Alicia Stocker Music Video Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product develops from conventions of a real country/ folk media product because although we have the traditional slow transitions to match the song and the lead singer singing, it doesn’t conform to open landscape with the lead singer alone with a musical instrument or animal like most country/folk products do. We developed it into a narrative based around a boy and a girl in a relationship that’s having problems to match the lyrics. Another way we developed the media product was the modernised surroundings to cityscape taking basic elements of the structure of real media products, such as the sunrise at the beginning. To further the modernising we included props such as a mobile phone to have audiences relate to the way of communication between the two characters in the narrative. Also using a technical advancement in final cut we managed to manipulate time in the footage as well as the colour, using experimentation with camera angles and techniques such as using the straightforward and very country/folk head shots and establishing shots we expanded from there. Over the shoulder shots were used to focus of the mobile phone and panning shots of when the girl is walking mixed with a lower body shot of feet walking down stairs, a shot reverse shot was used when the girl was walking one way and the boy another to different destinations.

Although it could be argued that it challenges a real media product when it comes to the digipak, which is very similar to one of dance / electro with the bright colours and wacky background and not a customary country/folk with soft colours and a picture of the artist on the front. The packaging is rather sophisticated as it features bonus material and opens out more to illustrate extra information about the band .where as a typical country/folk one would be a single CD case.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?

In particular i feel the digipak is very effective and would be highly buyable in a shop considering it looks similar to a dance/ electro CD case with the bright colours and the outline of a girl on the front which would draw people’s attention also the clear poster with similar information, using white font to contrast with the vivid background also draws the attention of a younger generations ranging from 15+ .

The music video relates to the younger generation due to the age of the characters and the establishment around them such as college something they can relate to. the communication device which is the mobile, not to mention the lead singer being an attractive female which will also be effective in selling as girls will either want to be like her and boys fancy her.

Together the digipak and music video would be very effective because of the abstract view in which we produced it having modern camera shots recent to the 21^st century such as shot reverse shot ect. Also having a narrative most of the population can empathise with. Using a still from the music video we decided that a black and white version of the outline of Danni would be the world wide symbol used to recognise girl in the mirror- wicked game. Using the outline of Danni for the digpak shows a clear connection to the music video and ancillary.

MIKIS album release advert was an inspiration as to how we wanted ours to look with the exaggerated colours and bold captions. we based our information around that magazine advert such as , tour dates, name of the most recent song, and who was the product producer. To improve the realism of the advertisement, we included a company logo at the bottom of the page also including how you can purchase it through iTunes or HMV stores or local stores.

However i feel the our media product would work more effectively as a single enteritis because of the abstract digipak which is in contrast to the mellow sountract and easy pace of the music video they would sell better by themselves than as a joint package.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What I learnt from the feedback is the music video could have been improved with shoots out of college similar to the street scene and cloudy sunrise at the beginning, using other locations with the music video would of made our narrative more realistic and believable justifying a longer relationship with different locations and clothing. The Lip syncing towards the end where Danni is standing behind the leaves could have gone better, but due to Danni smiling when miming the words we were limited with footage that emphasized the true emotions of the lyrics .

what worked well in our favour were the slow transitions which matched the pace and rhythm of our chosen song, Bassboosa – Wicked Game which we recalled Girl in the mirror – Wicked Game. Also to develop conventions of other folk/ country we included two different bits of footage which is side by side, one sliding up when the girl is walking forward and one going down when the boy walks down stairs.

The black and white street scene with our lead singer in colour was one of our better scenes and the audience liked the contrast in colour and time manipulation for the background the main focus point was our colour overlay of Danni the lead singer. The narrative in the music video focuses on a couple having difficulties which is constant throughout, it also matches the lyrics of the song wicked game by Bassboosa .

The response for the digipak showed that people liked the contrast between the colourful background and the white font because it drew their attention, first to the background and then the information, although the style of font could have been more creative it would have developed vastly from the country/fold genre which is not the look we wanted.

On the other hand people liked how the digipak was unexpected and didn’t conform to the traditional style of country/folk digipak, it made a unique impression and would, if put on sale, lure people to pick up our digipak rather than others in the country/folk section.

However it could be argued that the digipak conforms to cyber folk or electro country due to the packaging which is similar to a dance / rave category the background image s were stills taken from the original music video so audiences can see a visual connection linking the music video to the digipak.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the project the internet was used to write a record of what we did every lesson and posted it on blogger.com showing our thought processes and other ideas before our final design showing things that went wrong and how our plan expanded and is then refined. In addition we used youtube.com to gather research into different music videos containing interesting transitions or unique ideas with intriguing narratives, such as Blink 182- always or Craig David – I’m walking away. Images were taken from google.com to be used in the blog journal for examples or in general. Also researching other digipak’s and advertisement that bands had to help crate our digipak, they were all similar, and wanting to be original and have something that stood out from the crowd. One thing that we did try to keep the same was, using a picture of the singer on the front of both of the products. We wanted to keep a strong connection between the layout of both the DigiPack and the Magazine advert. This way if people saw both of the products separately then they would be able to associate them with each other. Furthermore during the filming process a digital camera and tripod was used to help holding the camera still while filming. The footage was then uploaded onto an apple Mac and into final cut, which helped us cut and edit the footage to match the pace of the soundtrack which we merged with the footage. Using different tools in final cut we were able to reproduce an effective music video. Additionally Photoshop, Fireworks, Illustrator were used to manipulate images in the digipak. Taking a still imaged out of the music video and placing it into one of the programmes, manoeuvring the colours of the sunset and the lead singer Danni. The sunset is the background of the CD case and the black and white girl was inverted from a still, colour image of the lead singer. The front panels feature three logos. A Dolby digital logo, DVD Video and an arista logo are featured at the bottom of the digipak. Bassboosa is signed by Sony, which is a relevant logo to include.