QUESTION 2HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

In the video our artists are costructed to represent the fun and lively characters we are used to see in pop and contemporary music videos. We chose to reflect this on our front cover and Ad, we hope use this element as a selling point and this should fit in with the tone and mood of the song. This translates on to the digipak in the sense of instead of having a conceptual theme it will be more focused on iconography.

I chose to not focus on an obvious star image but to have a colourful and abstract edge to the digipack and the blurred lights over the two actors was an idea that I thought reflected the chilled vibe and urban theme of the video, also the colour scheme reflected the chilled vibe the song has. The video seemed to have an “edge” to so in the final drafts I chose to have our stars through shapes to make more striking and interesting visuals opposed to a conventional portrait, explored in drafts and ideas.

I used an neutral background and abstract lights to reflect the conventions of the genre. The lights are vibrant and stand out, they reflect on the club scene where you get colourful lights in clubs yet the lights are still connoting a chilled out track. Also the use of headphones on the male artist and not on the female can represent the construction of love of music on the male side while the “girl next door” representation is more apparent in the digipak and magazine ad. The sound wave feature on the back of the digipak was added as an aesthetic connected to the genre of garage and the importance of the “basseline”.

The idea is to use an urban setting to connect with the audience and urban themes to solidify this in the ancillary texts. Keeping a low budget feel, this connects with audience as our target audience is used to consuming music from youtube and the video has the feel that it is made be one of the target audience themselves.

Without feeling glamorous, the stars of the music video connect with the audience by looking at the camera, smiling and having a relaxed body language as if they are with the audience performing especially for them. We chose a low budget studio setting for our performance shots to show the passion for music and show the creation of the music and pringing the music video to a more personal level. With the “narrative” the “London at night” theme connects with most of the target audience as it is recognisable and the aftermath of a party scene along with fireworks creates a celebratory feel, the fun fair then the stumbling home creates a live atmosphere winds down and the drunken night continues at home, relatable to most teens who have experienced this.

All of these features are important to conforming to the genre/subgenre because it solidifies its place with all the other music videos and ancillary texts but standing out at the same time. It conforms to the conventions but at the same time brings a few more features to the table such as having pop and indie artists singing on a garage instrumental and not be generic.

QUESTION 3WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

From the audience feedback during the editing process , I got the most active responses. From everyone who looked at the video whilst I was editing I got positive feedback and mainly classmates and passers by and friends telling me how they liked it and they were mainly impressed by the lip syncing and the rapid cuts.

From constant audience feedback throughout the editing stages as well as the pre production stage, it has help us ground our ideas and stick to themes and ideas that would appeal and attract our target audience. Reoccurring themes such as couples, parties, love and the “night out” along with the “morning after” all reflects on our target audience socially and just by having the themes present makes the video more entertaining. The feedback from the music video was mainly positive and the feedback told us the fast cuts and contrasting visuals were engaging and compliment the visuals and was a interesting break from the performance shots. On the other hand the performance shots did drag on a bit.

From the comments made of the video (added to the video in the form of annotations) I realize what I have done right and what I could improve.

First of all I would definitely put more planning into my future videos, rely less on the editing and more on the pre production.

Lighting is key, when well lit the shots looked clearer and crisp and the indoor shots looked amateur and horrible.

Performance shots and lip syncing really sells the authenticity and engages audience.

The rapid cuts and the lights looked great according to feedback and this should have reoccurred during the video.

If I could do it over again I would chose better locations more recognisable locations like central london and include sights in there more for the iconography such as red busses, Trafalgar square, London eye and so forth.

This would give me as editor more footage to work with and more footage to include in the montages.

I would have included more performance shots of the male singer and lit the room using 3 point lighting rather than natural lighting.

I was happy with the audience feedback and positive comments but the negative constructive criticism was needed and made me look at the video through another perspective.