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My name is Ellie Brown and this is my blog, it contains all of my G324 A2 Media Studies Coursework Portfolio unit within the OCR GCE course.

I worked alongside two other students in my group, Jonathan Bullock and Gareth Owens when creating our music video for Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Good Time". Throughout the process of creating our music video we wanted to get across our interpretation of having a ''Good Time'' to link with the narrative and the song title.

To make it easy for you to navigate my blog there are tabs on your right hand side which will link onto my work.
I hope you enjoy taking your time to look through my posts.

Thank you for taking your time to look through my blog.

Regards,
Ellie Brown

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Audience feedback final presentation from Ellie Brown

Evaluation Question 4

Part One Part Two

Evaluation Videos

Written Evaluation - My Question Contribution.

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

 As a group, we picked to use the song “Good Time” by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepson. The song is a mix between Owl City’s Electronic and Carly’s Pop music genres to make synthpop.

In the video, we followed Andrew Goodwin’s theory. We included thought beats in the video to make it more exciting and to keep to the pace of the song. We used the star image of both artists whom can be seen singing both of their parts and acting in the video.

Throughout the music video we’ve tried to link the scenes into the narrative of what is being sung, the main narrative of the song is in the name as well; they are doing what allows them to have a good time and are singing about it.

The Original “Good Time” Official music video shows both Carly and Owl getting prepared for the outdoor party then traveling to the great outdoors to have a good time. Throughout the song both of the artists are separate doing their own preparation for the night, and only in the later parts of the song are they finally performing together, we tried to re-create this in our music video by having both singers having a verse to themselves and the main event at the end being an outdoor party at a firework celebration. 

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When trying to gather feedback from viewers of all genders, ages and stereotypical backgrounds I posted our music video on to Facebook, however we got a few likes but no comments. This is mainly because Facebook has decreased in popularity and the main majority of students now use Twitter instead which we cant post music videos in to tweets. Instead to gather audience feedback we decided to gather a small group of students and have them watch our music video. We then handed them each a questionnaire to get their own feedback and also interviewed them with a few main questions we wanted to find out such as the lip syncing, their favourite part and least favourite part and took notes as they expressed their thoughts and opinions. We didn't add these main questions to the questionnaire as we didn't want the group of students to become bored with a long questionnaire.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the planning stages for the Digipak and advert, Gareth and I had to compromise and make sure the two products linked with each other. We wanted to keep it within the genres of Pop and Electronic in keepings with the two main artists.

After seeing the planning of the music video; seeing that we were going to go with night time and fireworks for the grand finale at the end of the song it was decided that we should base the digipak and advert around this.

During the planning thought process I was going to try and create a very typical colour scheme for the work, picking blue to represent Owl city and pink to represent Carly Rae. Gareth needed to plan to create the digital art for six panes and with the colour scheme already chosen whilst I had to come up with what images which I edited could be used in the advert and how I would put an effect to them, we both then started to use photoshop tutorials to find new techniques that we could later implement into the creation of the digital art. During the tutorial for Gareth that was to create a fire orb, he came up with the idea of creating a Katharine wheel firework and placing it on the back of the Digipack where the song listing and copyright information would be. It would of been created so it was quite big, and then place it on the back where you could only see one quater of the image witch would be placed in the top right; He also intended on having sparks flying off to the edges of the back cover.

This however proved to be initially difficult to merge blue and pink into the Catharine wheel and also to create the sparks, and at this time I had not decided on the constant background colour being black.

From his ideas I had to try and link them to the advert. I decided to do the same as Gareth and look through a few Photoshop tutorials at home and then immediately include them into our digipak. I took a copy of the background Gareth used with the blue and white sparks to represent Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen placed on the black background. I decided to include an image of both of the singers on the advert but instead of them being too bold and not looking very professional I decided to alter the transparency so the sparks in the background were still noticeable. Due to me being absent the lesson after I sent my progress to Gareth who then added the text and logo at the bottom. He then resent it to me to see if I was okay with the final editing he completed, to which I agreed to as they represented the video and were clearly representative to each other with the same colour scheme.
When thinking of a design for the advert I decided to look at previous adverts to promote other bands and singers to gather ideas from theirs. I was sure to include an image of the band so the audience could see who the singers were, which also linked with the digipak as it also included an image of the band. I also decided to include comments from top radio stations and magazines to show how even top music producers and reviewers would rate the album along with the bands name, logo, release date, and website.
Overall after comparing my advert to the digipak and other famous adverts I think the outcome was pretty good and resembles the product we are promoting.

Evaluation of Final Cut

Evaluation of the Final Cut.

Positives 

Eventually the Final Cut is completed.
Group-wise the positives were that we had good working together skills and managed to agree to dates and times we would meet up to film. We all supported each other and had different roles to help the group meet deadlines quicker. Our support to each other also helped the process of our filming and working together run much smoother and made friendships stronger.
The positives of the video is that all the clips are in place and the there is no Black flashes left in the video.
The Effects in the video give the video a cutting edge and a 'Swagger' about it because it helps fade in/out each clips and help it become continuous and fluent throughout and the fast clips can keep the viewer intrigued aswel as showing the narrative behind the lyrics of the music video.
Our video was difficult due to the thought beats being different in each chorus and the verus's. Jonny slowed the music background down to see how he could get the clips to the beat and to see what was the difference between each beat on the track. He realised even if a beat was a mili second out it was noticed in each clip.
It took him a lot of time to make sure all the lip sync and clips were in place neatly and correctly so hopefully the beats are correct because a little difference can make a big impact on the video.


Negatives

The couple of negatives are noticeable in the video.
1.The quick change shot leading to the final night scene needs re-doing because it is choppy and you can tell the difference of scenery.
2.Also at the start it is a bit chop/change so hopefully it can be smoothed out shortly. Its easily changed i just need to slow the clip down and create a smooth touch for to be more satisfying to watch.
3. There is also a change of scenes in one clip which isn't supposed to be there, this will be re-recorded to show passage of time correctly how we wanted it in our music video.

Conclusion 

Overall I am happy with the progress made in the video.
The montage type video helps get across to the viewer to have a 'Good Time' doing whatever.
We have played around with stereotypes of male and females in the narrative of our music video. This is because we have shown a girl enjoying shopping etc while a boy enjoys cars and game consoles.
There are still negatives which need to be changed to positives to make the video better even though this is a final cut, we are all going to 'tweek' the video, digipak and advert to make it better with us all putting a contribution to one different section each. To tweek the music video Jonny is going to slow the music down and count the thought beats and make the start of our music video fluent and aesthetically pleasing to watch.
Also re-film of the quick change is needed.
Gareth is working privately editing the digipak and will show us his final results in the end.
I am going to make changes to the advert and will make sure it resembles well with the digipak and the music video. During making changes I will show the rest of the group the changes I have made and listen to their opinion and if there is anything they would recommend.

Music Video Questionnaire

Music video questionnaire from Ellie Brown

I have attached a file of a possible questionnaire we may use when observing our audience feedback. There are a range of questions from tick boxes, scales and open questions so we can gather both qualitative and quantitive data. It was decided that there would only be a few questions provided so the participants dont become too bored. We will hand these questionnaires to the participants we ask to watch our music video and receive them back before they leave. Along with the questionnaire we will also interview them separately and note down their responses to questions we would like feedback about which havent been included in the questionnaire.

Printed Digipak

Front

 Back

Open-Two Pane

Open-Three Pane

DigiPak Flattened

Evaluation Questions

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

 As a group, we picked to use the song “Good Time” by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepson. The song is a mix between Owl City’s Electronic and Carly’s Pop music genres to make synthpop.

In the video, we followed Andrew Goodwin’s theory. We included thought beats in the video to make it more exciting and to keep to the pace of the song. We used the star image of both artists whom can be seen singing both of their parts and acting in the video.

Throughout the music video we’ve tried to link the scenes into what is being sung, the main narrative of the song is in the name as well; they are doing what allows them to have a good time and are singing about it.

The Original “Good Time” Official music video shows both Carly and Owl getting prepared for the outdoor party then traveling to the great outdoors to have a good time. throughout the song both of the artists are separate doing their own preparation for the night, and only in the later parts of the song are they finally performing together, we tried to re-create this in our music video. 

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

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

 Plan; Res; Con; Eva.

During the planning stages for the Digipak and advert, I wanted to keep it within the genres of Pop and Electronic in keepings with the two main artists.

After seeing the planning of the music video; seeing that we were going to go with night time and fireworks for the great finale at the end of the song i decided that i should base the digipak around this.

During the planning thought process I was going to try and create a very typical colour scheme for the work, picking blue to represent Owl city and pink to represent Carly Rae. I needed to plan to create the digital art for six panes and with the colour scheme already chosen, I then started to use photoshop tutorials to find new techniques that I could later implement into the creation of the digital art. During the tutorial that was to create a fire orb I gave me the idea of creating a Katharine wheel firework and placing it on the back of the Digipack where the song listing and copyright information would be. I would of created it so it was quite big, and then place it on the back where you could only see one quater of the image witch would be placed in the top right; I also intended on having sparks flying off to the edges of the back cover.

This however proved to be initially difficult to merge blue and pink into the Catharine wheel and also to create the sparks, and at this time I had not decided on the constant background colour being black.

After looking at many other Digipaks from pop artists I thought to myself that these look too easy to make, the majority of the albums had a picture and slapped a layer on top of the picture to change it's colour. To me this was very boring way even though is was simple and sometimes effective which I admit can be the best solution or way to proceed.

Some Examples of the albums i was talking about.

Final Cut

Evaluation Questions Script (brief)

Evaluation Questions Script.

Question 1 : In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of real media products?

Jonny: When we were deciding what type of music video we wanted to produce we were determined to use a wide range of camera shots and editing skills which would have to be done through Final Cut.

Ellie: We looked through a variety of music videos from different genres such as We are never ever getting back together by Taylor Swift. From her music video we found we could take emotion from it with how she finds breaking up pretty sarcastic and add it to ours by exaggerating our opinion of having a ‘’Good Time’’

Jonny: we also looked at Lights by Ellie Goulding as Ellie thought it would be a good idea to include flashing lights on our faces at some point. However sadly we never managed to include this because we couldn’t find the correct equipment that we could use apart from a torch but this didn’t really have a decent effect with the footage so instead we decided to come up with something different which was recording lights in the arcades which worked well as they went with the beat!

Ellie: our third inspirational video was Down with the trumpets by Rizzle Kicks. This video has camera shots which really inspired us to try to include in ours as they are different to what you would find in other typical music videos. There was a change of shots as the singers acted like they were falling but as they hit the ground it changed to them in a different setting. We tried to use a shot like this in our video and we had Jonny getting out of bed and walking out his room using a hand held approach with the camera which helped to show we could use a range of camera skills rather than just recording everything from it being stood on the tripod.

*recordings of filming and having a narrator*

say some stuff here depending on what clips we decide to use…

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

(possibly record outselves watching our music video and giving our opinion on what we thought we done well and some weak points)

* record the three students watching the music video in the recording studio hopefully – try get get a good close up of their facial expressions and body language eg if they’re actually paying attention or slouching back on the chair. Try not to make it too obvious youre recording them. *

* interview them each one at a time asking questions such as what they liked about our music video and what they think could’ve been better. Ask them as a group to discuss their opinions with each other (possibly hand them some sort of questionnaire to fill in) *

post the video on facebook , wait for about 24 hours to get enough feedback and printscreen all the comments (do something with the printscreen, not sure what yet) *

·      have images or record Jonny looking back at the feedback and editing the sections people thought could be improved and have him briefly describe what he is doing*

·      * record and get imaged of me and gareth editing the digipak and advert to fulfill what the feedback wanted.*

·      * re-record the new music video being shown to the same students and go through the same process of recording their facial expressions and body language, along with asking the same questions and interviewing them alone and as a group.*

·      *post the improved video on facebook again and wait 24 hours like before to gather enough feedback and printscreen all the comments (then do something with the printscreen) *

·      (possibly record us watching our final improvements and talking about what we thought about the feedback in the atrium)

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

(images and recordings of us using the camera, tripod and phone camera. Recordings and photos of Jonny using Final Cut, Ellie using Photoshop and Blogger and Gareth using Photoshop)

Tweak Week

Once we had finished our music video we noticed a few shots that needed improving and decided to manage these again when tweak week come along. The main parts of our music video we have decided to change is the scene of walking in the house / walking back out, this NEEDS to be changed as it is obvious to the eye that the doors have changed and so we need to make sure they are the same when entering and exiting the house. We have also decided to re-adjust some of the camera shots because during our time off we managed to come up with new ideas of what could be included in some shots that could boost our marks.
After looking through our feedback from the class we came across a variety of strengths and achievements within our feedback such as our music video relating well to the genre and good thought beats, the good use of continuous colours, same font throughout and the pulse of energy relating to the song in our digipak, and promoting the star image well, matching the theme of the digipak along with having essential criteria for our advert. On one of the feedback sheets one group had marked us as a high level 3 out of 4 which we were really pleased with and are hoping that tweak week will help us raise that to a level 4.
The feedback we received also had comments of areas of improvement which have been filled in. To ensure we meet the needs of all audiences we have decided to take into consideration their opinions on what we can improve and include that during this week.
We noticed that other groups had put comments about our lip-sync, this is one of the most noticeable signs in any music video, so to make sure we can put it across that it looks like we actually are singing we are going to re-record lip sync scenes and try to adjust them in Final Cut to go with the singing in our chosen song.
They have also made comments on our digipak noting that the colours are really dull which doesnt reflect well on our music genre. To resolve this we are going to come up with a new look for our advert and digipak so they relate with each other and use a wider variety of bright colours.
There were also comments about the text on the advert not being clear enough, mainly where we have advertised the release date. To resolve this we are going to use a more simple text and make it a few font sizes larger to help it become more noticeable.

Brief Ideas of Evaluation Video

This is basically a few ideas and very very brief answers on how we are going to answer the Evaluation  questions, we have decided to use a full documentary but use different cliques to interact with the audience.

Music video in background
half and half on inspirations
throw images

Documentry
Day one
Day two  Etc plan the day of filming and the days of filming

We were thinking we could say narratives such as
“ Day one of filming; we’re filming Ellie lets see how this goes”
Throw different collages of photos and outtakes etc.

Answer the questions through 1 and 3
3 get people to watch the video and feedback it!

2^nd how 3 products work together

Above are just a few ideas the group have put together for the Evaluation questions. We have decided to do a full documentary for the 4 questions but use different types of camera shots so it doesn’t become boring or stale.
Firstly we have decided to go back in time and start filming days of filming and use two cameras to show filming of filming and then analyses what we have done throughout the day, with a few outtakes on the way.
We will mix days of filming with a documented studio so the viewer gets the best of both worlds of serious and fun(Which will help share the experience of the project to the viewer).
We are going to get a presenter for the interview scenes.

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

Ideas :

-š This question requires detailed analysis of your finished work.

š -Which videos/films etc influenced your work? – on set analysis, take photos of shots and place name next to different still images of our influence video.

Did you challenge conventions at all? Yes thoughtbeats narratives etc.

š How conventional was your video? Very we set out what we did and tried to mix ours with the conventions of  a music video.

š Could consider Vernallis and Goodwin

Yes highly  we considered the 4 concepts of Vernallis  and thoughtbeats and narrative with Goodwin.

š 

do a link click towards question 2:

š Question two : How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

ideas :
Consider the brand identity of your products. Indie-pop,
Sound waves for the band WAVE

š Deconstruct your ancillary texts and discuss how you used conventions.

š Discuss how your ancillary texts reflect the themes/narrative of your video.     

š Link to institution

Coming up : preview of question 3:


Question 3:  What have you learned from your audience feedback?

ideas : Get 3 people to watch the video/film them watch it and get their reaction.
cut to a scene where the 3 of the group are in the studio talking about the research analysis and how it made it work and cut to a scene of me editing the mistakes.

After the break: Create an advertisement of our video/album

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Ideas: Final cut (brief tutorial) on how I’ve edited. The use of PhotoShop, the Camera footage and putting it all together.

Final Cut

Evaluation of the Final Cut.

Positives 

Eventually the Final Cut is completed. The positives of the video is that all the clips are in place and the there is no Black flashes left in the video.
The Effects in the video give the video a cutting edge and a 'Swagger' about it because it helps fade in/out each clips and help it become continuous and fluent throughout and the fast clips can keep the viewer intrigued.
Our video was difficult due to the thought beats being different in each chorus and the verus's . I slowed the music background down to see how I can get the clips to the beat and to see what was the difference between each beat on the track. I realised even if a beat was a mili second out it was noticed in each clip.
Hopefully the beats are correct because a little difference can make a big impact on the video.


Negatives

The couple of negatives are noticeable in the video.
1.The quick change shot leading to the final night scene needs re-doing because it is choppy and you can tell the difference of scenery.
2.Also at the start it is a bit chop/change so hopefully it can be smoothed out shortly. Its easily changed i just need to slow the clip down and create a smooth touch for to be more satisfying to watch.

Conclusion 

Overall i am happy with the progress made in the video.
The montage type video helps get across to the viewer to have a 'Good Time' doing whatever.
We have played around with stereotypes of male and females in the narrative of our music video. This is because we have shown a girl enjoying shopping etc while a boy enjoys cars and game consoles.
I still need to make the negatives into positives to make the video better even though this is a final cut i am going to 'tweek' the video to make it better. To do this i am going to slow the music down and count the thought beats and make the start of our music video fluent and aesthetically pleasing to watch.
Also re-film of the quick change is needed.