1. Evaluation 1: In what ways
does your media product use,
develop or change forms and
conventions of real media?
Emma Tonkinson
2. We were selling a brand as well as the single, so we had to take into account how
our solo female artist was portrayed. We were heavily influenced by other artists
that fitted in the ‘pop’ genre and we found a variety of different images from
Google to use as guidance when it came to filming, this gave us an idea of what
sort of hair and makeup was suitable, and what style suited the genre. This made
it much easier because we had planned ahead and could just refer back to the
images as a guide of what we needed to do. As our target audience were teenage
girls, we found that we couldn’t make Lauren too ‘sexy’ because it would be
promoting the wrong message, however we had a subtle use of voyeurism which
was good at promoting our brand because it still had a slight sex appeal to older
people but it was very understated. As our genre of music was pop, we wanted to
combine characteristics of a party girl through the use of hair, makeup and dress
code; also we made sure our visual effects matched the theme. Our dress code
was pretty simple and basic because we just wanted to represent a normal girl
getting ready to go out, however once she is dressed and ready for her party, we
see a much stronger character which she signifies her sexual empowerment. On
the whole, our theme was to keep the style dark, our main character dresses in
mainly blacks or dark colours which coordinated with the night time feel of the
video. However, we used different coloured lipsticks for different shots as a way of
breaking up the style; this was the only bright colours than Lauren had, because
we kept everything else sticking to the dark theme. The shots of her friends in the
video also match up to the theme by dressing only in dark colours or whites in
some shots, nothing too vibrant that would detract from Lauren.
4. We used Jessie J’s music video ‘It’s My Party’ and the actual music video of our
song ‘All About Tonight’ as inspiration. It gave us the codes and conventions of a
typical pop video which we used it as a guide when we were creating our own.
We found that looking at the real music video for our song was particularly
helpful because it made the story much easier to envisage, we used it when we
were stuck on what style suited the song and what we should include in the
video. This helped in constructing our own idea of what we wanted our version
to look like, and with the help of Jessie J’s music video, we got some new ideas
and a different perspective of what a pop music video should be like.
Its My Party
Jessie J
All About Tonight
Pixie Lott
T
5. The locations we chose for our music video was partly in reference to the music video
originally made for the song ‘All About Tonight’. We used inspiration from the real
video, and took guidance from the lyrics of the song too which made us chose to film
in places like in the middle of town, she’s dressed in casual clothes and this is because
she is shopping to find her outfit to wear tonight, also we see her at home with her
friends all dressed up and drinking, this is a clear sign that she is ready to go out and
enjoy herself. This gave off the impression that the song is all based on a night out as
she’s just broken up with her boyfriend and is ready to party, our locations have slight
narrative in showing that she is getting ready for the night, however we didn’t make
our song purely narrative which meant that we could use random settings too, like
when we see Lauren singing behind a white screen which has strobe light effects. This
doesn’t necessarily link to the song but we felt that it fitted well, also it looks like it has
a slight ‘drug’ look to it but it is very subtle and our younger audience wouldn’t
recognise this.
6. Due to the song being called ‘All About Tonight’ we decided to base
our music video around the night, having shots of Lauren putting on
makeup or out in the high street shopping for outfits, we also see
her drinking in a cab on the way to a club. These scenes made the
narrative much easier to understand. A lot of our influence came
from the actual video for the song ‘All About Tonight’, an example of
something we used from that video was at the beginning when we
see a pan shot of the city at night, we also use this at the beginning
of our song when we display the title, you can subtly see Pixie Lott’s
eyes in her shot whereas we didn’t use this idea because we didn’t
want it to be completely the same.
7. We had learnt from experience that filming on a good quality
camera is essential. In year 12 we used an iPhone 4 which
didn’t have bad quality but by the time it came to year 13 we
knew we wanted something a bit more advanced so we used
the new iPhone 6 which had a much clearer camera and many
more effects on it such as slow motion etc. Compared to last
year we were much more driven and this was reflected in our
work, we made sure to film all of our footage early so that we
could start editing as soon as possible and we had a set plan
about what editing software was best suited for us. As our
song fell in the ‘pop’ genre, we went down the route of
upbeat shots that change every few seconds, we had a lot of
close ups and club scenes. This fitted the codes and
conventions of a pop song because typically they are songs
you would dance to and therefore a lot of music videos
contain footage of clubs/parties to highlight the theme of a
pop song.
8. For our album cover, we decided to keep it fairly simple because although our
song is quite upbeat, we felt that Lauren as an artist generally sings love songs
rather than party songs and we wanted the album cover to represent the artist
as a whole rather than just the song we created. On the front cover, we have a
plain white background with pale pink font and a picture of an extreme close up
of Lauren, we didn’t want our album to be bright and vibrant because we felt it
may look tacky and not match the conventions of our song or Lauren as an artist
therefore we went for a simple design that looked classy and would catch the
right target audiences eye. The digipak also included different pictures of Lauren
that are faded into each other, they are different parts of the song so it gives off
an idea of what is expected in the actual music video. These pictures are all
taken in different angles, for example we have a long shot of her and then a close
up shot of just her face next to it, also we have used different lighting for
different pictures on the album cover, some are black and white but our back
picture has blue in it therefore it shows different vibes of the song. Image is a
crucial part when trying to sell an artist, without a good image you can’t sell a
brand so we tried to have the same image as Pixie Lott, this is why we went for a
basic, girly digipak. We felt this was a true reflection of the brand we were trying
to sell – pretty and elegant. Although we also wanted a slight sex appeal to the
older male audience so on the front cover she is pouting which could be seen as
quite seductive but subtle and not noticeable to the younger audience.
