Summary Of Project

When looking back at the duration of this project, we believe we have worked well as a group and our individual qualities have combined in order to create successful final products. The four areas of creating the music video, digipak, album advertisement and the blog have all been focused on and produced appropriately. We are both relieved and pleased with the work we have put in to create the four different features of the project and feel the group effort as a whole has proved successful. The workload was spread around pretty evenly so there was not too much pressure on one particular member of the group and the unison of the group meant there were limited divides which lead to a smooth and less stressful period of producing this project.

Evaluation

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

QUESTION TWO - How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advert)?

QUESTION THREE - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

FINAL CUT VIDEO

After a long process of editing, chopping and changing, we have finally produced our final cut for the music video. We are delighted with the finished product as we believe we have achieved a professional looking video. The dance scenes, in particular, recieved recognition from our target audience and the introduction of a new narrative also went down well with our target groups. The inclusion of fast paced cuts along with a somewhat unusual narrative combined in order to create a successful music video.

Final Album Advertisement

This is our final cut of our album advertisement. The key necessities of artist name, album name and date are included and we included our artist logo to strengthen the artist identity. Although we included the key features, we believe we have added to the features appropriately to create a very professional album advertisement. The continuity of the glowing lights has also benifited our project as we see this as a key technique into revealing our individuality. We used and challenged conventions in various ways in order to create a unique final product and we are pleased with the outcome.

Final Digipack

Overall we are very pleased with the final digi-pack as we believe it successfully conveys the Pop genre we are going for. There is a consistant theme of glowing beams throughout which are similar to the glow sticks in our music video.The 'Lula Gomez' font is hand written and one that we designed ourselves to create originality and so it was exactly how we wanted. Everything is center aligned (apart from 'DELUXE SPECIAL EDITION' which is slightly to the right), on the cover so the audiences attention is directly center and therefore it is easier and quicker to take in everything. We are also thorroughly pleased with the outcome of the image on our front cover as we believe the pose our artist is holding shows a real aura and attitude. The inside image is is Sarah drawing an 'L' which we were able to capture with a slow shutter speed. Artwork like this is something which is conventionally shown within the Pop genre as it is exciting and original.

Diary Entry 14

Currently we are editing our final cut, adding editing techniques and making final changes. We have also been thinking of ideas for the digipak and advert and have one main idea. Sarah will be in a pitch black room with glow stick in her hand writing and 'L', with the camera on a slow shutter speed to capture it.

Diary 13

We now have a plan for our narrative and have sorted out that we will be filming this weekend. We are filming Sarah for the performance next Sunday evening and Mark and Rachel for the narrative on Saturday afternoon/morning. At the moment we are planning our locations and the exact shots we want so the filming goes smoothly and quickly.

Deciding song names for our album; Rebelle

Today, Jonny discussed ideas with Hana and Rachel in order to generate song names for the album "Rebelle". These are the final song names we came up with after approving them with our target audience;

Lula Gomez Handwritten Ideas

Rachel worked at producing a distinctive artist logo for Lula and theser are some of the handwritten ideas she came up with. We are still in the process of deciding which logo we will use for our products.

Chosen Logo

Rachel has drawn this logo and we have agreed that this will be the logo for Lula. We are then going to scan it in and edit it on Photoshop.

Idea for narrative

After our video was shown to the class and we discussed key features of the video with our teachers, we knew we needed to change our narrative to make it relate more clearly to the track. We have decided to eliminate the audition-style narrative and depict a "radioactive" style relationship. We have decided to use Rachel and a friend of ours, Mark, to be the participants of the relationship scenes. Their relationship will be very intense and the constant switch between passionately in-love and huge fall outs will match the lyrics of the song. At the end of the narrative we will see Rachel and Mark standing in the rain looking bemused as to why they actually remain in such a problematic relationship together.

Diary 12

After getting our rough cut feedback we have began work on editing again and have started the process of our digi pack and advert. We are looking at possible song names for the track list and are planning when we will be filming again.

Brief Analysis of Digipaks

Before we began work with the production of our digipak, Jonny performed some thorrough research into various digipacks by some of our style models.

CHERYL - LIGHTS

This is the front of the Cheryl album which we are using as our main style model for our own album cover. This cover features Cheryl holding a distinctive pose, with a possible intention of showing off her tattoo. The font of the word "Cheryl" has a "lit-up" effect and looks as if it is glowing. Although basic, this album cover shows Cheryl has an attitude and a particular aura about her. This is what we will aim to replicate when producing our album cover.  

                                                                 

This is the actual CD from within the digipack. The purple-pink colour of the CD is very gender typical and the font is kept consistant throughout the digipack and this is seen as a must by our group. The font is very recognisable and is so distinctive it is now a part of Cheryl's overall brand image. When choosing our font we will ensure it is stand out and appealing to our target audience.

The colour scheme is carried onto the back of the digipack. This is where the track-listing is placed on the average CD packaging. Although the track names are written in reasonably small font, they still stand out to the customer due to the contrast of colour with the pink-purple background. The bar-code is placed in the middle/bottom area of the packaging and everything is centralised which looks neat and "tidy".

NICKI MINAJ - PINK FRIDAY

This album cover relates thorroughly to the album name of "Pink Friday". The cover is entirely pink and also features the artist, Nicki Minaj, in a slightly seductive pose. This album cover also features gender-typical female features and connotations. Nicki's hair is even dyed pink which matches the name of the album and the album cover. When producing our album cover, we aim to have links with album name and the actual image on the front cover.

This is the compact disc design of Nicki's Pink Friday. The continuous theme of pink is followed through onto the CD and develops an artist identity. The same font is also continued and Nicki is pictured pulling a different pose to the other two covers and this is a very effective technique. This time, a close up image of Nicki was used to add variance to the digipak.

This is the back cover of the digipak. Nicki is pictured in a different bodily position and posing in a unique way. This back cover is entirely artist dominated and the song names are listed down the left hand side of the cover. Nicki's glamorous aura is portrayed through her clothing as the heels and dress she is wearing were clearly thought of for this particular picture. We must consider key features such as clothing when it comes round to creating our album digipak.

KATY PERRY - TEENAGE DREAM

This is another style model of ours, Katy Perry's Teenage Dream. The front cover of this digipak has an image of Katy Perry lying on a pink cloud. The pink colour of the cloud gives a sense of female connotations and gender typical features. The title "Teenage Dream" is metaphorically depicted on the album cover. Katy Perry is pictured in a seductive style pose as she is naked only to be covered by a part of the cloud. 

The Compact Disc cover (right) links with the candy-floss style cloud and continues the candy-natured theme. A lollipop is being depicted on this compact disc cover and the continuous link to food throughout the digipak is a very creative technique used by the producer of this album digipak. 

There is also an extra feature in this digipak which shows Katy resting on a rather large cake. Noticeably  all the foods on this digipak are the typical "sweet" foods which could possibly represent her aura and persona of being a typical "girly" female. When creating our digipak we will consider including metaphorically thought out devices.

BRITNEY SPEARS - FEMME FATALE

This is Britney Spears' digipack album, "Femme Fatale". The front cover features Britney posing very distinctively and almost seductively. Britney is looking very glamorous and the gold font used on the front cover develops the stylised and glamorous feel to this particular album cover. The font style is representative of a "classy" female. These points will apply to our video as we aim to include a genre-typical glamorous feel to our album cover. 

The back cover, unusually features an image which doesn't include an image of the artist looking directly into the camera, possibly showing the individuality of the artist. Britney is pictured looking out of the window and the track names are placed on this window which possibly depicts Britney actually looking at the tracks and this technique is very effective.

The actual compact disc is very plain in design. This particular design subverts the glamorous sense of style from the rest of the digipack. Behind the CD is another picture of Britney, this time a close-up and showing Britney's beauty. The words "Femme Fatale" is a french depiction of a "promiscuous female". This explaining why Britney is pictured posing seductively throughout.

RIHANNA - LOUD

Rihanna is unusually pictured not looking directly at the camera which is different to all other album covers I had so far looked at. This is to show a possible uniqueness of the artist. The bold redness of her lipstick and hair is also very effective and stands out. The boldness of these features could possibly depict elements of her bold, powerful persona.

The inside covers have another image of Rihanna, again not looking directly at the camera. The inclusion of roses in the inside covers blend well with the colour of her hair and act as a graphic match. Roses are stereotypically a beautiful flower and this is to link with Rihanna's aura of beauty. The colour of red is also stereotypically a seductive colour.

The compact disc cover has an image of an open rose, but the rose in picture is an unusually pale colour of red. This could portray that on the outisde, Rihanna is beautiful and seductive but on the inside she has different, possibly more sinister qualities shown by the paleness of the rose.

Rough cut feedback

As part of our rough cut feedback we watched the rest of the videos in our class and they watched ours. They individually filled out a sheet and wrote down what they liked in our video and what they thought we could improve.

Good aspects, that our target audience liked:

• Dancers and dance routine
• 'Snappy editing' and jump cuts
• The locations 
• The angles in Tynemouth Station
• Glow sticks - something they also said in our initial pitch
• The costumes

Improvements:

• Lip sync - Sarah is out of time in parts of the video
• Perhaps to have Sarah dancing and singing at the same time
• Head on shots - we have a lot of angles but very little that are actually face on
• Make up - make her stand out even more
• More glow paint shots
• Match the glow paint to the music like the rest of the song
• NARRATIVE structure

Rough cut

Album name feedback

We consulted with our target audience in order to find ideas and gain feedback as to which album name to choose. The overwhelming favourite was "Rebelle" (the name we created ourselves). This was also our favourite name so the target audience feedback worked out perfectly for both of our preferences.

Advert Analysis

Today, I, (Jonny) started with the production of an advertisement gathering awareness for Lula Gomez's album "Rebelle".I looked at various album advertisements including Ellie Goulding's amongst many others.

This is a style model for the advertisement we are currently producing. It is a poster raising awarenss for Ellie Goulding, a very well known pop singer, and her album "Lights". There are obvious effects and editing techniques to emphasise and link to the word "lights". Ellie's hair has been manipulated so that there are glowing effects within it although her face is left totally clear, thus emphasising the importance of her on the poster. The letters of her name are also "lit up" which links directly to the name of the album, "Lights". The star ratings are included from companies such as "The Fly" and "Q magazine". We will definitely include this feature as it will make our advertisement look a lot more professional. 

This an album advertisement for Beyonce's album "Dangerously In Love". This is as simple an advertisement that I have come across in my research thus far. It merely features a picture of the artist, her name, the album name and the release date. The emphasis of this album cover is designated to Beyonce as this is the main attraction for anyone in the target audience. The second most noticeable feature of this advertisement is the released date of the album as the creators of this advertisement clearly thought this should stand out. There are no star ratings from any companies, differently to the Ellie Goulding advert. A constant colour scheme is kept throughout the production of this advert consisting of a colour scheme of black, white and silver.

This is Rihanna's advertisement for her album "Rated R". The black and white effect has been used by the designer for this particular advertisement and it looks unusually effective, in my opinion. The "R" in the top right corner is used as a brand image for the artist and the emphasis of the track "Russian Roulette" links well as lots of the words featured on this cover start or include the letter "R". The name of the artist is in a bigger font than the actual album name, thus highlighting Rihanna's star appeal. We will consider font styles and types to suit our artist when creating our album advertisement.

This is Leona Lewis' album advertisement for her album "Spirit". The advert is almost entirely image based and this would stand out to any target audience. Although this advert is very basic it is very effective due to the close up image of Leona. Leona's make up and hair has been carefully considered and crafted to create a positive, stand-out image on the advertisement. The font used on this particular album advertisement is entirely capitals and this is the case for almost the entire spectrum of adverts I have looked at so far. We will most likely follow this popular convention to add a tint of professionalism to our work.





This is one of Katy Perry's album advertisements for her album "One Of The Boys". It is clear to see that the colour pink has been used as a female attraction and a gender typical feature which represents her girly personality. Up to now, we have planned to use so called "girly" colours to link directly with our female artist.  Katy's outfit has been carefully chosen to stand out in the image as the advert is entirely image dominated. Katy's body and facial features seem slightly seductive which is a possible way of targeting the male audience.

Deciding Album Name

The name we decided to choose for our album name was "Rebelle" after combining our knowledge with our target audience's. The word Rebelle is a mix of two seperate words; rebel and belle. Rebel meaning rebellious and belle meaning beautiful. We thought this showd our creative edge and represented our female artist appropriately.

Diary Entry 11

When we started the project we didn't want the narrative to be a huge part of the video and wanted it to be mostly performance. However from creating our rough cut we have seen that the little narrative we do have still isn't enough, predominently because of the issues we had with the boy dancers. We have considered asking them to come again on a day that is more suitable for them but we are wary as they have let us down once before. We are still trying to think of possible narratives.

Diary Entry 10

Today we have been editing more of our footage and we are now have 2 minutes of edited footage. We've found it difficult to match up Sarah miming to the actual song but found if we zoomed right into the timeline on Premier and we as precise as we could be, it was a lot easier.

Diary Entry 9

Since Wednesday we have been uploading and converting the footage we recorded. We are then going to start producing our rough cut. Due to not being able to get some of the footage, our rough cut will look slightly different to our storyboards, yet some of the changes are better suited.

Tynemouth Station Filming

In order for us to film in Tynemouth Metro Station we had to ensure that we were able to film on the property. After speaking to Nexus we found out that where we wanted to film wasn't in fact owned by Nexus but was privately owned. After contacting them and securing public liability we were given permission to film on Wednesday night between the hours of 6 and 9.

Video from filming - dancers

Filming - Station (First Shoot)

 Filming at the station went very well and we got all the takes we had planned and more. In order to get a smooth, tracking shot of Sarah's feet we asked if we good borrow a boys skateboard. To create a high angle we placed the tripod on two benches pushed together. We thought about using the stairs but they were too far away to get a good shot and this may have dampened the professional look we were aiming to develop.

These are three location shots we took to show our improvisation and organisation of setting up the lighting etc.

Filming - Hoults Yard

We arrived at Hoults Yard fully prepared and ready to film. However, we had some problems when there was no electricity in one of the rooms we were using, 'Pillar room'. We were able to find another room to use, 'Think Tank' which was a pitch black room with graffiti on the walls, lit by one small light which turned out to be far better than the initial room. It then got slightly worse when none of the boy dancers turned up because they had lessons to attend. Thankfully we were able to solve this problem by changing the narrative to auditioning girl dancers. Another problem we had was spraying party string at the transparent, laminate screen. The string got blocked and wouldn't actually come out so we are going to revert back to the first idea of throwing paint at the camera.      'Think Tank' >

Diary Entry 8

Today we are filming the performance part and some narrative of our video at two separate locations. This morning we will be at Hoults Yard and tonight we will be in Tynemouth Station, as it needs to be dark for the spotlights to come on at the Station.

Invoice from Hoults Yard

Audition Poster

The main idea for our narrative is to have 3 boys auditioning to be Lula's dance partner. Part of the video will show Lula putting up an audition poster in order to establish the scene.

Diary Entry 7

Tonight we went and bought everything we didn't have for Wednesday. We were able to buy 60 small glow sticks, 4 large glow sticks, 2 cans of party string, cellotape, batteries and 2 glow balls for £15 from Poundland. We are planning on cellotaping the glow sticks to our dancers and turning the light's off so all you see is the light's moving. We bought the batteries for the music dock, for the station as we don't have access to any sockets. Tomorrow we are going to go and buy small snacks and water for our dancers for throughout the recording day.

Video of dance practice

We went to Newcastle College and filmed our dancers whilst they were rehearsing in order to get an idea of the whole dance with the music, the whole way through. From seeing it we then changed some bits that we felt were a bit too slow for the music or didn't quite fit with the fast paced beat of the the track we have chosen.

Animatic

Diary Entry 6

We have been scanning in our storyboards in order to make our animatic which will give an idea of what our final video will look like. We have been adding editing techniques so it comes to life and is a as close to the final product as possible. However, whilst making our animatic we have found there is small instrumental parts of the song that we haven't added frames for. All together the sound we have missed is about 30 seconds long but we plan to use our initiative and add this in when we come to film.

Deciding the name of our artist

We created a list of possible names for our artist to place on a questionnaire for our target audience in order to see what name they think would be the most appropriate. The questionnaire was handed out to ten people within our target audience range;

The feedback we gained was overwhelmingly in favour of Lula Gomez. Lula Gomez received seven votes and Clara Da Silva recieved two with Minnie Jones recieving just one. Due to the high number of votes the name "Lula Gomez" was decided as the name for our artist.

Storyboards

This is an example of the work we have put in to designing and structuring our music video via the use of storyboarding.  Shot number, duration, clip feature and description of each shot are included within our storyboard so that the shots are planned thoroughly. We are pleased with our progress and the quality of the storyboards as each shot is explained in detail.

Storyboard

This is the storyboard that we designed to help us create our animatic. We added our own branding to the storyboards by placing the word radioactive down the left hand side along with a radioactive warning hazard to make them unique.

Diary Entry 5

We have booked Hoults Yard for the 10th of October from 9:00 A.M in the morning. The dancers are arriving at 10:00 A.M and are able to be there until 1:00 P.M. We are then filming the station scenes that night at 6:00 P.M and have the station until 9:30 P.M.

Diary Entry 4

After going to Hoult's Yard and seeing the spaces we may use, we have started to draw our story boards and get organised with exactly what we want. Rachel and Hana are mainly doing the story boards, with Rachel writing up the shots and lyrics and Hana concentrating on the drawings. Emma and Jonny have been focusing on getting in touch with Tynemouth Station and getting permission to film there.

Costumes

Dancers

Girls - The dancers will wear black the whole way through the video in order to make in order to ensure Sarah stands out.

Boys - The boys will we be wearing dance clothing for the auditions and station shots e.g loose fitting clothing, tracksuit bottoms and trainers.

Sarah (Lula)

Studio - For the studio we want Sarah to be in a black like the dancers, yet slightly different as she will be wearing a black crop top and patterned black leggings. The clothing will be quite tight to resemble the dance element throughout the video.

Loft - Sarah will continue to wear the black crop top for the loft scenes but with light, pink, patterned harem trousers and black, high heeled, wedged boots.

Station - At the station, Sarah will be wearing a crop top again but this time it will be a light pink and lace. She will be wearing black, loose fitting trouser and trainers in order to convey the genre of the music and the urban area that surrounds her.

Locations

We have visited a studio location in Byker named Hoults Yard. We knew about this location as Rachel had worked there for the Northumbria University advert shoot, the year before. Inititally we were set on the idea of a large warehouse space and having viewed that first we were ready to book it but we asked if there was any similar but smaller spaces. We then looked at 3 more spaces and decided they were more suited to what we were interested in. One room is in a sort of basement setting with green pillars, which we thought were and interesting feature. The second room was a long, run down looking room with 4 pannelled windows taht we plan to use for the main dance scene. Finally we looked at a loft which had a lot off wood and thought this was perfect for the main performance part of Sarah singing. For the spaces we looked at it is usually £250 pounds per day yet because we aren't an official company and are students, we were given an offer of £75 for the day. Another part of our video is going to be set in Tynemouth Station as it has recently been refurbished and has spotlights which would be ideal for our final dance scenes.

Diary Entry 3

We have had the idea to use warehouse or studio space for the dance scenes in our video and have been researching possible areas. We have found a possible warehouse in Byker and have spoke to Julie Kemp about arranging a suitable time for us to go and visit it.

Julie's business card:

Transcript of phone call with Julie from Hoults Yard (Locations)

Roles Within The Group

We have designated different roles within our group to benifit the efficiency and organisation levels within our group. These are the roles we decided to format within the group:

Jonny - Focus on producing a good blog and adding the necessary pieces of information to improve the quality of the blog

Rachel - In control of the camera work and the general organising of the group

Emma - In charge of the editing the clips

Hana - In control of performance and costume design

Powerpoint Pitch Feedback

Powerpoint Pitch

Each group was asked to create a presentation to pitch to the rest of the class. This is the powerpoint pitch we created...

http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/14437884?hostedIn=slideshare&page=upload"

Simply click on the link and our power point pitch will upload on a separate tab.

Diary Entry 2

After having annotated the lyrics of the song and creating a mood board, we have our initial ideas for our video. We are in the process of creating a power point presentation which we will show to our peers and target audience. We are also using social networking as a way of communicating and discussing our ideas and have created a private Facebook group, in order to do this.

Moodboard

This is the moodboard we created which includes various ideas and thoughts...

Lyrics Annotations

These are the lyrics of our chosen track, Radioactive. We have annotated the lyrics thoroughly and established various ideas as to what is going to happen in the video in sync with the song lyrics. As you can tell, we have annotated almost every line of the song so we are not struggling for ideas when the production of the video comes round.

Conventions of a successful music video

Track Choice

We have now decided which track to use for our music video.

Rita Ora - Radioactive

We decided this would be the ideal song to create a music video for. We had ideally planned for a track which is upbeat and "dancy". This song matches both of these elements nicely. The lyrics within this song are also clear enough to make a clear link with the narrative. A constant reference to the word "Boy" means we can depict a relationship narrative and we can use the track name of "radioactive" as a metaphorical device to depict a typical teenage "up and down" relationship.

Diary Entry 1

We are currently in the process of deciding which song we will use for our project. We have all said we like the idea of using a generic, pop song which is upbeat and 'dancy'. We have narrowed down our ideas to four Pop artists: Cheryl Cole, Rita Ora, Rihanna and Cher Lloyd and each of us are looking at a specific one. Jonny has taken up the role of researching Cher Lloyd tracks, Rachel - Rita Ora's, Emma is researching Rihanna tracks and Hana is focusing on Cheryl Cole's music.

Once each member of the group has gave feedback to one another we will decide which track we will use for our project.