Final Evaluation - Lauren Widdop

Introduction

For my A2 Media Studies coursework I was required to create; - A music video - An album cover - A magazine advert I worked with Hannah Tabor, Muhammad Patel and Lauren Pollard. I made a generous contribution to the planning and finalizing of the location shots, costume, genre, etc. I also filmed quite a lot of the footage as the majority of the planned locations were very near to were I live.

Target Audience We came to the conclusion that females, aged 16-25 would be most interested in our product after we tested the song amongst a varying group of people and distributed questionnaires, with results coming back showing this specific audience to be majorly satisfied.

Our U.S.P: To bring something different to the market, with a memorable artist whom audiences can realistically relate to.










The Music Video – “A distinctive art form which can allow really interesting creative opportunities” (P Fraser 2005)
- Absolutely anything?
- Does it follow the codes and conventions?
- Does it last the length of the song (or longer)?
- Does it feature the artist (although it doesn’t have to)?
- Does it tell a story? - Is it visually memorable and worth watching again?
- Does it create a strong brand image for your artist?
- Is it a creative artifact of interest itself?
- Is it the main reason you’d flick on the music channels?

YES! Genre

What genre is it?
There are two elements of genre within my coursework piece;

1. Music Video
2. Experimental

We thought that with the experimental genre we could be as creative and experimental (shall we say!) as we’d like.

Codes and Conventions

Okay, so we know what a music video SHOULD follow. Does ours?

Did I do anything different? Why is it vital to do something new with a genre?

Genre music videos must offer more of the same to satisfy the audience’s expectations. But also offer something new so that they don’t become boring.

- “Repetition is a key element in the way audiences understand and relate to narratives” (O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, Arnold, 1994)

- “The idea of an audience’s foreknowledge will obviously lead to a certain set of expectations. It is these expectations which are then used to catch the attention of the audience whenever a film is being publicised” (Price)

My group didn’t follow the genre codes and conventions religiously - ‘the same, but different’ (N.Lacey)

We chose to follow an Experimental genre which basically enabled us to work on a blank canvas, including and getting rid of what we desired.

For example:
- We took inspiration from ‘Introducing Joss Stone’ - We based our album cover (very loosely) around it - We liked how the artist was facing away from the camera with her bare back












- We then had the idea to Photoshop our image of the artist onto a cartoon like cover – with inspiration from Paolo Nutini’s album, ‘Sunny Side Up’.
- Link in really well with our Experimental genre
- Produce something less predictable like your typical artist sat with a guitar, ripped jeans and back combed hair! With regards to our music video, I feel that we acted innovatively because most Pop/Folk songs don’t have an Experimental genre to them, they usually follow the typical Narrative and Performance genre.

“GENRES MAKE THE WORLD APPEAR MORE PREDICTABLE AND LESS COMPLICATED”

Why did I think my innovations were likely to prove successful?

Branding and Brand Image
One of the main and most important purposes of a music video is promotion. The music video is a promotional tool for the artist and is a way for the audience to see the music in a visual context. Although music videos sometimes (not always) serve as a catalyst for CD sales/artist song downloads. This is where branding comes into it!

"Advertising any given product is only one part of branding's grand plan" (Naomi Klein)

The above quote can be related to artists and music videos. It explains that a brand is not just there to advertise, but to create a foundation for where they can build up a relationship with the audience. Branding is about creating an image that people link to, this image should entice them into buying their music and make them want to watch their videos over and over again.

How did I attract my audience?
I did this through the different elements that make up my media project, these being;

Audience Feedback: My Thoughts
I believe that the feedback we retrieved through the questionnaire varied a lot. Of course I’d love to sit here and type about how my project got a 100% thumbs up, although that’s not the case.

We distributed 14 questionnaires amongst 8 males and 6 females, thus bearing in mind that females are our primary target audience and therefore I feel this reflected in our feedback.

“What are your initial reactions to this video?”:
- This question received a lot of similar answers with people commenting about how they enjoyed it.
- Although one thing that the majority of them slated was the lip syncing.
- I have to agree with this, as when I look back at our video, I feel there could be some minor tweaking with the miming.
- Although I am happy overall with everybody’s initial comment reactions.

“Is it something you would be interested in watching again?”:
- 70% of our audience stated that they would want to watch our video again.
- I feel that this is quite harsh because 30% claimed they wouldn’t want to watch it again.
- Although when I looked back these answers were from males, which could be why, as we primarily focused on pleasing a female audience. - It is important that our video is liked and people want to watch it again, because that is the focus of music videos for them to be repeated on music channels.
- Overall I am happy that over half said yes.



“Which was your favorite part and why?”:
- If I was to be asked this question, I would say that the best part of the video was the Green Screen, reason being because it is different to what you would usually see and increases the authenticity of the video, making it a lot more interesting to watch.
- Although, the majority of people said that their favourite part was the black and white scenes.
- I can understand why viewers would enjoy this section of the video because it does look professional and is just overly nice to look at.
- Although, it was one of the easiest parts of the video to create, which does anger me slightly, making me think that if the whole footage was edited black, white and slow-mo, then could it have been more successful with our target audience?
- Overall, we got a really positive amount of feedback from our audience with the majority claiming that the authenticity of the video was good.
- I was happy with this because one aspect that we worked hard on was making it look like something you would see on MTV/Viva.

“How authentic does our music video/magazine advert/CD album cover look?”:
- With regards to our CD album cover and magazine advert, I was really disappointed with the feedback we received.
- The majority of ratings gave evidence that our target audience believed our print pieces not to be authentic.
- All that I have to say to this is… EXPERIMENTAL
- We went out of our way to make both of these as cheesy and ‘kitch’ as possible, taking inspiration from Paulo Nutini’s album Sunny Side Up.
- I feel that our audience didn’t relate to our ancillary tasks and understand that we were expressing our artist’s individuality through the print products.
- Due to our plans for creating a cartoon-like album cover, we had to start from scratch and draw everything ourselves (for copyright purposes), thus leaving us with a piece of software that didn’t allow us to draw what we needed, hereby leaving us struggling.
- Although we worked with what material we had and produced good print products.
- If I was to produce my print products again, I would probably go about it in a simpler way to make the brand image more obvious and do something that the audience would connect with better i.e. a typical “indie” themed cover of the artist sat in a field with a guitar.



“How does our music video reflect the Experimental genre?”:
- This question received a lot of positive feedback and I was happy with the results.
- The majority of our target audience said that the black and white flashbacks were ‘extremely good’, this was presumed as a lot of people claimed this to be their favourite bit of the video.
- I personally feel that our music video did reflect the Experimental genre due to all of the elements from the green screen right through to the locations.
- I feel that my thoughts reflect in the feedback and we seem to have proven successful with the presentation of our genre through the music video.

“Overall, what do you think we could have improved on?”:
- I am happy with the constructive criticism gained from the customer feedback with nearly 100% of the people asked mentioning that we could have improved on the lip syncing – and I totally agree.
- Something that somebody mentioned was that we could have included a few more transitions and when I look back I agree.
- I feel that the video could have ran a lot more smoothly with a few more shot transitions.
- But, apart from these aspects, not a lot else was mentioned – which I have to say, I am relieved about.

What would I do differently?
There are two things that I would go back and mend if I could;
• Lip syncing
• The design of the print products

- The lip syncing was an obvious thing that needed changing because of the slight out of sync-ness about it. Although, I would probably have asked our artist to put a bit more emotion and expression into the miming, to make the video appear a bit more authentic.
- The design of the print products was one of the only thing that we received fairly negative feedback on,I feel that our audience didn’t really ‘get’ what we were trying to portray and the fact that we were reinforcing the Experimental genre. So, if I was given another chance I would change the design and create something more realistic and predictable.

Use of creative technologies – skills I have learnt... - Technology is the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, and crafts.
- In today’s society technology plays such a huge part and without it a lot of organizations would fall apart because of how reliant people have become upon it.
- I believe that without the aid of the following technologies my media project would not have been created as successfully as it was.

Construction:

Research/Planning:

All of these technologies have been fantastic and extremely effective:
- Effective
- Played a huge part in the creation of my music video/ ancillary tasks - Without them I wouldn’t have been able to carry out this project
- The college provided me with up-to-date cameras and computers
- Proved effective because of how complex it was
- Offering me unlimited features for a professional-looking end product - The software was effective and up-to-date
- Had features that provided me with the opportunity to play around with and enhance the authenticity of my media product

Conclusion
Research and Planning
Throughout the research and planning stages I feel that I paid a really hefty contribution. At first we felt a bit intimidated by one of our group member’s conscientiousness towards the coursework, although when I look back I feel that this definitely sparred me on to work hard and up my game.

The first bit of research I did was an evaluation of a music video. I then researched into the song that we had chosen to use for our video. I was given the topic ‘narrative’ to research and display information with links to why narrative is important and what its all bout. I believe that I produced detail blog posts here but when I look back I feel I could have done more work on the research aspects and posted more on the research of the music video.

I also created a poster advertising our needs for a model for our video because we were struggling to find one. Once we had found our artist I displayed pictures of her on the blog and reasoning to how we found her. I took pictures of the shot locations and posted them onto our blog with a description of their whereabouts and why they are ideal destinations. As time went on I my contribution definitely increased and my posts were becoming more frequent on the blog.

I contributed to the research of CD covers that were an inspiration to us for our album design. We all wrote a post on the blog about our day out filming our the Christmas holidays to keep our blog updated as to what stage we were up to in the planning and early creation stages of our music video.

I filmed a lot of the first bits of footage and believe that I was a major player in the filming process, I think the only footage I wasn’t there for, was the Manchester green screen shots due to other commitments.

Throughout the editing stages of our music video, I do feel that I may have been a bit too active, as I took control quite a bit but I put this down to me being extremely conscientious and I wanted our pieces to be finished by the deadline but to a really high standard.

I contributed to the creation of a mood board for our ancillary tasks and I also produced an analysis of an album cover, keeping my contribution to the blog and the workload overall high. Me and Muhammad shared an equally active role in the production of our album cover and magazine advert, we were together for the shooting of our photographs and frequently updated the blog together. We edited all of our material together and contributed both of our ideas, showing both personalities in them.

Once our video was complete and uploaded, our blog had 70+ posts on it, which I think is really impressive! I played an extremely active role within the production of our video and print tasks and enjoyed the highs (not so much the lows) and would definitely do it again.

My products

On a whole, I am extremely proud of the outcome of both the video and ancillary tasks. I believe that the video would be something that you would see on MTV or The Hits with its authentic look, this is also backed up by the audience feedback we retrieved.

My favorite part of the video would definitely be the Green Screen. This was such a challenging task, which we took onboard and made a success. Our audience feedback proved that the black and white memory aspects were popular, this increasing the interest of our video.

I believe that our ancillary tasks worked really well together, although the audience feedback claimed that they didn’t match with the music video. This riled me because when creating our album cover we did it with Paulo Nutinis, ‘Sunny Side Up’ album for inspiration, making it as cheesy as possible to link perfectly with the Experimental genre. I feel that our audience didn’t relate to, or ‘get’ our print pieces at all, which isn’t good on our behalf because the target audience are important for us to link strongly with.

One aspect that I think we could have included to improve on our video, would be to include shot transitions to make the general feel of the video run more smoothly. Although, apart from this I am genuinely chuffed with how our coursework has resulted.

Overall
I feel that I was a really good team member and played a consistent and active role within the researching, planning and creation of our coursework. I am proud of how involved I was and I don’t feel that I could have done anymore, thus proving that I worked to my full capability.

If I was to do this coursework again, the only thing I would change would be the design of the album cover because our audience didn’t relate to the image we had in mind. Overall, I am the proud creator of a music video, album cover and magazine advert. Good work gang!

Index