EVALUATION

Advanced Portfolio Critical Evaluation...

I have created a music video to accompany the song entitled ‘That’s how strong my love is’ by signed and highly successful artist, Alicia Keys. My plan was to create a video that portrayed a different side to the artist than what would normally be expected, showing an emotion story of personal loss and subsequent heartbreak. My idea was to focus on the artist as a normal person, rather than a celebrity, showing how the loss of a loved one can entice deep emotion and cause devastation, which is what celebrities tend to hide away from the prying eyes of fans.  I have incorporated some of the usual codes and conventions of a music video including shot lengths that match the rhythm of the music, close up shots of the artist, lip syncing so that the music matched the moving image, location change and performance.  However, due to the fact that I was focussing on the personal side of the artist, I avoided the usual ‘glitz and glamour’ by not using strong make up or outfit choices, which helped emphasize the fact that she was a normal person just like everyone else.  In addition to this, I included a narrative to commence and end before and after the actual song itself. This was to entice the audience in to the silence. For example, if a potential audience member was doing work whilst having a music channel on in the background, the long silence would make them want to look up, and then they would potentially be drawn in to the music video by the narrative. An example of this in an existing piece is Lady Gaga and Rhianna's 'Telephone'.

To compliment the music video, I also created a CD cover and website in order to advertise and sell my product. In my opinion these items worked well in expressing the theme and emotion shown in the music video. My CD cover consisted of an image of the actress which I added effects to make it look blurred, to reflect her emotion. I believe that the art stands out very well and would attract potential customers in a shop. I made the titles colours match the image which I think worked well. I was very pleased with the final project and think it related to my music video well. I aimed for my website to also show the personal side of the artist by basing it on a blog like format, and the blog entry that is accessible on the home page is very personal and shows her feeling on a matter close to her heart. I incorporated links to Facebook and twitter in order to create a community within the product.

My intended target audience is a mixture of teenage girls, and middle aged women. I gained my audience feedback through posting my video on Facebook and Youtube and then asking people to fill in a survey of what they saw. I asked both males and females of different ages to gain a good sample of feedback. The feedback i gained showed that some people didnt quite understand the fact that the male role had died in warfare, so in response to this, i included the image of a poppy at the end of my video which made the narrative clearer to the audience. Apart from this the audience feedback i gained was really good. However, in my opinion, i feel that my music video wasnt as good as it could have been but the audience feedback didnt reflect this.

In relation to this, I do not feel that this process is entirely reliable as I feel that some people will just put good comments so that they will not hurt my feelings, or feel embarrased.

In order to create my piece, i have used such technologies as imovie, photoshop, imovie and blogger. These applications enabled me to create my media texts easily. I found imovie very easy to use, and the most difficult was photoshop as it is so detailed and technical. One media technology that i used to include in my piece was the college's green screen. I used this to create a news report and i believe it worked very well. To research and plan the creation of my piece, I researched exsisting music videos by using You Tube. This enabled me too look at how genres effect my creativity and gained ideas that I was then able to adapt to my own piece. The hardest thing i found was using photoshop as it is so complicated, but in the end I was extremely pleased with the outcome of my cd cover. 

cd cover....

Audience Feedback...middle aged woman (target audience)

Audience Feedback...

THE FINAL MUSIC VIDEO

THE FINAL MUSIC VIDEO

Planning folder docs...

An example of one of the four recees I did in the locations I was intending to shoot. These were useful in finding how suitable the location would be as well as allowing me to think how the scene would be in my head.

 Part of the story board. This was very important and was crucial when it came to editing. I split each scene with a green line and highlighted where the performance was in order to make it easier for myself. This also gave me small targets to work towards which seemed to make the task easier.

 This initial run through of what I wanted to happen was useful as it allowed my to put my ideas down on paper and formed the basis of my storyboard.

 Planning schedule for my original actress although it wasn't used when I became the actress as it wasn't necessary.

A webite analysis. I did 5 of these individually for each artist similar to Alicia Keys. The website pictures are posted earlier.

Working on my own...

So at the beginning of the year, I made the decision to work on my own, rather than in a group. I made this choice because I generally work better on my own. In addition to this, last year I felt it hard to work in a group for numerous reasons:

1. The majority of the students live in Nottingham, whereas I live in Derbyshire, which made it hard to meet up. especially when it snows and all the transport stops.
2. If you work in a group it is sometimes hard to make sure your ideas are heard and used, and I had a very strong idea of what I wanted my video to be this year.
3. Working on my own meant less time working and more time getting on with it.
4. I knew that the grade I get is mine and mine alone. I will feel like I have achieved more.
5. I find it hard to work with new people a lot and i would take me a long time to fit in and concentrate.

Therefore I have done all the planning, shooting, directing and editing myself.
his has been hard because I obviously have 3 peoples work to do in the same time. However, if I had the choice again, I would choose to work on my own again, as I believed I have worked much better than I would have done in a group, and I am pleased and proud of the work I have produced myself.

Changes, stress, complications, holdups...

A lot has happened since my last blog., before the christmas holidays- both good and bad I suppose.  Firstly, due to other commitments, it was hard for me and Sophie to get together a lot, so I finally decided to continue the music video with me as the main character. Obviously this posed the initial problem of having to re-shoot the parts I had already done, but on the upside, I feel the emotion between me and Seth will have benefited from this change as we are a couple so there is no embarrassment, and we can easily show the love :) This left me with a short amount of time to shoot and edit, but thankfully, my organized preparation paid off as i found it much easier to shoot what I needed and shot my whole film in a matter of days over the christmas period. The hardest part was setting up the camera myself, for me to also be in the shot. However, I believed it has worked well.
Now, for the not so good things. Firstly, after editing the majority of my video, the mac I was working on unexpectedly closed imovie meaning that all my work was lost. This happened on numerous occasions which lost me a lot of time, and there was obviously nothing I could do as the technicians had tried to fix it numerous times. Following this (like I needed any more bad luck) the camera that i was using for a following shoot apparently needed 'cleaning', resulting in all my work to have grey lines across it. As this was down to the camera and tape, it could not be fixed which meant that I had to re-shoot all the work again, and more importantly, lost a lot of valuable time in the editing suite.
Relating to this, as we share macs throughout both years, it is extremely hard to get any time on them out of lesson time.
So after all this trauma I am finding it difficult to finish my work on time but am trying my very best, waiting in the mac suite for any possible chance of editing.