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

To begin research into conducting our artist image and our music video we researched several different pop/electro pop artists who were what we thought similar to our artist and what image we wanted them to portray, to do this not only did we look at interviews with similar artists but the music videos also to see how they come across in their videos and what the videos are actually about. By analysing real media products we could decide whether we wanted our video to be concept, performance etc...

Once as a group we had chosen the song, 'Ellie Goulding- You my Everything' we began creating and brainstorming the image that we wanted for our artist.

As our song of choice is from the teenage programme skins we decided that we wanted our music video to be based around this idea, which includes grunge clothes. But we also wanted our artist to have some glamour shots, with nice makeup and more feminine clothes so we decided to combine the two.

We mainly drew inspiration from the character Effy from skins in some shots she looks grunge and her makeup is messy in others she looks glamorous.

As you can see by the left image from a photo shoot that we done for our tour poster, we used grunge makeup to promote our new video 'you my everything' as this is the look throughout the video but used a feminine outfit and setting with the pink and white umbrella. We feel that this challenges typical media conventions as most women in the media industry portray themselves as very feminine and are afraid to break into new looks which is why we wanted Grace to challenge this stereotype with a darker look. In contrast to this our target audience is teenage females so to comply with stereotypical conventions of our target audience we decided to make our digipak very pink and girly to attract our target audience.

We conformed to the conventions of an electronic pop video in several ways, in this video by Tiesto,

which is the same genre of our video, there is no particular narrative (the same as ours) and this seems to be the case for most videos of this genre. There is no narrative it is either performance based throughout or shots of people having a good time not doing a lot, for example the Tiesto one just follows two girls in a car. We also conformed by making the main focus of our video performance and included lip syncing as a strong theme throughout, this is a key aspect in many videos of the same genre as shown in the video below:

We decided to use our video to challenge the forms and conventions of over sexualisation of women in music videos of this genre. By doing this we didn't stick to the stereotypical outfits. For example in the Calvin Harris video above the first image that we really see is of a Womans behind, you can't see her face and this represents as more of an object to look at rather than a person. Throughout our video Grace was seen in non suggestive outfits throughout, although the genre of the music is Electro Pop we decided to make Grace's look more grunge, as music videos of this genre women are not represented as sexually as they are in pop videos.

Grace's Colour Scheme

Did we conform to conventions in our DigiPak?

 By looking at the Eliza Doolittle Digipak you can see several similarities between hers and ours, and as she is an artist of the same genre as ours it is fair to say that we pretty much stuck to the typical conventions of an electro pop artist when it came to our digipak. The digipak includes a song lyric sheet like ours, the CD does not include a picture of the star on it like ours. Although Eliza Doolittle's CD cover is slightly more interesting than ours with the fun colours, this may be the brand that she is trying to portray. At the bottom of Eliza Doolittle's there is small text which includes her record label, etc just like ours.

 Looking at Katy B's album cover who is another artist similar to ours (in the electro pop genre) hers is a mirror image to ours. We conformed to conventions here also, as many electro pop albums that we found had a simple picture of the artist as the front cover, like Katy's and Eliza's which makes the cover all about them.

Finally Ellie Goulding's digipak is very similar to ours, it includes a picture page just of ellie like ours, it also includes a lyrics page and the CD is very plain.

To challenge forms and conventions of electro pop digipaks we decided to have the album name as the main focus and Grace's name in smaller writing. This is too make the album less about Grace and more about the actual album itself, to make Grace appear less obsessed and so people remember the album name and are talking about the album rather than Grace as she has already been established as an artist and it is the album that needs the publicity. The only other difference between our's and other electro pop artists digipak's is that our barcode is at the bottom where as others are at the top and side, this may be so the barcode does not distract from the names of the record label etc that are featured at the bottom.

Andrew Goodwin Theory & Our Video

Did we use or challenge conventions when making our website?

When looking at our website you can see that we conformed to the majority of conventions of electro pop aartist's websites. Our webpage had a news page, social media links, playable music links on site, advertisement, merch and the artist as the background of the webpage. Also we had the main piece of text as the artists name, this is as the website is all about her as it is a way of promoting Grace as an artist.

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

In my opinion we have created a brand that stands out for Grace Starr through the strategic combination of our music video, digipak and website. We used a wide variety of techniques by using a simple but effective album cover, also by keeping a consistent style across all the advertisements and also by a similarly styled images to advertise our star.

What we tried to achieve was to keep a consistent girly style across all the texts and we also have displayed this in the images. Furthermore we also wanted to display a sense of innocence and femininity as we are hoping this will attract more of the younger audience as well as teenagers our age. I feel we have done this by constantly using the colours white and pink throughout the website and album cover. 

Synergy:

It is very important for a new artist like Grace to use good advertising techniques that will stand out in the music industry. Especially as it will have very hard competition for her age group and gender. To be able to achieve this we need to make her stand out from the crowd so we have to make her look different and make her identity recognisable and memorable but at the same time we need to utilise her image so we attract the target audience so make sure she makes sales for her albums.

These are artists we got inspiration from for our star. Both of these artist come across very feminine and innocent, this is how Grace has been portrayed too.

This is the difference between our first draft and our final music video. Our first draft had lots of dark shots with drugs and alcohol influences, this did not match the rest of the advertisement so we decided to change it to match her image in the posters and the website. This is where the idea of the flashing lights came up as they fit in with her style. The silhouette shot is to enhance her beauty and how innocent she actually is. By flashing different colour lights in the background it symbolises her image and helps the audience to recognise Grace. 

The screen recording below shows all of the social media sites we have created used for our artist this also includes all the pages of our website.






Below is the colour schemes we have used for the digipak, website and music video. We have made all the colours for them very girly and light colours. The dark colours that are used are to represent her dark red lipstick on her lips or the green grass when we filmed in the woods.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We gained audience feedback from not only our target audiences, but also with our secondary and tertiary audiences. This helped us acknowledge what people like about our productions, and what people don't like about our productions. From different feedback methods, we gained a variety of positive comments and constructive criticism which either led us to remove some aspects of our creations or keep them. We used online surveys, video interviews, and questionnaires to receive our feedback.

Here is the feedback we received from our first draft music video, we had a range of positive and negative comments, which we went on to improve upon and make our final video a much more success.

Here is our feedback from our website, I took a lot of time to create this website to make sure it was a success. We then asked our classmates to give us feedback on our website so that we could improve the things that they did not like. I then made changes to our website to make sure it was as good as it could be. 

How we responded to criticisms

• A lot of our criticism's were that we look too much into the skins influence and use too much drugs and alcohol which does not match our digipack and website. We all sat down to look at what has been said, and then we started to agree. Therefore we went through and took out all of the drugs and alcohol scenes and decided to re film a more glamorous shot.
• Another criticism is that someone could have a seizure when watching this video. We highly disagree, as although there is a lot of flashing which combine shots together and relate to our genre, we do not feel that are extreme enough to make someone have a seizure.

This is our digipack feedback, however the feedback is on the first draft of the digipack, not the final outcome that you can see below. We knew our first draft needed a lot of improvements and a lot of changes to create the final product. However, the feedback we received was very beneficial as some things that other people noticed, we may not have.

How we responded to criticism 

• Someone said on our negative feedback that our merchandise was not very appealing, therefore I went through and created more merchandise, we now have more exciting merchandise with things like album covers appearing on them.
• Another negative comment was that social media links should have been added onto the home page. And when we looked back at our website, we was confused as to why we had not added these without being told by our feedback. Therefore we immediately added them onto our home page.

How we responded to criticism.

• Someone said that our digipack could include a thank you page, and we agreed as we want Grace to be a very emotional star who interacts with her fans a lot. Therefore we went and added a thank you page and dedicated her album.
• Another comment was that the font was hard to read, therefore we went on and made it bigger. However, on the lyrics page we could not make it any bigger as it would have not all fit on the page. Also it was said that the font is hard to read, which we disagreed with, but did not make any changes as we feel as though this fits well with our stars brand image.

We then created a questionnaire of our final music video, so that we could get people from our class to watch our video and give the final piece to feedback so we could see what our audiences thought of it. There is a variety of different audiences here, and an answer from our primary audience - young females, secondary audience- young boys, and tertiary audience- parents. This then gave us a broader answer which we were able to get different opinions from all our different feedback's.
The questions we collated were:

What is your age?

What do you think the genre of the music video is?

What do you like about the video?

What do you think could be improved about the video?

Do you think it is similar to a real video?

Which TV Channels would you expect to see the video on?

Do you think this video is suitable for the artist as a debut release?

Rate the video out of 10.

We took a look and started to try and relate to Blumler and Katz's Gratification Theory (1974). We then analysed the ways in which we could relate to the gratification theory and how we planned to appeal to all three of our target audiences.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planing and evaluation stages?

Whilst creating our music video, we used technologies that we came across last year and also introduced ourselves to new software's and hardware's that we have not used before to widen our opportunities. We incorporated different programmes and technologies throughout research and planning, production and evaluation stages of the task which gave us the chance to become familiar with new methods of presentation. Here is a video on all of the hardware and software we have all used throughout our process of the A2 Media Studies course whilst creating our music video. 

Research and Planning
To make a decision on what track to use, we all brainstormed a female artist that we feel we could add our own touch too which would not contradict with the artists typical video releases. We came up with Ellie Goulding, so we therefore searched on YouTube Ellie's name as searched through what song we think we could perform to. When clicking on one of Ellie's songs, the search bar down the right hand side of the video started to become useful to me due to it including songs which relate to that song and artist. 

We also used YouTube to research makeup tutorials that I could do on our cast to make sure that they are ready for filming.

We used Instant Messaging methods, such as iMessage, to communicate throughout the whole process of our production. We discussed things such as times we are filming, what costumes to wear and what props we need. We found this method of communication very effective due to the fact we are able to instantly reply as it is sent straight to our smart phones and sharing photos was very easy and cost free.

[screenshots of our conversations on iMessage]

To purchase cheap and appropriate props we used eBay to find the right things we need to make our mise-en-scene as realistic and appropriate as we could. Thinks we purchased were things like glitter for design on Grace's face, glow sticks, rose petals and sparklers.

Production
Throughout our production, we used two different cameras so that we were able to get different frames and angles for our star. We used a Nikon D3100 and a Sony AVCHD Handy-cam. The Nikon camera was Charlotte's, and we decided to use this due to it being much better quality than the camera's we had available at school.

We used a variety of different technologies throughout our production process, below is a table which give the advantages and disadvantages of each.

In terms of lighting, we used a range of different lighting effects dependent on the scene we was at. Below is a presentation of the different lighting we used.


WIX



The navigation around our website is very simple, you just click where you want to go and let the technology do the rest. We wanted to make sure our video was very easy to navigate around, so viewers do not get distressed while exploring and they can choose themselves where they want to go and what they want to look at. Widgets were added to make our website look more advanced, for example a 'sign up for newsletter' widget, which made it easier for fans to become more personal with our star. Here is a tutorial on our website and how the HTML codes make the pages link and interact with each other.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
Adobe Premiere was one of the main software's that we used throughout the process of our construction. We included a range of effects that made out video more creative and more professional.
This is the effect 'Ultra Key' that we used. When trying to make this green screen successful, we came across many difficulties as we needed to make a silhouette effect whist adding a green screen. Through lots of trial and error, we finally managed to complete the end result that we was hoping for.

Another effect we used was 'Luma Key' and this was used to make some of our shots appear more clear and sharp as some of the colour's looked bland and dull. Therefore we played around with this effect and made some of the shots seems more clear and more effective than if they was not edited.

The effect 'Strobe Light' also became very handy throughout our editing process, as when we watched back the recorded footage in the drama studio where we wanted different colour lighting flashing like a live performance, the lights did not show up very clear on camera and did not look anything like what we were witnessing whilst filming. Therefore, I played around on premiere to try and find a solution which would mean we could create our own lighting effects to make the outcome we originally anticipated.

'4 colour gradient' became very useful as we thought we needed to add a bit of electronic style into our video. Therefore, we changed some of the colours on a few random outdoor shots to show the electronic/pop side of the star.

Another technology that we used was survey monkey so that we could gain information and feedback from other people about our work. We created online survey's so people could leave us answers which would benefit us in our production process, as we aimed our survey's at our target audiences which would therefore mean that the information collected has to be listened to as we need to be aware of what our target audience thinks about our productions and creations.

To get people to answer our surveys, we had to think of good ways to promote them. Therefore, we sat together as a group and thought of good ways we can get people to take our surveys, particularly our target audiences.

• One way we promoted our survey was through social media on Grace's site. This meant that her fans, (our target audience) would see the post and hopefully click and fill it out for us. However, as this is on an online social media website, anyone has access to it. Therefore this could also target a wider audience who may not have took a particular interest in our video before, but do now. This then helps us receive feedback from both our primary target audience, and secondary target audience.

• Another way we got people to fill in our surveys was to send out emails to the rest of the media students in our year group which would then appeal to people who are familiar with our task and familiar with the decisions we made and the problems we faced. With our fellow students answering questions that we have created about our productions, they will know the extent to which we have gone to create this as they have witnessed our journey by viewing our blogs and having a chance to look at our productions so far in class showcases.

Photoshop played quite a big part in our production, as we edited a lot of things on this piece of software to make them look much more professional and more personalised and specific to our artist. The main production we used Photoshop for was our Digi Pack, as the complication's of our design caused us to only have this piece of software available to use. Neither of us have ever used Photoshop before, therefore we found it a struggle to try and complete the design we had in mind. Eventually, with hours of practice we finally got there and were very pleased with the outcome. We wanted to make each page in our Digi Pack relate in some way, so to create synergy we made sure there was a specific trademark included. We used a glitter effect on every page which meant that all of them could be linked and associated with each other. We also included a glitter shot in our video, of a face design within her make-up to also create the synergy there. Here is a tutorial on how we added the glitter into a page of our digipack.

Evaluation Descisions

Now our final construction is completed, it's time to evaluate our decisions so everyone can see why we did the things we done to create our final outcomes. The 4 evaluation questions are:

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How effective is the main product and ancillary texts?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

Who's doing what
As there are 4 questions, and only 3 people in our group, we have to all do one question each and then choose a final question that we can all contribute to and work together with.

Question 1- Emma Rolfe
Question 2- Charlotte Gregory
Question 3- Group effort
Question 4- Me [Lara Eardley]

Final Music Video