Question 3

Question 1

For our task we as a group were to create a music video using a song from an unsigned artist, the artist we chose was Natalie Lungely and we chose her song ‘gem.’ We made three media products to advertise a new artist. We discovered the is artist on YouTube

we searched for related artists by Lana Del Rey, we liked the tone to her voice felt very heartfelt and emotional, we knew then she was the artist we wanted to use, her songs often were related to heartbreak which is a theme which is very

broad and we can use with a variety of different narrative ideas for this. Having three promotional materials were important for this task they all had a purpose

of promoting the artist. The Digipak is created because it gives a connection between the audience and the artist. The Digipak contains an insight of the artist because it has images and text. This creates an image for the artist and gives the artist its own persona and it’s a useful way to get publicity for the new releases. An example of this is Rihanna’s album ‘Loud’ here shows an image of her Digipak, Rihanna is presented to us on the front cover.  Our artist Natalie Lungley, although an indie artist, has strong links to Lana Del Rey who is an indie-pop artist. This made our group want to explore some pop artists and we found Rihanna's 'Loud' album. She has red lips with matching hair and a red lip is a feature throughout our own music video. We liked the link to our strong use of makeup and have decided to use close up images of our actress to create a similar style.
A music promo requires three key elements; these are a music video, a magazine advert and a digipak.  The purpose of a promotional music video is to promote the artist, and their song or album.
Looking at unsigned artist was important for us because it meant we were able to explore what conventions from different genres did which we could take into account when thinking about what we were going to do for our music promo.

A music promo is important for the music industry, it is important that there is a variety of styles and that this is presented to the audience to see which genres are more successful, it is important they do something different because that way they will be recognised more.
Artists create their promos to be memorable because if they remember it the audience are more likely to be interested in purchasing it.
So they’ll make it bold and eye catching, something that’ll capture their attention to make their audience want to buy their record. For our music promo we chose a song that was to do with heartbreak, a lot of people can  relate to this and this attracts the audience to be more interested if they feel they can relate to you.

The promos has a range of elements which various artists use, performance is one of these, this is where and artist or band which mine along to the song on a stage sometimes with or without an audience or they’ll perform in an random location to set the mood to their song. An example of this is Labrinth featuring Emeli Sande- beneath you beautiful.
 This shows Labrinth playing his paino and miming along to the song on stage with a large screen that shows him and Emeli Sande miming their duet together. It is simple but  as it is a very heartfelt song and their performance is as though they’re both singing this to eachother which isemotional which people can relae to. Although we are shown no audience the illusion we get is the viewer is a member of the crowd.

A narrative is another element which artists include for their music videos, a narrative story line can very effective because it gives a structure to the song and makes it more as to the message the artist or band is giving a literal interpretation of the whole song,
there are two other styles for a narrative promo these are disjuncture meaning where the music video has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song and doesn’t link in any
way.  And amplification which means it works around a subject or something specific and works around it. Intertextuality means references to other films programmes or other events. An example of this is Taylor Swift’s music video-trouble, where the narrative of this song is a break up with a boyfriend who treated her badly and her video there are scenes of the couple when they were together showing how he caused trouble in her life and others around her.

Camera work in a music promo is vital because depending on their music video if it is a performance video they’ll use a range of different shots because they’ll extreme close up to show the instruments and them singing the song and cutaways that will go
to other scenes of their music video and to the audience if it is a live performance music video. But they do use a lot of shots we noticed in music videos, they do this to keep the viewer engaged and shots that flow well with the rhythm of the song. The quick movement of the camera allows there to be more shots used and by doing this it makes the video more interesting to the audience. With the pop music genre their music is often upbeat and colourful on the magazine adverts and digipaks they’ll and their music often shows this too, and this will persuade people to buy their song as pop is one of the most popular music genres. An example of a pop music video that shows this is Ariana Grande-focus on me. Here shows a close up of Ariana Grande miming to the song, the music video is colourful and bold and fits in well with the pop culture, the range of camera shots goes along with the song which keeps the audience engaged.

Actors are used to follow the narrative of the song; a lot of promos use narrative because a narrative story line is normally easier to follow and more understanding to the audience. Sometimes if the music video has actors in it can be more engaging for the viewer because it helps them see the storyline of some music videos. Some music videos have a separate actor in the video but sometimes the singer is the actor as well. Narrative and performance are used together in this music video, this is well suited to
this song, the lyrics have a strong message and using a narrative storyline to show this works most appropriately. Pop genre music videos are often aimed towards a younger audience so the actors involved are of this age group normally, the actor is important because this is what the viewers remember about the video. An example of this is the song ‘Stan’ by Eminem, where he is the actor and the singer.

Mise-en-scene in a music promo depends their targeted genre the location for the video varies but for the pop culture the location is often in a large studio where they
gather props and resources that go with the theme of their track, for example Katy Perry’s ‘this is how we do’ this is a classic pop music video, it is bright and colourful which sets the upbeat mood for the younger audience. She also gathered props which make it clear this is a pop music video by the colourful objects and costume used. The men in the video are dressed the same which centre Katy Perry as the singer. The scenery, costume, props and lighting are bright and bold; this attracts their target audience and goes well with her upbeat song. Performance is another key conventions in music videos are made, the purpose of performance based videos is that is gives a connection between the singer and the audience. Performance creates an authentic experience for the audience by the connection you have with the singer/band when they are facing and performing to the audience, this makes the audience feel connected with the artist. The use of editing through a pop video consists of a lot of cutaways to show the locations and charters in the video. The pace of a pop music video works when it ties in well with the beat of the music video. Cutting to the beat is also used in music videos; this is when the scenes in the music video cut at to a certain shot of the video. This makes the video flow better.  Combining Narrative and performance together it a popular combination in music videos, this is because the performance scenes gives the audience feel connected with the artist or band. And a narrative theme running through a music video keeps the audience engaged if there are lots of shot or a good story line. Taylor Swift is a classic  example for a Pop Artist. She promotes her music in a different style, as each album comes out. Her image has a huge fan base because her music is aimed mainly at teenagers and young adults Lana Del Rey is an alternative artist who has a very 50's/60's inspired style to her image and publicity, she goes with the classic bold colours and bold done up look, you can tell she has inspired her look like pops stars from around that time, such as Marilyn Munroe and Audrey Hepburn.

Stars like this are used for intertextuality by music artists, this is because the stars iconic look are very well known and draws the audience in, artists also use intertextuality in their music videos as well as the ancillary work artists do this because it makes the promo more recognisable to audience and this can be used to amuse the audience, for example Eminem’s music video ‘We made you’ this reference to other celebrities doing thing to amuse their audience. Artists such as Robbie Williams with his music video ‘You Know Me’ where he has used intertexuality by references to Alice in Wonderland. Another example of this is Taylor Swifts music video ‘Love Story’ she’s referenced her video to ‘Romeo and Juliet. An music album cover by Madonna ‘Celebration’ you an tell she’s been inspired by Marilyn Munroe. She's taken iconic aspects from that time and made her own look. Her music videos are always very popular due to her vintage unique style and heartfelt songs. Here shows a picture of Lana Del Rey in her music video 'Young and Beautiful.' We were influenced by her massively because her for her more vintage style, we felt this theme would fit in very well with our promo; we wanted to have two very different looks to represent the narrative of the song these looks were. These two looks were based on a 50’s style. The first look is in the house scenes, she has glamorous hair and makeup and we were inspired by the iconic 50’s/60’s stars. The second look was more rebellious look, we were inspired by Lana Del Rey for this look, less makeup to represent her no longer trying to please her ex-boyfriend and being herself. You can see a similarity between the two looks; from the glamorous hair and makeup this gives the narrative more of an understanding to the audience.

For our promo we researched the era of the 50’s/60’s theme, where we came across iconic celebrities from that time, these people included Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and many others but they had the look that we could envisage for our music video. The glamorous hair and makeup inspired us for our music promo because it shows a glamorous image for the characters in our music video.
We were also inspired by this image that shows Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She is presented in a very captivating light and represents glamour; we wanted to create a similar effect with our promo, taking on board the storyline of our promo, through her heartbreak she is shown in glamorous appearance, the scenes of her smoking to represent her depression over ex-partner. the cigarette takes away her innocence she carries with her. We used close up shots of this to emphasize on her and her sorrows.

We had two separate makeup and costume looks, the first was natural and follows a more rebellious looks, we were inspired by this image by Lana Del Rey where she is wearing a leather jacket, we found this went very well for our theme because it shows a more relaxed style, in addition to this we were also inspired by her makeup her cold eyes and red lips gives a more promiscuous and glamorous look, which we present her wearing in the shots in the house where she would dress in such a way to impress her boyfriend. We show her transition in a scene where she removes her red lipstick because she feels no need to wear it anymore because her partner has left her. We also show a shot where we show her about to change into another outfit, again meaning she no longer feels the need to present herself so glamorously to anyone anymore. This mid-shot focuses on the outfit which makes the narrative of the music video clearer to the audience because it portrays her transition.

Here shows a mid-shot of our actress at the beach with the sea in the background, this was a good shot to start the music video, as it begins by introducing the character and both of the shots introduce the locations straight away which make it clear to the audience where the video was taking place. We looked at other music video that included beech scenes in their music videos. One of which was Cheryl Cole’s music video- The Flood, who’s song was similarly related to a relationship. It includes scenes of her at the beach which inspired us for our music video.  We liked the openness the beech scene gives, her escaping from the house allowed her to be escape the memories that she had of her ex-boyfriend.

Throughout our music video we included a variety of long shots showing different areas of the beach. Here shows an extreme close up of our inspired music video The Flood where Cheryl Cole is presented in an extreme close up shot light a match in a blackout out room. This is effective because you see clearly her facial expression which sets the mood of the video. We were inspired by this when we did the smoking shots, we did extreme close ups of her smoking, this makes the narrative more personal and expresses her emotional pain.

The first location we filmed was at my house, we thought this would be a good place to film because as we are trying to set the scenes of a 50/60’s era we need the location to look quite old fashioned, my house is quite old and has a lot of antique ornaments and furniture this helps to set the 50/60’s vibe in the video. The allows us to focus on specific objects which look more authentic.  We chose certain ornaments that looked more antique and we would focus on these by using extreme close up shots that would help set the scenery of the 50/60’s era. The scenery at the beach is suited to the Indie genre because it is an open and natural setting which suits the lyrics and narrative of the song. The other location at Georgia’s house is suited to the Indie genre because of the props in the house, there are no labels of big brands, and there are only antique ornaments which suit the Indie genre.

We didn’t over edit our music video because the song we chose is a slow paced, we wanted to keep a slow rhythm throughout the song. We concentrated on the song and there was a drumming beat that went on through the whole song, we used this to put all the shots together this element adds variety and place in the song. We didn't use any filters on the music video we didn't want to distract from the original quality of the DSLR camera. But we added a few edited shots we had across faded shots we did this to make it more clear about her looking out in the a free open space where she can leave all her memories of her ex-partner. We filmed many scenes of our actress in scenes with ornaments around the house that express the lyrics of the song. We focused a lot also on her jewellery she had, this also relates to Laura Mulvey’s ‘The Male Gaze’ theory because the jewellery is admired and very feminine. The jewellery represents gifts that she was given by her ex-boyfriend, there are shot of her removing her jewellery later on in the video which represents her removing memories of him and moving on.We also looked at the theory ‘The male Gaze ‘by Laura Mulvey throughout creating our music promo, this is the idea that the audience see from a male’s perspective and it is presented to appeal to men. The theory also suggests that women have no real identity other than to be admired by men. Women are portrayed to be nothing other than gazed upon and are divided into being either pure/virgin or a whore. We followed this theory particularly in the house scenes because she is dressed more glamorous than the beech scenes, an example is the extreme close up shots of our actress mouth, concentrating on the bright red lips this shows a slightly more promiscuous look that follows Laura Mulvey’s theory. This is used by many female pop artists in the music industry, including Taylor Swift in her video ‘Blank Space’ where her lyrics relate to heartbreak. Another song who relates to this theory is Ariana Grande’s music video ‘Focus’ this music video includes many close ups and extreme close ups of her lips and eyes, anything to make her appear more desirable to viewers.

We then had to complete the ancillary task which was to create a Digipak and a Magazine adverts that included synergy throughout that linked to our music video. Designing our magazine advert was difficult because we wanted to create something that we could make very individual while still linking some aspects to our inspired artists we looked at throughout making the promo. One of our most inspired artists we looked at was Lana Del Rey, we loved her heartfelt songs and the slow pace of her songs, when we were looking for unsigned artists we wanted to find an artist that was similar to Lana Del Rey. So when looking at some artists Digipaks, we came across Lana Del Rey’s ‘Honeymoon’ Digipak, we liked how the synergy worked well together because she sticks to the 50’s era style and she reflects that in her Digipak as well as in her music videos. We were also struck by Rihanna’s ‘Loud’ digipak, the striking red lip we used in ours as it was a regular occurring shot used in our music video. We were drawn having a black and white theme running through it, this makes all the images work better together because otherwise the colour scheme wouldn’t have worked as well. The red lip was a key point in our music video which we included and we were influenced by Rihanna’s album cover. We were also influence by Lana Del Rey’s CD she made red which influenced ours. We wanted a more subtle amount of colour on our Ancillaries because we were sticking to 50’s/60’s theme so keeping the filter to black and white which we wanted to infiltrate in our ancillaries, the subtle colours used we found made these particularly stand out, it work well with the antiques and although was very subtle it works well together to have a section of colour and the rest being black and white. The synergy is reflected in our music video as well because we used a couple of shots of the black and white scenes in our music video, this shows synergy throughout the music promo. We used Indie conventions for our ancillary tasks; we used our inspiration artists we looked at throughout the task ‘Lana Del Rey.’ We tried to stick to the more 50’s theme and I think we did this with the black and white theme but keeping the red lip as this is one of the main focuses for our promo. We kept the synergy going in our promo as you can see a strong similarity between the Digipak and the Poster.

 

           

 

 

Question 4

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

Before we were even looking for an unsigned artist we were looking at different genres and styles of music videos and we were particularly drawn to Lana Del Rey, we liked her styles and her songs so when it did come to finding an unsigned artist we searched for artists similar to her and that’s when we came across Natalie Lungely. We found
her heartfelt song we thought would be popular with a large audience because songs based on heartbreak are incredibly popular.
  We search on YouTube rather than www.unsigned.com
because we found YouTube more familiar to work with and we already had an idea as to what we were looking for. YouTube has such a huge range of unsigned artists who you discover. When we
found Natalie Lungely we researched her by looking at her website, she does lots of covers one of which was ‘Born to die’ by Lana Del Rey. So we had to make sure the song we chose wasn’t a cover by any signed artist because of copyright restrictions.


We chose her own song ‘Candles’ to begin with but we began to find it didn’t have a good rhythm to it and got quite boring. So we found a different song by her called ‘Gem’ this we liked much more because we found there was more meaning to the song Also with YouTube we are able to upload videos freely. This is where we posted all three takes of our music videos and our Vox pops. For our production we used different technologies to help create our overall production. We presented a lot
of our work on Prezi documents, it was more interesting to include technologies rather than just have lots of writing because it meant we were able to explore these technologies. And sometimes the presentation of these technologies makes the information much clearer. Prezi is good
for chunking up an analysis or a large amount of writing because you are able to deconstruct it and use images and use arrows to describe it more clearly and much simpler we were also able to include images from Google and link videos from YouTube. We used Prezi for many tasks we had, we found it easy to use can gave us great results. We also used Glogster for our production this was good because we were able to use different colour schemes and typography. Again it was useful for writing things for our research and planning. What was good about using the technologies the layout and colour scheme made them much more eye catching and I found they are more interesting to read because the information’s cut down to what’s needed.


When filming as a group we use two different cameras one was an IPhone 6 and the other was my DSLR Canon camera. Using two cameras gave us more diversity when filming the IPhone 6 was easier to use because it much smaller and lighter so it was easier to get a steadier shot and to more around quicker. It was also good quality which allowed us to get
good shots. The DSLR Canon camera was useful because it is extremely good quality, we could adapt the camera to ‘Auto focus’ which will focus on something very specific which was good when taking images of antique ornaments and taking pictures of the actress for the Digipak and Magazine Advert. We also used
Manual Focus for a lot of the shots, like mid shot and when filming this was good because it allowed the shots to have a very sharp and clear quality for what we were shooting it would focus on various objects and parts of scenery we were filming. We could put the camera on flash while it was still on ‘Auto Focus’, this was great for taking extreme close up shots and getting the best quality we could, the flash also made the background much darker which made the ornament stand out much more. We could adapt the camera for specific shots which was great for filming with and taking photographs.  We also used my tripod for the DSLR camera, this was great for doing long shots of the views at the beach for and miming shots in particular for this we would put the camera on the ‘Manual’ setting.


Editing the footage we got from to make the music video required, iMovie was used for the majority of the editing; we wanted all the shots to work together so we needed a rhythm to follow and the more we listened to the song we noticed there was a drumming rhythm that followed throughout the whole song. We used this to time how long we wanted the shots to be. I feel I have learned much more about editing this, year through iMovie because I’ve seen the way shots have been placed together using our shots to make the
narrative more clear made the editing easier we edited our production on an iMac Pro and because one of our members of the group owned the iMac it made it easier for the we needed to edit it because it allowed us to have more time outside of lessons. The Mac OS X is much faster than windows so we were able to edit our footage quicker than we would have. When creating our ancillary tasks we had a member of our group that had a Microsoft Surface 3. This is a touch screen devise that allows pen interaction, this was useful for us because it meant that we were able to edit more accurately.

We also used Photoshop but on the school computers and we had problems with the time it took to edit, the computers a t school were quite slow. The first version of the music video did didn’t follow the beat of the drums throughout and it was all over the place. So we went out and re-filmed some scenes again, there were some shots that were too blurry or out of focus. For example in our first cut, we did an extreme close up of the actress miming, but we later realised it was out of focus so we went and did it again. But to avoid this happening again we filmed it in my conserventry where the lighting was much better. And by the third take we had sorted out the rhythm and used the shots to fit that so we could include more shots we’d taken which makes it more interesting.

For my production I used Blogger to post all of my Research, Planning and Production work, I hyperlinked all my work which would take to straight to that post but some of the links lead to YouTube which is where the music videos were. I found this a good way to present my work, because everything was organised and because they were all hyperlinked it made it much easier to find specific posts. In terms of search engines I used, I stuck to Google a lot for researching our chosen unsigned artist. Google is also great because it is linked to Blogger, meaning I had to create an account and this is also linked to YouTube