EVALUATION QUESTION 4 How did you use media techonologies in the construction, research , planning and evaluation stages?

In the construction of our music video we used many different media technologies including the internet, the editing software Final Cut Pro, video cameras, tripods , Adobe PhotoShop to edit our digi pack photographs and our poster photo and the mobile phone to show the protagonist receving the break-up text from her boyfriend. We also used Hotmail to email questionnaires to our target audience regarding the music video to receive feedback.

RESEARCH AND PLANNING
In the research and planning of our music video, we first needed to decide what sort of video we wanted to film. We wanted to film something fairly straight forward and from our research of looking at videos on websites such as YouTube where they show all videos, we came to the conclusion that videos that look quite straightforward to film and produce are HipHop ones as they run a theme of urban genre.

We researched HipHop music videos and decided that How to Love by Lil Wayne would be the best to do as we liked the meaning of the song and decided a narrative to match the meaning would be fairly straightforward for this song. We then used the search engine Google to do some research on Lil Wayne and his songs and noticed he followed the same sort of conventions for all of his music videos, theyre quite minimalistic and natural, always with a theme.

After looking at what sort of locations there were in HipHop music videos, we noticed that they are urban locations e.g town centres, council estates, the streets, so we too decided to use these sorts of locations and used a digital camera to go to the locations of Hulme Park, Alexandra Park Estate and the Manchester town centre to take photographs of where would film.

We then uploaded these images via USB onto the Apple Macs onto Blogger and analysed them. Throughout the research we used Blogger to record what research we were carrying out. Storyboarding our ideas for the video meant we had to again use the digital camera to take photos of the storyboard and upload them onto the Blogger and any research we did on music videos of our genre we had to upload onto Blogger and analyse. Screen grabs of shots from certain music videos were uploaded to show examples.

CONSTRUCTION
In the construction of our music video we used a camcorder to film our scenes and a tripod to keep the balance of the person filming for quality shots and for pan shots, zooms, tracking shots, high angle shots and low angle shots.

Final Cut Pro software on the Apple Macs was used in post production to allow us to change the shots to black and white, to add in effects (such as the rewind effect), fades, dissolves, bright rays and shot rotation.

We needed a mobile phone as a prop for the start of our music video which was a BlackBerry.

In order to keep in touch and decide when to allocate days for filming and days for post production we all kept in touch via social networking sites such as Facebook, and our mobile phones.





















EVALUATION
In the evaluation stage, we decided to do a director's commentary (posted in a separate post) touching up on a couple of things we did to make our video how it was. We also used Hotmail to email out questionnaires to our target audience (posted in Q3).our picture done.

EVALUATION QUESTION 3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience appreciate our video a lot and can relate to it, however, they believe a few things could have been added/improved. Below are some screen grabs of what our audience said, we asked boys and girls that meet our age range as they are our target audience, from all backgrounds, races and genders.

We decided to keep our questionnaire anonymous as sociologists have proved that by sending out anonymous questionnaires, people are more truthful and we would like honest opinions. We emailed out the questionnaires to our friends along with the music video and below are the best responses-the below responses answered the same as 75% of the people we sent the questionnaires out to, so below are the average answers that our target audience gave.

A lot of people liked the rewind of the girl laughing at herself for being so upset over someone not worth thinking about-we knew the rewind would be effective as a lot of teenagers go through relationship problems and it feels nice to be over somebody and moving on, and any teenagers that watch this music video and put themselves in the protagonist's position will like the fact there is a happy ending and she's over him, the rewind shows her looking back at herself seeing how upset she was over the break-up and then we show the present, with her laughing at the text that her boyfriend had sent at the beginning. The rewind was done on Final Cut Pro through the effects tool.

The bit of the video when the protagonist's friend is consoling her in the chapel could have been done better but was only a short shot. We didn't want the hug to look too friendly, as we were still trying to show that the girl is feeling lonely but if her friend looked very caring and friendly it would jeopardise the effect, however, if we were to do this shot again, we would maybe film the protagonist in a classroom with her head in her hands and a classmate walking past and patting her on the back as she walks to show that the protagonist is still lonely as our audience have got the wrong message from this shot and think it was supposed to be a friendly scene.

The medium shot of this audience member's favourite scene had to be used as we did want the audience to see that she was happy, relaxed, comfortable and ready to move on with her life and we were succesfull in doing this from the above answer.

The park scene was successful as we needed to show her thinking about the text that she had just received and showed her walking around trying to let the news sink in and think about her break-up, trying to gain closure and reminisce.

A lot of our audience members disliked the shot of the tram and the fountains in town for the same reason (didn't see a relevence) and we can see where they are coming from because it requires deep thinking to see that we fimed these shots to show that a) the tram shot showed she was going away to clear her head, and this was blurred into the fountain shot which shows that this is where she went which could suggest to the audience that she has gone to this romantic spot to reminisce about the good times between herself and her ex boyfriend, but clearly this was not clear to our audience and if we were to do this video again, we would take out these shots and instead replace them with shots of her with another male actor (acting as her ex boyfriend) in a diner or somewhere nice holding hands and looking loved up and we would show this as a flashback which would make more sense to our target audience and this is what this particular audience member says could be improved.

The park scene was successful because of the continuity as this audience member has pointed out, and when filming, we knew the long shots would be the best thing to use in these shots to show the location-the fact that you can see the council estates etc in the background connotes that her world is quite less well-off because of her background and now her boyfriend's split up with her things are even harder for her, so it adds to the dullness of what her world is like at this moment in time.

The burning of the letters is successful with our target audience because of the fact that if the audience put themselves in the protagonist's position, they would be happy that they are finally over their break-up and is happy about moving on and our protagonist is removing all memory of him from her life by burning the letters so we knew that the close-ups we used during this shot to put emphasis on her actions would be successful.

This is another audience member that didn't see any relevence to the tram and fountain shots and the reason for this has already been mentioned above for the first questionnaire and ways to improve has also already been mentioned above for the first question.

Brightness was an issue with this audience member, however we didn't want to make the fire too bright or the part where the girl smiles about being over her boyfriend going from black and white to colour too bright as it would not fit with the dull/urban mise-en-scene running throughout the video and we wanted to stay consistent.

EVALUATION QUESTION 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When doing our research on music videos, we decided that we wanted to do something simple, so when looking at the different genres of music we came to the conclusion that videos that had the genre of hiphop, RnB and Indie has the most simplistic videos. The original Lil Wayne video is a simple video with a little glamour added to it as Lil Wayne is a huge star. We then looked at A Team by Ed Sheeran, which is a completely different genre but is a very simple video so for this reason we decided to use inspiration from this-the theme of black and white running all the way through the video to highlight the bleakness of the protagonist’s life, matching with a black and white album cover and black and white pictures inside the digi pack which is the same theme as the A Team video.

We decided to use black and white all the way through the video to make the theme of gloom and bleakness more effective because of the storyline. The storyline is a gloomy storyline because of the fact that the protagonist’s boyfriend split up with her and her world has come crashing down. We also decided to make the poster and digi pack in this black and white colour as it would match to the video and would make fans of the video more aware that the CD is the music of the How to love video. The poster being this colour would also be easier for the fans to recognise.
We decided to keep the poster and album cover the same because of the fact that from our research, we noticed that a lot of artists used the same images for the album cover and the poster. Below is an image of the poster advertising the album.

























Here is the image of the poster


From these, we can see that the album cover and poster are the same so the audience and fans can recognise them. Another good thing from keeping these the same is that if fans and the target audience see these album covers everywhere in stores that sell them, and then see billboards that are advertising the album cover with the same image, they will become more familiar with the product, it will be more ‘in-your-face’ and more easy to remember to buy.

Not only did we use the same image across the poster and album cover but we used the same fonts for ‘Lil Wayne’ and ‘How to love’ to keep consistency.

As our target audience is males and female of the ages from 13-19, we decided to put the protagonist who is a young girl of seventeen years as old as the central picture for the poster and digi pack so the target audience can see this image and think that this is music aimed/for their age range. The protagonist is a female who is wearing a hoody which is quite masculine so would again appeal to both genders and show that it is unisex. She is of an Asian race so ethnic minorities can also relate to this and this is why is it aimed at absolutely everybody from all races and backgrounds from the age of 13-19 and would successfully sell.

EVALUATION QUESTION 1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video is of the HipHop genre, so for this reason we researched other music videos of the same genre after first looking at the original music video of How to Love. The video presents the harsh life a child can face due to dysfunctional family and parenting. We liked the idea of the singer just singing and not acting in the video, as if he was telling the story of this little girl and we decided to keep a similar theme. We then looked at other HipHop videos and noticed that this is the theme they followed-the artist or singer would usually be singing about something or someone but not actually appear in the video themself. We realised the video had a slow tempo which is conventional for a HipHop track and that HipHop videos include an intro, middle and end narrative, which we decided to do also. We came up with the idea of a relationship failure where the boyfriend finds someone else. The opening sequence of the protagonist receiving a text from him telling her its over set the topic marker for the video and the rest of the video is about her walking around upset, reminiscing and seeking closure.















< The close-up shot of the text that the protagonist received

Towards the end she realises he isn't worth being upset over and burns the letters he sent to her while they were in the relationship to erase all memory of him. As the protagonist starts to realise he isn't worth being upset over and is finally over the break-up, there’s a reverse re-wind of the video back to the opening shot where she receives the text but this time her reaction is different and shows a strong attitude (she laughs at the text). We took this rewind idea from Lil Wayne’s original video. This idea of a relationship failure and a breakup is usually in real music videos produced by real artists. The shots we have used to show emotions the character is experiencing in the video are real quality shots such as close-up shots for facial expressions and shots that need paying attention to such as the burning of the letters that are usually used in real music videos. The mood and the storyline of our music video is seen in many music videos that have been produced by many artists such as in the video ‘A team’ by Ed Sheeran and ‘Invisible’ by Skylar Grey, where the video is about one character and throughout the video emotions, mood and thoughts are expressed. This is shown through the protagonist's acting, we used medium shots to show her with her head down in the park when she was on the swing with her body looking limp, and her shoulders hunched.

Below is an image of the protagonist burning the letters which was done through a medium shot to show her physicality.













Below is an image of the letters burning which was done through a close-up shot to emphasise that the protagonist is removing all memory of her ex-boyfriend.













Close up shots were used when the protagonist was crying so we could see her tears. We looked at different locations in Manchester to film. We wanted an urban area to match the urban genre of HipHop and the mise-en-scene of our music video is urban. We filmed in a deserted park in Hulme as we thought it would fit in with the mood of the song and the urban mise-en-scene. Only 3 locations were chosen which follows the convention of real HipHop music videos as HipHop musical videos have a very few variety of locations to keep it as naturalistic as possible. The fountains in Piccadilly gardens were also filmed as the protagonist was reminiscing about the times she'd spent with her ex boyfriend here as the fountains are viewed as a romantic place for lovers especially teenagers who are video is aimed at and during winter where the weather is cold and more dull which also reflects the mood of the video. At this location we also took advantage of the presence of trams and took a long shot of one passing in front of the protagonist and the protagonist disappears which is a 'now you see her, now you don't' shot which shows how one minute, someone can be there in your life, and the next minute, they are gone. This follows a convention of HipHop music videos as they often contain little anecdotes in them such as the 'one minute someone can be in your life and the next they may be gone' anecdote like ours and has a clever way of showing it like ours. The protagonist feels worthless and invisible as if the existence of trams doesn't really mean much . We used low-key lighting to show the cold emotions and the depressed mood she is in due to the breakup.











< Here is an example of the close-up shot of the protagonist wiping her eyes to show the audience she is crying

Below in a screenshot of the long shot we filmed of the fountains in Piccadilly gardens to connote romance which the protagonist knows she will no longer get.













The actor was dressed in casual clothes, no bright colours instead we picked darker colours like black and brown also used nude make-up and simple hair style, which emphasises the sad mood of the story and represents her weak position and her being the victim. It also matches with the dull mise-en-scene. The video was mainly black and white all the way through till the end where it changes to colour when she is happy and over the breakup. The black and white colours are to present the vulnerable, weak character and then at the end colour is introduced to present life and happiness and that's when the character realises everything's okay and is with agreement with the breakup. In terms of editing, HipHop music videos keep 'real' and naturalistic and use minimal special effects as they often contain a hidden meaning e.g ours has the fact that one minute a person can be in your life and the next minute they can be gone theme running through it, but the bottom line is you must always stay happy and move on, and pick yourself up which again follows the 'life-goes-on' endings of HipHop videos. The original video contained the message of getting an education and giving the best start in life for your children or you will face harsh consequences. As HipHop music videos contain urban themes, they cannot be glamourised with special effects and studio effects therefore we did not use the studio at all and kept the special effects to a minimum. The only effects we used were the brightenening of the water fountains to show how beautiful love is and the black and white effect running all the way through but changing to colour towards the end when the protagonist is now happy and moving on. The only other effect was the rewind. From all of the above, our music video clearly follows the conventions of HipHop music videos from the way in which we keep the effects minimilistic, contain a message in our video, and stick with the urban mise-en-scene throughout.

Below is an image of an example of what the protagonist was wearing.

Director's Commentary

Development in Our CD design

We played around on Photoshop of a close up on the actors face. We adjusted the contrast and brightness of the photo to make it look more editorial and professional. The running themes throughout the video is black and white so we decided to keep the CD cover also in black and white, however we liked the idea of the background being colored and just the person being black and white.

The original Lil Wayne How to Love Album cover