Deryn Smith

Advanced Portfolio

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Picturesque setting

Direct close ups to make the audience feel involved

Conventions of real media products we used

No change of costume like what is usually saw in pop music videos.

It’s a sad song but our footage is thoroughly consist with bright colours which contrasts against the concept and message of the lyrics. As such songs like Adele – Someone Like you has been black and white edited throughout to give a melancholy effect. We did this as we took the message of the song in a different way then thinking it had to be heart-wrenching and emotional, as it was of pop genre and light-hearted we decided to create it as if it was a positive outcome.

Conventions of real media products we challenged

Long, flow dress was used to broadcast femininity and so the target female audience can emphasise with this artist, the several colours on the dress represent the artist’s state of mind as the lyrics sing ‘I need this time to clear out my mind’, the colours represent mixed emotions the female is feeling. Red represents the element of love in the song.

Blazer (boyfriend blazer) used to show stereotyped masculinity, to show how the artist had strength to leave her lover and wasn’t weak as females can be stereotyped to be. The bold colour of black represents the ‘death’ of this love and that it has came to an end.

Costumes and Props

Editing

We have both narrative and performance in our music video. The performance clips we kept to the original, natural colour and the narrative clips we edited to make them black and white. We decided to do this so the narrative footage looks natural as if it’s been captured by the female’s ex and it’s capturing her real emotions and feelings towards the relationship.

However, some of the narrative footage we believed looked too plain on it’s own to keep the music video interesting, therefore we merged a narrative and performance clip together, changing the opacity on the performance clip, so that both were shown.

We wanted to end our music video more delicately than a cut so that it fit perfectly with our ending shot, therefore we edited the end to make it fade.

Performance Narrative

Camera work & Editing

Camera work played a vital part in the success of my video as I wanted the narrative to be clear to the target audience, I wanted to set the scene, portray the confused emotions of the character and vary the camera shots to keep the video interesting to the viewer.

How I set the scene...

To set the scene I did a panning shot which began from the sky, so the viewer can see its a clear blue sky connoting it’s a sunny day. The panning shot continues until it stops at some ancient pillars which conveys to the audience it’s a picturesque setting which is what I wanted to achieve within this opening.

I then stopped the camera panning and tilted the tri-pod vertically to add suspense to what would be revealed at the bottom of the pillars, which ends up being the character. The suspense made gives the character a more significant role in the video as the audience have waited for her to be revealed.

How I portrayed the emotions of the character...

I wanted the character to reveal a variety of emotions within the video to relate with the lyrics.

Happiness – I achieved the camera work and editing to go into this emotion by filming in an area that reflected sunlight off the characters red hair and the greenness of the leaves in the background, both colours reflected light perfectly which gave the shot a bright, happy and up-beat film.

Melancholy – I achieved this by using a close-up shot to make it more serious so the viewer can concentrate on the character’s face. The editing of changing the colour to black and white gives the melancholy effect perfectly as it contrasts with the colours used for the happiness clips. Colours play an extensive role on the audience’s viewing of a music video, it enables them to become a ‘comelian’ and almost have the character’s emotions reflect on their own.

Genre

The genre of our music video is Pop

The opening suggests this there are vibrant colours throughout. From the bright blue sky, the aluminous green of the grass and the multi-coloured dress the female is wearing.

I believe colours are a large, important factor when considering the genre of the song.

It also features both narrative and performance throughout, this is suggested in the opening as the female is first saw positioned against an ancient pillar which doesn’t seem natural (narrative) where she then begins to sing (performance).

How the characters are introduced

There is only one character featured in our music video, however limitations of filming in a public park lead to accidental people in the background.

The character is introduced to fit with the lyrics.

“Stop...Where am I?”

Our music video opens with a pan shot of the summer sky 1 which moves to the top of ancient pillars to where it stops panning. 2

the camera angle movies vertically down the ancient pillars 3 to reveal the female character at the bottom 4 the audience are aware this is the character when her performance begins.

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How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?

My first ancillary project is a CD cover has an extreme close-up of ‘Jessica-May’, the character in the music video. I used an extreme close-up to relate to the title of the song ‘I Need this space’, which tells the audience it’s a female who feels claustrophobic within a relationship. The back cover of the CD reflects the continuous long shots I have in the video which again, reflects on the song about ‘needing space’, the shot shows the character looking small against all the nature

When I originally took the picture it was on a sunny day which lead to the picture having bright colours, therefore as this is a Pop song, to relate to the genre of light-hearted and up-beat, I did little edit to the picture as edits I had tried didn’t look as believable and professional as the original picture.

Ancillary Project 1

Similarities to music video...

Ancillary Project 2

My second ancillary project was a poster advertising the song and it’s date sale. For the poster I decided it would need a more eye-catching, edited effect for it to be successful in the real world, and to also differentiate it from how my CD cover and music video looked. As I believe the advertisement should show that it is a up-beat, pop song which also has a sad message in the lyrics.

The black and white effect used for my ancillary project has been reflected in our music video how we edited the narrative clips to black and white to portray emotion in the video as we wanted it to give the idea that these narrative, black and white clips are the emotions the female portrays while in her relationship and also that some are ‘home-made’ clips her ex boyfriend had taken.

Similarities to music video... ‘Home-made’ video taken by female’s ex-boyfriend to show how he believes their relationship will turn out, however female conveys in song she feels differently.

My ancillary projects thoroughly helped me in the planning of my music video, they helped me to decide on camera-work that I would use close-ups of the character to reflect the name of the song. However, I would also use several long-shots zooming out from the character as it also reflects to the song title, as it connotes that, that’s the space she needs. My Ancillary projects also enabled me to plan what editing I would do throughout my music video, I believe this was an extensive benefit for me whilst during the creation of the video as the different colour edits allowed the video to tell two different stories. Bright colours for the performance and black and white for the narrative.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To gain knowledge on what our target audience, those who favour the pop genre, want in a music video I created a questionnaire which contained the following questions...

I gave out 10 questionnaires to people who fit the mould of our target audience. The results gained are displayed in the following pie charts...

1. How would you want the artist(s) to be portrayed in the video?

Positive rep-resentationNegative rep-resentationEnjoying themselvesEmotionally involvedSeductive

2. Would you prefer the music video to

have fast-pace editing or a minimum of edit-

ing? FastMinimum

3. Would you enjoy a music video more with a narrative or without? Please expand on your

decision. NarrativePerformanceBoth

The audience research reflected extensively on our music video, we listened to the answers we received from the target audience and ensured we programmed this into the video.

Fast-pace editing

Positive representation & emotionally involved

Narrative & performance

How did you use media technologies in the construction

of your music video?

Adobe premiere pro was the software we used to edit our music video. Throughout the period I progressed in my skills on premiere as beforehand I had never edited anything before, I was able to turn separate clips into black and white, merge two clips together and to change the opacity so one clip was in the foreground and the other in the background.

The song we used was found on YouTube to which we then converted to an MP3 file and imported into the audio file so we could add it into our adobe premiere pro editing and it would play in our music video. However, as we had the song playing aloud whilst filming, we had to ensure all audio was turned off in the clips, so only the MP3 file was heard.

My music video and evaluation were both placed on my blog http://derynandjessmediacoursework.blogspot.co.uk/ which has been developed through the website www.blogger.com however to put my evaluation onto my blog I had to use Slideshare to transform it into a document that could be put onto my blog, as just like my video that had to be converted through YouTube, and my other word documents that had to be made into a JPEG, I can’t upload a PowerPoint presentation straight onto my blog.