Wednesday, 25 January 2017

Note to examiner

Please use all the labels on the right hand column to navigate your way through my blog. For the coursework component we have been asked to go into groups or by ourselves to create a music video promo for a song that does not already have a music video. We also had to produce a promotion pack for the music video promo, this included a digipak for the album release and magazine advertisement for the digipak.

I created my music video promo with my partner, Imogen White.

Monday, 23 January 2017

Evaluation - question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

At the beginning stages of constructing my music video my partner and I decided to look at different media technologies such as YouTube videos and Facebook pages to find out what genre we wanted to pick for our music video. Watching many different music videos under our chosen genre, indie pop helped us understand the codes and conventions of a music video promo. The use of media technologies such as social networking sites also helped us find our chosen artist Frances as her name was suggested as a related artist to Birdy on Facebook and Twitter pages. Whilst on the artists Facebook and twitter pages it gave my partner and I the opportunity to look how they present their marketing of their ancillary to the target audience.

Google helped when finding the record company of Frances which we were then able to contact directly through an email address. However, we also decided to contact the singer herself through a direct message on Twitter. As the target audience of our music video was young, social media defiantly help as it made it easier to contact and find people.

When doing our casting research to see if our chosen actors were photogenic and to see if they fitted in with the theme of our video my partner and I looked through their Instagram and Facebook accounts.

We all kept in contact through a group chat on Whatsapp which kept us organised as it  allowed us to share photos and information between us.

All filming for the music video was filmed on a cannon E0S 80 D. To create different effects we used different lenses such as 75 - 300 mm, 80 - 200 mm and 40 mm lense. It was important for us to do test shots before filming to ensure the camera was on the right level and was in focus. Using a tripod defiantly helped as it supported the camera throughout filming.

Once we had finished filming we converted all the footage onto premier pro. As we used final cut pro for editing our main task last year we weren't use to the layout of the website therefore we watched YouTube tutorials for learning the tools. From watching YouTube videos we learnt how to colour grade, change the paste of a clip and how to match the visuals to the audio. As we had filmed on two different days colour grading the shot was important as we needed them to match and flow. Also as the song has a slow paste to make the footage fit we decided to slow parts of the visuals down.

The ancillary was made on Photoshop. As I already had the software on my laptop I knew how to use the tools so editing was straight forward. Research for other promotional posters and digipaks were found on Google images and Facebook.

During planning, pre-production, production and post-production I used blogger to document the process. On blogs such as pitch to class and audience feedback I used Slide share and Prezi. Slide share converts a pre-made PowerPoint onto a document whereas you make the presentation as you go on Prezi. Once finished I embedded each clip onto my blog by clicking the embed sign.

Finally all gifs found on my blog from costume research were my own. I made them by using footage I had filmed during filming for our music video which I then converted using the website makeagif.


Tuesday, 17 January 2017

Evaluation - question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?




  1. Did you manage to understand the story line and the message the video was trying to convey?
  2. Is there anything you think we could improve on?
  3. If you were to promote this music video what age would you promote it to?
  4. Would you say it's more female or male targeted?
  5. Do you like the video and would you watch it again?

Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Evaluation - question 2

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

https://soundcloud.com/danielle-whitelaw-947811464

Tuesday, 3 January 2017

Evaluation - question 1

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


 (If any of the slides are too difficult to read please you the zoom button)

Saturday, 3 December 2016

Final edit - promotional poster


Changes made to promotional poster

The purpose of a promotional poster is to promote the artist. Once we had finished what we thought was our final edit for our promotional poster we decided to show our teacher for feedback. Altogether we realised aspects of what we had created on Photoshop didn't match up to the standards of a promotional poster promoting the genre indie pop, so we decided to redo it.

As we were stuck on ideas we decided to look back at our RMA research.


Lana Del Rey's promotional poster really stood out to us as it is simple and straight to the point. We relaised that the most important part of the poster should be the artist's name followed by a clear photo of them. We originally used a different photo to the digipak. Making this descion was a mistake as the photo didn't link to the album. In fact it didn't even show the artists face. Another thing which needed changing was the layout of the poster. As the photo we used was a screenshot the imageon Photoshop was atomically set to landscape instead of portrait.
Changes made
  • Photo
  • Tittle size and colour
  • Layout
  • no 'out now'
  • no social media links
  • release date added
First edit
Final edit