Final Music Video

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

My brief for this project was to create a music video and ancillary products for a new and upcoming artist, using a song.

There were 3 people in my group, Rhiann Johal, Sumbal Mirza and myself.  

My role in the group was to overlook the technical editing side; we decided that it would be best to do what we were best at. My skills lie in the editing side of the project so I focused on that, Rhiann is very creative so she was in charge of the creative and Sumbal has had experience with cameras before, so she focused on filming and planning the camera angles.

I believe that our group worked well together, as we knew what were each other's strengths and weaknesses and we knew when to listen and who should have the final decision on what.  

The song that was used for my music video was ‘Glasshear’t by Leona Lewis which was released on the 12th October 2012. I believed that this song would be the best choice for the music video as the song’s genre is pop and dance so we would be able to rebrand it for a younger artist a lot easier than if it was an R’n’B or classical song. Also, Leona Lewis is a female and as myself and my other two group members are females, it would be easier for us to use a female artist as we would be able to understand the representations and conventions that would need to be applied to the artist and what the target audience would expect. 

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

My brief for this project was to create a music video and ancillary products for a new and upcoming artist, using a song of our choice that had already been released. 

A music video is the visual that the artist will released to accompany their song and it will be used to relay the artist’s message and vision for their song. There are many different purposes that a music video has. They are the following: 

1. A market tool to promote a artist/song 
2. A short narrative or representation of the artist 
3. To buy into the artist’s lifestyle 
4. To show the generic conventions of a genre/music video 
5. For the audience to remember the music video 
6. To build a relationship with the artist 
7. For the audience to understand more about a song 

I tried to follow all of these when considering the plan for the music video in the planning and research stage and below is my explanation of how I achieved these purposes;

1. From my research, I saw that the way that the artist is represented will lead to brand and marketing deals so this was very important. I decided that we had to make our artist, Marni look glamorous and unique as this would be her debut music video on her debut album, so this would be her first impression to the public. I achieved this through her costume and hair & make-up and I made sure that whilst we were filming, everything was clear and crisp, which would help to make the video more professional looking.

2. I wanted Marni to be shown to be strong yet be someone who the target audience can relate to, and I did this through the scenes where we see the artist upset and distraught about the break up yet she has performance shots where she is standing strong and she is happy.

3. Buying into a artist's lifestyle is where you show their personality and the record label will put products that fans can buy as they would believe that the artist like & uses them. For this music video, I didn't have any product placement as it was her debut music video and typically, a artist wouldn't have any brand deals and would be more focused on developing themselves musically and gaining a fan base before bringing brands and products into their music videos.

4. There are many different codes & conventions for the pop music genre and the target audience would expect to see these in my music video. I tried to follow all the main conventions but some of them, I adapted and changed to make them more suitable to fit with my ideas that I thought of in the planning stages and there are some that I didn't do at all. Below, I will explain my decisions and why I felt that it would be best to do with the convention for my music video and ancillary products.

Follows the convention:

• Colour scheme - In my music video & ancillary product, I had a colour scheme that I kept throughout the entire project. It was decided in the planning stage that red, pink & purple would be the primary colours and gold & silver would be used as secondary colours. This was done to keep everything consistent and I chose the primary colours as they are conventional colours that you would expect to see in a music video from a female teenage pop artist. Also, these would appeal to the target audience which would be young female, who are the stereotypically target audience for a pop artist, whether they are a male or female artist.
• Camera Angles - Another conventional pop action that I put in the music video was the shots that we had of our artist, Marni singing directly to the camera in a close up shot. This is conventional as many pop artist will use this kind of shot to convey the artist's emotions and feeling to the audience better and this will be done to help keep the relationship between the artist & the viewer deep and strong. it will also help to keep the viewer feeling like they can relate to the artist too. This was kept in the ancillary products too as we had images from our photo shoot of just Marni's face with nothing else but background., which helps to keep the artist the main focus too.

• Theme - The theme for the 'Glassheart' song was love and this was used in both the music video and the ancillary products. In the music video, there were scene of the artist with her love interest and she was holding hearts and smashing them and everything revolved around the break up and the break down of the love between the two characters. The ancillary products were made to promote the artist's debut album, which was called 'Falling for You'. This suggests that the album will have love songs on it and this was further shown through the graphics on the magazine advert. There were faint hearts placed on the background of the magazine advert and on one of the slides on the digipak, the artist is holding a heart away from herself & everything is blurred apart from the artist and the heart, which would convey to the audience that the heart as well as the artist are important.
• Editing - The styles that I used when editing were conventional to the electro pop genre. There was slow editing with less shot changes when the artist is singing and the song is in the different versions, where it will switch from narrative to performance. When the chorus and dance beat is playing, the editing is shown to be more fast paced, with quicker changes and a lot more different shorter clips. This is conventional as it helps the viewer to see what to anticipate for the audio of the song, i.e. if the video has quicker editing, they know the song is in the chorus and if it is slower, they will expect it to be in the verse stage of the song.

Challenges the convention:

• No dance routine - In a pop or electronic song, the viewer might expect to see a dance sequence around the time of the last chorus as this is what is shown in many pop music videos. However, there is no dance sequence in the 'Glassheart' music video and this is because the music video is more about the relationship between the two characters and how the artists deals with the heart break and I felt that having a dance sequence wouldn't make sense and would just pull away the focus from what I was trying to convey to the audience with the narrative and concept.

An adaption of the convention:

• Costume - Our artist was dressed conventionally in glamorous clothes for the performances and casual clothes when we filmed to show the past events in the relationship but for the performance outfits, whilst they were glamorous and dressy, they weren't figure hugging and didn't show off her body. Stereotypically, in a pop music video, it is expected for a female character to show off their body as this will help to appeal to the male audience members and from my research, I found that this was realistic and many artists do it and wear as little as possible to attract more audience members, which can help to generate sales.
• Teenage love - Whilst our artist is the same age as her target audience and is a teenager herself, the relationship is shown to be more mature in the music video and isn't shown to be like a pop teenage love where everything goes well and is all happily ever after. The music video shows a more realistic side to a relationship and how it can affect you if something goes wrong and it is more conventional to show happy, good times that are more fake and unrealistic that to show a more mature love that the audience may not have experienced or understand yet. 

5. In order to make a music video memorable, it needs to be different to the other videos that are being shown in the same music genre or that are popular at the time of release. or this, I needed to recognise the main odes & conventions needed, which I discussed in the previous point, and to go above and beyond those points 

6. One of my main objectives for this music video was to make it so that the audience would feel like they could relate to Marni, the artist, whilst having her being shown to be a real music artist who deserves her record deal and is unique to other artists in the pop and electronic genres. I did this though her costume, as she was in very glamorous, sequin full outfits when in the performance segments but she is shown in normal everyday average clothes when in the scenes with her love interest. 

7. The music video is what helps the audience to understand the hidden messages and meanings that a artist might have for their song which didn't come across in the audio. In the glassheart music video, I filmed shots where we were smashing up glass hearts to help relate back to the title & to also help the audience understand the heart break and emotions behind the lyrics.

Another thing that must be considered for a music video is the style. There are 3 types that a music video can be; Performance, Narrative & Concept. Many videos will be a mixture of 2 or 3 of the styles and it is very rare to have a music video with just one of these styles. 

As a group, we decided that our video would be 20% narrative, 30% concept & 50% performance, which we managed to follow in our final product.

Final Group Advert

Final Group Digipak