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

Media Evaluation

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What magazine would you advertise in and why?

When considering what magazine to advertise in we need to ensure that the magazine we choose suits the theme and genre of our music and artist to ensure that we are reaching our target audience. Our chosen artist (Kate Nash) has a niche market and when considering the genre that Kate Nash falls within, which is pop/indie and so we feel that the best magazine suitable to promote our advertisement would be NME.  NME describe the magazine as "a weekly magazine that's a must for right–thinking music fans. And very wrong–thinking music fans. We have the best access to your favourite bands. We have the greatest music writing and photography. We're the ultimate source for discovering the best new music first."  Whilst covering articles featuring heavy band bands such as You Me At Six, The Darkness and Black Veil Brides, they also distribute many issues headlining softer indie/pop bands like Bombay Bicycle Club, Two Door Cinema Club, Florence and the Machine and many more. We feel that this magazine is perfect for us to promote our advertisement as the style of the magazine suits our advert

Analysis of Digipak

Lady GaGa's Digipak is completely opposite to our initial idea.  It is dark and gloomy, it features a crucafix which could represent the main theme portrayed throughout the music video of this song. Also there are pictures within the digipak that show the artist as the main feature, the pictures portray the artist to be vulnerable. In the picture on the front cover the artist covers her mouth and only bares certain parts of her face which give off a sense that she wants to be hidden.  Furthermore, the image on the inside of the digipakreveals the artist to be naked with her hair covering her body parts, the position her body is in is also one which represents vulnerability.  We feel the idea of featuring the artist as a focus point for the digipak works really well and that we could incorporate it within our own digipak.  However, it will be difficult to make this work for our digipak as the theme which runs dominantly throughout our video is one completely different to the theme portrayed in Lady Gaga's digipak.  Moreover, we like to challenge ourselves and hope to bring some originality to our digipak.  

  This Digipak  has two clear main colours which feature throughout, one of which resembles the theme of vulnerability portrayed through the images which appear within this digipak.  The colour white is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity and virginity, it is considered to be the colour of perfection; it also means safety, purity and cleanliness.  As apposed to black which is a mysterious colour associated with the fear of the unknown.  It usually has a negative connotation (blacklist, black humour, 'black death').  Black denotes strength and authority; it is considered to be a very formal, elegant and prestigious colour (black tie). In heraldry, black is the symbol of grief.  These two colours compliment and contrast each other perfectly and this is one of the reasons why this particular digipak has been successfully produced.

This Digipak has given us a lot of inspiration.  Although it is completely the opposite of the type of digipak we aim to design, it has given us several ideas of where to start and the type of things to include, for instance the continuous theme running throughout the digipak and having colours which also represent the theme whilst having there own connotations. 

Photoshoot for Didgipak

As a group we decided to use our double media lesson on Monday to go and take pictures for our didgipak.  I decided to take pictures on my iPhone along side the ones that were being taken on a proper camera which we are to use for our didgipak, above are some pictures of the actual shots we are going to use and there are also osome other pictures of the photos being taken.

Possible CD Cover Ideas

Once the photo shoot was completed and the images were uploaded to our blog, a member of our group thought that the colours were too bright and that the styling of the images were too similar to the styling of music artist Katy Perry's cd covers.  I have attempted to tone them down and put a vintage effect on a couple of pictures to make them resemble the quirky floral style of our music video, whilst steering them away from being too similar to Katy Perry's CD covers.  

Last Day of Filming

As a group we felt that it was best to get our filming completed quickly so that if there was to be a problem whilst editing and finish our music video, we wouldn't be rushed to sort the problem out.  We all agreed that it was a good idea to make the most of our double media lesson today to finish the filming we had left in order to progress in the progress of making the video.  We left school at lunch time and went into Nando's in Brentwood high street to film.

Before we go to the high street we stumbled across a few problems:  whilst gathering the equipment needed for the day from Rebecca's house we misplaced an important piece of apparatus which enabled us to connect the camcorder to the tripod.  Eventually after a while of searching, we found the attachment and were on our way to Brentwood.  However, once at Nando's we realised that we had forgot to pack the tripod and has to improvise the way in which we were going to film.


After a good think about how we were going to approach filming, everything fell into place and our last day of filming was successful.

Editing Software

As a group we felt that during the making of our thriller films in year 12 the school editing software   simply wasn't good enough. We therefore decided to use Apple editing software during the process of making our music video.  We feel that Apple software will make our music video better because it has far more editing options and the actual footage filmed can be altered to make the final product higher quality.  

Rough Cut

Music

As a group, we decided that before we brainstormed ideas for our story board we would analyse the lyrics of our song so that we could understand the pragmatic implications and gain a greater feel for the song to help us  create a better video.

 After analysing the lyrics we came to the conclusion that the song is a story of the artist looking back on a serious relationship that she once had and as she reminisces she remembers at one stage in their relationship when they were a bit rocky, but she wanted to work it out.  Eventually by the end of the song she realises that she doesn't feel the same any more and learns that she can cope without him.

Throughout our music video we hope to portray our understanding of the song.

Settings and Locations

Becca's House:  The very first place we filmed was at Becca Mais's house, we spent a lot of our time at this location making sure we filmed the essential and necessary shots needed to progress with making our music video.

King George's Playing Field, Brentwood:
On the same day at filming at Becca's house we also filmed at our next location, King George's Playing Fields.  The day we chose to film here had the perfect weather condition for the shots we wanted to capture and so we took full advantage of this and spent the whole day at this setting.  We have also recently spent  time here recently taking pictures for our digipak.

Shenfield Common, Brentwood: This location was the very last place we filmed, the shots filmed here were a late addition to our music video; the weather had taken a turn for the worse as it was getting further into the year.  However, the weather reflects the mood of our character at that certain point of the video during the shots we filmed.

Nando's, Brentwood: This was one of our last locations to film. The shots filmed here are several of the last shots used in our music video, we all enjoyed filming here and this is shown in the quality of our work.

All of our locations are in the same area of Brentwood, we have tried to keep the theme of our music video which is one of floral and quirkiness- with the majority of our settings and locations being outdoors.  I believe that the planning and thought put into our locations and which places would be most suitable for our video has made our video more successful.