Advanced PortfolioMedia Studies

Jessica Williams

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

products?

Genre of Music - Pop The genre of music that we chose to use in our Music Video is Pop. Pop has a

very wide mass audience because its such a mainstream genre of music. This meant that whilst constructing our video we had to make sure that we challenged conventions of typical Pop music videos in order for ours to stand out and be different from the rest. The way I personally portray Pop music videos and the ones that I researched were completely the same, bright colours, up beat music, more narrative based than performance based. However this is where our music video was different.

I Need This – The song itself, is a pop song, however the storyline of the song was different. The song was based around a love song, whereby she needed space from her partner so this needed to be portrayed in a different light.

Dress Code-Bright colours, conventions of Pop

Most Pop Music videos consist of a narrative style music video which means that normallythe song portrays a story which doesn’t usually consist of the main protagonist singing directly to the camera. This is yet again another convention that we challenged, as I was the performer in the video we had it so that for most of the video I was in fact singing directly to the camera. We felt by doing this that we were breaking ‘the fourth wall’ between the audience and the singer. Direct eye contact was key for a performance based music video such as ours so many of the shots that were taken were in fact of me looking straight to the camera. We felt that challenging this convention would make the audience perceive our video in the light that we wanted.

Location The location whereby our whole music video took place was Heaton Park. The

main reason we chose this location was due how we pictured the video to be shot. The song consists repetitively of the same lyrics ‘I Need This Space’, Heaton park was a setting whereby there was a lot of space that could be used in shots. I think the setting was one part of the video whereby it challenged the typical conventions of a music video by shooting the whole video in one setting. The main reason we did this was due to the fact there were different locations in Heaton Park that we could use without having to go to a different location, which in the long run saved a lot of time.

Whilst picking our location it had to be made certain that just because we had only chose one setting that this didn’t mean the whole music video would take place in one part, as you can see there were many different locations;

Even though there are three set locations whereby I was singing, it was in the camera work whereby it had to be made sure the video wasn’t repetitive.

As you can see here are the three main different locations that we shot that consist of portraying the main protagonist, me, in a differentway. The first one being an extreme long shot meant that there was a mass of space around me which reflected yet again on the lyrics ‘I Need This Space’. The second location on the white bench was good for the fact that we were able to shoot the angle so that there wasstill space around me but it was much more of an intimate view into the performance. The last shot was a medium close up, the rural locationmade me as a performer stand out as there was no background distractions. Also the medium close up allowed the audience to witness any hand orarm movements but still being able to see the full emotion in my face whilst singing.

Costumes and Props

Fitting into the conventions of Pop, the dress code fitted into this in some aspects. As you can see the I’m wearing a coloured

dress, however, the colours blue and white don’t draw the audience in too much so that they are put off by the dress colour, yet the

little strip of pink helps the convention of bright colours being used to fit in with the genre. The length of the dress was another matter

because it was quite a sophisticated song it meant that the way I was represented in the video would be crucial to fitting in with how theaudience would perceive the performer.

In this part of the music video you can see that I have wore a black blazer. The use of black represents the mood of the song as it hits this location, as the song lyrics

got deeper it was important that I was represented in this way. If I were to have just wore the dress in this part of the song I personally think it would have took away

from the feel and emotion of the song. The colour of the blazer being black it signifies quite a dark mood, yet the contrast with the white bench balances the shot out

as a whole so that it doesn’t seem to dark and depressing.

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As you can see in this shot as it is a medium close up the dress has completely been took out of the shot. The

reason for this was mainly because when the video relates back to this type of shot whereby I’m singing

directly at the camera, this is the most significant part in the fact that the audience are directly connecting with

me, the performer. I felt that in this shot none of the dress should have been shown so that the audience would

concentrate there complete attention into the eyes of the performer. Even though the black blazer is shown this

is quite a subtle colour that doesn’t contrast significantly with the background, therefore, I’m the only thing

that stands out.

Throughout the whole of our music video we chose not to use any props in my hand whatsoever. The reason for this being we felt like as it wasa performance based music video this would take away the edge of it. In making this decision, the only subtle props that could be argued that were used

was the fact that I’m sitting on a bench in some of the locations. The reason we chose to do this is so that we get the ‘relaxed feel’ to the song. It also reflectsupon the tiny bit of narrative performance that was in the video. Here in this shot it was hoped that the audience would see me as a performer reflecting upon

the story line with significant use of lyrics.

Camera Work & Editing.The camera work and editing was a crucial part of the Music Video as it would reflect upon how the audience would perceive the performer, the lyrics, the song and the video as a whole.

The first few shots that were used mainly reflected upon the lyrics. The first lyrics of the song are

‘Stop where am I?’, at this point the camera pans around the sky and then slowly comes down to

me leaning on a pillar whilst the lyrics carry on to ‘I Need Some Space’. This relates to me leaning on the pillar

but as you can see by the mise-en-scene there is a huge amount of space surrounding me. The first few shots

are what are going to capture the audiences attention immediately and reveal the genre of the song at the same time. The bright sky and the high key lighting making it obvious from the first

few seconds that this is a pop song.

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The next two shots, me sat on the white bench and the medium close up of me singing, were a continuous edit between the both of them. I did this edit because I felt like the narrative style of me sitting on the bench in contrast to the performance based part worked well together in telling the story. The next shot was one of the first mixed edits between two different shots. The background shot of me sat down on a bench looking out was made to Black and White. The reason for this being the shot over the top if it, the close up of me singing directly to camera then stood out more against the neutral background. This was therefore conjoining both the narrative style and performance based style into a mix.

The next few shots that were used were based down to editing. As you can see by the second shot here I had the backgroundshot in black and white, yet again it’s because it would be clear to the audience that the black and white edits were there to link back to the narrative theme of the video. Over the top of that I had a performance clip whereby I reduced the opacity of this and kept it central to the screen. The mix between the two allowed me to portray a story as well as keeping the performance of myselfsubtle in the background. The last shot here was an edit that I imposed by having a clear contrast between coloured footage andblack and white footage. I edited the black and white shot so that it cut from me starting the walk from the end of the path, faded footsteps then followed me to come closer to the lens of the camera. I then faded the edges of this so that I could then cut a shot of me singing directly to the camera. This meant that yet again I was telling a story yet keeping eye contact with the audience.

Other footage such as long shots of other people walking, speeded up shots of people walking across the paths, slow motion shotsof me looking away from the camera and shots of the sky were added into the video so that we could balance the two stylesof Narrative based and Performance based camera work. Using the two really helped link both of these together and when edited all together it gave off the feel of the song. Contrasting the speed of the editing would help the audience gain an understandingto the song. In pop songs the main editing is fast paced editing because there up beat songs, the way that I felt I could challengethis convention was by mixing the speed of the editing up. The mix between slow to fast complimented the change of speed in the song in the final video.

However whilst shooting the footage we did come across some problems. As we were in a public park we couldn’t control who would be in the shot when I was. The locationthat we chose we knew would be a risk, however we did try to overcome this problemthe best we possibly could. The only main thing that was in shot and that we had to usein footage was this shot. As you can see a dog walker is in the background of the shot. If we were to overcome this problem and we had more time then it would be best if we shot this footage again and made sure that there were no disruptions in the footage.

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

This is the front and back cover of my CD case. The difference of these shots being that they weren’t took at the same locationas the footage used in the music video. Here the shots were took at Formby beach, another location that fit into the genre of the song. Here I used the rule of thirds, by doing this I had the name of the singer, me, ‘Jessica May’ in an italic text that was quite feminine. The black text stood out against the white background of the sky. I then had a medium close up shot of me scaled to thethe right of the page. The picture shows the emotion in my face whilst looking down at the ground. I wanted to give off the impressionof the type of song that it is through this image by not showing a standard emotion of being happy or sad, because the song itselfis a mix between the two. I then edited the picture in Photoshop so that it would darken the already dark parts of the image and highlight the lighter parts of my face in a ‘sketchy’ format. This made the picture look almost 3 Dimensional as the image stood outagainst the light background of the sand dunes and the sea. The title of the song ‘I Need This’ was then in white text standing out against the dark image. The font of text that I used made it so that every letter in the word was separate and not handwrote, givingboldness and meaning.

Ancillary Projects

The background image was the rest of the front cover image, just cut in two. The back cover doesn’t consist of a direct picture of me it’s a setting shot. The lightcolours still fit in with the colours of the front cover so they match as a whole. I then have the four different songs that will consist on the single at the bottom left hand corner of the album. The font of this text being the same as the text on the front of the album cover where it states my name ‘Jessica May’. The conventions of a typical album has the barcode at the bottom of the cover so that it looks professional and also has the name of the record company at the top.

This is the poster to advertise the album. I chose to use the same image that I used on the front of my album cover. The reason for this being that the audience will thenrecognize the image on the poster, and realise it’s the same as the one on the album cover. Even though I have used the same image I have decided to edit it differently. By doing so I kept the ‘sketchy’ look of the image which makes it look quite water coloured. I kept the image in black and white for the simple reason that I think it made the image stand out more and blocks out the background colour which makes the audience concentrate directly on the image. Where the white parts were I decided to use black text so that it stood out, then I did the opposite for the darker parts of the poster, I then used white text for this.

Ancillary Projects

Ancillary Projects

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

positivenegativeenjoyingemo-tionally

fast pacedslow paced

Looking at our audience feedback its quite clear that we followed what feedback we got back to the best we possibly could whilst including our ownideas. For example when asked how they wanted the protagonist to be represented, most people said emotionally involved. This is something by the use of camera angles and editing that we tried to acheive.

When asked about the editing the majority of people asked said that they preferred slow paced editing, this is something we then took on board and used. It was the same with the editing, because the majority of people said that they preferred both, this is something that we wanted to use.

per-for-mancenartativeboth

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

Adobe Premiere ProThis was the main software that was used to import our music video file and then go on to edit. Even though I was workingwith a partner, I already had experience from my first year of using Premiere Pro so I had the advantage of already knowinghow to use it. By having the experience already it meant that editing was quite easy for me. Once the music video had beenfully imported, I broke down the clips so that it matched to the synchronicity of the lyrics as they were performed. Once this had been done and all the narrative clips had been added it meant that I could start adding effects. The main effectsthat were used was Black and White, fade to black and changing the opacity of some of the clips and rescaling some of the clipsso that they could overlap. Overall even though I already knew how to use the software, after making our music video I feel likeI have studied how to use Premiere Pro in more depth, meaning I have learnt a lot of new techniques that I will remember.

YouTube ConverterAnother software that I used was the YouTube converter. This was used when we exported a the songof ‘Jessie J – I Need This’, saved it as an audio device, imported it onto our music video and then opened it.This meant that we could have the real song in the background whilst the music video played which madeit look a lot more professional.

...Photoshop

Photoshop was the main software that was used for my ancillary projects. It meant that I could turn anaverage image into a more professional looking one by using certain effects. It also meant that I could change the contrast of pictures to make the image stand out against the background, add text to the images and rescale the image size.

Original image Edited image

As you can see there is an eye catching difference between the original image and the edited version.I changed the contrast of the image so that it looked almost 3 dimensional which made it standout more. I then added the text to make it look like a professional CD cover.

I then did the same for the poster, changing the image so that it looked different from the CD cover yet customerswould recognize the image on the poster, to the one on the CD cover. With Photoshop I was able to take the original imageturn it black and white and then add contrasting text whichwould stand out. Even though I already knew how to use Photoshop, I know feel like I have a better understanding of the software and know a lot more about how to edit images.

BloggerBlogger is the website whereby I set up my own portfolio on the website so that I could add all my workas I progressed through the year. By doing this it really helped within the planning as I was able to go alongin stages by uploading work in sections and once one stage was complete I could then move onto the next one. Using blogger was also helpful because I was able to refer back to work on the website, meaning thatif there was a piece of work on blogger that had been updated, I could simply take that off my blog and thenadd my updated piece of work. The Blog was a website that is used so that all my work gets marked. As this project went on in sections I dividedmy work up into folders on my blog and then added work so that it was organized which in the long run helped me.

YouTube was also used for the use of our finalproduct. The only way people would be able to view our music video and be able to give feedbackon it is through YouTube. As we already had anaccount created, we embedded the code of the videoand shared it to our YouTube account. This then meansthat when somebody searches for our tag, our musicvideo will appear. This is a great way to get the opinions of other people who are just watching ourmusic video on the off chance and see what theythink about it.