Emily Patrick - Question 1
Question 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?
---For our media product we were tasked to create a music video for an
unsigned song of our choice. We had to identify the genre of the video and
investigate what other videos of the same and/or similar genres used within their
videos. By doing this we could assess what was a necessity within our video so
that it would synergise with the music. As well as this we also had to assess
music advertisement for the same genres, and advertise our artist and music
video. It was important that our advertisement also synergised with our video as
well as matching its appearance with the genre of our song.
A music promo is made up of three elements. A music video, a digipak and an
advert, usually in the form of a tour dates poster. Each element has its own
specific purpose:
Music video = the purpose of the music video is to give a visual
representation of the song. The visuals either amplify themes in the lyrics,
illustration which follows the lyrics exactly, or disjuncture which do not
relate to the lyrics of the song at all. As well this is may also apply a
narrative throughout it, be pure performance of the band or apply a
mixture of both. Another purpose for music videos is that it enables the
audience to watch the band perform a song without having to pay large
amounts of money to see the band play live and it is more personal.
Digipak = the purpose of the digipak is to follow the genres and
conventions of the artist's music whilst still presenting the artist's image in
packaging. The digipak is the product that the audience can buy which
contains a CD containing the artist's songs. The digipak often resembles
specific themes in which the artist wants to present through the songs and
so when the artist releases several albums over time, the digipak changes
in appearance each time. It is another way to promote and have the artist
recognised as well as being another artistic outlet for the artists
themselves.
Advert = can come in many forms, but one example is a tour date poster.
The poster will feature the artist as the main and biggest image within it.
The artist will take up most of the composition because they are the
product that the advert is promoting. Secondly, the artist's name or stage
name will be the second biggest object on the poster as it will be the
second item on the audience's line of sight. The purpose of putting the
name there is so that the face can be associated with a face and vice
versa. Thirdly, the details as to tour dates, websites, social media etc...
Will be featured at the bottom as this will be the last item people look at.
The advert primarily needs to draw people into it and grab their attention
so that they'll search for the information once they're interested. That is
why the composition and appearance is so important.
Emily Patrick - Question 1
Our video took inspiration from Natalie Lungley's own music video for Secrets.
Her video is very performance heavy and relies on the scenery around her to
create hints and symbolism towards the lyrics and the underlying storyline
throughout them. We felt that this was effective, as our initial idea contained a
storyline featuring a male actor but it didn't work well in the first draft so we
decided take it out and give more preference to symbolism like Natalie has done
in her video. We made sure to make a balance between performance and
symbolic shots because we still wanted to acknowledge our audience's feedback
from our vox pops: performance heavy videos can become boring after a while.
By using symbolism, we also felt that it would make our video more enjoyable as
it is open to interpretations for people to try and piece together what they think
the narrative is.
Typical camera shots used within Natalie's video are midshots and close ups of
her performing the song from multiple angles. However her performance shots
were long and she only used one location, so we kept that in mind during our
filming so that we could use the same camera shots but in multiple locations so
that it was more exciting. We also invented our own camera shots, such as our
360 degree shot and long shots, so that it added more variety and made it more
interesting and eliminated repetitiveness.
Both videos shape meanings of love and secrecy through visual representation.
The lyrics promote the theme of love and secrecy themselves, but in Natalie's
video she also gives a visual representation. She uses shots of thorns, which we
can link to our use of the rose, which can represent a danger from them being
together. There are also shots of different greek status which give meanings of
exoticness and can link to such deities as Aphrodite, Eros and Cupid who can be
associated with love. There are also numerous shots of nature, which could
represent the place in which the secrets are kept because it is their secret
meeting place. We also used this imagery within our piece, but we also made the
addition of the train tracks. We felt danger also created meanings of danger,
because a lot of people will go to train tracks to end their life. But we also chose
a significant shot of the railway's buffer stop because they're put into place on a
railway to stop the train if it does not stop soon enough. We felt that this could
link to the idea of the relationship coming to an abrupt and violent stop.
Natalie also uses a subtle colour grading in her piece, featuring purple colours.
Colour grading can be achieved through using a number of plugins, the most
useful and popular being colour corrector, levels, and colour corrector
(secondary). The outcome can differ depending on the program you use as some
programs can achieve better looks. But we decided to do it in Sony Vegas Pro as
we had the most knowledge of how to use the plugins. Our colour grading is
more subtle than Natalie's, but this is because if we created one more like hers
then on certain clips they would appear too dark and it the clips would not be
clear or bright enough to see fully.
She also uses clips that start out defocused then come into focus or vice versa.
We liked this effect, as we felt it added a softness and anticipation to the video,
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Emily Patrick - Question 1
whilst also giving it a home video style effect. We established our own defocused
effects through two ways, firstly we did it through the camera by adjusting the
focus and slowly turning it so that it focused on the subject. Secondly we did it in
post-production using a plugin called Defocus and edited the keyframes so that it
would be defocused at the beginning and fade into focus slowly, much like that
of the camera's behaviour.
We took advantage of our Mise-en-Scene to represent her. We represented her
mostly through our location choices, making references to the location featured
in her video. But we also took influence from her costume when we made the
decision as to how our actor's costume should be. We tried to represent her in a
similar style to her original video. We wanted to emphasise the glamour of her
image and try and develop a melancholic feeling to our video which is what sets
apart Natalie from other artists.
The genre of the song was heavily important for the impact of our video. We had
to make sure that our video followed the typical conventions of the genre enough
so that we could add our own unique twist to it so that it was our own. Trip-hop is
a very experimental genre, so we wanted to make sure that we also
experimented as well as follow conventions. Typical conventions that we found
were common in trip hop were frequent performance shots from high and low
angles, visual effects and graphic effects as mirrored effects or light leaks and
close ups of the singer or objects. When we created our video we made sure to
make some of our performance shots appear at high and low angles. The effect
that this has glorifies the singer and makes them appear powerful, emphasising
the emotions portrayed through the lyrics.
Another conventions that we followed was the use of close ups. We used a lot of
close ups on our singer and on objects within the garden to draw attention to
specific aspects. They aided us to further present emotions by highlighting
objects that could spark certain meanings. For example, the statues being
related to gods of love and roses being a symbol of love. We also did close ups of
our singer to furthermore emphasise emotions.
A video that also heavily influenced us during the making of our music promo
was Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey. It featured Lana performing her song
in a beautiful garden location and it contained narrative elements amongst it as
well. It tells the story of two lovers who commit suicide when their relationship
comes to an end. Lana uses a lot of imagery of the cross and Christianity within
this video, creating connotations of heaven and sacrifice. There has been colour
grading applied to the footage as well, with numerous overlays placed above the
video so that it looks like a vintage home video which makes it look like a budget
video, but it adds to the down to earth and old fashioned American sweetheart
image that Lana Del Rey possesses. We took a lot of inspiration from this video,
as evident:
We had our actor perform the song in the gardens of Grimsthorpe castle. The
time of the year was perfect because most of the plants were still in bloom, but
there was also some decaying plants around the area. So we wanted to
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Emily Patrick - Question 1
incorporate both healthy and dying plants to show the development of the
relationship's downfall. But our choice of location was mainly down to the similar
plants and structures that were featured within Lana's video, with the addition of
some different structures that we felt were very similar to the structures in
Lana's video.
Another way it was similar was the costume of our performer. Both of them wear
white clothing which give connotations of innocence and purity. We also used
similar clothing on our actor, with the addition of flowers to amplify the
previously stated connotations and to also exaggerate femininity and nature.
We also used colour grading in our video. Ours is very minimal because we
wanted it to still have a modern look to it, but our colour grading does also use
purple and red tones like Lana Del Rey has used in her video. We also developed
upon the already existing conventions so that they would suit the specific
themes portrayed in our song.
Overall we have followed conventions typical of the trip-hop genre through the
means previously stated. This was of dire importance to our project as it was
important to synergise our visuals with the emotions and imagery portrayed
through the musics vocals and the feel of the song.
When we created our digipak we drew influence and developed conventions from
Lana Del Rey's Born to Die ancillary. The most influential piece being the CD. We
really liked the way in which the CD was done here, so we took inspiration from it
and did a similar design, but chose to do rose petals instead of roses on the CD.
It still created the same effect, but also gives a nod to a game that women would
play in which they would pull of petals and say 'he loves me' and 'he loves me
not' each time they pulled off a petal. Therefore it added to the theme of love
that our song represents. We also made our singer center of the front face of the
digipak, choosing a photo that we felt made her look most glamorous because
trip-hop singers are very expressive and through expression of their emotions in
song, then can create quite an enigma of power. Lana also has put the lyrics of
each of her song within her digipak on the inside of her ancillary. But because we
only had one song and had no need for a track list, we just placed the lyrics on
the back and added information about the singer to our digipak.
We think that Barthes' theory can be applied to our video. Barthes inferred that
narrative uses five different codes within it. Action, enigma, symbolic, semic, and
cultural codes. We felt that the codes could apply to our video:
Action: a device which sparks a resolution to come out from the action our actor visiting different locations as being places for her to hide her
secrets
Enigma: teases the audience by delaying the ending and prompts the
audience to work out the puzzles - the imagery of the rose to resemble
the relationship and as it decays, it represents the downfall of the
relationship that the singer is singing about.
Emily Patrick - Question 1
Symbolic: connotations - the various statues and objects featured in the
video connote themes of love through associations (e.g: statues and greek
gods of love)
Semic: denotations - our actor is by herself the whole video, further
adding to the idea that the love is secret because we do not show any
other actor
Cultural: a recognisable device which the audience can link to being part
of a culture - the themes and emotions that is promoted through our song,
which is love and heartbreak.
Our digipak draws a lot of attention to our singer. The only other imagery that we
use is the rose and petals, but the singer is featured more. Trip-hop music is very
expressive and is a emotional outlet for singers, meaning it can be quite personal
to the individual. So we felt that it was important that our singer be represented
the most on the digipak as it is all about them and their emotions, they're the
most important factor of the whole product.
We also used roses and rose petals throughout our digipak, with the backgrounds
of it being either in the woods or wooden planks. We felt that whilst this gave
connotations of love, it also represented nature and a sense of daintiness. Nature
can be linked to purity and innocence, something that is too beautiful to be
destroyed. We liked the connotations that this brought, because it represented
our singer as being down to earth and one with nature whilst also further adding
hints to the narrative featured in the lyrics and making her appear even more
powerful.
The font that we used on our text is quite stylised. The font we used for the title
is different to that which we used for the song title and the rest of the
information that we placed on our digipak. We did this to set apart the title from
the information. It also drew the eye to the name of the artist too, which is
important because it is usually the first thing that people search for when looking
for an album. The font featured looks similar to that of 1920s American stylised
font, which gives the whole album a vintage feeling and adds to the melancholic
theme that is carried through the music. Then we added the album title and
information in another font, which looks more like stylised handwriting. We liked
the look of this text because it was somewhat similar to that of love letters that
would be written in the eras similar to that of Pride and Prejudice. So we felt it
helped present connotations of love and secrecy even more. We also made the
font black and red so that it would tie in with the black and white, red isolation
effect that we had placed upon the images. It aided the synergy between them
and made everything fit together better.
Our digipak design is very typical, the artist is featured on the outer cover. This is
because the purpose of the outer cover is to attract attention and interest the
audience into viewing the contents of the product. As well as this, the outer
visuals can also contribute to a person's decision, as if the outer cover is
aesthetically pleasing enough then it may direct people to buy it just for its
artwork. But if the viewer can be drawn in initially by the outer covers then
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Emily Patrick - Question 1
they're more likely to look at the inner contents. Therefore we made sure that we
placed all photos of the artist on the front covers of our album and featured
information about her so that people can learn about her and learn her
appearance so that she can be recognised again in the future. The content of
our digipak is also typical. We placed the CD in the center of the digipak because
typically that is where most digipaks place them and we also felt that it was the
safest area for it to be placed to ensure a reduction in the risk of damage when it
is distributed. We then added any further details on the inside because, like a
poster, this will be the last thing people would look add. We added in the lyrics to
the song on the inside of the digipak because they're an important factor to the
story of our song. By adding the lyrics of our song to the inside of our digipak, it
enables the audience to dig into them and analyse them alongside the video to
piece together the story of our song.
On our music advert, the main image featured is our artist because she is
essentially the product that our media product is trying to sell. Therefore when
we presented her we wanted it to link in with the themes of the song, whilst
suiting the style of the genre. The pose was inspired by the Pretty Little Liars
promotional posters and well suited to the idea of secrets that both the lyrics and
our video portrays. We also added in roses and rose petals, to tie in with our
music video and the connotations of love and decay. The red can also be
interpreted as being a representation of passion, or perhaps blood to link into
how one can cut themselves on a rose thorn, much like how love can cut into and
hurt someone emotionally.
When we picked our font we wanted it to look quite elegant, to look somewhat
like 18th century calligraphy. It reminded us of old fashioned love letters like
someone would expect from Pride and Prejudice. Such letters were considered
quite personal and hidden from other member of the household. Therefore the
text would add even more to the theme of love and the exchange of secrecy.
Our layout is very typical of poster conventions, with the eye of line being drawn
to the artist initially, then their name, then the details of the product. This way it
draws in the attention of the viewer, enables them to become interested in the
product and search for details of it, then allows them to record the necessary
data for them to locate and buy into it.
We decided to use black and white in the majority of our poster because we felt
that it would fit best to the emotions that are portrayed throughout our song. But
we isolated the red colours to link to the rose featured throughout our video. The
black and white colours can be linked to harmony as they're colours often placed
together because they are aesthetically pleasing together, but are also polar
opposites which is something that can sometimes ruin a relationship between
two subjects. The isolation of the red colour can link to love and passion, but also
death and blood and destruction.
Emily Patrick - Question 1
