Sunday, 19 February 2017
Evaluation 3-What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Planning
From the planning process we found that our target audience is from the age 16 to 22, we chose this because the artist that we have chosen is more appealing to those of this age as the research that we carried out a the beginning of this process showed that those in this age range preferred artists of Kehlani's age. As this target is very broad it allows for us to have a larger audience because if we chose a smaller gap for example 16-18 this doesn't allow for the artist to be as successful as she could be with this wider audience. When making my target audience mood board I included images of many alternative and edgy young girls because this is what the artist herself is like, she is young and he style is very unique and trending so we wanted her audience to be the same as her so that there will be this natural connection with them, her and the music.
Throughout planning we decided to research the style that Kehlani has, we looked on her social media sites like Instagram so that we can see pictures of what she looks like most of the time, this then allowed us to gain a better understanding of the RnB style that we are going to show to our audience. As the research showed that Kehlani is very trendy and current with her style, it told us that her fans will also be the same. This then gave us a better understanding and narrowed down our target audience to unique and stylish 16-22 years olds. Having this target audience narrowed down into a smaller group still allows for our artist to be successful on a large scale but it makes it a more direct approach because the audience can be connecting with our artist on a physical point as well as with the music.
Whilst planning the target audience also effected the costumes that we put Mikah in because we wanted the style to be one that they liked so from the research that we carried out at the beginning, we could apply the casual style to Mikah. This meant that our video is likely to be received a lot better than if we went for a completely different style to what our target audience wants.
By having a clear type of target audience this influenced many of our decisions even little details like the colour scheme because we know that the audience are females, but they are the stereotypical women, they are very alternative so if we chose to have the main themes of our products to be pink and feminine colours like this then they wouldn't be very effective, which is why we chose to have deeper and darker colours like the purple and blue colours we used for our ancillary texts.
When we were making the target audience mood boards, we all made them separately which meant that we all had different ideas, but when we came together to show the boards they were all very similar. This meant that we all had a clear idea of who were to be our target audience from the very start. This is good because it meant that we could move on to different tasks faster as we were all aware of the plan.
Filming and Editing
When we were filming the video we changed some of the planned scenes because they didn't look right at the time. One scene that we changed was the scene we initially wanted to have on the estate stairs at Melville Court, we were originally going to have 3 different shots of Mikah's face, but this didn't give the connection to the audience that we wanted to create, so whilst editing we decided to input a different clip that fitted the audience better. We also changed the out outfits that we were going to have Mikah wear, at first we wanted to have her as this seductive female, but then as we realised that the theme we wanted was very different to that, we wanted a strong female instead of the RnB convention of sexualising the females. This was influenced by the target audience because we overlooked our previous research and realised that these females are alternative and have a different style to the typical female so we wanted that theme to run through so it related to them as well. This meant that when filming we actually had her change her outfit so that her outfit fitted the theme.
Whilst editing we made sure that we used a lot of shots that had Mikah looking directly at the camera, this was because we wanted that relationship to be made with our audience and the best way for us to do that is when certain lyrics fitted the audience, we will have Mikah looking at the camera. Another aspect of editing that was effected was the number of shots we had with Chrissy dancing. This was effected because initially we only wanted to have a few clips with her dancing, but as we were creating the video in the editing phase, we realised that we should add more clips with Chrissy in them because it adds to the urban and edgy feeling because of how dark the scenes were and how different the setting looked with the lights from the projector, it could have relevance to how different our target audience is. We also thought that these scenes were very eye catching and made us a lot more interested when we were watching the video through on repeat as we were editing.
We also targeted our audience by filming in attractive places like Leake Street, this was the most artistic place in which we filmed in and also the best place for our audience because it showed the themes that they like, we could dress Mikah in the casual clothes that they wanted ad have her in an attractive setting with art and colour in the background.
Feedback
For most of our feedback we created a questionnaire on SurveyMonkey, this allowed us to get physical evidence of the responses from our target audience that we need to see if they enjoyed the elements of the video in which we incorporated.
The first question is Do you think the slow motion shots worked well ? and the results are shown below
This table and graph show that overall the slow motion effects were successful because 90% agreed that they worked well. This is good because it shows that the video has been successful with our audience because 10% not agreeing is a very small amount. We used a lot of slow motion shots when we were finding fillers because we felt that it added a special feature to a basic clip which, from the result, shows that it worked. The slow motion shots were also used to emphasise a certain feature in the scene for example we used this effect when we were using the clip of Mikah in the car at the roundabout because it made the lights of the car coming round the bend stand out a lot better.
The second question was do you like that we had a performance in our video?
We chose to have this question because the performance was one of the main features of the video so we needed to know if it was a good choice to have a lot of shots in the music video with the dancing. The results show that this was the right choice because 100% of respondents enjoyed the performance in the video. This is good because the reason we added so much of the performance was to reach out to our audience, so to see that this was worth adding extra it means that we were targeting out audience very successfully.
The third question was Did our product conform or subvert to the typical conventions of an RnB music video? The results are shown below in a graph format with comments from respondents also.
The graph shows that most of the respondents think that we both conformed and subverted the typical conventions of the RnB genre. This is the result we want because it shows that the audience have understood the video and what we have tried to do. We initially wanted to conform to the conventions but as we figure out our target audience we realised that we also want to subvert them because we have an alternative audience. This means that our video has been very successful because the message we wanted to put across has been shown and received successfully from our audience. The comments that were made shows that having both conforming and subverting the RnB conventions was a good decision to make because they actually liked it. One comment stated that it did this "In a good way" which shows clearly that they think the decision was effective. Other comments suggested that they saw elements of pop music in the video which wasn't the image we were aiming for but they haven't said that this made the video look bad in any way, so its still a positive. Another comment that showed our video worked well is the one about giving Mikah characteristics of a man with the bat, this is a positive comment for us because we didn't want her to be this feminine character and w wanted the power within masculinity to shine through with the bat, which the audience could see.
The next question was Do you think we addressed our target audience well (16-22)?
This question was very simple and the results show the answer we wanted, they show that 100% of the respondents agree that this video does fit this audience. This is good because the main aim is to make sure that the video suits and fits our target audience, so by doing that through this questionnaire, shows us that we have been very successful in the process of making our video because it has achieved the goal we wanted. It also means that we do not need to change anything in our video to make sure the audience are targeted because we have already made sure it fits them. We used this question within our questionnaire because we think that it was the most important one because if an artst does not reach their target audience then they would need to change their product or their audience, but as we have been very successful with doing this, we don't need to make any changes.
The next question was Do you think our video was successful or unsuccessful?
This question was also a very important one, it shows that the majority of our respondents feel that our video was successful. This is very good because it shows that most people liked the video and only a small amount didn't enjoy it which isn't as big of an issue because these people not like the video due to factors that we cant control such as their genre reference or their style of music, because not everyone we asked the questions to like the song or this genre. So this 10% doesn't really effect the successfulness because they are a small minority.
This question also included written responses that are shown below
These results show that the main drawbacks of our video are the lip syncing and clothing choices. As we were editing we did notice that the lip syncing was definitely our weakest point so to have the feedback discuss this issue it is not a shock to us and if we were to do it again we would make sure that Mikah pronounced the words slightly more to make it look more realistic especially on the longer notes. The comments also suggest that we should have kept to the colours we intended to, which was the grey and black theme and not have the brown jumper. They may be against the jumper because it isn't very edgy and we also regret having her wear this jumper because we don't feel as if it fitted the urban theme because its quite formal and normal so our artist didn't stand out as much as she should've. Another comment suggested that we should have edited the lighting a lot more with the graffiti scenes because we could've made it brighter and more vibrant. However during the editing process we did attempt to do it but with the technology that we had it made the shots look very amateur like and unprofessional so we decided not to adjust the lighting because it looked more professional without its adjustments..
Throughout planning we decided to research the style that Kehlani has, we looked on her social media sites like Instagram so that we can see pictures of what she looks like most of the time, this then allowed us to gain a better understanding of the RnB style that we are going to show to our audience. As the research showed that Kehlani is very trendy and current with her style, it told us that her fans will also be the same. This then gave us a better understanding and narrowed down our target audience to unique and stylish 16-22 years olds. Having this target audience narrowed down into a smaller group still allows for our artist to be successful on a large scale but it makes it a more direct approach because the audience can be connecting with our artist on a physical point as well as with the music.
Whilst planning the target audience also effected the costumes that we put Mikah in because we wanted the style to be one that they liked so from the research that we carried out at the beginning, we could apply the casual style to Mikah. This meant that our video is likely to be received a lot better than if we went for a completely different style to what our target audience wants.
By having a clear type of target audience this influenced many of our decisions even little details like the colour scheme because we know that the audience are females, but they are the stereotypical women, they are very alternative so if we chose to have the main themes of our products to be pink and feminine colours like this then they wouldn't be very effective, which is why we chose to have deeper and darker colours like the purple and blue colours we used for our ancillary texts.
When we were making the target audience mood boards, we all made them separately which meant that we all had different ideas, but when we came together to show the boards they were all very similar. This meant that we all had a clear idea of who were to be our target audience from the very start. This is good because it meant that we could move on to different tasks faster as we were all aware of the plan.
Filming and Editing
When we were filming the video we changed some of the planned scenes because they didn't look right at the time. One scene that we changed was the scene we initially wanted to have on the estate stairs at Melville Court, we were originally going to have 3 different shots of Mikah's face, but this didn't give the connection to the audience that we wanted to create, so whilst editing we decided to input a different clip that fitted the audience better. We also changed the out outfits that we were going to have Mikah wear, at first we wanted to have her as this seductive female, but then as we realised that the theme we wanted was very different to that, we wanted a strong female instead of the RnB convention of sexualising the females. This was influenced by the target audience because we overlooked our previous research and realised that these females are alternative and have a different style to the typical female so we wanted that theme to run through so it related to them as well. This meant that when filming we actually had her change her outfit so that her outfit fitted the theme.
Whilst editing we made sure that we used a lot of shots that had Mikah looking directly at the camera, this was because we wanted that relationship to be made with our audience and the best way for us to do that is when certain lyrics fitted the audience, we will have Mikah looking at the camera. Another aspect of editing that was effected was the number of shots we had with Chrissy dancing. This was effected because initially we only wanted to have a few clips with her dancing, but as we were creating the video in the editing phase, we realised that we should add more clips with Chrissy in them because it adds to the urban and edgy feeling because of how dark the scenes were and how different the setting looked with the lights from the projector, it could have relevance to how different our target audience is. We also thought that these scenes were very eye catching and made us a lot more interested when we were watching the video through on repeat as we were editing.
We also targeted our audience by filming in attractive places like Leake Street, this was the most artistic place in which we filmed in and also the best place for our audience because it showed the themes that they like, we could dress Mikah in the casual clothes that they wanted ad have her in an attractive setting with art and colour in the background.
Feedback
For most of our feedback we created a questionnaire on SurveyMonkey, this allowed us to get physical evidence of the responses from our target audience that we need to see if they enjoyed the elements of the video in which we incorporated.
The first question is Do you think the slow motion shots worked well ? and the results are shown below
This table and graph show that overall the slow motion effects were successful because 90% agreed that they worked well. This is good because it shows that the video has been successful with our audience because 10% not agreeing is a very small amount. We used a lot of slow motion shots when we were finding fillers because we felt that it added a special feature to a basic clip which, from the result, shows that it worked. The slow motion shots were also used to emphasise a certain feature in the scene for example we used this effect when we were using the clip of Mikah in the car at the roundabout because it made the lights of the car coming round the bend stand out a lot better.
The second question was do you like that we had a performance in our video?
We chose to have this question because the performance was one of the main features of the video so we needed to know if it was a good choice to have a lot of shots in the music video with the dancing. The results show that this was the right choice because 100% of respondents enjoyed the performance in the video. This is good because the reason we added so much of the performance was to reach out to our audience, so to see that this was worth adding extra it means that we were targeting out audience very successfully.
The third question was Did our product conform or subvert to the typical conventions of an RnB music video? The results are shown below in a graph format with comments from respondents also.
The graph shows that most of the respondents think that we both conformed and subverted the typical conventions of the RnB genre. This is the result we want because it shows that the audience have understood the video and what we have tried to do. We initially wanted to conform to the conventions but as we figure out our target audience we realised that we also want to subvert them because we have an alternative audience. This means that our video has been very successful because the message we wanted to put across has been shown and received successfully from our audience. The comments that were made shows that having both conforming and subverting the RnB conventions was a good decision to make because they actually liked it. One comment stated that it did this "In a good way" which shows clearly that they think the decision was effective. Other comments suggested that they saw elements of pop music in the video which wasn't the image we were aiming for but they haven't said that this made the video look bad in any way, so its still a positive. Another comment that showed our video worked well is the one about giving Mikah characteristics of a man with the bat, this is a positive comment for us because we didn't want her to be this feminine character and w wanted the power within masculinity to shine through with the bat, which the audience could see.
The next question was Do you think we addressed our target audience well (16-22)?
This question was very simple and the results show the answer we wanted, they show that 100% of the respondents agree that this video does fit this audience. This is good because the main aim is to make sure that the video suits and fits our target audience, so by doing that through this questionnaire, shows us that we have been very successful in the process of making our video because it has achieved the goal we wanted. It also means that we do not need to change anything in our video to make sure the audience are targeted because we have already made sure it fits them. We used this question within our questionnaire because we think that it was the most important one because if an artst does not reach their target audience then they would need to change their product or their audience, but as we have been very successful with doing this, we don't need to make any changes.
The next question was Do you think our video was successful or unsuccessful?
This question was also a very important one, it shows that the majority of our respondents feel that our video was successful. This is very good because it shows that most people liked the video and only a small amount didn't enjoy it which isn't as big of an issue because these people not like the video due to factors that we cant control such as their genre reference or their style of music, because not everyone we asked the questions to like the song or this genre. So this 10% doesn't really effect the successfulness because they are a small minority.
This question also included written responses that are shown below
These results show that the main drawbacks of our video are the lip syncing and clothing choices. As we were editing we did notice that the lip syncing was definitely our weakest point so to have the feedback discuss this issue it is not a shock to us and if we were to do it again we would make sure that Mikah pronounced the words slightly more to make it look more realistic especially on the longer notes. The comments also suggest that we should have kept to the colours we intended to, which was the grey and black theme and not have the brown jumper. They may be against the jumper because it isn't very edgy and we also regret having her wear this jumper because we don't feel as if it fitted the urban theme because its quite formal and normal so our artist didn't stand out as much as she should've. Another comment suggested that we should have edited the lighting a lot more with the graffiti scenes because we could've made it brighter and more vibrant. However during the editing process we did attempt to do it but with the technology that we had it made the shots look very amateur like and unprofessional so we decided not to adjust the lighting because it looked more professional without its adjustments..
Evaluation Question 2
Here is a video of our evaluation for question 2 but it is in two parts because of technical issues.
Part 1
Part 2
Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When we finished making our music video we decided to upload it to YouTube, we did this because it allows other people to view it as it has a large social media platform where many other artists have been discovered and where very successful musicians have started their career like Justin Bieber. We used YouTube instead of other social media sites, because it is extremely popular and the number of people in total that have views this one site in the first 6 years was over 1 trillion people. This means that there would be a much higher chance of it being viewed the song being progressed into a bigger song just like what the artists discovered on YouTube would have done. By uploading our music video to YouTube we are not challenging the usual uses of a media product, instead we are conforming to what most musicians do with their music videos because if we challenged it then we wouldn't have the feeling that it is a professional product.
Advertisement
The advert that we created is shown on the right and it will be shared around on social media platforms because the audience will be much wider than the audience we will get from a magazine because its much more accessible to see an advert on a social media website than go into a store and see a magazine cover with our advert. This is also more suitable for our target audience which is the ages 16-22 and most of the people this age would have at least one social media platform where they would be able to see our advertisement of Mikah. The colours that we used are very feminine colours like pink and purple but they are cool tones so they still show a bit of the darkness that we want Mikah to portray as her character. As we have shown other social media websites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where our audience can follow our artist which is an idea we got from looking at other music advertisements because it will allow the fans to have more contact with the individual and they will be able to see more information about the tour. Another feature we included for our advert that we saw when researching was that we included our record label logo, this will allow people to know who the artist is signed with and if our audience like our artists then they would be able to do further research into who else we have signed to our label if we were a real record label which would widen our audience for the other artists. We chose to write at the bottom of the poster 'Album now available on iTunes and in stores', we did this because it makes the advert look like an official advertisement because most artists have their music on iTunes. This also widens our audience because they are able to either by it on the app or if they prefer a material copy then they can buy it in a store. This shows that we don't want to exclude anyone from being able to buy the product.
Music genre
The music genre of our video is RnB soul and throughout our video we have both challenged and conformed to the conventions of our genre. As the genre incorporates both RnB and soul music, it means that we are allowed to show the sexiness of RnB with the emotional and story side of the soul. In our video we have challenged the conventions of RnB artists like Rihanna because even though Mikah's body is not fully covered up head to toe, her body is not being sexualised with her clothing or costumes. This is because we went for the style of Kehlani herself who in some of her videos is dressed in seductive clothing but we decided to have the urban and stylish side of her as oppose to sexy. The clothing that we used in the video consisted of a dark tops, ripped jeans, black jeans and black long coats. These neither show or hide her body because with the ripped jeans they showed a lot of her legs and they were paired with a white and black top with a long black jacket. This collaboration allows for Mikah to look urban with the subtle bit of sexiness with the upper thighs being shown through the rips. The locations that we chose however does fit in with the RnB style because she was filmed in very rough and urban areas because we went to London and filmed in places that showed graffiti which is a key when giving off the impression to the audience that we are in a modern city. Another location that is featured in our video is in an abandoned warehouse that has been destroyed and vandalised throughout the years. This location challenges the conventions of the RnB genre because even though there was graffiti and vandalism in the warehouse it was very dirty and abused which often in music videos for RnB they are filmed in lavish places with a lot of money, or in an urban area, to which this location was neither of them but it still looked like an RnB music video even with a completely different setting.
The other location featured in our video is Mikah driving in her car, we used this because we wanted our artist to be relatable to the audience, so by having her do a daily job in the video would make that connection and form a bond between the artist and the audience. It also allowed us to have the dark lighting because we were filming at night so the darkness worked well with the street and car lights, which is a theme in many RnB videos, to have the dull lighting with the bright colours of light for example the previously analysed Bryson Tiller ' Sorry Not Sorry' music video. He used very dark scenes at night and made the red lighting and the yellow lights stand out which we did when we had the scene of Mikah' hand moving outside of the car, in the background you can see the car lights in front and the street lights because it lights up the scene whilst still having it dark.
As we were editing the music video we wanted to show the beat through the images so we decided to create a jumping motion of one scene because the beat makes a jolting sound so by editing this effect onto the shot it showed the video being in sync with the song because they are both doing the same motion. This is the scene when we did this editing technique.
Advertisement
The advert that we created is shown on the right and it will be shared around on social media platforms because the audience will be much wider than the audience we will get from a magazine because its much more accessible to see an advert on a social media website than go into a store and see a magazine cover with our advert. This is also more suitable for our target audience which is the ages 16-22 and most of the people this age would have at least one social media platform where they would be able to see our advertisement of Mikah. The colours that we used are very feminine colours like pink and purple but they are cool tones so they still show a bit of the darkness that we want Mikah to portray as her character. As we have shown other social media websites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where our audience can follow our artist which is an idea we got from looking at other music advertisements because it will allow the fans to have more contact with the individual and they will be able to see more information about the tour. Another feature we included for our advert that we saw when researching was that we included our record label logo, this will allow people to know who the artist is signed with and if our audience like our artists then they would be able to do further research into who else we have signed to our label if we were a real record label which would widen our audience for the other artists. We chose to write at the bottom of the poster 'Album now available on iTunes and in stores', we did this because it makes the advert look like an official advertisement because most artists have their music on iTunes. This also widens our audience because they are able to either by it on the app or if they prefer a material copy then they can buy it in a store. This shows that we don't want to exclude anyone from being able to buy the product.
Music genre
The music genre of our video is RnB soul and throughout our video we have both challenged and conformed to the conventions of our genre. As the genre incorporates both RnB and soul music, it means that we are allowed to show the sexiness of RnB with the emotional and story side of the soul. In our video we have challenged the conventions of RnB artists like Rihanna because even though Mikah's body is not fully covered up head to toe, her body is not being sexualised with her clothing or costumes. This is because we went for the style of Kehlani herself who in some of her videos is dressed in seductive clothing but we decided to have the urban and stylish side of her as oppose to sexy. The clothing that we used in the video consisted of a dark tops, ripped jeans, black jeans and black long coats. These neither show or hide her body because with the ripped jeans they showed a lot of her legs and they were paired with a white and black top with a long black jacket. This collaboration allows for Mikah to look urban with the subtle bit of sexiness with the upper thighs being shown through the rips. The locations that we chose however does fit in with the RnB style because she was filmed in very rough and urban areas because we went to London and filmed in places that showed graffiti which is a key when giving off the impression to the audience that we are in a modern city. Another location that is featured in our video is in an abandoned warehouse that has been destroyed and vandalised throughout the years. This location challenges the conventions of the RnB genre because even though there was graffiti and vandalism in the warehouse it was very dirty and abused which often in music videos for RnB they are filmed in lavish places with a lot of money, or in an urban area, to which this location was neither of them but it still looked like an RnB music video even with a completely different setting.
The other location featured in our video is Mikah driving in her car, we used this because we wanted our artist to be relatable to the audience, so by having her do a daily job in the video would make that connection and form a bond between the artist and the audience. It also allowed us to have the dark lighting because we were filming at night so the darkness worked well with the street and car lights, which is a theme in many RnB videos, to have the dull lighting with the bright colours of light for example the previously analysed Bryson Tiller ' Sorry Not Sorry' music video. He used very dark scenes at night and made the red lighting and the yellow lights stand out which we did when we had the scene of Mikah' hand moving outside of the car, in the background you can see the car lights in front and the street lights because it lights up the scene whilst still having it dark.As we were editing the music video we wanted to show the beat through the images so we decided to create a jumping motion of one scene because the beat makes a jolting sound so by editing this effect onto the shot it showed the video being in sync with the song because they are both doing the same motion. This is the scene when we did this editing technique.
This effect is conforming to the RnB genre because many other music videos have used this technique because it emphasises the importance of the beat and as in this genre, the music is almost more important than the lyrics so the emphasis needs to be shown through the video.
Whilst editing we also decided to make the dancing fit with the beat and rhythm of the song and we made Chrissy come in on the beats which fitted the dance moves that she was creating. This again adds to the conventions of an RnB video because the type of dancing that Chrissy was doing was very urban and many Hip Hop and RnB videos show this style of dancing especially when the music has a lot of variance in the beat, it can be used to show a change of tone and feeling, without having the artist or main character show it. This is why many motions that Chrissy does actually fits with the way the lyrics are sung, for example if Kehlani is singing a line that might be slower or flow more than the others, then we slowed the clip of Chrissy dancing down, so that it fitted with the music and the relationship between the music and character was created. Our inspiration for this relationship was Beyoncé's Formation music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ because from the beginning the beat is in time with the shots, every beat has a different shot and then whenever the characters are dancing the beat fits it perfectly, which is what we wanted for Chrissy's scenes. Also dancing is the main theme in this video so for it to be our inspiration I allowed us to gain better ideas for what we want our shots to look like. We chose Beyoncé rather than another artist with dancing in their music video because she represents the female gender very positively by being strong and powerful which is how we wanted Mikah to be shown.
Our main representation for this female artist was to show her as a strong and powerful woman that wants love, but we didn't want to make her too feminine because this may make her look weaker but we didn't want to our gender representation to be of a weak woman. We did this through her clothing and poses. Within the video as I have mentioned before her costumes covered most of her body other than her thigh with the ripped jeans. We did this in a very masculine way as the outfit she wore was actually a men's top with a long jacket, so we included the sexiness with the masculine outfit so that we didn't show her to be feminine. In most of the scenes Mikah was standing up ad walking, this shows that she has power because she is standing physically on her own as well as metaphorically, this shows that even though she wants love from a 'gangsta' she doesn't need him to make her a woman. We wanted to show this so that we show our target audience a strong image of a woman that could be a positive role model.
Digipak
For the Digipak we wanted to conform to the usual CD cover with the little details but we did also challenge some of the conventions. For the front cover we decided to have Mikah sitting I front of a graffiti background with a bat in her hand, this is the inspiration from the Suicide Squad film, s the bat represents the crazy in Mikah that Harlequin has. This is conforming to the RnB stereotypes because artists like Beyoncé have used a prop like this before in a media product like her ' Hold up ' music video. So for us to show Mikah to have this bat in front of the very urban background it shows the audience that she is fierce. The colourful background allows Mikah to stand out because she s wearing very plain coloured clothes grey cropped hoodie and black trousers. We chose to have her wear thee plain colours so that the background could be colourful without overpowering the cover.
The inner section of the Digipak has an all black background which challenged the usual style of digipaks. We wanted to challenge it because out artist is very unique so we wanted o make some features of the lack unique as well. This is different to other female artists like Rihanna's Digipak because she has focused on the background as the main part but we have made the CD and the lyrics to be what we want our audience to focus on. For example Rihanna's Digipak for her album 'LOUD'. As you can see her pack I very different to ours, the inner section has a picture of her with red roses and a lot of colour, but ours is very plan because we wanted the CD to stand out. As we wanted the CD to stand out we made it have the same graffiti as is on the front cover because we wanted it to have continuity throughout. On the other side of the Digipak we decided to have lyrics of the song on half the page and then 3 images of Chrissy dancing in he music video. We chose these pictures because we wanted to give the audience a preview of what is in the video. Also because the colours in the clips are similar to the colours we have used for the back of the pack, as they are blue and purple lights from the projector. These colours on the images allowed us then to change the colour od the writing on the lyrics page because originally it as white because it stood out well against the black, but when we input the pictures we found that if we add this blue colour to the font then it will bring out the importance of the colour in the pictures of Chrissy. By having lyrics on the left side of the pack it conformed to the usual RnB packs because many artists put their lyrics to the songs in a booklet within the case which is what we also wanted to do.
For the back of the pack we wanted to have a picture or Mikah again as we had Chrissy in the middle section, so that the artist was the main feature. This picture is again with the bat because we want it to be like her trademark so that she can be identified in different ways. The colours that we used are challenging the usual colour that female use, because artists like Rihanna use very soft colours and bright colours like red and pink, but we have used this dark blue and purple scheme that fades into black because it suits our artist much better than feminine colours.
Overall I think our ancillary text have been very successful with showing alternative representations of the female artist in the RnB genre because many male artists show women to be sexualised in their music videos with seductive and sexual clothing and style, but we have made sure that our artist ha a more masculine approach with the style but whilst still looking feminine and sexy without the sexualisation that men often create. However we have also conformed to the way that female RnB artists like Beyoncé are represented with the powerful female theme that e created without using any images of men or with any theme of dependence.
Whilst editing we also decided to make the dancing fit with the beat and rhythm of the song and we made Chrissy come in on the beats which fitted the dance moves that she was creating. This again adds to the conventions of an RnB video because the type of dancing that Chrissy was doing was very urban and many Hip Hop and RnB videos show this style of dancing especially when the music has a lot of variance in the beat, it can be used to show a change of tone and feeling, without having the artist or main character show it. This is why many motions that Chrissy does actually fits with the way the lyrics are sung, for example if Kehlani is singing a line that might be slower or flow more than the others, then we slowed the clip of Chrissy dancing down, so that it fitted with the music and the relationship between the music and character was created. Our inspiration for this relationship was Beyoncé's Formation music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ because from the beginning the beat is in time with the shots, every beat has a different shot and then whenever the characters are dancing the beat fits it perfectly, which is what we wanted for Chrissy's scenes. Also dancing is the main theme in this video so for it to be our inspiration I allowed us to gain better ideas for what we want our shots to look like. We chose Beyoncé rather than another artist with dancing in their music video because she represents the female gender very positively by being strong and powerful which is how we wanted Mikah to be shown.
Our main representation for this female artist was to show her as a strong and powerful woman that wants love, but we didn't want to make her too feminine because this may make her look weaker but we didn't want to our gender representation to be of a weak woman. We did this through her clothing and poses. Within the video as I have mentioned before her costumes covered most of her body other than her thigh with the ripped jeans. We did this in a very masculine way as the outfit she wore was actually a men's top with a long jacket, so we included the sexiness with the masculine outfit so that we didn't show her to be feminine. In most of the scenes Mikah was standing up ad walking, this shows that she has power because she is standing physically on her own as well as metaphorically, this shows that even though she wants love from a 'gangsta' she doesn't need him to make her a woman. We wanted to show this so that we show our target audience a strong image of a woman that could be a positive role model.
Digipak
For the Digipak we wanted to conform to the usual CD cover with the little details but we did also challenge some of the conventions. For the front cover we decided to have Mikah sitting I front of a graffiti background with a bat in her hand, this is the inspiration from the Suicide Squad film, s the bat represents the crazy in Mikah that Harlequin has. This is conforming to the RnB stereotypes because artists like Beyoncé have used a prop like this before in a media product like her ' Hold up ' music video. So for us to show Mikah to have this bat in front of the very urban background it shows the audience that she is fierce. The colourful background allows Mikah to stand out because she s wearing very plain coloured clothes grey cropped hoodie and black trousers. We chose to have her wear thee plain colours so that the background could be colourful without overpowering the cover. The inner section of the Digipak has an all black background which challenged the usual style of digipaks. We wanted to challenge it because out artist is very unique so we wanted o make some features of the lack unique as well. This is different to other female artists like Rihanna's Digipak because she has focused on the background as the main part but we have made the CD and the lyrics to be what we want our audience to focus on. For example Rihanna's Digipak for her album 'LOUD'. As you can see her pack I very different to ours, the inner section has a picture of her with red roses and a lot of colour, but ours is very plan because we wanted the CD to stand out. As we wanted the CD to stand out we made it have the same graffiti as is on the front cover because we wanted it to have continuity throughout. On the other side of the Digipak we decided to have lyrics of the song on half the page and then 3 images of Chrissy dancing in he music video. We chose these pictures because we wanted to give the audience a preview of what is in the video. Also because the colours in the clips are similar to the colours we have used for the back of the pack, as they are blue and purple lights from the projector. These colours on the images allowed us then to change the colour od the writing on the lyrics page because originally it as white because it stood out well against the black, but when we input the pictures we found that if we add this blue colour to the font then it will bring out the importance of the colour in the pictures of Chrissy. By having lyrics on the left side of the pack it conformed to the usual RnB packs because many artists put their lyrics to the songs in a booklet within the case which is what we also wanted to do.For the back of the pack we wanted to have a picture or Mikah again as we had Chrissy in the middle section, so that the artist was the main feature. This picture is again with the bat because we want it to be like her trademark so that she can be identified in different ways. The colours that we used are challenging the usual colour that female use, because artists like Rihanna use very soft colours and bright colours like red and pink, but we have used this dark blue and purple scheme that fades into black because it suits our artist much better than feminine colours.
Overall I think our ancillary text have been very successful with showing alternative representations of the female artist in the RnB genre because many male artists show women to be sexualised in their music videos with seductive and sexual clothing and style, but we have made sure that our artist ha a more masculine approach with the style but whilst still looking feminine and sexy without the sexualisation that men often create. However we have also conformed to the way that female RnB artists like Beyoncé are represented with the powerful female theme that e created without using any images of men or with any theme of dependence.
Saturday, 18 February 2017
Colour schemes for the digipak
Colour scheme 1
This design was our first idea for the background of the back of the digi pak, we wanted to have colours that weren't too feminine because that isn't the image we have portrayed of our artist and we want everything to be similar. So we tried a bright blue fade into a pale green because the two colours work really well together, however even though we don't want a feminine colour, these colours were too light to make the big statement that we originally wanted so we decided not to use this colour scheme. Also the green isn't very dangerous or fierce so it didn't link with the previous themes we had created within out music video.
Colour scheme 2
This second colour scheme is very different to the one above because we tried to go for a completely different idea but still keeping the fading effect. The colours are purple, pink, red and orange, these are all very statement colours that stand out very well. But once we put all of these vibrant colours together we found that it was too much and the fading effect didn't work at all because there was too many colours that were too bright together., because of this the scheme created these lines that made the background look very blocked and the flow didn't work as well as we wanted it to. These are the reasons for why we decided not to chose this design.
Colour scheme 3
This colour scheme was the third one that we created, we used much cooler tones like the ice blue and the white and lilac which was very different to the warm tones that we used in the scheme before. We definitely preferred this undertone because you can use colours like purple and blue in a less feminine way to the warm colours. Even though we liked the cool tones, we still weren't too sure about using all of these colours together because we used blue, pink, purple and white which were a lot so the flow effect still didn't work the way we wanted it to so we decided that for the next design we will need to use less colours so that they don't block together.
Colour scheme 4
This colour scheme was the final one we made and the one we chose to use in our product. We chose this because the darkness really fitted with the theme we had in our video because we included many dark scenes which correlate with these colours. The way the purple effortlessly flows into the black also looks very natural which we made by using less colours so this time instead of using 4 colours we used 3, purple, dark blue and black. This scheme was also the best because it has the dark purple which is a very powerful colour which we want to show our artist to be, very powerful and strong.
Colour scheme 2
Colour scheme 3
This colour scheme was the third one that we created, we used much cooler tones like the ice blue and the white and lilac which was very different to the warm tones that we used in the scheme before. We definitely preferred this undertone because you can use colours like purple and blue in a less feminine way to the warm colours. Even though we liked the cool tones, we still weren't too sure about using all of these colours together because we used blue, pink, purple and white which were a lot so the flow effect still didn't work the way we wanted it to so we decided that for the next design we will need to use less colours so that they don't block together.
Colour scheme 4
Production schedule for music video
This is the production schedule that we made so that we had clear dates for when we were filming so that we could get it done quickly so we had enough time to make any changes that we may have needed and to edit the best we could,
Behind the scenes footage
This is some visual footage of us filming the music video in the abandoned warehouse which was the first time we went out to film
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)