ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END

“One good thing about music is when it hits, you feel no pain.”

Bob Marley

This quote is very true in most circumstances and defiantly links to the experience we had with our pop video, although making a music video can be very stressful and daunting this was not the experience we had with ours. It took us seven months to fully create the pop video, from the initial idea to the final edit and publishing. Although the whole process took a while we enjoyed every minuet of it. There where times where things did not go the way we wanted such as the filming we did with the band. Our original plan was to have the band cut into shots of the girl in the cage and when the beat picked up the shots became short and fast, but when it came to filming we were very unprepared and many of our band members did not know how to play the instruments that were necessary to the song so we had to cut them out, this later became an issue as our song did not portray a clear narrative. If we had the chance to film it all again we would probably be more organized in choosing our band members and our time management as we ran out of studio time to get all the vital shots. As well as our pop video we also created a digi pack and a magazine advert for the song. This was another enjoyable part of creating the video as it gave us the chance to be creative and it also gave our pop video a more professional element to it. All in all I really enjoyed making the pop video and there has been a drastic improvement in my work since my AS level thriller and I have really enjoyed the experience and have gained a small understanding of what it might be like to work in the music video industry, hard work yet extremely enjoyable with the final outcome.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY- AUDIO RECORDING

The aim of the director's commentary was to help the audience grasp a better understanding of what we were trying to achieve in the pop video. We explained why we chose to edit it in the style that we did with the slow motion shots in contrast the fast cutting ones, we also referred to why we edited it in the out of focus and blurred way we did as it was almost reflecting her state of mind, unclear and blurred. The Mise en scene played a big part in the video and we described the shots, angles, track and pans that we used in order to create a better understanding of what we were trying to achieve using these.

We also discussed the close ups and intimate shots that made you feel as though you were inside her thoughts and engaged in the video. We hoped to have given the audience a clearer idea of how the video can be interpreted differently, by having three of us discuss different areas of the video we hoped that this would reflect the different interpretations of the video. We discussed Keith Negus and his conventions and why we chose to imitate or subvert the few that we used and how, by subverting a few of them this gave the artist the 'edgy' and different image that we were trying to achieve and it helped to establish her brand more.

TASK 3. AUDIENCE. WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

Having collected a variety of feedback for our pop video and ancillary products from members of the target audience, and from other audience demographics - via You Tube, a focus group and questionnaire, and other sources, I looked to answer this question.

Jictar can be applied to the pop video in terms of its target audience and the audience that the pop video may reach. Jictar is broken down into terms of class, education, and employment, and often interest, it is grouped into A,B,C,D,E an example of a person who would fit into category 'A' would be someone who was a high paid doctor or lawyer who had attended education until A levels and then very likely gone on to study further education at top universities. Whereas a member of the E category would be a person who has had little or no education and is often unemployed. The categories that the target audience for the pop video fall under are, B,C,D as this pop video can be interrupted on many different levels. a person in category B may get the underlying message that the pop video is trying to convey about women being suppressed or trapped in society. Whereas a member of the C category may see the message of the song as a girl who is hiding something and is contemplating moral dilemmas between right and wrong. The age of the target audience is between the age of 16 to 25 and mostly a female audience as it raises issues relating to women. The interests of a member of our target audience would be perhaps reading as it is an intellectual thing that relates to the big issues that are raised in the song about women in today's society. The type of people in the target audience would be ones of a calm nature as the song does not have any graphic violence in it, although some violent is implied through he lyrics and the falling feathers.

There have been many different responses to this video depending on the viewers interests and up bringing as it can be seen from so many different angles, but most the responses that the video got when on you tube were all good. The video has had 456 views and has been commented on by a number of people, some of these comments include :

"who ever made this video is amazing,"
dkeofhazard

"This is really cool "
caz2435
"beautiful shots throughout, the slow motion really created an atmosphere and mood. "
challli5
"Love the contrast between the fast cutting up beat bits and the slow motion!"
paroilda316

To find out what response people had to the pop video we organised a focus group of 2 boys ages 17, 2 boys aged 18 and 2 girls aged 17 to see what their immediate response was to the video. There was an obviouse initial response from the video as girls seemed to get more from the story than the boys did as the song is mainly aimed at women. We created a questionnaire for them to answer with open ended questions these were,

1. Did you enjoy it?
2. What did you get from the video?
3. what message did you get from the video?
4. what persona for out artist did we establish?
5. Did you identify with the character, if so how?
6. Did you feel a personal relationship with the character, if so how?
7. Were you informed by the video, if so, in what way?
8. Did you get the idea of women being ill treated in society?
9. What did you think of the video not having a narrative?
10. Ways it could be improved, could we have done anything differently?

the overall response to the video was that people got the idea that a girl was trapped in a cage and wanting to get out, the cage may represent society. An idea that also seemed to come across the viewers was that the girl in the video was beginning to rebel against society and fight to get out of the situation she was trapped in. A few of the viewers also thought that the girl was asking them for help as she often reached out from the cage implying reaching out for help. This also adds to the Blumler and Katz theory of personal relationships, as most of the viewers wrote that they wanted to help her, the eye contact with the camera and the close ups on her face also help to enforce the idea of being intimate or personal with the lead singer. When asked what they thought about the fact that the video did not have a narrative, Julian, a 17 year old fun loving guy said, "I thought that a narrative was not necessary as it gave more time to pay attention to the artistic side of the video." Phoebe a 17 year old laid back, indi style girl, said " I really got it, although there was no narrative it gave me the freedom to really feel apart of it as i felt so intimate with the singer when she looked at me."

When asking peers and teachers what they thought about the pop video it was very interesting to see the different interpretations between the age gap. James, a middle aged teacher who is head of the media department said, " the panning shots created the illusion that the cage was swigging and this really added a something unique to the video." But when asking peers what they thought, most of them commented on the contrast between the slow motion and fast cutting and the effect that this had on them, Layla, a 18 year old photography student commented on the use of beautiful shots and the close intimate shots let you into the video and gave the impression that you were inside the lead singers head and thoughts.

According to Start Hall the video encodes a preferred message which the audience decodes and this effects their end interpretation and depends on who the observer is as each person has a different interpretation of the video depending on the dominant reading, the negotiated reading and the oppositional reading.

TASK 2. A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION TO EXPLORE HOW EFFECTIVE THE COMBINATION OF MY MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS ARE?

Blog task 2 exhibbandjdjd

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The answer to this task has four parts.

The firts is to apply the ideas of Richard Dyer and stardom to see what elements we need to put in to establish our singer as a star in the making. The second is the ideas of pop music theorist Carlsson who argues that pop stars are either comerical exhibitionists or telivised bards or electronic shamen. Our singer is the middle one of these.

Thirdly we looked at the idas of Levi Strauss and his idea of universal myths. Our video shows a song concerned with the position of women in socioty, and identity, which are both universal myths. The fourth and last thing is synergy, where we tried to create a pop video that worked with the digi pack and the magazine advert to sell our singer and her song and her brand.