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Narrative
The word “Narrative” in media terms is often described as how the story is organized and presented, and although our music video doesn’t follow a clear narrative as there isn’t a list of events that happen; there are elements of a narrative intertwined within. This relates to music videos, and ours can be thought of too, as being a postmodernist form of media, in the way that it doesn’t have to have a clear and concise narrative in order to make sense and depict a story.
"The image for postmodern culture precedes anything regarded as real...Images displace the "original" realities that traditionally they are taken to reflect or represent" (Reference: Image and ideology in modern/postmodern discourse By David B. Downing, Susan Bazargan) This suggests that music videos can give any representation and don't have to follow clear and concise rules, that maybe a film would have to. For example, when I was making my film opening last year for my AS portfolio, it made sense to use the typical representations of a horror movie, as this is what the audience would expect. It can be seen that the singer in the music video is the narrator as she is taking the audience through her thoughts and feelings, which are the lyrics of the song, playing with emotions and telling her own story. Much of the music video is simply shots of the singer in various situations, portraying her emotions, which doesn’t really tell much of a story, however, then appears 
the shots of her embracing a mysterious male character, and then she removes a ring, which shows that there is a “love story” going on, which makes sense of the lyrics as they sing about love. We also thought about how the images would fit with the lyrics, and when everything that appears in our music video can be seen to affect the narrative, for example, the use of the dark settings is reinforcing her emotions. The genre of the song also has a lot to do with the narrative as the soft music does fit well with the contents of the music video. It can be seen that the narrative of the music video is quite dream-like in the sense that the scenes with the boy appear like memories , and the way that those images are overlaid over ones of just her make it seem like while she is singing the lyrics she is being nostalgic and remembering, which shows a slight
narrative in the way the story is being told. One of the many reasons why we chose to follow many stereotypes (mainly of the female) is because this makes it easier for the audience to construct a narrative, as they are already familiar with the preconceived ideas they already have of females. The CD cover and magazine advert also have a slight narrative, as just by looking at the images we have chosen, you can create a story from it. For example, we chose images of the girl looking sad and emotional, which would automatically lead the audience to construct their own narrative of what the songs on the CD may be about, and the genre of the music. I felt that our use of narrative worked very well, and overall was very successful in reinforcing the emotions in the music video, as we didn't go over the top on creating a story line, and taking the lyrics too seriously, instead we preferred to use symbolism and be very subtle when referring to the lyrics in the narrative, and this was quite apparent in other music videos of this genre.
Audience
We did identify the target audience first off, by looking at the audience of simular products, and found that it could be quite a wide age range, but mainly a teenage audience, and could be mainly female due to the nature of the song, and tried to base our video around this. Throughout our whole project, we felt that an important part was to gain feedback from the target audience, as they are a good indicator of whether our products were working and presenting the ideas they were supposed to. In order to make sure that our Video, CD cover and Advert were going to be able to relate to the target audience, our research into existing media of a similar target audience was very important, in order to get an idea of what our target audience likes, and what they would expect to find. For example, when creating our music video, other video’s with similar genre, or themes contained many things like the use of location, or effects on shots (discussed in Conventions question!) which when we showed our final draft to an audience, many of the comments we received were that “it fitted with the music well” showing that we had researched what sort of things appeared in videos of music of this genre so we could give the audience what they would expect to see, they would understand why we made the creative decisions we did. Obviously, only being media studies coursework, we only had limited resources to work with, so we couldn’t completely use ideas that are present in existing media, which presented problems like the fact that we had to use car head lights as a source of lighting (and the car broke down!) as we didn't have professional equipment. When creating the advert, we had to have the audience in mind, because this is the product that is appealing to the audience to buy the album and watch the video. We felt that the audience had to know some information about the album (such as release date etc) and use images that are going
to relate to the actual album (same images as on the digipak) to make it appeal to the audience. We also found that during our research many adverts include quotes or ratings,which the audience may pay attention to when deciding whether to consider buying an album. Obviously, the images on the advert have to be appealing because this may be the first time the audience has heard of the band, they must be persuaded to listen to the music, which is why we used pictures of the artist looking nice. When getting audience feedback for the CD cover and Advert, many people commented on and made reference to the fact that the "artist" looked pretty in the photo we used, which is a good way to entice an audience and capture their interest. It is discussed that "pop stars are, to some extent, symbolic vehicles with which young women understand themselves more fully", Paul Willis (1990: 57) This suggests that young women audiences of pop artists and their music often look up to them as role models, and if they look attractive/stylish maybe more willing to pay attention and look up to them.
We paid close attention to genre when creating our music video, as I believe that genre and representation are very closely related. For example, there are always many stereotypes surrounding each and every genre, which make them identifiable, whether creating a film or a music video. During our research in this project we did identify many differences in music videos of music from different genres. For example, Metal/Hard rock music often had videos of just a performance of the band, but when looking at videos from the soft pop/rock music genre, I found they often included things like; the use of a female character (usually it was a female artist), also the use of the effects, like black&white, fades and laying images. We learnt a lot about presenting genre earlier this year when creating our AS Foundation Portfolio, in which we made a film opening of the horror genre. From this, we did much research into the horror genre, so we could learn about what makes it what it is, so our film opening would be clearly identified as a horror. We did use many of the stereotypes relating to our genre when creating our music video, in order to make it more identifiable to the target audience. It can also be seen that genre does relate to CD covers, as we found that CD covers for the genre of our music are often similar, for example, showing a close-up beauty shot.
I feel that taking into account Feminist theory, may be appropriate when criticising our music video, as from a feminist point of view, the representation of women we have shown, can be criticised in various ways. Feminist film theory has been described as focusing on "the function of women characters in particular film narratives or genres and of stereotypes as a reflection of a society's view of women" (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_film_theory). The feminist view that women are seen as weak and helpless could be applied to the representation of women in our music video, as seen in many other music videos when a female gets emotional when singing about topics such as love 
(such as the Duffy - Warwick Avenue Video on the left). The female in our music video is typically shown to be feminine throughout, as she is always seen wearing a dress, which reinforces her sexuality, especially the use of the white dress which can represent purity. Other things that reinforce her feminity are the use of make-up and her hair being styled. A quote that explains how the use of the feminine clothes are very symbolic is that a "Woman is desexualised at the very moment she is stripped naked" (Barthes 1972: 91) This is suggesting that it's the clothes a woman wears that reinforce her sexuality. Our decision to show our female character as "emotional" when singing her song is mainly due to the stereotypes in the media, which most people expect, and much of our research found that women are often seen as "emotional" in this genre of music, whereas males hide emotions when talking about issues like love. Our female character is also seen in our video to be with the male character, in one in instance in an embrace, and another, laying on his chest, which can be seen as a controlling role for the male as the lyric states "I stayed in the darkness with you", this is showing that throughout the song she is debating whether to stay with him, but she decides she will, which can be criticised on a feminist level, as we are reinforcing the control that males have over females. But, in some ways it can be seen that we are challenging this stereotype, as the focus in on the female character, not the male whose face we don't even see, and it's her choice and decision to make whether she stays with him or not, which can be seen as quite empowering.
Looking at our music video with regards to another theory, it seems to contain postmodernist elements also. It’s been seen that "of all televisual media in recent decades, which have attracted the most concerting descriptive analyses of postmodernism, music videos or promos are at the top of the list" as they present a "challenge to the dominant form of television, sense they make no pretence at showing 'the real'". (Reference: Beginning Postmodernism: Tim Woods). It's suggesting that as music video's can be representations of almost anything that doesn't have
to depict reality, they can take something real and change it, so they can be considered postmodernist. I think that ours fits with this view, as our music video doesn't have a continual narrative, or a proper storyline throughout it, as a film would. Our music video is mostly just a pastiche of images that don't follow a pattern but just appear on the screen in a un orderly fashion. For example, in one shot she is wearing a white dress, but in another a purple dress, which wouldn't be acceptable in a film, but is considered ok in a music video, due to its postmodernist nature.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Conventions in the Promo Video
Examples of these include the use of black and white in our video. During our research we saw that many music videos in our chosen genre used black and white to evoke emotions of sadness, when singing about issues like love, we used this in our music video as we desired to create the same effect. Another editing technique that we used was layered shots, which we often saw. The over laying of shots gave the video a dream like feel and softened the mood, which we liked when looking at existing media videos. Also the use of fades when
going from shot to shot was common in music videos of our chosen genre, as instead of just straight cuts from shot to shot; the use of fades also softened the tone of the video, and added to the emotion of the song, especially when the songs were quite slow paced. Also another convention that we followed was the fact that we tried to edit the shots together on the beat to fit the pace of the song which was seen in a lot of music videos to make the shots more fluid and fit with the song.
During our research into existing Digipaks, we followed conventions in the obvious way of the layout, having the artist name and album name on the front, and a tracklisting on the back, and having the CD inside. But we found in most cases that the images and covers were very much a reflection on the genre of music contained on the album, and we felt that ths was an effective way of presenting the album. Also it was possible to see that album covers of different genres shared qualities which distinguished them as their own genre. When looking at the Albums for the soft rock/pop genre of music that we chose, we found that, on albums featuring a female
artist, there was usually a emotion envoking image captured, which usually is a beauty shot,to reinforce the music on the album as being quite emotional. 
For example the album "I am..." by "Beyonce" or "Spirit" by "Leona Lewis" both feature images of the artist looking good, and these images are more likely to entice the audience. Also, they could give an initial impression of what type of music is on the album, due to the black&white and the emotions on the faces. We took this idea and used it in ours, however, we felt like we could have taken a more striking image that made the album cover stand out more. But we feel that the image does portray what sort of album it would be that is why we chose this image, and the font to go with it. We followed obvious conventions of Digipaks in general, like having a tracklisting on the back, and the album name and artist name on the front, as this would obviously make it identifiable as a digipak.
I also did much research into existing Adverts to see what sort of things were conventionally included, and I found many things (such as the album image or a relating image, release date, a quote, a star rating, websites of the band, forms in which the digipak is released in; download and cd). We took these things into account when constructing out advert, and used all these things, as the whole purpose of the advert was to promote the album, so we had to make sure that it was showing the album in a good way and giving information about it. We followed many of the 
conventions, such as having an images from the digipak on the advert, so the audience would immediately be able to recognise the album when they saw it, we also used these images as they were a good indicator as to what sort of music would be on the album. We included a release date, and what forms the digipak would be available in, as this is all information the audience would want to know, and would expect to see in an advert and also worked very well at promoting an album when looking at our research. We included a quote stating "an amazing album" NME, because this may affect the decision to buy the album, if they see that a music magazine is recommending it. We also decided to create an A4 page advert, instead of a partial page advert, as I found these are better at capturing the reader’s attention. We decided to keep it quite simple and not put too much text on the advert as this may lose the attention of the reader. However, I feel like we could have used more effects, even thought we did use layering of images, we could have made it look better, but none of us very skilled enough in Photoshop to be able to use any amazing effects. In many adverts we looked at, we didn't usually see many that included images that weren't on the digipak, however, we did include one image that appeared in the video, but not on the digipak, so this could be breaking conventions in a way.
The advert may persuade the audience to watch the video, and therefore the video may persuade the audience to buy the album, so they all have to connect in order to make them relatable to the audience. The promo video is really effective at promoting an album, it's been suggested that "Music Video has become a crucial Marketing tool, with the music often merely part of an overall style package offered to consumers". (Reference: Understanding popular music: Roy Shuker). He is suggesting that as well as the music, the video is also very much a tool to promote the album. He also suggests that "three quarters of sensory information is taken in through the eye, the video viewer concentrates on the images, arguably at the expense of the soundtrack" (Reference: Understanding popular music: Roy Shuker). It can be seen that the music video is a good way to promote the album, and sometimes can be paid attention to even more so than the music itself, so in order to successfully promote the album, it can be seen that the music video would do best to reflect the music so both would be working together, so if an audience enjoys the music video, this means they may enjoy the music more. 
We made sure that the digipak cover related to the promo music video, as we found this is often the case in most existing music videos, which would make it easier for the video to promote the album, as if the audience enjoy the video they are more likely to see the relating image and want to buy it.
We decided to feature the same font, and some of the same images in the digipak and the advert in order to connect them and make sure there was a synergy between the products. I do believe that our promo video and advert effectively promotes the digipak as they are all of equal quality, however, we did put the most time into the construction of the promo video, and if we were to do the project again, would have spent longer on each of the ancillary tasks. As we did not do ancillary tasks in our AS project, it was quite challenging to do 2 more products, however, I do think our group managed well.
I do regret that we didn't gain more audience feedback throughout the start of the project, as it would have been useful to gain an idea of what the audience wanted before we started creating the video. However, after a first draft (which was only about 30 seconds) to show what we had done and planned on doing we decided to get some feedback on it, to see what was working and what wasn't. This turned out to be extremely helpful as it mostly just confirmed the doubts that we had our self. One of the major changes that we made to our first draft on the basis of the feedback was 
that we got rid of a whole location (the pond scene) as we heard that the daytime shots at the pond didn't go well with the rest that were shot at night. I felt that this was a good decision as it made our video stronger and flow better. The audience also mainly reinforced what we liked about it, which made us feel we made mostly good decisions. We learned that the audience did think that our video fitted well with the genre of song. With regards to the digipak cover, we did ask some people what they would expect to see and they said things like a close up of the artists face and track listings on the back, which we took notice of. Overall, audience feedback helped very well as we gained it throughout the production of the video and made improvements on it after each draft as shown in my blog. It helped us to make changes for the better and was a very important part of the whole project. However, we could have used more things like questionnaires to get more audience feedback.
From our AS project last year we learnt many skills when operating a video camera, and editing the film together, and learnt about shot types, and editing etc, which was very beneficial as I believe that I have built upon my skills from last year and have created an even better film piece due to this initial knowledge. When creating our promo video, technology that we used included a video camera and a tripod, and of course we used editing software. I feel that the editing was one of the best, most important things about our video, and while one member of our group was very skilful with editing, I have learnt a lot more about shot overlaying, and using different effects in the editing stages, even by watching him and advising him of what effects to use. We did use a wide range of editing techniques, such as black&white, fades, shot overlaying and slow-motion, which shows that we were able to use the editing software to its fullest, and get a lot out of it, and developed skills from it.
I do feel that we could have used more technology when in the planning and research stages, such as made use of the interactive nature of the blog and got people to comment more on what they thought of our products (even though we did this more by asking people face to face) or created some questionnaires for the target audience as to what they would expect to find in a soft pop/rock music video and analysed them using a graph perhaps, which is what I probably would do if I had another chance to do this project.
In the creation of the magazine advert and the digipak covers, technology that used was the image editing software 'Photoshop'. We used this software to manipulate the brightness/contrast of the images, and to add black backgrounds, and on the advert we used it to layer the images over each other. However, we found this software difficult to use as none of us were very skilled using it, and it was very difficult as none of us had really used it before! This meant that we couldn't really do anything amazing with it, which we would have liked to do.
The internet was one of the main ways in which I did my research, as I used YouTube to find music videos and other sites to find digipak covers, it was also good when looking at target audiences as I looked at what sort of people watched the music videos on YouTube etc. Obviously also, I used this blog to record the project which was useful as I have added slideshows of the photos taken on the video shoots and added images and versions of our music video, which effectively document our process and show our progress throughout the project.
Overall, it was when using the technology that came most of the issues when creating our products. Due to the only small budget (being media students) and lack of proper proffessional eqquiptment we came across a lot of obstacles and had to use what we could to create the best products. Much of the issues were surrounding the lighting. We aware of the fact that the quality of the filming would be grainy and quite bad when filming in the dark with little natural light, because we came across this problem when creating our AS Film opening earlier this year. As we knew that we were going to be filming in the dark again, we knew we would have these same lighting issues, however, we overcame these by using car headlights, which still was a problem as the car broke down, but we did learn from out mistakes last time and used a good source of lighting before embarking on our filming.
