Ancillary Task

Our whole grouped worked together to decide what to put in the Digi pack, we had an idea of doing a picnic on the Grand piano - however, we ran out of time so decided to use the pictures we took in the photo shot at the Miniature train station. We wanted to keep to the patriotic colour scheme in the Digi pack.

Then Jack and I picked some photos from this photo shot and put them jaggedly on a black background so that the brightness (also enhanced by me altering the saturation) would stand out - illustrating her personality. 

Nadine Board retake Evaluation

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

 Two conventions we used:

1. Mise-En-Scene

Kate Nash (Foundations)

We took the idea of giving inanimate objects characteristics from Kate Nash's music video - 'Foundations'. Using this convention gives our artist the same quirky image illustrated in Kate Nash's videos and makes the horrors she is singing of about the world naive and childish - making it amusing rather than sad.

2. Filming

Vanessa Carlton (A Thousand Miles)

We took inspiration from Vanessa Carlton in shots to emphasise that she plays the piano.

We got ideas of camera angles from the piano used in the video as we wanted to include quite a bit of piano to show that she is a talented musician rather than just a singer.

Our emphasise of the piano is a convention of indie music as it is a symbol of independence, talent and shows the audience that all of the music is the that artist - they write, play and sing their own music. It demonstrates that they are their music.

Two conventions we developed:

1. Mise-En-Scene

Roger Sanchez (Another Chance)

 We took the physical heart that the female character carries - this develops our idea of making the lyrics literal.

We have developed it as the heart is used in Roger Sanchez's video to make the audience feel sympathy for the character. Whereas, in our video, it is used to make the lyrics more literal and portray a naivety in our artist. The placing of the paper heart suggests another reading of what she is seeing - the male is looking at another girl's chest. It also carries on the happy tone to the song.

2. Mise-En-Scene

Kate Nash

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Lilly Allen (The Fear)

  

 

For the train station sequence we had our artist in a blue dress with red bows with a belt to show off her curves and red, white and blue shoes to fit in with the patriotic colour scheme (British flag). This also fits in with our very English orientated music video (cup cakes, miniature railway and English singer). The idea of using tights was from Lilly Allen as it makes the short length of the dress less voyeristic and sexual. We had our Artist's hair down with the fringe clipped back. We kept it looking natural but putting the fringe up showed confidence by showing her face. This hair style was also used in the performance sequence but she wore a plain blue dress with silver shoes. The heels show her feminine side. The dresses were both high cut so not to show cleavage (a convention that we picked up from Kate Nash), this - like the tights - stopped the actress from appearing too sexual or voyeristic. it is one main colour straight down (another convention we got from Kate Nash) so that she stands out, one big block of colour is more eye catching (this is also something that The Queen of England does) but we added a belt (or in the performance the dress tightened with a bow) to give her some shape and add a splash of colour.

Two conventions we challenged:

1. Mise-En-Scene

Vanessa Carlton (A Thousand Miles)

Vanessa Carlton has multiple scenes but spends the whole video performing on a grand piano whereas we wanted to keep it quite simple and didn't have a need for more setting tan we had. We only needed one to tell the story (miniature train station), one for performance (hall) and we added one to give it a bit more variety (white wall background).

We also differed in who was in the performance shots. Whenever our artist in shown performing there was no one else in the room - this was to show that she likes to play for herself, as she enjoys it. Rather than for a living and to get a message across, as shown in Vanessa Carlton's video.

Another way we challenged the conventions seen in Vanessa Carlton's music video is through the chosen narrative. We wanted to use a proper storyline as we and the active audience had thought this was more entertaining. It also gave us an opportunity to illustrate out artist's quirky side.

2. Editing

The Kooks (You Don't Love Me)

Throughout the music videos there is a lot of black and white - this is mainly due to the fact that they have not got a storyline but a "behind the scenes" video where everything looks candid whereas all of ours is obviously deliberately posed (this is partially to challenge Mulvey's theory that women are under the male gaze - watched unknowingly - and make her appear strong). All of ours is in colour to emphasise our artist's quirky side and bright personality. In our post-production process we altered the saturation, contrast and brightness to make the scenes appear as bright as possible which is a complete contrast to their turning some of the scenes into black and white.

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

A video of my answer 




HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TASKS?


Answer - Part 1
Answer - Part 2




WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?


Annotated video of audience comments
I annotated this video from feedback from a video I posted on Facebook and Youtube and a questionnaire in our Sixth Form. The questionnaire was sent out to students aged 16 - 18 and comments on Facebook range in ages from 15 - 48 years. We got a lot of positive feedback and very little negative - all of which are annotated in the video above.
We had received audience feedback throughout the editing stage of post-production and this helped us in our creativity and to make the music video as entertaining as possible, it also helped us keep the video appropriate for our target audience.

Nadine Board's retake music video

This is my final music video

I didn't feel that I needed to make much change to my original piece. I contacted the real artist, Josephine Vander Gucht, to see what she thought and if she could see any room for improvement:
"I love the video, it's really great. I love the train! such a good idea...it all looks pretty good and perfect timing!! Really great shots."
However, there was a bit at the beginning where our Jose is jumped up the train station and the angle changes through it. This didn't look right so I re-did it but using footage from the same take so that I wouldn't have a problem with continuity. This was very difficult as I found that we did not have enough footage and it was very dark but I managed to get it all in by jumping her smaller distances then in the original and changing the saturation, brightness and contrast on all of the cuts.