Planning Evaluation Q 1 - In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? - Draft

Music Video 

• Goodwin cam up with the common 3 types of Music Video - Narrative where the lyrics have a relationship to the video being shown this can be seen in many videos and is common feature often used and example can be seen in Professor Greens - Read All About it  where the lyrics are talking about his relationship with his father and the video shows this in the form of narrative by having a young boy presumably him when he was younger and his family. The Second type is Performance which involves the members of the band or people in the video lip syncing the song, maybe adding a little bit of choreography and dance moves and sometimes props such as drums and other instruments depending on the genre, you can mainly see videos containing just performance in videos for genres such as Death and Heavy Metal. The third type is Concept where the video has no relationship or meaning to the video present.

• There are many general codes and conventions of music videos which include :    

1. Music videos are often focused more on a artist and often contain performance footage which includes lip syncing as a way to show performance, aswel as narrative, concept doesn't appear to be that popular of a convention used.
2. There are often variations of shots and locations, which fit the feeling of the song, an example of this is Depeche Mode - Enjoy the silence
3. There are different types of music videos, non-linier and linier.
4. Special effects are also often used.
5. Heterosexual Relationships are often used in music videos, when focusing on relationships, however there are some exceptions one example of someone challenging this is Christiana Agurlaria in her video for 'Beautiful' where their feature a homosexual relationship in parts. 
6. Female and Male gaze often used.
7. Fast paced editing
8. Layering is a effect used in editing processes.
9. Dijetic Openings and example of this is Thriller by Michel Jackson which in some way turns into a short film almost.

However these conventions may vary depending on the genre: 

• For example Heavy Metal Music Videos can include more shots which are focused more on close ups on the performers face.
• Close ups are often used on the instruments maybe to signify talent and the genre of music.
• This genre often includes Performance, maybe sometimes live.
• The location is normally dark, and isolated. 
• The special effects are often used, mainly being fast paced editing and lighting.

On a completely different note to this genre, R&B videos contain convention such as :

• Props such as Cars, big bling necklaces, Women are often seen to be wearing diamonds and chains could symbolise wealth and power and contain elements of Male Gaze.
• Dance routines are often frequent as well especially with women. 
• Often focus on one girl throughout and sometimes sing to the camera ( lip syncing ) 
• The girls used often have big breasts and are revealing a lot of flesh, the camera mainly focuses on getting their look to the audience. 
• Female often following the male, and the male seducing the women, showing the authority of men. 

Pop is the genre we worked with for our music video and our sub- genre being Boyband pop, for now I am going to focus on the conventions of Pop Videos : 

• They often focus on a member of the opposite sex, showing the typical convention of a heterosexual relationship. 
• Locations are used such as more public places, such as parks, cafe's, shopping places, streets in a town etc. 
• People just having a laugh, more happier locations and brighter settings and lighting compared to the metal genre. 

Boyband Pop is our sub - genre : 

• Conventions include, a rural setting such as a warehouse shown in the Back Street Boys " I Want It That Way" or country settings or maybe sometimes shopping places seen in the video for N'sync video for "Its Gonna Be Me" 
• Often cars, or fast cars are used and country roads so silent settings again shown in a N'sync Video " Bye Bye Bye" when we see the guys being chased by a girl using them as puppets which sort of reverses the roles of gender placed in many videos, This time we see the girl as the one in control and the boys being the puppets. 
• Sex Appeal often shown in boy band videos as their main target audience is teenagers, so they attract girls into watching their video, giving off the Female Gaze and boy band image
• There is often a female being sung about or maybe the lead having a relationship with a female.
• Water is sometimes involved when focusing on locations and effects, rain could be added to a scene, or there could be shots by a river or beach / sea etc. 

Conventions we used in  our music vid  : 

• Layering
• Variety of locations
• Lip Syncing
• Male/Female gaze
• Narrative/Performance
• Portrayed a heterosexual relationship as the norm (normative)
• Constant narrative through out
• Performance separate from narrative
• Some special effects used on flashbacks 

Conventions We Have Challenged : 

• There is no dancing in our music vid
• We have not put text on screen to make it have a dijetic opening / short film
• We haven't really had fast paced editing in ours with it being a slow, love song. 

Digipak
Digipaks are a paperboard case that allows space for a CD (in a plastic tray) and an information booklet about the artist or the tracks.They are used because a number of images and text can be printed onto every panel which is perfect for a special edition CD or DVD.  A digipak is a recyclable form a cd packaging. Digipaks are not as comoon as jewel case. A digipak consists of;

• Front panel
• Back panel
• 2 inner panels
• spine

Common conventions of Digipak

The front cover of the digipaks can contain;

• Artist shot
• Name and Album name
• Sticker showing DVD bonus
• Sticker showing leading singles contained

Back Cover;

• Track listings and timings
• Bar code
• QR Code
• Website URL
• Logos eg production and record company

The advantages of a Digipak;

• Recyclable as its made from card
• Lower in weight so reduces distribution
• Thinner cases- can fit more on the shelve
• Some resemblance to a LP
• More collectible than a jewel case

Other features;

• Spine- small details such as catalogue number this can either be a different colour or image to other panels or the picture front the front or back can be continued over the spine
• Inside design
• Removable lyrics sheet
• Distinct colour scheme

Some existing digipaks are very simple for example Take That- Beautiful World whereas others are a lot more complex.

The example we used in our digipak;

• Including a image of the band and making in the focal point of the front.
• Have the relationship bewteen the front and back cover- we used the same pose for the boys but took it front the back.
• Sticker
• Logos
• Social Networking images
• Track listing and times
• Production company URL
• Relationship between front and back panel.

Magazine Ad

Our target audience is 15-24 females, a secondary audience is an older audience of 25-35 because the they would of been 15-245 when the NSYNC track was released. Another secondary audience could be gay males of the same age.

It is possible for us to use slightly different adverts to appeal to a slightly different audience for example for a younger audience who read magazines such as 'Sugar' we could use larger texts and have more focus on cute and happy pictures of the boy band whereas for a older female or gay male audience who would read 'more' or 'heat' we could use slightly more seductive pictures of our boy band.

Conventions used in our Mag Ad.

• Artist name
• Album name
• Release date
• Production company url
• Image of band
• Small amount of text
• Font variation

EF - Planning Evaluation Q2

Similarities:

• Titles of Digi Pak and Mag Ad link together - "New Generation"
• Older teenage audience due to the 'new generation' of N'sync and time period
• Bottle of whisky from music video is included in the inside of the Digipak and flowers also included linking our narrative to the digipak
• Locations of pictures took for mag ad and digipak are similar to the locations in the video as we took them on set.
• Maybe have sophie in the Digipak, in our inside
• same clothes have been worn in pictures and video.

Differences: 

• Digipak is in black and white, where as the mag ad will be in colour 
• The narrative is not included in the mag ad \
• Style of the font used for digipak and mag ad are not the same 
• Black font colour on the Digipak and White on the mad ad
• some of the locations are different 

Mag Ad - Draft 1

This our first try of a Mag Ad, again the picture used will not be used for our final thing, as the band members are different, to our new cast.

Digi Pak - Back Draft 1

Here is our first draft of the back, the people used on this picture are the new members of our band so we will be using this picture for our real thing hopefully unless feedback changes our idea.

Digi Pak - Draft 1 Front Panel

Here is our first draft of our front panel of the digipak, we realise this isn't perfect and we know we will have some changes to make.  One thing i want to note is this picture will be different, as we have used different members now due to re-shoots.

MA - N'SYNC Magazine Examples

MA-NSYNC Magazine Covers

It has been quite hard to find magazine adverts online for NSYNC.

Im not really sure why this is but i think it may be because they broke up in 2002.

However i have found a few magazine covers. 

I think these will help us when looking for ideas for our magazine advert. Here are some examples.

As you can see there some common aspects in these pictures. 

For example the members of NSYNC all wear clothing that ties in together. 

This was very common of the 'boyband' era. 

Also they all pose together, they are not about looking individual.

 Another point is that even though Justin Timberlake is clearly the lead singer 

(this became more obvious in the later NSYNC songs) 

he is not standing in the front in every picture, nobody is made to stand out. 

We want to use these examples to influence our own image for our mag ad.

We want to use the idea of having the band pose as a close group. 

It was said in our feedback of our first performance footage that the band should be wearing more 

similar clothing to help create a cohesive image.

EF - Cast Update

This is just a basic update on cast to my previous post. In my previous post i mentioned we had to change the cast, due to our re-filming and other commitments original members could not participate anymore. We recently had 2 new members and were looking for a 3rd new member, we have now recruited our new member and new band!... Finally!! 


Our new band consists of Keiran Mitchell, Jem Whitehead , Temour Ahmed who is an original band member and finally our newest recruit George Gamble who is a fellow media student, so knows the time urgency we need to complete this. Jem Whitehead was also in a Boy band last year for previous media students Emmie and Megan who did a Backstreet Boys track .. "As Long As You Love Me" so Jem is probably the most experienced member of our band, he is also a previous media student from last year. These members now make up the new generation of N'SYNC!!!. 


So now we have our new band after many difficulties we are filming our new performance footage Monday, and we are hoping this will be our final shoot and then we can work our hardest to edit all the way though to the end without re-shoots. 

EF - Changes We Still Want To Make To Our Final Cut

Recently Mel and I made the mistake of unfortunately not backing up our work, on the editing we had done with our footage, which resulted in us loosing our editing when the Lacie drive on the mac broke. This has meant we have had to transfer everything back on to Final Cut and re-edit our work. 


Music Video 


We are going to have to hand a final cut to be marked roughly on Friday this week, however the footage we are going to be handing in will not show the true potential of our performance, as we have not yet been able to re-film our previous performance, as we have had problems with casting, however we have now got a full cast and we know this is cutting it fine but we are hopefully filming our performance either Monday or Tuesday next week. 


So the performance in our cut we are giving in on Friday will not be the performance we are going to use for the Complete Final cut, but will show the locations we are going to use so far however we have decided to use one other location when we re-film. The clothes are going to be different, and more sophisticated as we have added more control to our part in this production now, and our new cast members will be taking the shot more seriously. There will be some more group shots for the performance, and some more camera angles and shots both for the narrative and performance. 


Unfortunately in the ending to our video has not yet been filmed, we are planning on using a final part of the narrative as our ending which is the grave scene, where we are hinting the girls death from the narrative as our ending. So the ending for the cut getting handed in will not be our actual ending.  There will also be another narrative flashback in our complete piece which will be a scene where our couple are feeding the ducks.  We are also filming this next week. 


We are going to be using more layering techniques in our complete final cut, than what will be shown in the cut handed in on Friday. We have done a section of layering for our bathroom, mirror scene to show what we are hoping to place in the complete cut. There will also be more  effects added in our complete cut. 


Digipak 


As for the Digipak being handed in, this will be our rough idea but the band members and pictures used will clearly be different in our final digipak. As we have changed the cast since this picture was taken. The back picture will be different, we are going to have the back panel as the band with there backs to us, however this will not be shown in the rough one handed in on Friday, as we forgot to take the pictures of there back to us when filming our previous performance. 


Mag Ad. 


We are going to use a water scene for the Mag Ad but this picture has not yet been taken so will not be present on the one handed in on Friday. We are hoping to show a generation change, through the water, with the reflection being either the new generation or the previous generation from when N'SYNC were first around, we have not yet decided on this. As we are going to have a 10 year reunion Mag Ad, showing a new generation advertising our digipak maybe. 

MA - Digipak Testing Idea 1

Digipak- First Draft


For part of our coursework we have to produce 2 ancillary texts, one being a digipak and the other a magazine advert from the digipak. We have to research digipaks and gain knowledge on the common types of conventions and also to gain ideas for what to do for our own digipak.
We are doing a boyband song and therefore need to look at current and past band digipaks.
This is our first draft of the front panel.


We have done a number of shoots and i took pictures at these that we could possibly use for our covers and back. We have decided what we what to put the picture in black and white, this reflects the video and parts of that are shot in black and white and also is common for a slow boyband track. The original video is entirely shot in black and white. The idea to have the boys on the moor was partly ease as we where there shooting and also the background of a grey sky reflects the mood of sadness from the video.
We wanted to have the boys spaced apart so that they fill the picture. A sticker has been placed in the bottom left corner so that it doesn't interrupt the image and it is done in a deep purple to stand out from the black and white. The purpose of the sticker is to highlight that it is a digipak and that the video is for 'Gone'.

Mag Ad - Teaser For The New Boyband

Here is a Teaser for our new Mag Ad we have put together for our new Boy Band members, who include
Keiran Mitchel, Matthew Frost, Mitchel Cundale, and Temour Ahmed. A new and complete one is to come later.

Signifiers and Connotations In Still Image From Music Video

Signifiers in this pictures include :

• The hair style, long styled into a slight quiff could signify him being from a upper/middle class, and that he is of a sophisticated manner. 
• The direction of his eyes, his gaze out of the frame, not looking directly at the camera, could signify he is looking or longing for someone else from the distance, this is the preferred reading we have hoped to give across to the audience. 
• The Misc-en-scene of the location being a  rural area, surrounding him could signify loneliness. However the metal railings could give of an oppositional reading, as the railings are maybe hinting a footpath, which shows there will be people walking through this area. 
• The white top, could signify purity and innocence, also the white pale complexion could help signify this more, with the rosy cheeks. 
• Also the white v neck top is open a little bit at the top, maybe signifying sexual connotations. 

EF - Target Audience

When talking about it, me and Mel, basically come to the conclusion that the male sex would definitely not be the target audience we are trying to attract. It seems clear that we are most likely to be attracting the female audience, with this age 17-18 being the medium age, to show this target audience we are using cast members of a similar age who are going to be of course male. 


By re-releasing a song released originally in 2001 we could be attracting audiences of around 20 - 25 who were say 12 at that age, as N'sync would of originally attracted that age with it being the pop genre. 


Also by using a female in our narrative you could also argue that male gaze theory could be present, which could then attract male audiences. 

EF - Magazine Research

Q Magazine

Q is a music magazine which is published monthly in the United Kingdom. The magazine has an extensive review section, featuring: new releases from music , reissues of music, music compilations, film and live concert reviews, as well as radio and television reviews. The website for Q magazine has a poll questionnaire on the right hand side on the front page, with questions such as Which is Noal Gallagers Best Album? indicating a focus on Oasis straight away.

The website also offers a subscription to Q magazine monthly which is a good marketing technique. You can also sign up to a Q newsletter via the website. It also compiles a list of approximately eight albums, which it classes as the best new releases of the last three months. Most of the magazine is devoted to interviews with popular musical artists. 

Such as Cheryl Cole , Professor Green and Noel Gallagher. Q magazine monthly features well known artists/bands normally about something which has happened that month. Previous covers in 2012 have included Florence and The Machine  in 2011 interviews included Jessi J and Muse, and Adele . The first ever Q magazine published in 1986 cover featured the likes of Paul Mccartney, Rod Stewart and Elton John . 

The only boy band however who was big in the 90's to be on the cover of Q was Take That, who even though N'sync were not on the front cover, Take That were still very popular and still are. 

OK Magazine

OK Magazine is mainly a celebrity and gossip magazine mainly aimed at women, where as Q is I would say mainly directed at males. However they sometimes appear to have interviews with bands/artists about their up-coming songs/albums such as Joe McElderry .

They have also conducted an interview with Westlife who are a popular boy band who were trying to sell their new album, this interview basically marketing the album and single.

A magazine like this would be good to include our magazine add, as it it a magazine with the main audience being between  16+ to around 40 I would say, also fitting our secondary audience. 

EF - Changes To The Cast

Due to feedback given to us, we had decided to cut one of the members from our Boy Band for the performance, due to him not taking things seriously. Unfortunately we have also recently had to find another 2 new members of the band to replace 2 original members as due to work and school commitments they do not have time to film any more and we are cutting it fine waiting around for them, so we have decided to find 2 new members to make up the band, resulting in us having to find 3 new members and leaving us with 1 original member. 


So far our Boy band consists of Temour Ahmed who is a student in our year, Jeremy Whitehead who is also a student in our year and Kieran Mitchell who is also a member of our 6th form year group. We are still however looking for a forth member to fill the band, we have someone in mind and are hoping he agrees. 

For the narrative we are using 2 members of our year group Charlie Deller for our lead boy and Sophie Dixon for our main girl, Sophie is also a media student. 

Sample Scene - Number 2

Here is a 1:00 sample scene we put together for feedback from the class, which resulted in us being told to re-film the performance mainly  due to one member of the boy band letting the others down and not taking it seriously, however more reasons why we have to re-film have been posted about in a previous post on Audience Feedback.


Any more feedback please feel free to post ...

EF - Audience Feedback

We put together a opening sequence for our music vid during last week which lasted approximately a minuet and will be uploaded very shortly. 
Below is our audience feedback : 

• Members of our class said we had zero camera movement so this could be improved in our re-shoot of performance
• We need to re-rip MP3 and re-lay audio track 
• We could start with a group shot and then individually introduce members of the band.
• For our mirror shot for the narrative, we could maybe play around with layering. 
• Opening scene is maybe a bit to long for the narrative so cut this down a little bit.
• Overall we need faster paced editing, maybe some jump cuts.
• Bed shot - Multilayering and fade Sophie out.
• Additional behind the scenes footage of the band. 
• Costumes more together, more white colours - white t-shirts etc, bringing the group together more by having them wear the same things. 
• Simple Choreography for the boyband.
• Dont introduce boyband straight away.
• Dont need all of the shots of the main boy in narrative.
• More signifiers of relationship needed for the narrative in misc-en-scene.
• For the narrative we could have Car Keys - bottle of drink to signify guilt maybe? 
• Ducks and bread for a romantic scene in narrative.
• Do want some skin showing, not just buttoned up.

Over all we have taken this feedback into consideration and are organising a re-shoot, we know this is cutting it fine so we are trying our best to get this done soon as possible. We were supposed to film on friday however due to other commitments our band members were not able to take part meaning our filming was cancelled. 

EF - Filming Update

After gaining some vital audience feedback from a 1.00 minute sample we put together for our class to view, we realised we had some changed to make especially to the performance as one of our original members did not appear to take the filming seriously and let the rest of our members down for the boy band this then effectively ruined the whole of the performance we filmed for our music video.

Some people also said we could have done with some more movement and emotion from our boy band members due to the nature of our song being a love song about a break up, the emotion just wasn't shown there. We were also told we could need more behind the scenes footage for our whole music video, but mainly performance.

We were also told that we could make our boy band look more together and as one, rather than separate like they were looking in our original sample. To do this we could increase the costume demand we place on them and insist the wear the same clothes, and also we need more costume changes and maybe more locations.

This has obviously resulted in us having to re-film our performance which we are hoping to do on friday this week.

MA - Digipak first draft ideas

Digipak- First Draft


For part of our coursework we have to produce 2 ancillary texts, one being a digipak and the other a magazine advert from the digipak. We have to research digipaks and gain knowledge on the common types of conventions and also to gain ideas for what to do for our own digipak.
We are doing a boyband song and therefore need to look at current and past band digipaks.
This is our first draft of the front panel.


We have done a number of shoots and i took pictures at these that we could possibly use for our covers and back. We have decided what we what to put the picture in black and white, this reflects the video and parts of that are shot in black and white and also is common for a slow boyband track. The original video is entirely shot in black and white. The idea to have the boys on the moor was partly ease as we where there shooting and also the background of a grey sky reflects the mood of sadness from the video. 
We wanted to have the boys spaced apart so that they fill the picture. A sticker has been placed in the bottom left corner so that it doesn't interrupt the image and it is done in a deep purple to stand out from the black and white. The purpose of the sticker is to highlight that it is a digipak and that the video is for 'Gone'. 

MA - Nsync CD Covers

These are a few examples of covers we have been looking at as research for our own digipak.

We we found from the research is that the conventions of Nsync. The boy band are always all present on the cover. It is quite common for the boys to be stood in a line. The boys seem to switch position which is surprising because Justin Timberlake is the lead singer but if we look at the last 3 covers these were towards the finals years of NSYNC and you can see that Justin is centre in all of them.
Also the text placed on the picture the band name NSYNC is always in bold and large font with the single or album name in smaller size. The covers overall see to be rather plain without much image manipulation, something which we may challenge in our own digipak cover.

EF - Contacting The Record Company

We previously contacted the Sony Records through their feedback page as we could not find an email address linking directly to the licensing company for Sony Music. However there reply to our feedback gave us an email address to their licensing company to contact in order to ask for permission to use the song for our coursework. 


The email address we have now contacted is www.licensingny@sonymusic.com.
This will hopefully be the last time we have to contact the record company, I am now awaiting a reply. 

MA - Picture Taken For Digipak

Pictures taken for Digipak

These are the pictures we took whilst filming our first performance shoot. Our idea is to use the locations we filmed in for the 2 outside panels of the digipak. We also may want to use one of these pictures for the magazine advert.

EF - Contacting The Record Company

In order for us to use our song for our coursework, we were asked to research into the record company and either ring or email the company asking permission to use their song. 
Our song is Gone by N'sync, and when the song for released and the video produced the band were under the record label of RCA Records which ultimately is owned by the big record label Sony Music. 


When try to find the contact details on the site me and Mel both struggled to find a contact email, and UK Number to ring so we decided to ask for permission via the feedback website for RCA Records leaving our emails, we hope they will get back to us. 


Unfortuanatly what we sent will not show in the box below when published on Blogger, however this is the image below showing how we contacted the record company. 


When Contacting the Company we sent this : 



Hello I understand this is the feedback centre however me and my partner Melodie Abraham have been struggling to find a contact email for RCA Records. We are both 6th form students at Ilkley Grammar School in England and  We would like to ask permission to use a song produced under their record label it is called Gone By N'sync, as we would like to re-create the video for our school media coursework. And we wondered if this was possible? please reply to ellie-ruane@hotmail.co.uk or melodie.abraham@hotmail.co.uk. Thankyou 


Yours Sincerely 
Ellie Fry and Melodie Abraham 
Ilkey Grammar School
Ilkey 
West Yorkshire 
United Kingdom 



    

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EF - Filming Update

On Friday we filmed what we hope to be our final shoot of performance, we used locations such as The Cow and Calf Rocks and The Swing Bridge both in Ilkley. We also took some more pictures to use for our digipak, which we have recently been putting together through last week on Photoshop. We are still to put forward our idea for the Mag Ad. 


Filming we think went good, and hopefully we should be okay for performance footage. Now all we need to do is film the ending to our narrative, which will involve our grave yard scene, where we discover the girl is really dead. 

All- Call Sheet - Performance

Here is a Call Sheet we put together for our filming of our performance footage which we plan to film on Friday 3rd Feb. We used locations which were The Cow And Calf Rocks, & The Swing Bridge both of which were in Ilkley. 

Call Sheet