Evaluation of Music Video Project

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

The video, I thought, mimicked the likes of Rihanna and Loick Essien's music video styles - green screening, plain backgrounds and single artist narrative and visuals, I thought we used our own single artist narrative worked well considering the amount of time and money we had for this video.
I feel the lack of Gaga-esk dance number would create an emotive atmosphere, as well as the sparseness of some the backgrounds; though we tried to conform a little to a sense of Gaga style through our Sci -fi glasses prop choice (£15 inc. p&p amazon) through stripping back we've developed the idea in such a way that challenges the commercial cinematic music video; intending to make the final product purely about how the artist feels and the isolation, sorrow and regret that that entails.
We chose to make our video quite basic because we believed in the case of this song simplicity is key to create and effective and coherent narrative and also that because this specific track was written before Gaga's 2008 debut album 'The Fame';  we decided that our rendition of 'Second Time Around' should reflect this sense of stripping back. We hoped to symbolize this sense of nature and class through using conventionally British green screen backgrounds of places in and around Cambridge; to the mass media this would create a feel of other worldly-ness and the unknown, something that I felt suited the Gaga sensibilities also, and that I felt we achieved.
It is also with these decisions to that we challenge the conventions of all other Gaga videos. Even our ancillary dvd cover we dubbed 'Stefani' links back to the artists real name; Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

Unlike regular R&B videos; our lacks the conventional jump-cuts, instead we used complicated greenscreen overlapping fades because of the nature of the song. These effects were time consuming, and there was alot of problems caused by some of them, althought the finished effect was worth it. Also our lack of voyeurism, because we have a female artists, were caused by our tight-framed shots and 'in vogue' clothing.

How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?


The combination of main product and ancillary texts is fairly strong; it fits well with the conventions of advertising the artist in manner that creates depth and reflects our goals of stripping back the glamour.

Because the ancillary texts focus strongly on the artist; the tight framed, minimalism of the visuals can be directly affiliated with our video, even though we purposefully avoided taking images from the video for the digipak and magazine ad, we did however keep to a sense of strict tight framed visual structures.
With the digipak and magazine ad I essentially flattened the images we had of our actress, the wonderful Lynsey Smith, by using the notepad and pop art features on Adobe photoshop filters to great effect. The contrast in colours, and the bold simplistic approach to how we presented our artist, demands attention in such a way that reflects Gaga herself.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We were told our choices of camera angle and visuals went well with the themes of the song, the photo stills were effective, that we could have made a better connection with the artist had we seen more of her eyes and that our lip syncing could have gone better.
Had we the chance to go back we could include a transition of some sort to include the eyes, maybe the actress putting on the glasses or taking them off; putting up a shield or revealing her vulnerability.
Unfortunately some of our lip syncing did go awry during conversion to Quicktime.

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

We used blogger, we used this to document what we had done and the processes we used it throughout the process of producing a video and advertising it.
Photoshop was used to make the digipack and magazine advert. This was good to use as it enabled us to create the ancillary texts exactly how we wanted to, focussing on the artist and edited to be something that would stand out but fit with the conventions.

We used final cut for all our editing, it was quick and easy to use to help us get all our editing done in time. We did get our lip-syncing done and to good standard but when we transferred it to quick time the lip-syncing went out half way through. A problem we have since fixed on our latest version which has been uploaded onto the blog.
The HD cameras were used for filming, they were good to use because they made the video look more professional, as well as giving a crisp high definition picture, which helped when we came to use green screening.

Music Video Evaluation

Final Finished Video

Magazine Advert

Digipack

Script For Video Commentary

Conventions of the R&B Genre


- We mimicked the likes of Rihanna and Loick Essien's music video styles - green screening, plain backgrounds and single artist narrative and visuals

- We hoped to create an emotive atmosphere through the sparseness of some the backgrounds and lack of Gaga-esk dance number; though we tried to conform a little to a sense of Gaga style through our Sci -fi glasses prop choice.
-through stripping back we've developed the idea in such a way that challenges the commercial cinematic music video; intending to make the final product purely abot how the artist feels and the isolation, sorrow and regret that that entails.

- We chose to make our video quite basic because we believed in the case of this song simplictiy is key to create and effective and coherent narrative and also that because this specific track was written before Gaga's 2008 debut album 'The Fame' ;
-
We hoped to symbolize this sense of nature and class through using conventionally British green screen backgrounds of places in and around cambridge; to the mass media this would create a feel of other worldly-ness and the unknown

- It is also with these decisions to that we challenge the conventions of all other Gaga videos. Even our ancillary dvd cover we dubbed 'Stefani' links back to the artists real name; Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

-Unlike regular R&B videos; our lacks the conventional jump-cuts, instead we used complicated greenscreen overlapping fades because of the nature of the song. Also our lack of voyuerism, because we have a female artists, were caused by our tight-framed shots and 'in vogue' clothing.

Effect of the combination of our Main Product and Ancillary Texts


- We feel the combination of main product and ancillary texts is fairly strong; it fits well with the conventions of advertising the artist in manner that creates depth and reflects our goals of stripping back the glamour.

- Because the ancillary texts focus strongly on the artist; the tight framed, minimalism of the visuals can be directly affiliated with our video, even though we purposefully avoided taking images from the video for the digipak and magazine ad, we did however keep to a sense of strict tight framed visual structures.


Audience Feedback

 - we were told our choices of camera angle and visuals went well with the themes of the song, the photo stills were effective, that we could have made a better connection with the artist had we seen more of her eyes and that our lip syncing could have gone better.

- had we the chance to go back we could include a transition of some sort to include the eyes, maybe the actress putting on the glasses or taking them off; putting up a shield or revealing her vulnerability.

- unfortunately some of our lip syncing did go awry during conversion to Quicktime.

New Technologies

-We used blogger, we used this to document what we had done and the processes we used it throughout the process of producing a video and advertising it.

- Photoshop was used to make the digipack and magazine advert. This was good to use as it enabled us to create the ancillary texts exactly how we wanted to, focussing on the artist and edited to be something that would stand out but fit with the conventions.

-We used final cut for all our editing, it was quick and easy to use to help us get all our editing done in time. We did get our lip-syncing done and to good standard but when we transferred it to quick time the lip-syncing went out half way through.

-The HD cameras were used for filming, they were good to use because they made the video look more professional.

Evaluation Questions and Answers for Directors Commentery

1. Our media product has used forms and conventions from a real product by focussing on the artist throughout the video with tight framing and close ups to help sell the song. The poster and digipack also use this as it is a convention of R&B/pop like with Rihanna's videos. She was our main influence while making our video, digipack and poster. We made it our own by giving it a more british setting as Cambridge. This challenges the normal conventions of an R&B artist as you would expect a more glamerous city as you would expect a more glamorous city to help create emotive shots.


2. The combination of main text and ancillary texts is fairly strong the video is packed with tight angular shots of the artist full of motion. It fits well with the conventions helping to advertise the artist. The ancillary texts also focus strongly on the artist. It is all tight frames singling out the artist focussing on her help sell the song. Showing all her feelings and emotions for the person she is singing about. Ancillary texts has all the detail needed in the text and stands out with all the well edited stills.


3. We have learned from our audience feedback that we need to make sure the lip-syncing is more precise, as halfway through the video it goes slightly out of sync. Our idea of the montage of photos is nice. We had this to show the past memories she had and how they are now fading. The audience felt this went well and could clearly see what we were trying to achieve. The close ups were good and they had unusual framing of her face that fitted with the genre and conventions showing the artist advertising the song.


4. We used technology such as blogger, we used this to inform about what we had done and the processes we used it throughout the process of producing a video and advertising it. I liked using this because we more able to work from home or anywhere else with internet access. Photoshop was used to make the digipack and magazine advert. This was good to use as it enabled us to create the ancillary texts exactly how we wanted to, focussing on the artist and edited to be something that would stand out but fit with the conventions. We used final cut for all our editing, it was quick and easy to use to help us get all our editing done in time. We did get our lip-syncing done and to good standard but when we transferred it to quick time the lip-syncing went out half way through. The HD cameras were used for filming, they were good to use because they made the video look more professional.