EVALUATION Write-up - Lauren Wright

Fragmentation of the body

My media product can be compared to many real popular music videos as it incorporates common motifs that from conducting research I found were popular amongst my target audience. My music video includes a party scene, as the majority of favoured music videos contain ritual celebration. However, I challenged the conventions of real music videos by adding controversial motifs my own video. The first of these being sexual objectification, this is where people within the video are seen as sexual objects  and portrayed in my music video as the artist is frequently acting provocatively in front of the camera. Examples of this would be when the artist is laying on the bed or when she pulls herself towards the other girl as though they are about to kiss. This aspect in particular challenges conventions of real media products as there is an insinuation that there is attraction between the two girls. Another technique I used was fragmentation of the body; these are close-ups of the artist’s body parts, such as a close-up of her lips when she’s applying lip gloss or of her legs when she is putting on her stockings. This adds to the controversial side of the video due to fact that she is singing about kissing a girl whilst presenting herself in a sexual way which stands out when compared to current music videos.

Bright, feminine design of the website

Pop art effect of the album cover

In my opinion, my main product and ancillary texts work effectively alongside eachother. I believe that the main media product is complimented by all the other pieces of coursework as they are all influenced by the image that we initially wanted to create for the artist. The image we were looking to create for her was a feminine fun-loving attitude with a cheeky, controversial side. We incorporated into the website details such as bright pastel colours and a ‘girly’ cloud theme in order for it to fit in with our ideal image of the artist. I presented the cheeky side of the artist in the cd cover I created by using an image of the artist with her finger covering her lips insinuating that she has a secret to keep, this works well with narrative of the music video where the artist is attempting to hide the fact that she has kissed another girl. Within the video we have used editing techniques such as a pink tint and a pop art effect; these mirrored the effects used on the images for cd cover, which creates a professional ‘house style’ amongst the different texts.

Ritual celebration aspects in the video, favoured by the audience

From the audience feedback, I have learned the importance of a strong narrative. After carrying out research prior to making the video, it was clear that the majority of people asked favoured a narrative in a music video. Therefore, I thought it vital that a narrative was included in my music video and from the results of the audience feedback, it was clear that this was necessary as the responses show that the narrative was one of the most popular aspects of the video.  Another popular aspect in the video was ritual celebration, initially from the results of the research; a party scene in a music video was the most popular motif. Within my music video, the scenes including ritual celebration were a factor which kept the audience interested. On the other hand, I feel I included too many shots of the party scene and if I were to be given the opportunity to improve the video I would replace some of the party scenes with scenes that added to the video’s narrative to avoid the audience losing interest. One of the questions in the initial research found that controversy was a popular motif within music videos, so I included an ambiguous narrative, keeping the audience unsure as to whether the artist was sexually attracted to the other girl. This unusual narrative was seen as controversial by the test audience; however they also said that this was a good addition to the video and kept them watching the entire video. The test audience finally stated that they liked the website, cd cover and music video all portrayed a feminine, fun image of the artist which meant I had achieve my goal of create that image through my media products.

Adobe Photoshop

The radiospot in Adobe Premiere

The media technologies used in the planning stage of were mostly the computer, this was because I had to conduct a large amount of research on past music videos, controversial music videos and about the artist that I chose, Katy Perry. Therefore, I had to use many websites to gather information that would be useful when creating all of my products. When planning my music video, I created a storyboard to distinguish between different scenes and shots, in order to transfer the storyboard onto the blog, I used a scanner to scan the images onto the computer. Also, another part of the planning process was to create a master catalog and calender, I used Celtx to do so and due to the fact that I also had to create these items for my AS Media last year, it was much quicker and easier to make this year. As part of the construction stage there were many technologies used. To create the website, I used the programme iWeb on the computer as I found it was the programme to use easiest use. To construct the music video and the evaluation video, I used video camera to film all the clips, in order to edit the clips and merge them all together to form the music video, I used Adobe Premiere. For the radiospot, I used Garageband on an iMac to record and edit it. Then, to export it, I transferred it into Adobe Premiere and made it into a video.  Finally, to create the album covers, we used cameras to take the images of the artist and then to edit them and construct the covers, I used Adobe Photoshop. For the evaluation, I had to produce many podcasts explaining the products, and discussing any problems that I had occurred throughout the process, to do so i used Photobooth on an iMac.