Closing post

I almost feel quite sad that this is my last ever media blog post. I have really loved these past two years making lots of creative work and learning new skills both using the equipment and editing. This year especially, I feel I have really progessed in my work. I am a real perfectionist, always trying my best in everything I do which is good because you do have to be quite fussy when it comes to media. Everything has to look good! This year I have not only developed more skills, challenging myself using new media technologies such as prezi, but I have also devloped my skills using other software seperate for imovie, mostly Photoshop. This is because I have used it a great deal in order to design my digipak and magazine advert. Although it was challenging for me to get my head around all the different tools, I feel that after watching many tutorials and experimenting on my own, I can now confidently use photoshop! Media has become a big part of my life and I feel that I definately will continue to use the skills I have developed, making my own little video's with friends and family. I hope you have enjoyed looking through my work, I am really proud of what we have achived! I still haven't let any of my friends and family see our final music video, I'm waiting for the premier which were holding at school! Hopefully everyone will like it just as much as we do!

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your music video and digipak use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our music video although we did try to use conventions of our electropop genre (use of bright patterned costume, and studio equipment) we did also challenge the conventions by including things like our animation. This is often found in Indie alternative music video's for example Kina Grannis's music video of 'In your arms'. However we too wanted our music video to look creative and quirky and so we decided to challenge this convention of the electropop genre found in real media texts.

Here is a little video I put together showing our animation in which I drew..

We have also decided to subvert the stereotype of showing weak objectified females, and have instead tried to portray women to be more dominating and strong. We did this for example by using low angle shots, having the camera looking up at the artist in order to make them look big and intimidating. Below I have made a screenshot of this, which is shown when I am singing about my 'boyfriend' forgetting my birthday, 'It was my birthday, my stupid birthday'. We used a low angle shot here as we wanted to show my anger and frustration.

Beyonce's music video featuring lady gaga, is a good example of showing dominant strong women however although they were shown to be in control (at the beginning when Beyonce is walking towards the camera surrounded by a group of men), we felt that they were still being objectified, something we felt strongly about avoiding. Both females are dressed in very revealing clothes, and use rather suggestive dance moves. At 2:54 Beyonce is crouching down stroking a very large gun (phallic object) which is sure to capture the attention of men, 'the male gaze'. Also at 4:47 the camera focuses on Beyonce's body and cuts out her head which again looks at the male gaze and Laura Mulvey's feminist theory. We did not want our music video to objectify women, we wanted to take a different approach in order to show women being strong and in control. We did this by bringing in a more youthful, playful feel, showing that although there is a 'potential breakup' we are still enjoying and living life to the full. We did this by including locations such as the beach and  playing in the snow, as this showed us having lots of fun rather than sitting around being sad. We also used the different locations and weather conditions to show the passing of time, that we are moving on with our lives.

We wanted to avoid showing weak, heartbroken females as seen in many music videos. One example of this is Cheryl Cole's music video of 'The Flood', a song also about break up.

When making my digipak and magazine advert I did much research into other products of my genre in order to use the same codes and conventions. The first annotated image is of a digipak album cover and the second annotated image is an example of a magazine advert/music poster.

I decided to use these codes and conventions when designing my products, for example the idea of featuring the artists on the front, using bold black and white colours etc. However when designing the inside of my digipak I wanted to challenge these conventions by using quite quirky ,bright images which contrasted against the front and back designs. For example on the CD design I drew stick people using the paint tool on photoshop, as this linked to the idea of the animation which we have in our music video. This is something which you would not expect to see, as it is not a typical code and convention of the electropop genre.

2. How effective is the combination of your music video and your ancillary texts?

Digipak

Front cover

I decided that I wanted to have me and Beste on the front cover of my digipak as I liked the idea of featuring the artists on the front, so that people can identify who we are in our music video. I used Adobe Photoshop to enhance the contrast of the photo so that we could stand out more. I then opened up our logo in a separate tab, selected all, copied and then pasted it on top of our photo. Our logo obviously had a white background which I removed using the magic eraser tool, a very lengthy process, having so many separate bits to our logo. This then allowed the logo to sit nicely on top of our photo without a white background separating it. 

Our logo 'The Capulets' is our main signature design. It is seen on every product.

It is also seen in our music video, shown in the introduction. Here is a small screenshot I took of our logo after the glitter has been blown away and it is revealed.

Finally I added in the album name which I chose to be our main song,  'The Potential Breakup Song' as I noticed this is something many artists do, eg Lady Gaga with her album name 'Born This Way' which is one of her songs. I decided to use the font Lucida Calligraphy as it's quite a feminine font and went well with our fancy twirly logo. I have also used this font when designing my magazine advert in order to make sure that all the products combine well.

Back Cover

I quite liked the idea of having both outer covers of my digipak similar, and so I used another image from our photo shoot to feature us again on the back. I needed however to find a picture showing quite a large area of background so that I would be able to include our track list. After carefully selecting an image, where we were positioned in such a way to have room for the songs, I again enhanced the contrast of the image to match the front design. The image I have used on this side of my digipak is the same image used when making my magazine advert, again linking both products. I then wrote out our final track list on Microsoft word, in the same Lucida Calligraphy font and copied and pasted it onto our image. I again used the Magic eraser tool to rid of the white background making the text sit well, on top of the image.

From looking at other Cd's I noticed that I had to include executive producers (us), a copyright symbol (made on Microsoft word), a distribution company name which I chose to be called 'Ivory Keys' (inspired from white keys on a piano), as well as a message about violation of the laws. I included this in order to make my work look more professional. I also made sure that I used the same Lucida Calligraphy font so that my digipak remained consistent throughout.

Below is my company logo design, again found on all of my products. I wanted to keep it fairly simple as most of the company logos that I've seen pretty much are, such as the Universal logo. This was actually a name which my family helped me to come up with, it was really useful to have other peoples input, and listen to their ideas.

Inside Left

                              

I wanted to make the inside of my digipak fairly different to the outside, and so I picked a colourful more quirky image. We both really liked the idea of writing messages on balloons, so we decided to experiment with this idea and took some pictures. We also used a blue and pink balloon in our music video, which I feel was a nice way of combining the products. I feel that it reflects our youthful ditsy characters as artists, as we decided to reverse the writing on the balloons so that we were both on the opposite side rather than having the arrow pointing to the left. On Photoshop I enhanced the contrast, making the balloons appear brighter in order to stand out more. I also used the clone stamp to cover the drain in the background with grass so that it didn't distract from the balloons which are the focus. This design links in well with our music video as we are again seen having fun.

Inside Right

                             

I found this particular side of my digipak the hardest. I decided to incorporate the idea of our animation seen in our music video, into the CD design and so using the paint tool on Photoshop I created my own picture using ideas I'd gathered from Google. I tried many different background designs to go behind the CD however I felt that the colours didn't particularly go with the inside left. Each time I tried a new background I had to use the eraser tool to erase the CD section, carefully keeping within its outline. After many attempts of this I finally found a picture of some daisies which I took on holiday, as the green colour went well with the picture on the inside left design. I used the fading eraser tool and with a brush size of 300 I carefully erased the CD section. However half way through I noticed that the faded effect looked quite effective and inspired the idea of having the CD piecing together with the background so that when it's put in its case the background image matches with it.

As you can see I have again included our logo onto the CD as it would be important for our name 'The Capulets' to become more recognised amongst audiences.

Spine

In order to make the spine of my CD design I decided to use the logo which I made when me and Beste were working on our final design. It's basically a simpler version of our actual logo, the title of our band in a twirly font, minus all the other bits around it, as these wouldn't all fit on an actual CD spine. I again incorporated the cupids and hearts as these are an on going theme throughout our work.

Magazine advert

As mentioned before I used the same image on my magazine advert as I did on the back of my digipak. I thought this would be an effective way of again combining the products, using a well known image of the artists on the advert.

I made my magazine cover using Adobe Photoshop. I personally felt that it was important to have a picture of the artists on my magazine cover to get our faces (if we were a real band) well known.

On the top left hand corner of my magazine advert, I have again placed my company logo. I also added a small HMV logo to show where our album would be available. I saw this idea on a number of different magazine adverts and so in order to make mine look professional I decided to also include it.

I am really happy with my final result, I feel that I have managed to create a realistic looking music poster promoting our band, which also goes well with our genre and suits our target audience. It also combines well with my digipak design and music video, I am happy with the outcome of all my products.

Here is my second magazine advert design although I have in fact chosen to use my first design..

In order to get the heart imagine in the background I took a screenshot from our music video, then manipulated it on Adobe Photoshop. I enhanced the contrast to make it stand out more and I then coloured the wave in white using the paintbrush tool, so that I could blend it into the white at the top of the canvas, giving me enough space to include the text, our band logo and our company logo.

3. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research and planning stages of your music video?

Research and planning

Below is our prelim music video which we made at the very begining of our projects. We made an almost exact copy of Lilly Allens opening music video of 'Smile'. We used all the same shots including panning shots and zooms. We also made sure the editing was exactly as it was in Lilly Allen's music video, as the task was to make it as similar as possible. It helped us get used to the idea of editing togther short snappy shots, fitting them in time with the music. 

During the research and planning stages of our projects we used many different resources available to us, at home, online, at school etc. Below are some examples.

At the beginning of our project me and Beste made a Prezi which we presented to the class. This helped us to map out our plans for our music video, including research into our genre and target audience. Here is a copy of the presentation below. This was the first time I used Prezi, and I really liked it, I thought it helped us to create a professional looking, well organised treatment pitch.

Copy of Aly & Aj on Prezi

INTERNET:

www.weheartit.com was a website we regularly visited showing us images which inspired new exciting ideas in our work.

Ebay-This helped us browse for props such as the dried petals which we purchased from here.

You Tube- This has been extremely useful, allowing us to watch other music videos, again inspiring new ideas, researching codes and conventions of our genre and also watching tutorials to help me use photoshop for my digipak and magazine advert.

Facebook- This was a way of communicating, helped us arrange days to meet and film on location.

Wordle- This was a mind map of all the words we could think of which we'd like our music video to be, or things we'd like to include.

Phones- This was again a way to help us plan our days for filming, times and where to meet. We also we had to make sure we both wore similar colour clothing and that we had all the equipment and props we needed, such as the bubble machine, balloons, cake etc.

Construction

Film camera Panasonic SD90 HD- helped us to get clear footage, allowing us to achieve work of a professional quality.

HD Flip Camera- we carried it around with us incase there were any oppertunities to film. We also used the flip camera when our main panasonic camera was low on battery. It was always our back up plan as we couldn't afford to run out of battery when on location, at Southend for example.

imac computers- meant that we were able to have access to professional equipment and software such as imovie, helping us to achieve a successful end result.

Here is just a basic little video we made of imovie. I filmed the screen whilst talking about the editing we did, looking at transitions.

Ipods- to play the music on in order to help us with the lip syncing, as we didn't have access to a computer on location. 

Nikon D7000 Camera- we filmed most of our footage on this camera as luckily Beste has one! The quality is really professional looking again allowing us to achieve a successful result.

 

4.  What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


During the very early stages of researching for our music video we made a presentation on Prezi, here is a screen shot of one of the slides which mentions audience feedback when deciding on a band name.

If it weren't for our audience feedback, we may never have become 'The Capulets'!

We managed to get some audience feedback on our final product, here is a video showing what one person thought, their reaction and their ideas on what we have tried to portray.

It was really nice to hear positive feedback, and it was good to know that we succeeded in portraying non stereotypical females. I'm also really glad that she saw the symbolism in which we had included, the washing away of the heart in the sand, the birds flying away showing freedom etc.

I decided to also ask some friends on which magazine advert they preferred as I couldn't decided which one I liked best and which would be more suited to our genre. I sent both images of my designs to a few friends on blackberry messenger and here is one of their responses..

I also asked members of the class for their opinions as I wanted to get as much feedback as possible. Most of them agreed and said that they preferred the first design. Someone commented saying that they liked the ripped page effect, 'it was a creative way of making space for the writing'. Most people also said that they felt it was important for the artists to be featured on the poster as it suits our electro pop genre more and looks more professional. Another class member commented saying 'The heart used in your second design would only be a shot taken from one music video, so someone who hasn't seen the music video wouldn't see the relevance'.

A couple of people did however prefer the heart poster.

Getting this feedback from everyone was really helpful. I personally did prefer my first design, as I feel that it does look more professional. It was more complex to make which hopefully will reflect my capability. I therefore have decided to go with the majority vote, choosing to use my first design with the artists featured on the front.

Representation

This is the last clip of our stop animation. The boy character is asking the girl to forgive him however we do not know the outcome, as it is a 'potential breakup'. We wanted to used an enigma code, to make the audience feel more involved, making their own decisions as to whether she forgives him or not.

The clocks are a symbol showing time passing, and the fact that there are many of them shows that she has been waiting for a long time. My bored fed up expression goes well with the lyrics as she is waiting for her boyfriend to call her on her birthday, but he forgets.

The cake smashing on the floor was to show her anger and hurt that her boyfriend forgot her birthday. Its almost a flashback, as if she had thrown the cake, on her birthday, onto the floor in frustration.

This shot is shown when we hear the lyrics 'my armour was cracked'. The petals are pink which has connotations of love and lust, however the fact that she scrunches them up was to symbolise love being crushed, reflecting how she felt.

This is one of my favourite shots. The sun reflecting on the sea looks really effective. The sun has connotations of happiness and the fact that we are dancing in the light reflects that this is how we are feeling. We have moved on from the anger and the hurt.

Although we have many symbolic shots we also wanted to be quite literal with some of our footage. This shot of the balloons flying in the sky is shown on the lyrics 'you know your lost', the balloons are representing the idea of being 'lost'. This goes with Andrew Goodwin's theory that 'there is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals'.

This shot is shown on the lyrics 'this is the potential breakup song'. The washing away of the heart is very symbolic in the sense that the love is gone, it has been 'washed away'. We have had lots of positive feedback about this shot and we are both really pleased with its outcome as it is exactly how we had planned it. 

                                     

This shot of the birds flying up into the sky was symbolic as birds have connotations of freedom however they also have connotations of hope. Therefore this is another enigma code as the audience are unsure of whether they 'breakup' or 'makeup'.

This establishing shot of the funfair was followed by another series of images showing us having fun in the arcades etc. It was again to show us having fun 'your not living till your living, living with me. It also shows us being strong and living life rather than moping around being sad about the 'potential breakup'.

This is shown on the lyrics 'minus you I'm better off'. This is the only time we see who one of the boys are, however they are merely a picture, she is still the one in control scribbling over his picture. It also added a bit of humour to our music video, and a playful youthful feel to it.

Here is another shot of us having fun, the change in location and weather shows the passing of time and the moving on of the relationship.

This shot shows the word love written out in twigs being destroyed by a snow ball. It is symbolic in the sense that the love in the relationship has too been destroyed.

This is an extreme close up shot  shown on the lyrics 'you know I know it be a lie'. Here i am wearing red lipstick, red has connotations of anger however it also has connotations of love and lust. A mouth also has fairly sexual connotations, so we used this to show that although she is angry she does still love him.

Here I am wearing headphone and am singing into a microphone. We felt it was important to include studio equipment in order to use codes and conventions of our genre.

Here is just another shot of us having fun. We wanted us as artists to be shown as down to earth typical teenage girls, rather than an unreachable 'star image'.

I really liked this shot with the banisters in front, its symbolic in the sense that she feels trapped and sad, being in a relationship where her boyfriend forgets her birthday.

This image is shown towards the end of the song where the lyrics become 'this is the potential makeup song', which is why she is smiling. Its another enigma code as the audience are unsure if she has forgiven him or not.

This was a really beautiful long shot taken towards the end of our day at Southend. The ships in the distance are stuck as the tide has gone out. It is symbolic as it reflects the fact that the girls are stuck and unsure whether or not to forgive their boyfriends. Another enigma code, as we do not tell the audience whether they end up staying in the relationship or whether they do breakup.

This is the final shot seen in our music video. The camera slowly zooms into the sunset and the washed out tide. The fact that it's nearly the end of the day, the sun is setting and the tide is gone, could represent the end of the relationship, its been washed away and its time for a fresh start. However someone else could interpret it as them staying together, as the sunset and the beach has connotations of love and romance.

Here is a quick video I put together of some bloopers and extra footage from behind the scenes. We had lots of fun during the making of our music video and although it was hard work we are really proud in what we have achieved.

Celebrities Before and After Photoshop (This is just something which caught my attention after someone posted a link on Facebook)


REAL VS. FAKE: Photoshopped Celebrities, Before & After
Thanks to photoshop, the critical standard at which we judge beauty has become increasingly unrealistic.
This is an interesting topic when looking at representation of women in society. 


This can give you a feel of what it takes for a person to look beautiful. No wonder we, ordinary people, are left with a great deal of pressure to look our best at all times, a high goal that is impossible to reach. Impossible even for our God-like role-models.


These photoshopped images are mostly used in magazines and on advertising posters. It really is quite sad to see.. people being made skinner, taking away bits of them that make them who they are.


See for yourself..

Penelope Cruz

De-frizzed and repositioned hair strands,
Lowered neckline, enhanced cleavage,
Thinned rib cage, softened collar bone,
Removed wrinkles around eyes and mouth.

Mena Suvari

Removed acne from forehead,
Evened skin tone, 

Brightened eye colour.

Keira Knightley

Enlarged chest,
Added volume to hair,
Softened eyes and eye brows.

Kelly Clarkson

Thinned face and jawline,
Thinned stomach, thighs and behind,
Minimized shoulder.

Brittany Murphy

Removed lower eye lids,
Smoothed and softened skin tone,
Minimized shadows, brightened eyes and hair colour.

Kim Kardashian

Removed cellulite and veins in legs,
Thinned waist/stomach,
Smoothed hairline and elbow.

Faith Hill

I found this one below most shocking, they have made her arm absolutely tiny, I find it quite sickening.

Removed lower eye lids, softened lines around mouth,
Minimized her arm, back and collar bone,
Thinned thighs and waist.

Girls aren't the only ones who feel the pressure, they do it to boys too..

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Removed dark circles from under eyes,
Brightened eyes and evened out skin tone,

More muscle definition.