The Dance Sequence

As a dance student, I wanted to include a routine within our music video as this would make our video exciting and fun, as well as staying relevent to our genre. After watching several music videos from our research e.g Pixie Lott - Boys and Girls and Lady Gaga - Just Dance (see Initial Ideas post) I have choreographed 3 short routines for sections of the music.

I wanted to make the Dance very funky, with fast movement to match the upbeat music. Also I decided to use mainly female dancers to show the female dominance and proudness of their sexuality which links directly to the lyrics of the song.

I included lifts which make me, the singer, the focal point and used set formations to create tableaux which will therefore make the filming easier and make it look good on screen.

Here are some snap shots from the dance sequences;

This shows the triangular formation which we shot from 3 different angles, this made the the editing easier when we came to the production of the video.

In this snap shot, the use of levels shows me to be the dominant character.

Evaluation

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

Here are six examples of how we have used real media texts to influence and inspire us in our own work. We wanted to create a typical 'Pop' music video therefore we used many techniques which we have seen within existing, professional work. As you can see the main artists videos that have influence our work are; Pixie Lott, The Black Eyed Peas and of course, our chosen artist, Jordin Sparks. We were particularly inspired by the original video for the song we chose as it also gave a clear narrative and followed the lyrics in the song, visually. Overall we believe that we have given a successful representation of the song and the genre that we chose.

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

As part of our coursework we had to produce a number of products, we wanted to ensure that each product showed clear similarity so it was certain to audience what we were trying to represent. Throughout our video it is clear that there is a dominant female character, we wanted to ensure this in our print work also. We did this by focusing specifically on the character alone, experimenting with a range of clothing and make up for each individual image, this allowed us to represent and portray the personality of the character. As a group we feel our ancillary tasks compliment our main product very well as they reflect clearly what the song is about, with the use of print we were able to clearly represent the switch in character personality and create this specific post feminist role model we were aiming for. The use of video helped us to tell the story and represent the issues and difficulties the character is faced with, and how she manages to turn it around to gain her own way.

The print work alone is a strong representation of the genre of the music video, the background of the images is mainly dark, but covered with a spread of deep pink colour, the focal point of the images being the female character is a lot brighter and takes of the majority of the image. Along with various effects from photoshop and specific lighting we were able to represent a sense of glamour and pop.

The song is about relationships, promiscuity and lust for the opposite sex we were able to represent this through minor effects and symbolic details, such as the use of deep pink lipstick to represent a sense of love or lust within the character and the use of large false eye lashes covering most of the face, this give the subject a blank expression but creates this sense of a threat and power from within the subjects face. Overall we think all three aspects of our project have worked well in creating a successful outcome.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

er our rough cut, we got some of our peers to comment on how they thought our video looked so far. Most of the comments where positive so we were happy to carry on editing as we had been. Laura however pointed out that the lighting at the beginning of our video was poor as it was shot at night time, to justify this we did aim for our video to look dark and grungy to contrast with later shots in the video at the party. Also with the night settings and the train station as our location the audience automatically can see the story starting and setting a narrative, as the girls are all dressed up and look ready to party. The shadows that are created within the settings I believe give a mysterious aura around the characters.

Many people commented on how our video ended, saying that it was their favourite section to the 3 minute video. We tried to follow the stereotypical film within a video which was a treat we found when researching and planning. The comical and humorous ending to the video left the audience with a feel good, girl power type feeling and tied up loose ends in the narrative.

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

When constructing our coursework we used various types of programs to help us. The main programs that we used we Adobe Premiere and Photoshop.

<----- Using Premiere

We used Premiere for the basic construction and editing of the music video. We also took advantage of this equipment to take our video a step further, using the effects tools to create our effects in our video coursework.

Here are a couple of examples;

We also used photoshop to create our print work for our coursework. (CD advertisement poster and digipack) We used many different techniques with the program and used it to its full potential.

Photoshoot Two

After completing our first photoshoot successfully we then began to plan and put together some ideas for our second photoshoot.

The mise en scene for the this photoshoot was significantly important as this was the best way to represent the right character to our audience.
The contrast between the two shoots shows a switch from a very confident, glamorous female character to a very personal and secretive character. The choice of clothing for the shoot allowed us to create a very sexual yet powerful dominant female. The focal point of the image is quite clearly the face and with the use of deep pink lipstick against the light tones of her face, we were able created a sense of innocence yet a hint of lust and anger at the same time, again portraying this shift and change in the character. We added the use of a top hat along with a broach and feathers to still portray a sense of glamour and fame within the character, the use of a darker eye shadow almost meant the character was hiding behind something, unable to face up to the camera, this again represents promiscuity and secrecy.

This is one of the selected images from our second photoshoot that we used in our album covers.

Music posters research

Here are a few examples of different posters that we looked at when we were creating the advertisement poster for our music CD. We have commented on each one stating what we thought were good and bad points.

This is a great advert. As Gwen Stefani is a famous, popular and a well established artist, she can afford to risk having the smaller image of the album she is advertising in the bottom corner. The advert will still sell hundreds of thousands of copies as the main attraction of the advert (the image of Gwen) will draw fans in and interest them enough to read the advert and buy the album.

We like this design because it is simple and straight to the point. It immediately tells you what its advertising, who it is, and gives a taste of what sort of genre of music it is through this font and picture.

These adverts have no dates for the release of the album or any indication of where the album can be purchased from. Britney Spears is that well-known and established that it probably won’t make much of a difference that this information is not include on the advert because she knows she will sell millions of copies anyway.

This advert for Madonna’s album ‘Sorry’ applies the same method as the album ‘Love Angel Music Baby’ by Gwen Stefani. The colours used look professional as they have stuck to a basic colour pallet of pinks and purples, very feminine. The layout works but in my opinion could be a lot stronger.

Props

Here are some images of various props that we used within out music video.

Working With Photoshop

Once we had finished both photoshoots and as a group narrowed down a spread of several images to use for our work, we then started to experiment with various effects to enhance and progress our work further.

With the aid of Adobe Photoshop CS4 we were able to access a vast range of effects and techniques that could be practiced on our images. The main characted in our piece is portrayed as a very young and glamorous character, but as seen in the video there are other sides to her, with the use of such effects we were able to represent both personalities.

Theoriginal images were quite dull with selective ligthing throughout so we decided to add a specific colour to each album cover. We used a deep pink for each cover linking similarly to Red the colour of love and lust, this was chosen to portray the more devious and envious side of the character.

Once we had selected a spread of images to use for our album covers, i then began to add the effects and techniques that would enhance the quality of our work alot further.

Here is an example of one of our best images, we can see the light used is very selective and focuses on the subject very well.
But there is quite alot of negative dark areas, this draws away the attention of the character and drains out the image.
With the aid of various brush and pen tools i was able to create trails around the subject, as seen below, i then used a simple stroke technique to create a white blur around the trails. Following this i added an outter glow effect with the selective colouring, again being deep pink, i then experimented with the size and shape of the glow to create a successful glow and light trail.

Along with other similar techniques i progressed this effect numerously throughout the vast majority of our images, this is something we felt as a group really helped capture the image and look we were hoping to create.

OBSESSION - Our end product