How effective is the combination of the main product and ancillary texts

Evaluation

Setting and Locations- The first location that appears as part of our media music video is the Bedroom of the female character. We wanted to show the female character in her bedroom to show she is an average normal teenage girl and this makes her more relate-able for the audience. We wanted the room to look individual and unique to represent the character of the female, and also represent the overall theme of Kate Nash and her music. I think this was a good choice of location to portray the females individual personality.
The next location we used was the dining room we wanted the dining room to look fairly bland and dull to reflect the crumbling relationship of the female character and the male character. ultimately the females costume is the only bright thing in shot to reflect her vibrancy over her dull relationship which could also show a positive outlook on life.

Titles font ans style of the opening- We had a difficult time choosing the font for our music video for the beginning title and the credits. Unfortunately we were unable to find a font that we deemed suitable due to the lack of choice available on the editing equipment we used if we could choose any font we would use the same as the font used on our digi pac as we feel this suits better the style and genre of Kate Nash and would look more professional that what we settled for.

Costumes and props- For our music video we all felt as if the costumes and props of the video was very important as the quirky style of Kate Nash always coincides with interesting and unusual outfits and objects. We felt by using the range of unusual costumes such as the bright flowery dress and The polka dot dress allowed us to portray the same unusual costume choices that fans usually associate with Kate Nash Music videos. Furthermore i think the props we used were extremely effective at representing the pop genre as we using bright colours and unusual looking props (such as the watering can bag but also used everyday props that viewers would be able to recognise and relate to such as the 'Ben ans Jerrys' ice cream featured at the beginning of the video.Furthermore we tried to contradict this during the second half of the video when the lyrics read 'we are not the people that we turned out to be' the character is supposed to be portrayed as ide if time had passed between the couple and she has in fact grown not only older but also wiser we tried to tone down the costumes to show a less childlike more mature character showing personal growth from her previous personality. Furthermore we did try to dress her as if she were older than her years to maintain a humorous element within the video.

How characters are introduced- The first full shot of both character comes from only a short shot of the female character walking away from the male this is done to create an enigma among the audience leaving them to ponder questions such as why did she walk away? who upset who? are the a couple?. We wanted the story to develop throughout the video so including this shot allowed us to pave the way into revealing more about the characters and their relationship.The Next time the female character is in shot is when she is sitting alone on her bed we did this to make her relatable to the audience and many people from our audience feedback said they were able to relate to the character more by showing her in a normal bedroom environment as it immediately means the viewer is able to identify similarities between them and the character meaning they can feel more sympathy towards the character and overall have more interest in the videos narrative and outcome.


Narrative and how it represented- After analysing the lyrics of the song the songs underlying meaning was quite obvious and we were able to follow them to develop a successful narrative that followed the audio. Lyrics such as 'dancing at discos eating cheese on toast' Were fairly clear and to steer away from such a obvious lyric would have look very unprofessional. So instead we tried to think of less obvious was of representing what could have been a very restricting set of lyrics eg by not not on making cheese on toast but using stop motion animation but also writing the next line of merry happy on to each piece. This meant that the narrative was more interesting for the viewer and hopefully portrayed a fun quirky take on the lyrics making it more representative of Kate Nashs' current pop videos. Furthermore the song is about the breakup of 2 people we did not want to make the video a cliche love story so we tried not to show scenes that revealed detailed fact about the relationship eg the reasons for why they may have split up instead we wanted to leave this to the audience allowing them to engage with the video in order to find out more about the relationship. We did this by including only small teasers such as the male leaving the front door and the female packing her bags.When the major details are never revealed the audience is able to draw their own conclusions which could mean they are more likely to discuss the enigma with others and audience for our Media product may grow.

Camerawork and editing-
During our music video we attempted to use various different types of camera shots. Most shots were medium close ups as we wanted to use stop motion animation which meant we needed a clear view of the object keeping the camera in the same position at all times.Furthermore we used long shots to make the female character seem venerable and isolated to the audience encouraging them to be sympathetic towards her. Long shots such as that of the females teddy bear picnic are used to make her seem alone and childlike but the lyrics say 'i can be alone' Which contradicts the on screen imagery. This means the audience are able to except the fact that the female is better alone and that it is in fact in her childlike personality that she enjoys time alone.We used close ups in some cases to emphasise lip movement while the female is singing meaning the audience is better able to focus on the dialogue which was important within the songs narrative. We also used closeups on the females eyed to emphasise her feeling at that point for example when she is waiting for the male character to come to the restaurant we did this to show that the female was in frustration about the fact he had not turned up leading the audience to sympathise further with her and become more aware of her emotions at that point.

Kate Nash's Digipak



Front cover

The front of Kate Nash's album 'my best friend is you' uses her signature quirky scrapbook style and Kate Nash logo to make the album instantly recognisable as hers and the cover sticker reads 'Includes the single ''DO-WAH-DOO'' which is one of the most successful track from the album which is used to entice customers in to buy and listen to  the rest of the album in hope that those who enjoyed that single will also be int iced to listen to more of her work.


Open cover



The digipak only has 2 panels that fold out  the inside left panel contains more scrap book type imagery eg hearts skeletons and dolls as well as a head shot of herself portrayed in a vintage sepia style with her scrapbook theme a constant throughout.As well as the CD which keeps the main colour palette of the front cover using mainly black blues and reds and using the same Kate Nash font as the front cover.



Showing inside booklet

The digipak also contains a inside booklet of lyrics to the features song and other images and montages.including 2 black and white photos of  herself and scrap booked images of random imagery such as toy dolls and bunny rabbits still using the constant colour pallette that remains within the digipak.The booklets cover is the same as that on the cover so the buyer is able to identify that booklet as being a part of the digipack.



CD inside the booklet



When the CD disk is removed from the digipak behind the plastic is a sepia toned picture of a bunny rabbit which also remains a constant piece of imagery throughout the pack. 



All elements of cd



 The back cover list the song quite simply but coinsides with the album name font from the front cover meaning that the digipac looks better together and that constant themes run throughout.


cd back cover

I think that this digipack is very effective as it is simple but effective, by using the same 'scrapbooking' style throughout the digipack and the use of overlapping images and a simple but constant colour palette it stops the digipack from being to overpowering and busy. I like the way she has used random imagery of vintage objects to show aspects of her personality and her music genre.However i think that within our digipack production we will be including more panels to fit in a larger amount of imagery from our video and to also make the digipac more eye catching and appealing for the customers. We will  be taking inspiration from this pack for ours and will use similar fonts for the front and use a small colour pallete to be kept a constant within our pack eg sepia tones.

Evaluation of final thriller production.(unfinished)

The lighting was so dark you could not see the blood on the bed sheets

I did like the way we used the black and white for the dream sequence

Overall i was happy with our final thriller opening i think that the lighting style of filming and editing helped us to give the opening a really dark opening and help to add to the sense of foreboding that something bad is about to happen though out the story.But this dark lighting did cause us problems when filming and often some of the action was so dark it was impossible to see any figures but increasing lighting would ruin the atmosphere we really wanted to create. For example when our female character had been stabed in her dreams and woken up to find her covers drenched in blood the red food colouring we poured across our white bed spread was so hard to see it is hardly noticed.



I also think  that our opening was not very well produced as the action moves extremely fast and is often difficult to understand, furthermore i believe that we tried to fit to much into only the first 5minuites a large amount of the story line was squeezed into only the opening and if we were to produce it again i think we would re-think the action of the opening and only include some of the action so the opening could seem less ruched.I do think however that our group did do very well at editing considering the problems we had with the format of our video and the editing software. I do think the way we included the dream sequences in black and white, used the fast foward editing to make the action fit the pace of the thriller and the music we included .
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Moodboard

Together we made mood boards of the items and imagery we are going to include in our music video.

Researching Kate Nashs' Single covers

Before we made a major decisions concerning the cd cover of a 3 pack single for Kate Nash 'Merry Happy' we wanted to firstly research some of her previous album/single cd covers to take ideas and inspiration from them in order to create a cover that appeals to her existing fans and also suits the personality and genre of Kate Nash and her music.

Her First Album was called made of bricks and as you can see from the image it shows a female character you would assume is Kate Nash in a red dress approaching what looks like a life size dolls house. The red dress and house help to create a 'Fairytale' theme of  a mysterious and unusual environment helping to make the female Kate Nash character seem venerable and childlike in a fairytale world. furthermore the Font of the cover is a messy un neat style reflecting maybe the childlike theme further.

The style of these single covers seemed to further develop and convey more and more a simple childlike them containing small but beautifully drawn pictures asif they were in a childs hand. Childlike imagery is often used such as 'three blind mice' . The simple cover ideas and drawings dont seem to offer at face value any indications of the personality or music genre of kate nash. Her audience dont yet have any idications of what their admirred artist really looks like or the style of music she represents. Furthemore that single covers dont seem to indicate the theme of titles of the song such as the cover of 'pumpkin soup' which shows drawings of a ghost train which to me does not indicate the theme of content of the song at all. However this may be intentional as Kate Nash may not want to give away to much of the impotant elements of the song simply on its cover i dont think she wants to entice costumers with flashy busy covers, but instead provide simple drawings and clean cover to let her music to all the talking.

After taking a small break from commecial recording and producing albums or singles she released the album 'My best friend is you'. Kate Nash had returned with a slightly different style of album cover still sporting the classic 'kate Nash' childlike font, but instead sporting scrap book syle imagery of herself. I think this cover is a better representation of Kate Nash her music, and her style. Overall the cover looks quirky and interesting. But still remains simple and not overbaring. This scrap booking messy style remains constant within her singles from the same album.Furthermore these single covers seemed to conicide more with the single itself but also the music videos that accompanied it. For example the single cover for /Do-Wah-Doo shows imagery of planes and flying aswell as an image of kate herself playing the role of airhostess which is the overall theme of the video for the same song thois means that fans of Kate can recognise this cover as the single for the video making them more likely to see the video online or on television and them purchase as they are able to recognise the same themes. This new scrap book style theme of random over lapping imagery with herself included make the audience more aware that the music is her own and that it is one of her singles, Furthermore the fact that she has slowly increased the font size of her name means that the cover will stand out more on a self making the buyer more likely to recognise it as work from Kate Nash and therefore purchase it.

The overal appearene of Kate Nashs' singles look very similar making them more identifiable as a group of singles and more recognisable as her music.

I think that we will be taking inspiration from these more recent cover ideas and we can use creative scrappbooking style techniques to create a similar effect.

Filming Locations

The Bedroom- For scenes of our female character miming to the audience we wanted to put her in a typical environment for that of a teenage girl her bedroom.It was important that the bedroom was bright vibrant and quirky just like the personality of the female character. We chose the bedroom that was painted bright pink with paining and vinyl covering the walls to reflect her retro and quirky personality we also wanted the room to pink pink and childlike to reflect her venerable personality and make the audience feel more sympathetic towards her.I think filming in this location went really well and when you watch it, it feels as if you have an insight into the character environment and the audience immediately feels closer to her.

Nandos- When the line about sitting ion restaurants was on we wanted to show the female waiting for her male in the restaurant. Until she had waited so long that she appeared to dress as if she was alot older therefore aging as she waited for him. Filming at Nandos restaurant in Brentwood was a great location as it was almost empty when we were in there and we managed to sit at a large table directly in the middle of the restaurant meaning we were able to get more background in and show that the female was alone and isolated.



Field scene



Field scene- We wanted to film the 'picnic scene on a sunny day in a wide field-space with no people in the background  in order to make the female seen lonely and vulnerable. It was important to film this scene asap so that it was a summery day and reflected our 'summery flower theme'.

Park scene- We used shots of the female character alone in a park enviroment to make her seem innocent and childlike as the lyrics repeat 'i can be alone....' showing her alone on the swings and on benches

Kitchen- For the kitchen scenes we wanted to have a bright and vibrant area to reflect our females personality. The kitchen is where the cheese on toast is made.

At the beginning of the video the mood seems fairly dark and sombre until the female character 'Kate Nash' walks through the darkness and the camera focuses on her face immediately ensuring fans and other watchers know that this is her video and her music making fans more likely to continue watching.

  Then a close up shows a pair of stylish shoes that appear quite fun and quirky representing the genre and style of Kate herself.

The video next shows imagery of old fashioned style music equipment eg vinyl Dec's something that portrays Kate's vintage style and a theme we also want to represent within our video maybe to begin with.

More shots of the floor are then shown and all characters appear to have unusual and vibrant clothes and footwear.Representing the pop theme of the video and the fancy dress theme.

High angle shots are then used during the party scene to represent the amount of people squeezed into what seems an average house and room size. Representing the character as normal allowing viewers to identify with them.

A two shot is then done with Kate and the main male character to suggest a relationship and closeness between them suggesting intimacy.

Next the camera pans up Kate's outfit which appears in keeping with her theme and personality a classic style vibrant red dress with her signature short bob and fridge.

Then her and other party guests continue to break into a short dance routine used in time with the tempo of the song.To attempt to show a fun side of the video but also represents kates unusual personality and unwillingness to conform to the dancing styles of other party goers.

The action of the video then cut to parallel editing of the continuing party and then the mining monologues of Kate herself in a separate room suggesting not only her separation from her male friend but the isolation from the other guests.

Kate Nash then changes costume into a wedding dress representing her loneliness and desperation for a relationship and possibly marriage.

Then close ups of Kate being dragged away in her dress are shown maybe representing her relationship being pulled appart as this happens the mood of the video seems to change as the tempo slows and the scene becomes morbid and dark as it began. Suggesting the glimmer of hope between the 2 characters has come and now gone again.

As Kate herself is pushed into the swimming pool close ups of the previously fun loving party goers shows them motionless and trance like. As if the mood and the atmosphere of the party has been seriously been disrupted by the cause of whatever led Kate's hands to be stained with red blood. 

And as the song fades out  Kate is seen lying back drowned in the pool confusing watchers as what first seemed to be an upbeat normal Kate Nash song has taken a u turn in to unusual territory.

Overall the video has an extremely sombre mood and the narrative seems to show the blossoming of love between 2 people initially but the murder and lies of the 2 main characters that seems to lead to a brutal ganging up of party goers leading to the murder of the once happy character.