Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or change forms and conventions of real media?

Emma Tonkinson

We were selling a brand as well as the single, so we had to take into account how our solo female artist was portrayed. We were heavily influenced by other artists that fitted in the ‘pop’ genre and we found a variety of different images from Google to

use as guidance when it came to filming, this gave us an idea of what sort of hair and makeup was suitable, and what style suited the genre. This made it much easier

because we had planned ahead and could just refer back to the images as a guide of what we needed to do. As our target audience were teenage girls, we found that we couldn’t make Lauren too ‘sexy’ because it would be promoting the wrong message, however we had a subtle use of voyeurism which was good at promoting our brand

because it still had a slight sex appeal to older people but it was very understated. As our genre of music was pop, we wanted to combine characteristics of a party girl

through the use of hair, makeup and dress code; also we made sure our visual effects matched the theme. Our dress code was pretty simple and basic because we just

wanted to represent a normal girl getting ready to go out, however once she is dressed and ready for her party, we see a much stronger character which she signifies her sexual empowerment. On the whole, our theme was to keep the style dark, our main character dresses in mainly blacks or dark colours which coordinated with the

night time feel of the video. However, we used different coloured lipsticks for different shots as a way of breaking up the style; this was the only bright colours than Lauren had, because we kept everything else sticking to the dark theme. The shots of her friends in the video also match up to the theme by dressing only in dark colours

or whites in some shots, nothing too vibrant that would detract from Lauren.

Inspiration

We used Jessie J’s music video ‘It’s My Party’ and the actual music video of our song ‘All About Tonight’ as inspiration. It gave us the codes and conventions of a typical pop video which we used it as a guide when we were creating our own.

We found that looking at the real music video for our song was particularly helpful because it made the story much easier to envisage, we used it when we

were stuck on what style suited the song and what we should include in the video. This helped in constructing our own idea of what we wanted our version to look like, and with the help of Jessie J’s music video, we got some new ideas

and a different perspective of what a pop music video should be like.Its My PartyJessie J

All About TonightPixie Lott

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The locations we chose for our music video was partly in reference to the music video originally made for the song ‘All About Tonight’. We used inspiration from the real

video, and took guidance from the lyrics of the song too which made us chose to film in places like in the middle of town, she’s dressed in casual clothes and this is because she is shopping to find her outfit to wear tonight, also we see her at home with her friends

all dressed up and drinking, this is a clear sign that she is ready to go out and enjoy herself. This gave off the impression that the song is all based on a night out as she’s

just broken up with her boyfriend and is ready to party, our locations have slight narrative in showing that she is getting ready for the night, however we didn’t make our

song purely narrative which meant that we could use random settings too, like when we see Lauren singing behind a white screen which has strobe light effects. This doesn’t necessarily link to the song but we felt that it fitted well, also it looks like it has a slight ‘drug’ look to it but it is very subtle and our younger audience wouldn’t recognise this.

Due to the song being called ‘All About Tonight’ we decided to base our music video around the night, having shots of Lauren putting on makeup or out in the high street shopping for outfits, we also see her drinking in

a cab on the way to a club. These scenes made the narrative much easier to understand. A lot of our influence came from the actual video for the

song ‘All About Tonight’, an example of something we used from that video was at the beginning when we see a pan shot of the city at night, we also use this at the beginning of our song when we display the title,

you can subtly see Pixie Lott’s eyes in her shot whereas we didn’t use this idea because we didn’t want it to be completely the same.

We had learnt from experience that filming on a good quality camera is essential. In year 12 we used an iPhone 4 which didn’t have bad quality but by the time it came to year 13 we knew we

wanted something a bit more advanced so we used the new iPhone 6 which had a much clearer camera and many more effects on it such as slow motion etc. Compared to last year we were much

more driven and this was reflected in our work, we made sure to film all of our footage early so that we could start editing as soon as

possible and we had a set plan about what editing software was best suited for us. As our song fell in the ‘pop’ genre, we went

down the route of upbeat shots that change every few seconds, we had a lot of close ups and club scenes. This fitted the codes and conventions of a pop song because typically they are songs you

would dance to and therefore a lot of music videos contain footage of clubs/parties to highlight the theme of a pop song.

For our album cover, we decided to keep it fairly simple because although our song is quite upbeat, we felt that Lauren as an artist generally sings love songs rather than

party songs and we wanted the album cover to represent the artist as a whole rather than just the song we created. On the front cover, we have a plain white background

with pale pink font and a picture of an extreme close up of Lauren, we didn’t want our album to be bright and vibrant because we felt it may look tacky and not match the conventions of our song or Lauren as an artist therefore we went for a simple design that looked classy and would catch the right target audiences eye. The digipak also

included different pictures of Lauren that are faded into each other, they are different parts of the song so it gives off an idea of what is expected in the actual music video.

These pictures are all taken in different angles, for example we have a long shot of her and then a close up shot of just her face next to it, also we have used different lighting

for different pictures on the album cover, some are black and white but our back picture has blue in it therefore it shows different vibes of the song. Image is a crucial part when trying to sell an artist, without a good image you can’t sell a brand so we

tried to have the same image as Pixie Lott, this is why we went for a basic, girly digipak. We felt this was a true reflection of the brand we were trying to sell – pretty and

elegant. Although we also wanted a slight sex appeal to the older male audience so on the front cover she is pouting which could be seen as quite seductive but subtle and

not noticeable to the younger audience.