- a website homepage for the band
- a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
- a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).
The music video required personal planning, filming and editing. Before making any final decisions on what song I wished to produce a music video for, I felt it was necessary to do some research prior to this on the history of music videos. This gave me an insight on the different types of music videos whether it be narrative, performance, abstract or a mixture of these and also the purposes which they are used for, this is often to create a specific impression of the band/ artist so that they are represented in the way they want the audience to see them. Music videos are also a way for the artist to express a message to the audience. This research showed me how music videos have developed in time, with all aspects changing or evolving, including animation, the camera quality with more elaborate camera movements due to new technology and devices. I looked at how the introduction of the Internet has dramatically helped towards the easy access of music videos and also the discovering of new bands and artists via well-known websites such as Youtube. I then delved further into music videos by analysing existing videos which are current and that I found interesting, this provided me with many ideas for my own media product.
I chose to produce my media text to the song "B Boy Baby" by Mutya Buena and Amy Winehouse which fits the genre of RnB/ Soul music. The reason for choosing this song is because as soon as I listened to the lyrics I could instantaneously visualise a narrative to go with the words, one which was both interesting and achievable. Due to the genre of the song being a hybrid of RnB and Soul music I made sure I researched these conventions so that I could see which style was more appropriate for my idea, I also took note on how these conventions appeared in official music video of "B Boy Baby". This music video contained a mixture of both genre conventions as it included men who were break dancing which is associated with RnB, however elements such as the artists clothing were more suited to the Soul genre because of the links with her long black coat and that of gospel clothing. I feel that my media product holds aspects of both the RnB and Soul genres in certain ways however fits better to the Soul genre because RnB is more commonly linked to money and power although this is not always the case and many songs can be about love which my music video is about. I decided to make my target audience for my music video 16-19 year olds because this is not only the age range which I am in meaning I will understand this age group the most but the poll on my blog also features this age range the most, meaning it was likely that this would be the most common ages for people who may watch my music video and be interested in it, the majority of people felt that they would like to see a Soul or RnB music video and this is also what made me choose this song. Due to the target audiences age this would make them come under the E category in the demographics because of their age, most of these people would be classed as a student if they attend college or unemployed after just leaving school.
I modelled my music video around the conventions of real media products, specifically RnB and Soul music videos, however before finding these exact conventions I looked for more general conventions when applied to music videos. The media language of a music video covers a wide spectrum of elements therefore I made sure I looked at all the different forms which are included so that my media text would be consistent to the rest. They are edited in time with the beat so that when a scene changes from one clip to another it will conform with the music and not be a too apparent and sudden change as it fits in time with the beat. Locations and settings are used to create a certain atmosphere and give meaning to the text, this also applies to the rest of the mise-en-scene such as the costumes people wear and the props they use, all of these elements try to conform with the song by creating the correct vibe and fitting the genre and mood of the song therefore even facial expressions and body language are an important way of emphasising the moods of the songs. All media conventions help connote deeper meanings so it is important that the correct convention is used when trying to create a desired idea. The camera is crucial when trying to express a specific mood. The speed and types of camera movements, the angles and the types of shot are all used to create a certain vibe or meaning, for example a camera on a low angle tilted upwards on the artist can imply power and dominance where as a high angled camera tilted downwards on the artist can make the artist look vulnerable and weak.
All music videos are either a narrative, performance, abstract or are a mixture of these depending on how the band/ artist want to be portrayed and whether they have a story/ message to give therefore it is crucual to their image that they are represented in the correct way. Each type of genre has generic conventions, music videos emphasise these to make their genre and the values belonging to it clear to their target audience.
When researching into typical RnB and Soul music videos I found that RnB music is very materialised, with many of the songs being about prize possessions such as money, cars, clothes, jewelry and a high class lifestyle whereas Soul music is much more focused upon love and belief, it holds more of a meaningful message when compared to most typical RnB songs. As the song for my music video is a mixture of both these genres I found it vital that I also included the conventions of these genres and also music videos in general within my media product, I therefore took my research of these genres into consideration when I planned each aspect of my video.
My music video includes both narrative and performance, Tim O'Sullivan et al (1988) suggests that narratives have a common structure, starting with the establishment of a plot or theme which is then followed by the development of the problem or enigma which increases the tension and finally comes the resolution of the plot. This narrative structure can be seen within my music video, the beginning of the text shows the singer pining for a boy who is in her class at college, this plot then develops by the boy finding out she likes him through finding one of her doodles which she has written for him, we also see her singing to the boy which shows she has expressed her feeling for him. The resolution of this media text is that the singer gets the boy, we see this in their show of affection for each other through a hug that they share.
The lyrics played a major role in how the narrative and performance aspects of my video were produced. The narrative fits very well with the words of the song, due to the inclusion of animation I was able to illustrate some of the lyrics which would of been hard to do other wise, for example, for the lyrics "it was winter time" I drew a simple doodle of snow falling from the sky and a snowman. The performance by the singer was also affected by the lyrics and mood of the song as we can tell she is very passionate about her feelings for the boy when she sings about him. Her facial expressions imply happiness and also slight desperation at her need for the boy she likes. This passion is commonly seen in the genre of Soul music which contains a lot of powerful emotions which are normally very positive and uplifting. My music video uses 4 different settings, these are a college class room, a garden, a bedroom and an edited background which shows the girls doodles in the background and the singer in the foreground. The reasons for choosing these locations are that they conform very well to the story line of the girl fancying the boy, there are also connotations behind the locations. The back garden is full of nature and this is very obvious because of the very dominant colour green, this natural vibe helps convey deep and meaningful emotions which is once again typical of the Soul genre. The singers bedroom uses props such as the bed and a teddy, the flamingo teddy implies innocence and love as flamingos are often seen in the media with their heads together to form the shape of a love heart, this could emphasise the fact that she wants the boy to love her like she does him so they can unite to form a bond like the flamingos do.
The bed has a leopard print quilt on it, this is a much more RnB styled prop because it emphasises the girls physical attraction for the boy, giving the impression that her feelings are not only passionate and deep but wild and uncontrollable. Other props are also used which are more commonly linked associated with the RnB genre, the singers phone shows she possesses material objects and her clothing reflects this implication because she is dressed in high trend clothing which is popular for people of that age, this is to make sure she promotes the correct image of herself. Although the high trend clothing would suggest the conventions of the RnB genre, the fact that the artist is not wearing minimalistic attire keeps an innocence to the text and takes elements of the Soul genre and the age of the target audience into consideration.
When taking the camera angles for my music video into account I studied the original B Boy Baby video and
found many different shots were used, these included close ups; to show the emotion on Mutya Buenas face, tracking shots; to follow her whilst she walks which gives involves the audience by giving the impression they are walking alongside her, long shots to allow the audience to see the full scene and the mise-en-scene within it which helps create the ideology, this is a general convention of music videos. I included many different types of shots within my media product with the aim of making it look like a conventional music video yet also having specific shots and angles to help portray a certain meaning or emotion. When the artist sings "so won't you please", I deliberately had the camera higher than the singer so that she was forced to look upwards whilst the camera had a downwards tilt, this was to magnify her desperation for the boy and give the impression that she is almost pleading for his affection.
I felt it was extremely important that I edited my music video to the beat and mood of the song because this is a convention which is essential to all media texts in order for them to run smoothly. I used a tool called the chroma key when editing which enabled me to edit out the background of a green screen room so that only the foreground characters were included which then let me put in my desired backgrounds of the girls doodle animations. I also used a dissolve effect on some of my shots as many music videos which are based around love and have quite a steady tempo use this as a convention for dream-like effect, making it flow a lot better.
When creating the ancillary texts for my music video I felt it was wise to do some research on them beforehand. I therefore looked at similar artists to Mutya Buena, the true singer of the song I chose to produce my music video too, and look for popular conventions. The combination of my main product and ancillary texts is very effective as they all help towards promoting one another and bringing awareness to the different types of media forms for example I noticed that websites often had the artists latest single on the home page so that the audience can locate it easily, this is a smart way of promoting the new songs and music videos as if the audience like it they will be encouraged to buy the song. It is evident that I have kept a continuous theme between my music video and the two ancillary texts; a digipak and website. I have done this because it gives each media text a direct link to one another and lets the audience establish the common features within the texts, this would benefit the artist when regarding sales as the audience would find it much easier to locate the products due to apparent themes linked to the artist. These stylistic themes include the college-like equipment such as paper and a pencil, these not only link to the story line of the music video but they emphasise the artists age by indicating she still attends college and has quite an innocent approach to love.
The audience feedback was very insightful when considering things about my music video which I would change if I were to do it again. The audience was the initial reason I chose to style my music video around the soul and RnB genre, the people who voted on my poll was most interested in these areas of music. I also discovered that the audience found animation to be very interesting in music videos and this is why I developed my animation idea. The questionnaire I produced after I had finished my music video was given to 100 students at Wyke College, all between the ages of 16-19, this was so that I could get an accurate response from my target audience. Overall the results were very pleasing as the majority of people understood the purpose of my music video and enjoyed the narrative story line. Their critical opinions have helped me understand what needs to be taken into more consideration when planning a music video such as having enough locations and camera angles to make the video very pleasing to watch. It is obvious that because of the high levels of technological equipment used to produce the nowadays music videos, the audience expect a very professional styled appearance to the media texts, therefore things such as slightly shaky camera work can give the audience the impression that the work is sub-standard. Furthermore this has taught me the lesson that each planned scene should be filmed a number of times so that back up shots are available in case something isn't quite right about one, another example of this is the artists performance, some shots may have a more believable looking performance than others so by shooting it a number of times you can choose the best ones to use.
Throughout my A2 media assignment I have been introduced to many new media technologies in all stages of production. The research stage required using websites such as Youtube which make music videos and other media texts readily available to the audience. This website is a relatively new piece of media technology when comparing it to the past ways in which music videos used to be viewed, it makes it much more easily accessible to the audience and therefore there is much more chance of people watching it. I also used the well-known online encyclopaedia website "Wikipedia", however this source is believed to be quite misleading sometimes because anyone can make changes to it, therefore I made sure that all information I got off this sight was checked before applying it to my work.
When planning my music video I produced an animatic which is a rough video of the story board pictures edited together to the song I used, this required me to scan the images I had drawn onto the computer, the scanner made the process a lot quicker as I did not have to waste time drawing them on the computer which would of taken a lot longer to do and it was unnecessary to spend a long time on this because its main purpose was to give me a detailed plan which I could work towards therefore perfection of sketches was not needed. By editing the clips together I got a brief introduction to the editing software which belonged to the programme Adobe Premier Pro CS3, this was extremely beneficial as it prepared me for when I was ready to edit my actual clips together to the sound track.
The production stages of my music video required capturing the footage I needed on a SD Sim card camera. This camera was very easy to use and had effective tools such being able to zoom in and out of a scene without a change in the focus, I used this a substantial amount in my music video as it enabled me to include close ups whilst keeping the audience interested. When filming most scenes, I used a tripod which kept the camera at a desired height and angle. This was very helpful as when I was filming the shots to create the animation backgrounds it was essential that the camera stayed exactly where I started filming with it and the tripod was a great piece of equipment to do this with. I delved into the technology of editing a lot further when I had finished filming and imported my shots onto the editing suite so that I could start constructing my final piece. The editing of my footage required various affects which I had to apply to the shots to make them work. These affects included the chroma key which allowed me to make the green coloured back ground disappear on all of the scenes which I had shot in the college green room that was made especially for this purpose. Once this green colour was opaque and the only thing left on the screen was the elements I required such as the artist singing, I could add the appropriate background footage which I captured specifically to go behind the artist. It was important that I took the artists colour of clothing into consideration when filming in the green screen as and colours which were close to the green shaded background would also dissapear. The chroma key also allowed me to make the singer black and white, this gave quite a grainy affect however this is exactly what I wanted as it implies that the girl is part of the doodle on the page styled background. When editing shots together I used a dissolve transition which made my scenes flow elegantly from one clip to another, this added a dream-like affect to the video which emphasises the "fairy tale" type story line and her blossoming romance which she is hoping for. After finishing my music video I exported it using the Adobe Media Exporter and then uploaded this to my Youtube account which I created so that my video could be put on my blog and could be easily viewed.
Creating the ancillary texts required good editing software for the images; therefore I used Adobe Photoshop CS3. I was already accustomed to this programme having used it in my previous year of media studies therefore I did not need to experiment with the functions meaning I was saving time. The digipak needed to be set out in a certain way so that the images would be in the correct order if made into a real digipak therefore I used a template so that I could add the pictures I wanted to include over it. Different layers can be used on Photoshop, this means that when new images or text are being added to the composition they can be applied to their own layer so that this is the only thing that gets moved around or deleted if unwanted. This is a very good adaptation to the programme as it enables the user to locate the layers quickly and make any changes they want without having to change all elements, an example of a programme which does not have this feature would be Paint which is very simplistic in contrast to Photoshop.
I included shots directly out of my music video onto both my digipak and website to create a strong and continuous theme throughout my work. By using Photoshop on both ancillary texts it allowed me to use the same fonts, colours and other elements to maximise the continuity. Throughout my media brief I have used the programme Microsoft Word 2010 an excessive amount. This programme is very good when writing essays because it has an automatic spell checker which is useful as it highlights and errors you have made and allows for corrections whilst also keeping an extremely accurate account on the number of words you have written. Microsoft Publisher 2010 has also been a popular programme for me, specifically in the evaluation stages due to my use of print screens, this is a time efficient and helpful button as it quickly lets you get an image of the screen you want to get a picture of, once I pressed print screen I then pasted it on to Publisher so that I could crop the image down as much as I needed or to right click and save it as a JPEG file so that it could then be uploaded to my blog.
All stages of the work I produced was uploaded to my blog belonging to the website "blogger.com" which I created specifically for this brief. Blogger was a very effective way of recording all of my work as it allows for all typed of media to be uploaded to it. Even my hand written work was easy to put on my blog as I simply had to scan it onto the computer as a picture. When comparing my blog to the typical paper form of work it has many benefits as none of the work can go missing or be destroyed and it is much less hassle to navigate through.
