Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Final Focus Group


After completing the music video we wanted to film a response from our target audience (16-17) whilst they watched the production.  We asked questions about what they liked within the music video and if they understood the narrative.

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Directors Commentary



Music Video Commentary Script

Song/Artist: ‘Good Girls’ 5 Seconds of Summer

Created by: Hana, Chloe, Taslima


0:00 – 0.31 seconds 
Scene: Girl in bedroom getting ready.
(Introduce group)
The video beginning is set in the girl’s bedroom. We wanted to create a girly atmosphere and show shots of different items in her room so that it can relate to our teenage girl audience and almost “welcome them”. 
To keep to the upbeat rhythm of the song, we changed shots often. 

0:31 – 0:50 seconds
Scene: Girl sneaking out house and meeting with her boyfriend. 
We decided that the actress should sneak out of the door instead of the window due to safety reasons. We show a wide mid shot of the boy whilst he waits to emphasize his loneliness without the girl. Then to add to the effect more, when the girl comes, the shot is close up as she walks. It almost looks slow motion and which gives further impact. The shot is wide again as soon as the couple embraces each other.  
This shot shows the back of the boy and the girls face as she ‘winks’. This expresses her secret bad girl attitude. 
The shot of the couple is wide and then there is another shot that is closer as they get physically closer too. This gives a closer more intimate feel for the audience. 

0:50 – 1:04 minutes 
Scene: Girl studying in library. Boy walks in and they meet. 
A mid shot of the girl studying followed by a behind the shoulder close up of her “study book” was shown to show the audience that she is not studying but drawing. This again expresses the bad girl behavior that we wanted to subtly imply throughout the video. 
A mid shot was used for the boy’s entrance to almost slow down his movement in contrast to the song to give a ‘grand entrance’ feel. 

1:06 – 1:08 minutes
Scene: Hand to camera. 
As the couples cover the camera with their hand, we added a distorted effect on final cut pro to look as if the tape got damaged.  

1:11 – 1:17 minutes
Scene: At the library, hidden behind a book. 
A wide shot was used to show the couple mischievously hiding behind a book. We placed a bookshelf behind them to emphasize the school setting and add colour to the shot. The shot adds humour to the video.

1:20 – 1:33 minutes
Scene: At the back of the school/Grease
We chose to shoot this scene beside an edgy background to reflect the rebellious attitude.  The body language and behavior in this part was influenced by a scene from ‘Grease’, which also connotes a similar meaning as the song. This creates entertainment. 

1:33 – 1:41 minutes
Scene: Park Documentary/ Self footage. 
To engage the audience further we included self-footage that the couple took. This is entertaining to watch as we get to know them more personally. To make it obvious that they are self-footage, the quality is different to the other scenes.  
The shots (of the boy) here are almost similar to how fashion adverts are shot. It appeals to the audience and syncs with the beat of the music. 

1:46 – 1:56 minutes
Scene: Photos
To suit the pace of this moment of the song, we decided to use photos. We added a frame onto the photos in final cut pro to make it look as if they are the couple’s own photos.

1:59 – 2:06 minutes
Scene: Girl putting on red lipstick. 
As the music builds up, we show different shots of the girl putting on dark red lipstick to connote romance and rebellious behavior as red is usually a colour used for warnings. The props were picked precisely, such as the heart shaped sunglasses, to look fun and appeal to the genre and audience. 

2:06 – 2:40 minutes 
Scene: In Camden 
We establish the location with an iconic part of the area ‘the Camden Bridge’. The upbeat vibe and setting in Camden gave the shots a colourful and fun look as well as fit the music.  It looks happy. The various shots show the couple together having fun. The shots change quick in able to look lively and engage the audience more.  Again, there are more self-footage shots to allow the audience to get more personal with the characters. 

2:47 – 3:02 
Scene: Final Shots/ White Background 

We decided to film the final shots with a white background. The boy wears a red bandanna to fit into the cool rock genre of the song and to suit the girl. The couple carry on having fun and the action is sped up so that it feels more exciting and lively. Instead of text credits in the end, we decided to show each crew member holding up a clapper board with their name on it.

Before Focus Group


We decided to show both the second draft and final version of our music video to our target audience (14-5), for them to see the changes and to compare them. We planned out questions to ask them after each video was played. We got some good responses such as: 

  • "It's cute." - This comment is good because we had aimed for it to look like this.
  • "The footage where they have their own camera was effective and good."
  • " I like the photograph sequence
  • They also said that they would watch it if it appeared on TV.  
Summary: 
Overall this feedback was really useful in letting us know what we had done well and if we had appealed to the correct target audience, in this case we found that we were very successful in doing so. No one gave any bad feedback so as a result I think that our music video was very successful. 

Planning: 
It was very important to use that our chosen target audience enjoyed what we were creating therefore being able to show them and have them comment on our video was to much use and help. We considered all feedback and felt that there was little changes to be done to our video as most of our focus group enjoyed watching our music video. 

Monday, 20 April 2015

Digipak and Advert Poster Feedback sheets

In able to receive feedback for our ancillary texts, we created a questionnaire for a year 10 media class to fill in. The questionnaire showed each ancillary text and asked four questions such as : 'is the image appealing' and 'would you want to watch the music video?' 

We received relevant and good feedback: 












Friday, 17 April 2015

Intertextuality found in our music video

Within our music video though that it would be quite important to include some intertextuality to make sure that our music video would be entertaining for an audience (even if they are not our target audience). A main example of intertextuality was taken from the late 1970's classic rom-com film 'Grease' the imtertextuality coming from some of the most recognisable scenes. This makes it entertaining for our target audience in particular as they are likely to have seen the film and recognise that some of the clips seen in our music video are similar to those seen in Grease. It may also draw in a second audience as they too recognise the iconic scenes. 


'Grease'
Our music video
'Grease'
Our music video 
Another example of intertextuality we used within our music video was the vlogging/documentary shots inspired by Lana Del Ray's music video called 'Video Game's'. This music video is romanced based therefore we thought it would be suitable to include in our music video.          


Lana Del Ray's 'Video Games' music video 
Our music video 
                          
Our Music video 
Our music video 
Our music video 
We also included some intertextuality from the original music video for 'Good Girls' by 5 Seconds of Summer, from their music video we took the idea of the mug-shot scenes and included it in both our music video and our digipak as it fits in well with the 'bad girl' images that we were trying to covey. 


5 Seconds of Summer 
Our music video
Our music video

Our digipak - Album front cover 

Planning : 

Representations of british youths: Stereotypically within the pop genre of media, females are usually represented as being girly and fun. This is where our video slightly challenges the usual conventions. The band 5 Seconds of Summer refer to themselves as a pop/rock band and the lyrics in the song say "Good Girl are Bad Girls that haven't been caught" therefore we chose to include costume such as bandannas and leather jackets to represent this rebellious side to the characters. Although our video includes a lot of fun moment there is also some serious ones, for example, when the girl has 3 missed calls from her mum. However, there is still intertextuality that represents the girl as being fun. For example, the heart shaped sunglasses idea taken from Taylor Swift's music video '22'. 

Our music video 

Taylor Swift's '22' music video 



Wednesday, 15 April 2015

Problems during Filming

During filming we experienced minor problems such as:

  • Weather - The problems with the weather was that some days we wanted to film the weather would change (for example rain) and filming would have to be postponed for another brighter, clear sky day.
  • Available times with both actors - Some problems were caused due to the male actor not always being available for filming. Therefore, when we was filming him, we tried to get as much filming done as we could.
  • Locations Problems - problems finding locations that suited the narrative of the music video/song and locations that were interesting for an audience to look at.
  • Tripod Adjustments - The tripod was often stiff and hard to use over objects that needed to be shot close up and panned. 

Monday, 13 April 2015

Making of the Advertisement Poster


For the making of the album advertisement poster we decided that we wanted it to look simple but at the same time included something that stood out as we thought that this would look the best. We figured that we wanted to add something to the background that linked with our music video and youths (which is our target audience). Something that was subtle yet appealing. Therefore, we decided to create/draw a 'doodle background; it relating the our target audience as this is something that is done in school. 


"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" 
- Clare Boothe Luce 


Hana from our group sketched the doodles on a large piece of paper which we then scanned into the computer. After uploading the image onto a Mac computer we increased the opacity in able for the image and text in front to stand out more as the doodles would appear fainter. 


Planning: 
In regards to genre we firstly wanted to stay quite close to the usual conventions of pop music advertisement posters however, because we found that our video challenged the usual pop conventions a little we decided to carry this theme throughout all of our media products. To do this we didn't use bright colours as we wanted to stick to the rebellious look and narrative to the video. However, to make sure that we still attracted the correct target audience the products where aimed at we added a 'doodle' background that the audience could relate to, in this case it being school. 

Friday, 3 April 2015

Full Digipak Rough Previous Idea


We created a full digipak to give an idea of what the inside of the album would look like. However, we decided that we would just leave the inside blank, or maybe just with the chalkboard background effect.  The front cover and the back would have the main focus of the design. 

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Music Video Draft 2 & Feedback




We showed the second music video draft to an audience of 16-18 year old boys and girls and asked them to fill out a feedback form. By doing this we could see what went well and what we needed to do to improve the music video.