believe strongly that our video also has this idea of "don't do drugs" General planning went very well and we posted everything from what we'd done to our next move on the blog which was extremely helpfull in case one or two of us were not in lesson due to exams the people remaining in media still had a very clear idea of what to do and what was happening, for example we had to re-cast our Edie Sedwick 3 times due to illness and a full schedule, this was nerve wrecking but it was a comfort to know that as soon as anyone knew anything it would be posted. Having to re-create the mise en scene from the 60's and the Factory we knew the expectations were high, so therefore we produced and collected our own props and selected locations carefully. Overall I've enjoyed the project a lot and found it challenging in the best of ways, I worked to the best of my abillity and believe strongly that we've successfully established what we can do.
For editing the video we used the College Apple computers provided and Final Cut Pro, a program on these computers used to edit films and songs. Having only used this sort of advanced technology once last year for our sample video of 'Ghostbusters' I felt I was out of my comfort zone, I knew how to use Windows Movie maker but have never used anything so extremely complex or high tech in my life, so I basically spend a few hours on my own getting to know Final Cut Pro by doing some minor editing which wasn't constructed or something which we added to the video, I am just a strong believer that if you can't do something learn how to and then do it. Eventually I got the hang of it and grew better, so myself and Emma spend unanimous hours on 
editing, Jasmine couldn't do much outside of lesson unfortunately due to her timetable being full. The editing process gave us an idea of the awareness and made us plan every major scene carefully because of the dangers describes in Jasmine's risk asessment and because of all the cables and cords surrounding the major outcome of extras and us. For the main research we spent a few weeks doing individual research in to music genres and previous music videos made which eventually would give us a wider perspective and greater idea of what we intended to produce. For this I researched Marilyn Mansons famous song and video for 'Coma White' which I chose to do because we sat down and agreed to do 3 very different genres and video types, Jasmine analysed 'Disturbia' by R'nB singer Rihanna and Emma did 'Bad Romance' by starlet Lady Gaga - the fact that at the time the video and song were new gave us a fresh input as mine and Jasmine's choices had been around for longer. 'Coma White' I found was a classic example of breaking the boundaries and music video conventions, the lyrics were about drugs and how they wont help solve your problems despite anything you do. 
Yet in the video Manson himself portrays JF Kennedy and the video, which is concept based, evolved around the day he was assasinated. What fascinated me about the video was the strong message it carried forwards, the people surrounding the 'President' all seemed somewhat like puppets, remaining still. Despite the fact that this eventually wasn't our chosen path song and genre wise I like to think and I do believe strongly that our video also has this idea of "don't do drugs" General planning went very well and we posted everything from what we'd done to our next move on the blog which was extremely helpfull in case one or two of us were not in lesson due to exams the people remaining in media still had a very clear idea of what to do and what was happening, for example we had to re-cast our Edie Sedwick 3 times due to illness and a full schedule, this was nerve wrecking but it was a comfort to know that as soon as anyone knew anything it would be posted. Having to re-create the mise en scene from the 60's and the Factory we knew the expectations were high, so therefore we produced and collected our own props and selected locations carefully. Overall I've enjoyed the project a lot and found it challenging in the best of ways, I worked to the best of my abillity and believe strongly that we've successfully established what we can do.Saturday 20 March 2010
My Evaluation
by Emma Green
1. How does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our media coursework, we were assigned to create a music video, and digipack which we would have to research and construct as part of a group. Before we started our coursework, we spent a great deal of time researching into the history and conventions of music videos. What I learnt from this research period helped our group create a professional and entertaining product.
Firstly, I learnt how music videos can be split into three categories of performance, narrative and concept based. Modern day Pop videos such as "It's Raining Men" by Geri Halli
well is very much performance based, with some narrative. For example, we see Gerri and many dancers performing various dance routines all throughout the video, with some narrative present as it is set in the school f
rom the film and tv programme "Fame". In relation to our video and song, the music videos of the 60's (e.g. mainly television performances) from artists such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley, are solely performance- based, but with instruments, not dancing. We decided therefore that it was important for our video we show a lot of band performances but also challenge the typical convention of the music video, by having a strong storyline running along side it.
Referring to the band shots, we did decide to use the convention of 60's music videos, of having a typical 4-piece band e.g. a main singer, a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. But instead of having them have
the same kind of look or style, we
decided to develop on the kind of characters/fashion trends that were present at the time. Matt (the singer), we decided, should look quite folky/rough-round-the-edges rock star like Bob Dylan, which contrasts with the clean cut image of the bassist David. Felix (the guitarist) was very much reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix, with his casual clothes and the tie draped over his shoulder, whilst Luke (the drummist) has a more pop image with the shirt and the tie, and his humerous attitude in the video could be related to fun characters of the time like Ringo Starr. We also used the typical 
mise-en-scene of band shots in music videos with the set up of the band, having the lead singer down-stage centre, in front of the others, the bassist and guitarist parallel to each other on centre left and right, and the drummist upstage centre, at the back. However, instead of using a typical concert arena or rehearsal 
room, l
ike you see in most videos, I reseached the kind of places bands of that time would perform in, and found that these were mainly town and village halls, or small theatres. We chose to set up our band shots in an old school room at the college, because it had the old wooden fittings, high windows, old paintings and photos, and a dull colour palette of browns, whites, creams, blacks and blues, which was good, because we didn't want it to look modern.
We used the convention of music videos of building up band clips at the beginning of the video before going onto the develop any narrative or concept ideas. For example, the Foo Fighter's
vi
deo, "Best of You", shows alot of performance shots at the beginning, before it focuses on the concept shots that relate to the lyrics of the video. We thought it would be good to show the band clips first, so we could build up a climax to what and who the video was about, and to introduce the audience first to the musician, the person who is telling the narrative through his song. However, we also challenged the convention because we decided to use a short introduction at the start of the video, when the musician arrives and comes on stage. Usually, music video directors try to avoid this, because music channels such as MTV cut videos down if they extend over 3 or 4 minutes, to make room for a busy schedules and other's artists videos. Usually clips they cut out are scenes where the audio is not the music track and is dialogue e.g. most channels have cut out Lady Gaga's introduction to her music video "Telephone", because the video is quite long.
We like to think that our music video developed on the idea/narrative that is usually used in music videos of band playing, where
the narrative is based round a boy being in love with a girl. Examples of this are all Justin Timberlake videos, "Sign your name" by Terence Trent d'Arby, "And I" by Ciara, "So Lonely" by Akon, "Is this Love?" by Whitesnake, "I'm not missing you" by John Waite and "Jesse's girl" by Rick Springfield to name a few. All of these kind of videos normally entail the lead man played by either the singer or an actor chasing aro
und after or dreaming about their dream girl (who is 
usually played by a beautiful, young model or actress). He either ends up winning her, after proving to her his value (e.g. usually protecting her in some way) or ends up still alone. We decided to use this idea, but add more depth to it, by using a real-life story and how love can be conveyed in many ways. For example, Edie was cau
ght between two worlds, one world being Warhol's who was the father figure she had always wanted, and the other being the musician's, who tried desperately to convince her that the Factory world wasn't good for her, but to no evale. Edie doesn't realise how much the musician really loves her, as we look back through his flashbacks to what life was like then when she was alive. The idea of rejection is the main theme of our video, with Edie rejecting the musician, who desperately wants to be with her, over and over again because she is caught up in the Warhol world, but in the end, Warhol ends up rejecting her too. There is also the idea of love for yourself involved too, with Edie's self-destruction and insecurities rising to ahead, even behind her popular, IT girl facade. We also witness at the end, 
both the musicians and Warhol's guilt,
for not helping Edie enough when she was alive, and for what they did to her. The plot is quite complex for our video, as well as the themes behind it, which contrasts to the typical watered-down, pop videos of today, containing just dance routines, sex and a simple narrative. The audience has to concentrate to understand the video, but it is entertaining as well as informing too.
On a smaller scale, we decided straight from the beginning, we didn't want to create a typical student music video. We had watched examples of previous students's A2 music videos, and whilst they were good, the majority of them consisted of the Ludlow Castle and the Whitcliffe landscape, the Drama Room used for band shots with a
black, curtained background, and a narrative based around a 
teenage couple falling out. We wanted to create a video that was very much different, even including the the genre of music (most students used a rock or heavy metal song, so we decided to use a song with a mixture of many genres e.g. pop, rock, folk and punk).
Most pop music videos, especially nowadays, need to look aesthetically stunning to stand out against the huge scale of videos available today. Music videos have a large influence over consumer's buying, and a popular, visually exciting video suc
h as "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel and "Thriller" by Michael Jackson can create large revenue for records and albums. Many pop videos today, use a lot of bright colours and flashy effects to appeal to the watcher's eye in these HD, image-obsessed times. Rock videos rely less on viv
id colour hues, but even they have a strong colour pallett of normally blacks, blues, reds, and browns. We d
ecided to develop on this for our video by incorporating different colour effects and palletts, because of the mixture of the music genres and the two different worlds represented. We prefered to go for a more colourful video, to attract viewers, but stick to the rock and 60's roots, we uses black and white, and used strong contrast and brightness effects on the colours to create a old, dated look.
Also in music videos, there is a big emphasis on using physically appealing people to sell the sex factor. We used this concept by using young, attractive actors as our leads and extras (Matt Carter and Sarah Ellis as our leads, the girls used in the Factory scenes). Furthermore, to create a exciting vivid experience, we made sure the costumes, hair and make-up were exqui
site and b
eautiful, as well as being fresh and youthful, and that the locations, especially the Factory, were interesting to look at. We used star image motifs e.g. with the close-ups of the faces of both Edie and the musician, Edie standing out in the crowd because her costume and make-up deliberately stand out, ect. We also used vouyerism and the notion of looking with scenes with the Musician watching Edie behind the door, and her looking into a mirror, the audiences watching her in scenes on her own in the park and in her bedroom, close-
ups of her body e
.g. when she touches her face in the toilet, and the scene when the musician spots something at the trainstation and then it jumps to a clip of Edie sat on a bench, from his perspective.
We decided to challenge the convention of most music videos that they have to be based on a techno, cyber, futuristic basis e.g. The new Black Eyed Peas's single "Imma Be (Rock that body)" has a video set in the future, with robots, fancy gadgets, action/space costume, etc. Most videos today will have some sort of reference to futurism or technological advances whether it is the use of colour, costume, props (e.g.
product placement of new mobile phones or gadgets), settings, etc. because it is "cool and trendy" to have this as the basis of your video, because your audience should look up to these artists as idols who have unattainable looks and lifestyles. We have gone against this trend because instead of setting of our video in modern day or the future, we felt our song would suit a 60's theme, because of the style of the 
sound. This meant our video 
would stand out against the crowd, but there have been examples of retrospective videos that have worked well e.g. "Will 2K" by Will Smith which goes back through several decades in his video after he discovers a time machine device. We did, however, slightly develop on the futurism theme, through the use of the Factory. The 60's was a time of space-age trends, in interior and 
fashion, due to advances in space travel (e.g. Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969) and Warhol's factory reflected this. The Factory we created looks very futuristic, and cool, but we also stuck to our retrospective roots, by keeping the colours contrasted, and only using props and costume that would have been around in those times.
We decided to use short clips, with a lack of transitions in between, to create a quick-paced feel to the video. This convention is used, but it depends on the genre. Fast-placed Rock songs such
as "Toxicity" by System of a Down generally have very short clips of about 1-2 seconds to suit the beat of the song, whilst slowed-down, more relaxed rock tracks such "I wanna be a Rockstar" by Nickleback has longer clips on average of about 4-5 seconds. Fast-paced Pop songs have slightly longer clips than rock videos, because there is less emphasis on the beat of the drums, but the clips are still short with a 2-3 second duration. All genres of videos usually have longer and short clips, but if fast-paced, much more use of short-clips, to keep up with the tempo of the song. For example, Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" has generally shorter clip
s when a lot of action happening (e.g. When the actors come out of their coffins at the beginning) but then longer clips when the artist is singing or the music slows. In our video, we have a mixture of longer and shorter clips; more longer clips for the band performances, but usually shorter clips for the Factory and Edie scenes because this is where all the action is happening and also to show the busy, hectic world she was caught up in. We also decided to use minimal transition effects, because firstly we believed it didn't suit the genre of music and there is typically not a lot of transitions in videos, because it looks somewhat "tacky" or "unproffessional" using a lot of them. For example, in pop videos, such "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga 
and "Umbrella" by Rihanna, there are hardly any transitions such as dissolves, box or cross-fade, except probably a fade at the end, or an occasional effect somewhere in the video. They usually stick to jump and straight cuts when it comes down to editing. We have used this concept for our video, with only a few transitions e.g. fade to black at end, and a few cross-fades at the beginning, to keep to the naturalistic theme of the video.
We also decided to use the concept of keeping a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, and the music and lyrics too. In most videos, there is a subtle reference to the lyrics in the video e.g. Britney Spear's "Toxic" is lyrically about a toxic relationship, and the singer being addicted to her lover, but the video focuses on an assasin who tracks down her lover, who is having an affair, and kills him with poison or some toxic substance. There are links to the lyrics, but the video usually has a different implied meaning to what the lyrics actually mean. Our song's lyrics reflect the singer talking to someone, and they are being driven mad by someone or something. We interpreted that this might be a
guy who is in love with a girl, and he can't "reach" her for some reason. In our video, we reflect the lyrics in that our musician tries to get in contact with Edie through various means e.g. through the phone, trying to track her down at the trainstation, trying to get through to her in an argu
ment. We also show the love aspect as well, at the end, when we see the musician break down at her grave. In terms of relations between the music and visuals, we stick to the genres characteristics with band shots and making sure the instruments and concert features (e.g. microphone stands, lights, speakers) are visible in the video. We also have dancing in this, to show it's not just a rock song, but an upbeat pop track too.
Lastly, we used the music video concept of having climaxes throughout the video, especially at the end. All genres of
music use these, but the type of climax depends on the tone and seriousness of the song. For example, Rihanna's "Umbrella" has a build up before the end chorus, where she holds a long key and then it cuts to her and dancers performing in the rain, and the lights explode so sparks f
all to the floor. However, in a more serious video, such as Green day's "Wake me up when September ends", there are several big climaxes, like when the couple argue when she finds out he's signed up for the army, then theres another build up when we see troops fighting, and then one last climax, when the lead male is shot. We used several climaxes in our video, when she is on drugs and has passed out, then shortly again when she is in the toilet, when her and Warhol fight, and then the end, when we learn she has died.
I learnt a lot from the audience feedback, as I was in charge of gathering the data and analysing it for both the pre and post-production questionnaires. We decided, for both questionnaires, to ask a sample of about 20-25 people, of all ages and genders, to find out informastion.I constructed the pre-production questionnaire, and I focused my questions on two areas: firstly, how the public interacted with music videos, and what attracts them to music videos, and secondly, w
hat they would think of a 60's themed music video.
We learnt that Music videos were quite a popular medium, with over half of our sample stating that they watch them on a regular basis. This also meant we had to make our video impressive, as people would be comparing them to the professional music videos they are used to seeing everyday.
Nearly all of our sample watched music videos via the television medium, but what was also interesting to see was the emphasis on online technology as well. This in a way was exciting news for us, because people now watch music videos via the internet. This meant our video, which wouldn't be normally be seen by the general public, could potentially have a large audience oppurtunity. Uploading it onto a site like Youtube is not only free, but anyone can give feedback and share it.
From our results we found that we had chosen a song that was made up of some of the most popular genres chosen by our sample. Our song is somewhat pop, as it is upbeat and catchy, but also has a touch of rock, indie and folk. We were pleased
by this because the song is a key factor in producing a good music video.
The main findings from the examples given for the public's most popular music videos were that two of the most popular videos stated were Micheal Jackson's "Thriller", and Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". "Thriller" is a well renound classic and paved the way for future music videos, and new artist Lady Gaga's videos
are sexy, strange, and unique, like her style. Both artist's music and video style attract a wide selection of fans, becuase they always have not been afraid to experiment and try new ideas and genres. The sample also chose a mixure of different music genre videos, but the main elements they liked about the videos were a concept that was cool or kind of wierd, the dancing, the look/aesthetics and sexiness.
Although I had some idea of what attracted an audience to a music video, based on the research I found in
Question 4, I wanted to find more specific and accurate answers, to be definite. So therefore, it did not surprise me when I found that sexiness, fashion and dancing 
were ranked as two of the highest popular elements in what attracted an audience to a specific music video, because it links with media's obsession with vouyerism and image. But I was also pleased to see other elements such as the actual band performances and abstract concepts proving well-liked as well, because it shows an audience isn't too narrow-minded in what they enjoy watching.
Wit
h my questions relating to the 60's theme, it was first important to know whether the general public do consider the 60's a good time for music or not, if our video was going to be enjoyed by those who watch it. Generally, nearly everyone from our sample seemed to like the music this decade produced, which meant our video should be enjoyed and liked.
The artists that were most popular from this era were mainly
male artists and bands, including a mixture of sexy, dangerous rock stars (e.g. Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Johnny Cash) and good, old-fashioned musicians (e.g. The Monkees, The Beatles and The Beach Boys). These results showed we would have to portray our band in the video as a mixture of both these two qualities, to attract a bigger audience.
We found that everyone liked the colours, with over half of the poll thinking the colours suited the music genre, which we were pleased about, as we deliberately manipulated the colours to make them look classic 60's.
The most popular features of our video were the black and white band footage with the band, the Factory scenes and the ending with the musician and grave. We were also pleased with these results are we had worked really hard putting together the Band and Factory scenes, and we took along time trying to figure out a good ending for the film. Jasmine suggested using a rose which we interpreted as symbolising Edie herself, and so we thought showing her death would be a very strong and melancholy climax.
Lastly, over three-quarters of our sample thought we had cast our actors good, with half of these people thinking that the three leads suited their roles. This was great news for us, as we'd spent a long time trying to find suitable people for the roles, and people who had time on their hands to help out. We especially had problems trying to find someone who could play Edie, as other actors who had agreed to play her had to drop out for personal reasons.
1. How does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our media coursework, we were assigned to create a music video, and digipack which we would have to research and construct as part of a group. Before we started our coursework, we spent a great deal of time researching into the history and conventions of music videos. What I learnt from this research period helped our group create a professional and entertaining product.
Firstly, I learnt how music videos can be split into three categories of performance, narrative and concept based. Modern day Pop videos such as "It's Raining Men" by Geri Halli
well is very much performance based, with some narrative. For example, we see Gerri and many dancers performing various dance routines all throughout the video, with some narrative present as it is set in the school f
rom the film and tv programme "Fame". In relation to our video and song, the music videos of the 60's (e.g. mainly television performances) from artists such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley, are solely performance- based, but with instruments, not dancing. We decided therefore that it was important for our video we show a lot of band performances but also challenge the typical convention of the music video, by having a strong storyline running along side it.
Referring to the band shots, we did decide to use the convention of 60's music videos, of having a typical 4-piece band e.g. a main singer, a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. But instead of having them have
the same kind of look or style, we
decided to develop on the kind of characters/fashion trends that were present at the time. Matt (the singer), we decided, should look quite folky/rough-round-the-edges rock star like Bob Dylan, which contrasts with the clean cut image of the bassist David. Felix (the guitarist) was very much reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix, with his casual clothes and the tie draped over his shoulder, whilst Luke (the drummist) has a more pop image with the shirt and the tie, and his humerous attitude in the video could be related to fun characters of the time like Ringo Starr. We also used the typical 
mise-en-scene of band shots in music videos with the set up of the band, having the lead singer down-stage centre, in front of the others, the bassist and guitarist parallel to each other on centre left and right, and the drummist upstage centre, at the back. However, instead of using a typical concert arena or rehearsal 
room, l
ike you see in most videos, I reseached the kind of places bands of that time would perform in, and found that these were mainly town and village halls, or small theatres. We chose to set up our band shots in an old school room at the college, because it had the old wooden fittings, high windows, old paintings and photos, and a dull colour palette of browns, whites, creams, blacks and blues, which was good, because we didn't want it to look modern.
We used the convention of music videos of building up band clips at the beginning of the video before going onto the develop any narrative or concept ideas. For example, the Foo Fighter's
vi
deo, "Best of You", shows alot of performance shots at the beginning, before it focuses on the concept shots that relate to the lyrics of the video. We thought it would be good to show the band clips first, so we could build up a climax to what and who the video was about, and to introduce the audience first to the musician, the person who is telling the narrative through his song. However, we also challenged the convention because we decided to use a short introduction at the start of the video, when the musician arrives and comes on stage. Usually, music video directors try to avoid this, because music channels such as MTV cut videos down if they extend over 3 or 4 minutes, to make room for a busy schedules and other's artists videos. Usually clips they cut out are scenes where the audio is not the music track and is dialogue e.g. most channels have cut out Lady Gaga's introduction to her music video "Telephone", because the video is quite long.
We like to think that our music video developed on the idea/narrative that is usually used in music videos of band playing, where
the narrative is based round a boy being in love with a girl. Examples of this are all Justin Timberlake videos, "Sign your name" by Terence Trent d'Arby, "And I" by Ciara, "So Lonely" by Akon, "Is this Love?" by Whitesnake, "I'm not missing you" by John Waite and "Jesse's girl" by Rick Springfield to name a few. All of these kind of videos normally entail the lead man played by either the singer or an actor chasing aro
und after or dreaming about their dream girl (who is 
usually played by a beautiful, young model or actress). He either ends up winning her, after proving to her his value (e.g. usually protecting her in some way) or ends up still alone. We decided to use this idea, but add more depth to it, by using a real-life story and how love can be conveyed in many ways. For example, Edie was cau
ght between two worlds, one world being Warhol's who was the father figure she had always wanted, and the other being the musician's, who tried desperately to convince her that the Factory world wasn't good for her, but to no evale. Edie doesn't realise how much the musician really loves her, as we look back through his flashbacks to what life was like then when she was alive. The idea of rejection is the main theme of our video, with Edie rejecting the musician, who desperately wants to be with her, over and over again because she is caught up in the Warhol world, but in the end, Warhol ends up rejecting her too. There is also the idea of love for yourself involved too, with Edie's self-destruction and insecurities rising to ahead, even behind her popular, IT girl facade. We also witness at the end, 
both the musicians and Warhol's guilt,
for not helping Edie enough when she was alive, and for what they did to her. The plot is quite complex for our video, as well as the themes behind it, which contrasts to the typical watered-down, pop videos of today, containing just dance routines, sex and a simple narrative. The audience has to concentrate to understand the video, but it is entertaining as well as informing too.
On a smaller scale, we decided straight from the beginning, we didn't want to create a typical student music video. We had watched examples of previous students's A2 music videos, and whilst they were good, the majority of them consisted of the Ludlow Castle and the Whitcliffe landscape, the Drama Room used for band shots with a
black, curtained background, and a narrative based around a 
teenage couple falling out. We wanted to create a video that was very much different, even including the the genre of music (most students used a rock or heavy metal song, so we decided to use a song with a mixture of many genres e.g. pop, rock, folk and punk).
Most pop music videos, especially nowadays, need to look aesthetically stunning to stand out against the huge scale of videos available today. Music videos have a large influence over consumer's buying, and a popular, visually exciting video suc
h as "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel and "Thriller" by Michael Jackson can create large revenue for records and albums. Many pop videos today, use a lot of bright colours and flashy effects to appeal to the watcher's eye in these HD, image-obsessed times. Rock videos rely less on viv
id colour hues, but even they have a strong colour pallett of normally blacks, blues, reds, and browns. We d
ecided to develop on this for our video by incorporating different colour effects and palletts, because of the mixture of the music genres and the two different worlds represented. We prefered to go for a more colourful video, to attract viewers, but stick to the rock and 60's roots, we uses black and white, and used strong contrast and brightness effects on the colours to create a old, dated look.
Also in music videos, there is a big emphasis on using physically appealing people to sell the sex factor. We used this concept by using young, attractive actors as our leads and extras (Matt Carter and Sarah Ellis as our leads, the girls used in the Factory scenes). Furthermore, to create a exciting vivid experience, we made sure the costumes, hair and make-up were exqui
site and b
eautiful, as well as being fresh and youthful, and that the locations, especially the Factory, were interesting to look at. We used star image motifs e.g. with the close-ups of the faces of both Edie and the musician, Edie standing out in the crowd because her costume and make-up deliberately stand out, ect. We also used vouyerism and the notion of looking with scenes with the Musician watching Edie behind the door, and her looking into a mirror, the audiences watching her in scenes on her own in the park and in her bedroom, close-
ups of her body e
.g. when she touches her face in the toilet, and the scene when the musician spots something at the trainstation and then it jumps to a clip of Edie sat on a bench, from his perspective.
We decided to challenge the convention of most music videos that they have to be based on a techno, cyber, futuristic basis e.g. The new Black Eyed Peas's single "Imma Be (Rock that body)" has a video set in the future, with robots, fancy gadgets, action/space costume, etc. Most videos today will have some sort of reference to futurism or technological advances whether it is the use of colour, costume, props (e.g.
product placement of new mobile phones or gadgets), settings, etc. because it is "cool and trendy" to have this as the basis of your video, because your audience should look up to these artists as idols who have unattainable looks and lifestyles. We have gone against this trend because instead of setting of our video in modern day or the future, we felt our song would suit a 60's theme, because of the style of the 
sound. This meant our video 
would stand out against the crowd, but there have been examples of retrospective videos that have worked well e.g. "Will 2K" by Will Smith which goes back through several decades in his video after he discovers a time machine device. We did, however, slightly develop on the futurism theme, through the use of the Factory. The 60's was a time of space-age trends, in interior and 
fashion, due to advances in space travel (e.g. Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969) and Warhol's factory reflected this. The Factory we created looks very futuristic, and cool, but we also stuck to our retrospective roots, by keeping the colours contrasted, and only using props and costume that would have been around in those times.
We decided to use short clips, with a lack of transitions in between, to create a quick-paced feel to the video. This convention is used, but it depends on the genre. Fast-placed Rock songs such
as "Toxicity" by System of a Down generally have very short clips of about 1-2 seconds to suit the beat of the song, whilst slowed-down, more relaxed rock tracks such "I wanna be a Rockstar" by Nickleback has longer clips on average of about 4-5 seconds. Fast-paced Pop songs have slightly longer clips than rock videos, because there is less emphasis on the beat of the drums, but the clips are still short with a 2-3 second duration. All genres of videos usually have longer and short clips, but if fast-paced, much more use of short-clips, to keep up with the tempo of the song. For example, Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" has generally shorter clip
s when a lot of action happening (e.g. When the actors come out of their coffins at the beginning) but then longer clips when the artist is singing or the music slows. In our video, we have a mixture of longer and shorter clips; more longer clips for the band performances, but usually shorter clips for the Factory and Edie scenes because this is where all the action is happening and also to show the busy, hectic world she was caught up in. We also decided to use minimal transition effects, because firstly we believed it didn't suit the genre of music and there is typically not a lot of transitions in videos, because it looks somewhat "tacky" or "unproffessional" using a lot of them. For example, in pop videos, such "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga 
and "Umbrella" by Rihanna, there are hardly any transitions such as dissolves, box or cross-fade, except probably a fade at the end, or an occasional effect somewhere in the video. They usually stick to jump and straight cuts when it comes down to editing. We have used this concept for our video, with only a few transitions e.g. fade to black at end, and a few cross-fades at the beginning, to keep to the naturalistic theme of the video.
We also decided to use the concept of keeping a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, and the music and lyrics too. In most videos, there is a subtle reference to the lyrics in the video e.g. Britney Spear's "Toxic" is lyrically about a toxic relationship, and the singer being addicted to her lover, but the video focuses on an assasin who tracks down her lover, who is having an affair, and kills him with poison or some toxic substance. There are links to the lyrics, but the video usually has a different implied meaning to what the lyrics actually mean. Our song's lyrics reflect the singer talking to someone, and they are being driven mad by someone or something. We interpreted that this might be a
guy who is in love with a girl, and he can't "reach" her for some reason. In our video, we reflect the lyrics in that our musician tries to get in contact with Edie through various means e.g. through the phone, trying to track her down at the trainstation, trying to get through to her in an argu
ment. We also show the love aspect as well, at the end, when we see the musician break down at her grave. In terms of relations between the music and visuals, we stick to the genres characteristics with band shots and making sure the instruments and concert features (e.g. microphone stands, lights, speakers) are visible in the video. We also have dancing in this, to show it's not just a rock song, but an upbeat pop track too.
Lastly, we used the music video concept of having climaxes throughout the video, especially at the end. All genres of
music use these, but the type of climax depends on the tone and seriousness of the song. For example, Rihanna's "Umbrella" has a build up before the end chorus, where she holds a long key and then it cuts to her and dancers performing in the rain, and the lights explode so sparks f
all to the floor. However, in a more serious video, such as Green day's "Wake me up when September ends", there are several big climaxes, like when the couple argue when she finds out he's signed up for the army, then theres another build up when we see troops fighting, and then one last climax, when the lead male is shot. We used several climaxes in our video, when she is on drugs and has passed out, then shortly again when she is in the toilet, when her and Warhol fight, and then the end, when we learn she has died.
2. How effective is your combination of your main product and ancillary text?
For our products, we spent a great deal of time researching each aspect. For the video, we looked modern day music videos, 60's music performances, and other Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol inspired music videos; "Light my fire" by Will Young and "Deeper and Deeper" by Madonna. For our digipack, we researched covers of concert dvds and any music video releases onto video/dvd such as Micheal Jackson's "Thriller", and we picked out the main features that should be pres
ent on the covers like age certificate, record company and dvd producers logo, blurb and the style of writing, etc. For our advert, we looked through music magazines such as Q and Kerrang to find any singles, albums or music dvds adverts, and what kind of style and layout each of them ha
d.
We decided that our ancillary text (our digipack and advert) should be very similar to our actual video. Even though the digipack and advert are supposed to represent Spitfire's career over several decades (the digipack contains a greatest hits album, along with music videos from their career), I thought that we should convey that the song and video "Do you" could have been their biggest hit, and that the video may be one of the most popular and recognisable one of the band's collection, and so this would be shown by using it as the design for the cover. Our ancillary texts, especially the digipack, has a purpose to not only persuade consumers to buy our product, but to hint to a heavy storyline, and because we've used certain images to entice an audience (such as the silohette on the banana), this may engage them to watch the video.
I came up with the idea that the digipack should represent the two clashing worlds portrayed in the video, with the same use of contrasting style and colour used in our video. The musician's world is portrayed on the front side, as it is the actual band's dvd and album we are promoting. We decided to use
the black and white footage of the band performing with the left hand and centre side being taken up by the lead singers face. The close-up was suitable because the musician has a very thoughtful expression on his face, and if we refer this to the video itself, this is the clip where we see him reflecting back on the past, when Edie was alive. The image is neutral, neither happy or sad, but you can hint there is some pain lying behind it. We used images down the right side of the cover of the other band members but they blur into the main image, to symbolise that the main focus should be the singer. The image colours are 
very contrasted, with the black and white being very sharp, but this adds emphasis to the old, rustic feel of the video and to the sound of the group. The title and the advert
ising slogan is the only use of colour on the front page and the fonts 
and colours are very simple, to represent the down-to-earth nature of the band and the musician's world. The colours are used to emphasise the power and passion behind the band's name with the use of the reds and oranges.
The back cover is very much different to the front. It is more vividly colourful (with the use of
contrasting colours such as blue, silver and yellow), and the characters (Warhol and Edie) are deliberately put here to show seperation from the musician. From studying other music dvds, we made sure we included the basics like a blurb, info on the structure of the dvd, dvd logo, and b
ar code. Jasmine came up with the idea to use the silver tin foil background to represent the Factory itself, and an image of Andy Warhol sitting on a banana to represent both Warhol and the work itself that made him famous. This is the main focus of the back cover, which the text surrounds, and Edie is in the bottom-right cover, an image we took from the video footage, where she looks her most free, but really, we know from the video these are the moments before her world is crushed when Warhol turns against her. We also thought sticking a small image of Edie in the right corner would symbolise how unsignificant she really was to Warhol, whilst he meant so much to her. 
For our products, we spent a great deal of time researching each aspect. For the video, we looked modern day music videos, 60's music performances, and other Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol inspired music videos; "Light my fire" by Will Young and "Deeper and Deeper" by Madonna. For our digipack, we researched covers of concert dvds and any music video releases onto video/dvd such as Micheal Jackson's "Thriller", and we picked out the main features that should be pres
ent on the covers like age certificate, record company and dvd producers logo, blurb and the style of writing, etc. For our advert, we looked through music magazines such as Q and Kerrang to find any singles, albums or music dvds adverts, and what kind of style and layout each of them ha
d.
We decided that our ancillary text (our digipack and advert) should be very similar to our actual video. Even though the digipack and advert are supposed to represent Spitfire's career over several decades (the digipack contains a greatest hits album, along with music videos from their career), I thought that we should convey that the song and video "Do you" could have been their biggest hit, and that the video may be one of the most popular and recognisable one of the band's collection, and so this would be shown by using it as the design for the cover. Our ancillary texts, especially the digipack, has a purpose to not only persuade consumers to buy our product, but to hint to a heavy storyline, and because we've used certain images to entice an audience (such as the silohette on the banana), this may engage them to watch the video.
I came up with the idea that the digipack should represent the two clashing worlds portrayed in the video, with the same use of contrasting style and colour used in our video. The musician's world is portrayed on the front side, as it is the actual band's dvd and album we are promoting. We decided to use
the black and white footage of the band performing with the left hand and centre side being taken up by the lead singers face. The close-up was suitable because the musician has a very thoughtful expression on his face, and if we refer this to the video itself, this is the clip where we see him reflecting back on the past, when Edie was alive. The image is neutral, neither happy or sad, but you can hint there is some pain lying behind it. We used images down the right side of the cover of the other band members but they blur into the main image, to symbolise that the main focus should be the singer. The image colours are 
very contrasted, with the black and white being very sharp, but this adds emphasis to the old, rustic feel of the video and to the sound of the group. The title and the advert
ising slogan is the only use of colour on the front page and the fonts 
and colours are very simple, to represent the down-to-earth nature of the band and the musician's world. The colours are used to emphasise the power and passion behind the band's name with the use of the reds and oranges.
The back cover is very much different to the front. It is more vividly colourful (with the use of
contrasting colours such as blue, silver and yellow), and the characters (Warhol and Edie) are deliberately put here to show seperation from the musician. From studying other music dvds, we made sure we included the basics like a blurb, info on the structure of the dvd, dvd logo, and b
ar code. Jasmine came up with the idea to use the silver tin foil background to represent the Factory itself, and an image of Andy Warhol sitting on a banana to represent both Warhol and the work itself that made him famous. This is the main focus of the back cover, which the text surrounds, and Edie is in the bottom-right cover, an image we took from the video footage, where she looks her most free, but really, we know from the video these are the moments before her world is crushed when Warhol turns against her. We also thought sticking a small image of Edie in the right corner would symbolise how unsignificant she really was to Warhol, whilst he meant so much to her. 
For the spine of the cover, we decided to have all three characters faces at the top, Warhol and the Musician either
side of Edie, to show, again, she is caught between them. We also used the typical features of a music dvd spine with again the DVD logo and the title of the band and dvd down it. We used a dark background and an image of smoke taken from the video footage, to create an eerie and dark atmosphere, as the video, though light-hearted in some places (represented by the back cover, and the Factory scenes at the beginning of the video), also have a cruel and malicious nature too, with the references to d
rugs, death, rejection and heart-break.
side of Edie, to show, again, she is caught between them. We also used the typical features of a music dvd spine with again the DVD logo and the title of the band and dvd down it. We used a dark background and an image of smoke taken from the video footage, to create an eerie and dark atmosphere, as the video, though light-hearted in some places (represented by the back cover, and the Factory scenes at the beginning of the video), also have a cruel and malicious nature too, with the references to d
rugs, death, rejection and heart-break.For the advert, we went for a similar look as our front cover, as it's purpose is advertising the band itself, and shouldn't have the obvious features on one music video. We decided again to use the promo close-up shot of the musician as we thought this was a strong image, and if a consumer was looking for the dvd/album, they would instantly recognise this design from the advert. We wanted the design to be simple, but stand out, so we chose a strong colour pallett of reds, oranges and yellows, with vertical stripes and over-lapping circles (a key print of the 60's). The mise-en-scene of the two images of the musician and Edie murging together is very vividly strong, because of the gazes of the two actors. They are looking in 
different directions and have a mystery behind their facial expressions, which shows there is a powerful background to this band and storyline, and symbolically, the opposite sightlines show the barrier between them. The good thing about our advert is that it could appear in a magazine, or it could be used a promo poster around the highstreet, arenas, etc. From studying other posters and adverts, we knew that certain information had to be published on the advert such as the title of the product, slogan, where its available, websites, etc. We also decided to add release dates on our advert, which is unusual, but it gives the impression that this band is universally known and popular, and so this poster could be established generally anywhere across the world.
different directions and have a mystery behind their facial expressions, which shows there is a powerful background to this band and storyline, and symbolically, the opposite sightlines show the barrier between them. The good thing about our advert is that it could appear in a magazine, or it could be used a promo poster around the highstreet, arenas, etc. From studying other posters and adverts, we knew that certain information had to be published on the advert such as the title of the product, slogan, where its available, websites, etc. We also decided to add release dates on our advert, which is unusual, but it gives the impression that this band is universally known and popular, and so this poster could be established generally anywhere across the world. 3. What have you learned about your audience feedback?
I learnt a lot from the audience feedback, as I was in charge of gathering the data and analysing it for both the pre and post-production questionnaires. We decided, for both questionnaires, to ask a sample of about 20-25 people, of all ages and genders, to find out informastion.I constructed the pre-production questionnaire, and I focused my questions on two areas: firstly, how the public interacted with music videos, and what attracts them to music videos, and secondly, w
hat they would think of a 60's themed music video.
We learnt that Music videos were quite a popular medium, with over half of our sample stating that they watch them on a regular basis. This also meant we had to make our video impressive, as people would be comparing them to the professional music videos they are used to seeing everyday.
Nearly all of our sample watched music videos via the television medium, but what was also interesting to see was the emphasis on online technology as well. This in a way was exciting news for us, because people now watch music videos via the internet. This meant our video, which wouldn't be normally be seen by the general public, could potentially have a large audience oppurtunity. Uploading it onto a site like Youtube is not only free, but anyone can give feedback and share it.
From our results we found that we had chosen a song that was made up of some of the most popular genres chosen by our sample. Our song is somewhat pop, as it is upbeat and catchy, but also has a touch of rock, indie and folk. We were pleased
by this because the song is a key factor in producing a good music video.
The main findings from the examples given for the public's most popular music videos were that two of the most popular videos stated were Micheal Jackson's "Thriller", and Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". "Thriller" is a well renound classic and paved the way for future music videos, and new artist Lady Gaga's videos
are sexy, strange, and unique, like her style. Both artist's music and video style attract a wide selection of fans, becuase they always have not been afraid to experiment and try new ideas and genres. The sample also chose a mixure of different music genre videos, but the main elements they liked about the videos were a concept that was cool or kind of wierd, the dancing, the look/aesthetics and sexiness.
Although I had some idea of what attracted an audience to a music video, based on the research I found in
Question 4, I wanted to find more specific and accurate answers, to be definite. So therefore, it did not surprise me when I found that sexiness, fashion and dancing 
were ranked as two of the highest popular elements in what attracted an audience to a specific music video, because it links with media's obsession with vouyerism and image. But I was also pleased to see other elements such as the actual band performances and abstract concepts proving well-liked as well, because it shows an audience isn't too narrow-minded in what they enjoy watching.
Wit
h my questions relating to the 60's theme, it was first important to know whether the general public do consider the 60's a good time for music or not, if our video was going to be enjoyed by those who watch it. Generally, nearly everyone from our sample seemed to like the music this decade produced, which meant our video should be enjoyed and liked.
The artists that were most popular from this era were mainly
male artists and bands, including a mixture of sexy, dangerous rock stars (e.g. Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Johnny Cash) and good, old-fashioned musicians (e.g. The Monkees, The Beatles and The Beach Boys). These results showed we would have to portray our band in the video as a mixture of both these two qualities, to attract a bigger audience.
For what was most expected to be seen in a 60's themed music video, the sample's top choices were:
1. Bright Colours
2. 60's Fashion
3. Hippie/ Flower Power Vibe
4. Big/Crazy Hair
5. Dancing
6. Psychedelia
7. Drugs
8. Over the top acting
These were the elements, I thought, we would definitely have to include in the video, because we would want to include features of what an audience's expectations of the video would look like, not ignore them.
Other suggestions included:
*60's Cultural References (e.g. Woodstock, JFK shooting, Martin Luther King, Vietnam War)
*Vintage Stuff
*Classic car
*60's technology
*Relations to era
*Fun narrative
*Guitars
These requests were ideas of what we might have included, as long as they fitted our style of video.
For our post-production questionnaire, we wanted to find out what an audience really thought of our video, so we could get ideas for our evaluation, ancillary texts, image of the band and what we could improve in our product. Kat created the questionnaire, which focused on asking about certain features of the video (e.g. the use of colours, the use of extras and crowding, the use of the introduction and our selection of the 3 leads) as well as what features they liked and what should be improved.
We found out that nearly everybody understood the storyline, which was a relief as we thought it may have been quite complicated compared to what a typical music video viewer would be used to, and that also all of the sample thought the video was well put together and constructed. This showed we had made a video that flowed well, and that was easy to follow.
We found that everyone liked the colours, with over half of the poll thinking the colours suited the music genre, which we were pleased about, as we deliberately manipulated the colours to make them look classic 60's. 
The most popular features of our video were the black and white band footage with the band, the Factory scenes and the ending with the musician and grave. We were also pleased with these results are we had worked really hard putting together the Band and Factory scenes, and we took along time trying to figure out a good ending for the film. Jasmine suggested using a rose which we interpreted as symbolising Edie herself, and so we thought showing her death would be a very strong and melancholy climax.
The main features that our sample thought we needed to improve were the lip-synching and crowd sound a
t the beginning of the video, and that a few scenes needed to be a bit clearer to be understood. F0r the suggested scenes we could include more, we got varied results, with similar numbers for both the Factory scenes, Band scenes and Lead girl footage. We used this feedback as ideas to improve our video, and from our rough cut, me and Kat removed clips, added new ones, moved clips around, and altered colour effects and transitions.
The introduction for our video, was an idea we had decided to experiment with, because we weren't sure at first whether it would work 
or not. But judging by the audience feedback, it did with every single person stating they liked it. However, I was slightly disappointed to see that from the question on what they expected from the introduction, that noone said a story based around the musician, as that was what we had been aiming for. But possibly in a way, this may be a good thing, as it gives the video an element of surprise.
Lastly, over three-quarters of our sample thought we had cast our actors good, with half of these people thinking that the three leads suited their roles. This was great news for us, as we'd spent a long time trying to find suitable people for the roles, and people who had time on their hands to help out. We especially had problems trying to find someone who could play Edie, as other actors who had agreed to play her had to drop out for personal reasons. 
At the beginning of our research period, we watched an array of music videos via Youtube.com and watched documentaries on the web and through video about the history of the music video. We also learned how to critically analyse music videos, and as a group, we chose three different music videos of different genres and styles (Lady Gaga "Bad Romance", Rihanna "Disturbia" and Marilyn Manson) and looked out for conventions such as vouyerism, star motifs, notion of looking, relationships between lyrics/music and visuals, etc.
Then we created our blog. It was the first time I'd ever used this media form and it took a while for me to get used to this system. At first, I wasn't keen on the idea of using a blog as a source of tracking our progress, because I much rather had used a scrapbook for example. However, I started to notice the advantages to this form; how we could access it all as a group at the same time, how we could upload videos, pictures, and links along with our blogs, how we could scan drafts of work we'd done such as drawings, how we could change, modify blogs and organise them, and the general usefulness of it.
Our next task was to find a song for the video. We were told at the beginning that our coursework was somewhat restricted because we needed to have a song that was either copyright free, or we would have to get permission off the artist themselves. Kat had done some previous research on a few musicians who had taken mainstream songs such as "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga and "Circus" by Britney Spears and reinvented them into a different style of music. Jas decided to research a local band she knew that was based in Hereford and 
had a Myspace page advertising their band and music. Finally, in the end, we decided to look at some creative commons websites, and see what we could find on there. We looked at Jamendo.com , and found a large collection of artists, of different nationalities, genres, and tastes. You c
ould search for any kind of music you were looking for, or a specific artist/album/single name, and there was such a large selection, it was difficult to know where to start. Finally, in the end, we decided to look for music that fell into the "pop/rock" genre, to represent our group's differing music interests, and we saved a few songs that we took a liking too onto the computer desktop , from which we would chose one from later. The only problem with this specific website is that it was difficult to find a specific song again after you exited the website, due to the large amount of material on the site.
had a Myspace page advertising their band and music. Finally, in the end, we decided to look at some creative commons websites, and see what we could find on there. We looked at Jamendo.com , and found a large collection of artists, of different nationalities, genres, and tastes. You c
ould search for any kind of music you were looking for, or a specific artist/album/single name, and there was such a large selection, it was difficult to know where to start. Finally, in the end, we decided to look for music that fell into the "pop/rock" genre, to represent our group's differing music interests, and we saved a few songs that we took a liking too onto the computer desktop , from which we would chose one from later. The only problem with this specific website is that it was difficult to find a specific song again after you exited the website, due to the large amount of material on the site. 
After we'd picked the song and come up with a few ideas for the video, we had to ge
t together a basic outline of the plot. Because we were basing our product on the real-life story of Warhol's Factory and his muse, Edie Sedgwick, we had to do research to create an accurate portrayal. We watched the film, "Factory Girl", the bio flick about Edie's life, Youtube videos of other proffessional music videos inspired by this same idea, Youtube videos of 4 minute memorial videos remembering Edie, reading information on Wikipedia and websites devoted to 
the Factory movement about Edie's biography, Warhol's work and biography, and the history of the Factory days. We also did further research on fashion and beauty blogs and websites such as Nylon.com about 60's fashion, beauty, and the history behind the genres of our song (folk, rock and punk). I also did research on the search engine, Google.com, to look for images from 60's interior and stillshots from "Factory Girl" for ideas on interior and the general "look" of that time.
The social network site, Facebook, helped us a lot during the casting process. When asking people to help out, we launched a campaign via this site asking if anybody would like to be part of a music video, through extras or helping behind the scenes. It also gave us the chance to look at the potential lead's previous work and skills e.g. Jodie, who was supposed to play Edie but had to drop out, had images of her model portfolio online, and Matt, the actor who played our musician, had images and videos of him performing in plays and musicals such as "Little shop of horrors".
Throughout the coursework process, we used digital cameras to use for evidence of our progress and to preview what the set and characters might look like on screen. For example, Jasmine took photos of the different locations we were aiming to shoot at, to create a photo montage of what the video might eventually look like and whether the locations complimented one another. Another example was when we took pictures of Kat's first make-up design on Owen, to see if it would be clear on screen that he looked similar to Andy Warhol.
We used image scanner to put up work that we had created during class sessions, and that couldn't be easily replicated into writing on the blog. For example, I wrote up information about the ground plans, but we had to scan up the actual diagram so the reader could truly understand what kind of set we were trying to create. This use of technology was extremely useful, because it added more depth to our work, to be able to show rough plans of work as a group, like the storyboard for example.
For the filming process, we decided to use several DV cameras and one larger, but older camera 
and divided them between each of us, so we could get the best shots as possible, and not rely on just one cameraman or director. We also tried to use effective lighting as well (e.g. key lighting, front lighting), and tripods to give a proffesional look to the film footage.
and divided them between each of us, so we could get the best shots as possible, and not rely on just one cameraman or director. We also tried to use effective lighting as well (e.g. key lighting, front lighting), and tripods to give a proffesional look to the film footage. 
For the editing process, we used a software program on the Apple Macs computers (that we used for all of our work throughout) called Final Cut Express. We could have used Windows Movie Maker, which would have been easier, but although it was hard at first to grasp, we found it to be very beneficial in the longrun. We could upload footage from our videos, which were present at the side of the screen, and take clips which we could shorten and lengthen as much as we wanted and move them along the timeline wherever we wished. We uploaded the song and got rid of any extra sound from the cameras. The effects were important too, and there was a huge array of colour, visual and transition effects available for us to use. But because we wanted to keep our video professional and stay true to the 60's theme, we decided to use the desaturate effect which we developed on by increasing the brightness and contrast for the band scenes, and for the colour scenes, we did the same contrast and brightness effect, as well as enchanting specific colours as well. We decided to use minimal transitions and visual effects, only using fade outs, cross-fades, and blurs in some places. The other good thing about Final Cut is that you could lock clips so that if you added something new it would not move the overall sequence you had created. The only critism I had with the program is that clips did move even when you locked them, and if some of our clips we put on there did disapear. Also we had to keep continuously rendering any effects we applied, and placing the clips onto the timeline was very fiddly and time-consuming.
For the image of our band, me and Kat studied documentaries, biographies and band websites of 60's icons and their brands to come up with a plan of how our band should look like and their values and key selling points. For example, studying the history of the Beatles and the Johnn
y Cash bio film, "Walk the line", helped us to understand why they were so popular, and what attracted them to an audience.
y Cash bio film, "Walk the line", helped us to understand why they were so popular, and what attracted them to an audience. As well as using questionnaires for responces, we decided to put our video up on the web via. Youtube, Social Networking sites and Mobile phones (to send the video through Bluetooth to other people's phones) to get feedback from a wider audience, who wouldn't normally have the chance to see it, unless they attended the college.
For our digipack and advert, we did research on the web of famous designers and past digi-packs (e.g. the design cover for Thriller) to get some initial ideas, and then we created the two ancillary texts using Corel Paint Shop Pro X. On this program, we were able to scan images up, enchance 
colours and features, use a suitable layout and background, include text, as a few examples. The idea of this program is to string images together into a suitable form.
colours and features, use a suitable layout and background, include text, as a few examples. The idea of this program is to string images together into a suitable form.
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