G324 A2 Practical Coursework Evaluation | 4

G324 A2 Practical Coursework Evaluation | 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Who are your audience?

The song we chose for our music video was ‘U.N.I’ by Ed Sheeran, who is an artist from the ‘indie’ genre of music. When defining the audience for this genre, dissecting it into five steps helps to establish exactly who we are aiming our video at and therefore how to create the most successful media text that will appeal to them accordingly. In terms of their socio-economic group, audiences of the ‘indie’ genre tend to be fairly upper-working class to middle class. Not necessarily wealthy, but can generally afford things they don’t necessarily need and rather spend their money on the things they enjoy, such as attending festivals and gigs of the artists they like. The artist that we chose is one that attends and has attended popular music festivals.  Linking in with this is their age group, and how they the target audience is mid to late teens, and even into the early twenties. They can afford to spend their money on gigs and music-related merchandise, as they don’t really have any responsibilities of what to spend their money on! In terms of gender, the genre is aimed equally at both males and females. Rather than the songs focusing on objectifying either males or females in terms of appearance, indie songs tend to focus more on meaningful emotions and the idea of love, that therefore aims at both genders. The ethnicity of the audience is mixed, as it is quite broad. However the ethnicity of the indie artists tend to be white Caucasian. In our video, both actors/actresses were of this ethnic origin. Due to there only being two characters in the whole video, this is simply a coincidence and if more talent was required in the video, people varying ethnic origins probably would have been included. The indie audience’s lifestyle

consists of revolving heavily around a social life, both physically through parties and social gatherings, and online networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. They tend to be fashion conscious and aware of latest trends within their friendship circles rather than what’s on the catwalk. At the same time, they still have a relaxed approach to what they wear and it is generally quite causal. In our video we therefore kept the male character in nice jeans and a fashionable t-shirt, and the female character wore black leggings and a patterned top.

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With this in mind, when wanting feedback from the final version of our music video, we aimed to receive comments from those who best fitted in with the audience type we discovered, and more importantly; fans of this genre! Luckily, we found it easy to collate the data as our target audience was people our age, and therefore we could ask a mix of peers at school.

To get our audience feedback we decided to create questionnaires, setting them out in a way that allowed us to get the main information we needed through questions being answered on a scale of 1 to 5; with 1 being low/no/poor/negative and as the number increased it becomes more positive/agreeing with 5 being the highest.

This was a useful form of quantative data as we could clearly see how our music video was portrayed as a whole, to people. We were open to criticism and gave the option on the questionnaire to mark negatively, and also included some questions at the bottom of the questionnaire where further comments could be made. 

The Uses and Gratifications Theory assumes that members of the audience are not passive when viewing/experiencing a media text but instead take an active role by interpreting the text themselves and integrating it into their own lives in some way. Furthermore there is the belief that audiences view media to gain gratifications of some sort. Of the 'Basic Model' of these uses and gratifications, our music video is aimed to entertain and cause social interaction once the video has been watched. The narrative storyline is aimed to portray an positive message to the viewers regarding relationships causing a pleasant experience when watching the video. The narrative within the video follows an equilibrium, conflict/ disequilibrium , resolution, and then a new equilibrium. The disequilibrium causes concern when the female goes to leave for university and causes a sense of panic due to growing attached to the characters. The happy ending ensures a positive new equilibrium causing the viewers to hopefully feel happy once the video has been watched. 

I started with this question as it generalises their opinion towards the music video as a whole, and at the same time I think that it is an important question, as this is our target audience so we aim to tailor it so they can enjoy it. As shown in the bar chart the feedback was positive and indicates that we have fulfilled our aims of creating a successful video that appeals to our target audience. We therefore learnt that the approach we took to this video, although it was ambitious in some senses such as not lip-syncing, it was clearly worth it! Furthermore it is apparent that the uses and gratification's of this video are mainly for enjoyment and pleasure. 

This was a key question to ask, as when creating a music video you want to be able to engage the audience's attention through suspense and wondering what will happen, especially seeing as our music video was narrative and tells a story. Our video therefore follows the path of having a beginning, middle and ending and we wanted this to be clear to the audience.  We similarly asked the question that links in with the above, which is how well the video held the attention of the audience. The ending and enjoyment of watching the video, figuring out what they think the narrative video will end like, is a useful way of engaging the audience until the end of the video. 

The feedback suggests that the ending was to be expected, but not obvious that it was going to happen. This is the result I wanted as it links into audience pleasures when watching a media piece and once again supports this as being for enjoyment in terms of its uses and gratifications as a media text. The overall happy theme for this video - even though it touches on breakups and the kind of emotions related with this, it approaches it in a light-hearted way. We wanted the video to be one that the audience enjoys and would watch as a form of escapism. Familiarising with the characters in the video, this is what the viewer focuses on instead of anything in their own world. The narrative nature keeps them entertained and interested, and the happy ending would typically reinforce a positive message, linking in with Personal Identity, because in seeing the eventual success of this relationship in the video, it could convey a happy message to them leaving the audience feeling positive reassuring that if they were perhaps experiencing a similar breakup, they could also have this 'happy ending' that is featured in some existing music videos. As the audience are young adults, they will be experiencing new romances and breakups and this is something that will be familiar to them. Although this sounds slightly cheesy, it is still reassuring and entertaining.  

Similarly, theorist Deborah Knight believes that viewers gain satisfaction through knowing what will happen in what they are watching and what to expect from the genre. The feedback from this question supports this. In our music video, there is nothing unexpected or out of place to do with the genre in the sense that it remains a realistic narrative about a relationship. There is a basic level of anticipation in the form of “will they, wont they?” get back together, but the upbeat music of the song and miss en scène (lighting, surroundings) all connote a fairly happy story and the audience can expect a happy ending.

The feedback from these two questions are important to me, as we wanted to impress our target audience in this way. Fans of the indie genre are generally loyal to their favourite artist, supporting them at gigs and festivals and buying all their EP's and singles! There is therefore a certain amount of pressure to do the song justice, especially as Ed Sheeran has recently become very popular and his narrative videos that already exist have resulted in great success! We hoped that the video would do the song justice in this way, and the questionnaire showed that the video did live up to their expectations. Of course, we could not create a video that is equal to those already existing as we did not have the time, money or extent of professional equipment that the real video makers have! 

Similarly, I discovered that a convention of indie genre's music is to be meaningful, and the videos following the release of the songs are narrative. Such as Ed Sheeran's Drunk following the story of going out to a bar and getting...drunk! The lyrics of the song and the video are usually strongly linked, and we wanted to do this in our video. The feedback suggests that we successfully did this. 

The editing scenes in our music video appear to be have worked well with our target audience. In addition to this, we wanted to find out how one particular editing technique was interpreted by the audience and if they thought it was effective. We therefore included the question "What did you think of the animated scene being incorporated into the video?" with space to write their opinion. As we challenged conventions of the indie music videos that our audience would be used to watching, we wanted a more in depth analysis on what they thought of this particular scene. 

The feedback included ; 

"I thought it was unique and different, and appealed to me a lot."

"Very effective and clever"

"It added variety to the video" 

This therefore suggests that the ambitious scene we created payed off and I have learnt that this fits in well with the indie genre. 

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We also wanted to ensure that our music video was clear and understandable, the flow of meaning is very important to me. The scenes such as where there are flash backs and changes in time, in the short length of the video - jumping from 'then' to 'now' do potentially is open to cause confusion with some audience members. I was pleased to discover that when asking the video "Did you understand the concept of the video?" everyone said yes! I feel that we made this clear through distinguishing changes in time through changing the colour effect on the scene. 

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Of course, our target audience was our main priority, but we also wanted to gather the opinion of someone who wasn't, and to see if they understood the video in the same way. We asked our media teacher what he thought of the video, and surprisingly the feedback was pretty much the same as the answers of those in our target audience. It was also seen to be important to ask for his opinion in this way as he is of course a media teacher and therefore is knowledgeable in what makes a good video. 

The overall feedback which we gathered through our questionnaires was preferred Readings, suggesting that they liked the video which indicates I have created a music video which represents the indie genre successfully. From the feedback which is supported by the Uses and Gratifications theory, it is apparent that the main use of our music video is for enjoyment and pleasure due to it being an engaging video with a strong narrative. This is what we wanted to achieve as it is typical of our genre.

G324 A2 Practical Coursework Evaluation | 2

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

G324 A2 Practical Coursework Evaluation | 1

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

Using Conventions-

Here is a video I made to show how current music video conventions have been applied, and influenced our work. 

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• Cross dissolves

In Ed Sheeran's music video for 'Drunk', the narrative is that he is reflecting on the failure of his relationship and it often transitions in time from 'then' when they were together, and 'now' where he is alone with a talking cat and ultimately, getting drunk. An editing technique we particularly liked from this video to show this, was a cross dissolve, which was used to transition from a shot of a photo on a wall, into where the actual photo was taken. I believe this is an effective way of cutting to the past. As our video was of a similar narrative, where the main character is looking back on the relationship he had - we decided to use this convention. In our video, we have an extreme close up, zooming into a note that says 'I love you'

• Props

When making a video for a song that is narrative, we wanted to make what was said in the lyrics, appear in the video and be relevant to the theme of our piece at the same time. Props that we used included a hair band which was shown in an extreme close up, fitting in with the lyric 'I found your hair band on my bedroom floor.' We similarly included beer cans for the lyric 'I don't drink like everybody else.'

As well as this, we also included props that had meaning and helped build a story line. Due to the fact a music video is only minutes long, we had to present our story in a brief time frame. Our 'I love you' note was focussed on, as a way of transitioning to flash backs of when they were together, creating a quite emotional narrative in doing so, the audience are able to get inside his head and understand better his emotions in this way. The close up of this picture in the video also works well , as it is featured several times throughout our video. In Taylor Swift's music video for 'You belong with me' , the beginning scenes show the two main characters exchanging conversation by writing messages to each other on paper, this therefore has relevance when the prop is used again at the ending, which concludes by showing the 'I love you' sign. Use of this prop helps to follow the story line of how they start off as friends, and end up together.  The note in our video is also featured in the ending scene

You Belong with me - Beginning

You belong with me - ending

U.N.I - Transition to flashback 

U.N.I - Ending

• Jump Cuts

This editing technique we applied to our video to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Jump cuts are a common feature in music videos. In the One Direction video, for example, jump cuts are used when the band are standing together, and they swap places. This visually looks interesting rather than them all just standing there. It also seems impressive as it is something that could not be done in real life. An example of these jump cuts in our video include the build up of images behind the main character on his bedroom wall. These jump cuts help to emphasise the main character's emotion. The fact that he himself is static on the bed and the photos build up on the wall behind him, implies how he has almost become a recluse in his bedroom, not doing anything but sitting on his bed. The jump cuts are the images on his wall appearing. This fits in with the lyric 'now I'm in the position to be another stalker.' This adds a comical value to the video, but also as the song is quite sensitive, the audience can gather that he is doing it because he misses his ex-girlfriend, and causes the audience to sympathise and connect with him in this way. Another part in the video where jump cuts are included is in the girl's bedroom, this is effective as it symbolises her packing her belongings and leaving. Instead of just showing many shots of her physically packing her things, this is an interesting alternative and signifies how she is 'disappearing.'

• Positive / Happy ending

This genre of music doesn't tend to be too deep and disheartening in terms of it's lyrics, music tempo and videos. The songs themselves are usually focussed around life and love, typically in a positive way.

Taylor Swift is an example of an artist who sings about these topics, but not in a directly depressing and sad tone, and her music videos are typically very sweet, pleasant to watch in terms of colour schemes and settings. Her video 'Ours' is about a long distance relationship, and although she misses him, she constantly reminds herself of the times they were together. Although the song is not as narrative as the one we used, the video has been created to tell a story. We loved how this video ended, and we wanted to create a similar feel for our audience. Despite the ending being slightly predicable that doesn't contain any twists, it is still effective and relevant to the song. 

The song we chose is about a couple breaking up and the reasons behind it, but the music itself is up-tempo, the use of an acoustic guitar has a pleasant tune to it and a major key, that fits in with the conventions of an indie song. Usually when people watch music videos and films in general, it is used as a form of escapism and is an audience pleasure to watch other people for entertainment and emotional release. As there is a story within this video, it causes the viewers to follow it and want to know what happens in the ending. This is a song which some people would listen to as they can relate to it, it is only right that the video also follows this. Due to our target audience being young people, who will experience relationships and breakups, this also makes it relatable . By having a happy ending, it reinforces a positive and uplifting message to the audience. Even when the song is sad, the video does not emphasise this too much and represents it in a bittersweet way.

• Use of technology- 

As we are appealing to our target audience of a young, mixed sex group who are very involved in social media and social networking sites, we wanted to include this in our video. There is an increase in featuring technology in music videos. The most common way this is used is including mobile phones, whether this is to show phone calls, texting or taking photos. In Ed Sheeran's video 'Drunk', technology is involved by Ed showing the cat his text messages. The fact that it is a birds eye view shot, and even looks like an over the shoulder shot, it looks like Ed is directly showing you his messages for you to read. This is an engaging way of involving the audience in the video. Due to the audience being conscious of technology and the meaning behind the video itself, they can grasp that the text is from an ex girlfriend causing him to feel the way he does. This influenced us to do something similar, and we included technology in a similar way. After doing research into this genre for this topic, and also in my AS studies, it became apparent that teens of this genre have moved towards using twitter as their social network of preference, rather than facebook. With this in mind, we featured a shot of the main character looking at his phone and viewing a tweet of his ex-girlfriend, saying how excited she was for university. The shot is similar to the Ed Sheeran shot, and is an over the shoulder shot so the audience are involved in this too. We also included technology by involving a voicemail being left. This is a key part to our story line, as it is the reason the girl considers not going to university. We wanted to make it explicit that this was a voice mail being left. It was easy to incorporate this into our video, as part of the song doesn't feature much of a beat / tone and sounds quite talkative instead of properly singing. Therefore we decided to make this the message that would be left. To make this clear, we inserted a voice over of the answering machine when someone doesn't answer their phone. We had no worries in the audience not grasping this concept as they are so aware of technology. Despite this, to avoid any confusion we had a close up of the girl with her mobile, showing that she has a new voice mail and who it is from. I believe that over all this is an effective way of being up to date with the audience and conventional to the increasing use of technology in music videos and fits in well with our narrative story line.

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Theorists

When studying some theorists who have formed their beliefs on the codes and conventions of narratives, it has become clear that some of their theories can be seen in my work. An example of a direct link between a theorist's view on media texts and our work is Vladimir Propp; who analysed 100s of fairytales formed the idea that it was possible to place characters in clearly defined roles from their actions within a story. Examples of these character roles include ;

-The Hero (the main character, usually seeking something)

-The Villain (opposes the hero)

-The Donor/Helper (helps the hero by providing a magic object)

-The False Hero (falsely assumed to be the hero)

-The Princess (reward for the hero, the love interest who usually needs saving from the villain) 

Although this is a theory which has been formed from typical fairytales which explicitly have the characters in the story such as princesses, there is still a link between my characters and narrative and this particular theory. For example, the hero being the main protagonist who in my music video is wanting his girlfriend back. The girlfriend is therefore the princess and due to the ending of them getting back together is the 'reward'. Despite not being a physical character, the villain in my music video is university. Supported by the lyrics in the song, this is established... "thats why you and I, ended over U.n.i" 
This is also a similar pattern to the character roles within Taylor Swift's music video for 'Ours'. In this narrative, there is a separated relationship between the hero (who in this case is Taylor) and the "princess" (despite actually being a male in this video, this is the character role he falls under as he is sought out by Swift in her music video) The villain in this narrative is again, not a physical character but is the man's job role which is causing them to be apart.
Overall, it appears that the convention of relationships and love in media texts cause Propp's theory to apply to my media text and similar texts of the same genre. The narrative follows the Hero/main protagonist seeking the Princess/partner in the relationship. Usually, to provide substance and suspense to a story which is engaging with the audience, a villain of some sort threatens this. The ending however, is a happy one (which is actually a very typical convention of a fairytale!)  .The link causing this convention that Propp identified from analysing tales  still exists today in media texts that involve the aspect of love, but are applied in more modern situations - such as university and jobs. 

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Developing Conventions

More and more current artists now release a lyric video alongside their actual music video when promoting their single. These types of videos are becoming increasingly popular, due to the fact that when someone enjoys a song, they tend to want to learn the lyrics and sing along to it. Despite these not being released on music channels as an official video, they are put on artists websites and Youtube pages. Often, people watch music videos on the internet more now anyway, with Youtube and Vevo being the two main ways of viewing it. These lyric videos gain millions of views, so it is apparent they are a common and popular way of people listening to their music. Typical conventions of a lyric video include an animated, moving image of the words appearing as they are being sung. They are usually reflective of the artist and the song style as well. They visually move in a smooth, slick way and look professional. 
We developed conventions by applying a lyric video to a typical music video. I haven't found any music videos that incorporate both video styles, but due to the audience being young and frequent users of technology, I believe that it wont be a shock to them and would be easy to adapt to this style.The fact it is only a small part of the video, and was only included in one chorus it isn't too much and doesn't detract from the narrative video and story line. 
Other ways I believe developing this convention is effective, is that Ed Sheeran is quite creative and artistic in terms of his album covers, posters and videos. All of this single covers are similar due to being black and white, a simplistic composition, the image being an illustration and the font being in a handwriting style. Therefore the audience/fans of Ed Sheeran's music would be aware of this and we wanted to fit in with his overall style. We adapted our lyric video to fit in with this, and kept the colour scheme black and white. We also had the fonts look relatively hand written and the images that were used look like doodles. Another way that this is effective is that one of the props used in our video is a black piece of paper with a doodle on it, so it also links in that way. 
I enjoyed incorporating this into our video and believe it is an effective way of combining two popular music video styles to please our audience. 

Challenging Conventions

One way in which our music video is not conventional is that there is barely any lip-syncing. The only time we do include this is for the purpose of the narrative story, where there is a shot of the male character leaving a voice mail, and it creates the illusion that he is speaking the words in the lyrics down the phone. Often in music videos, typically in the pop and R&B genre, artists will lip-sync along with the song and often are facing the audience looking directly into the camera. In the indie genre it is not necessarily in a band / party set up with instruments and a band, but instead the artist lip-syncs in more of an everyday context, such as walking down the street or in a park. Despite challenging conventions as a whole, due to creating a video for Ed Sheeran's music, we wanted to follow conventions that he as an artist uses. Ed Sheeran very rarely mimes along to the lyrics if at all in his videos, and due to his songs being quite descriptive, sensitive and having meaning to them, it often focusses on a story that is related to the song. I believe that if it cut to a set up of him singing, it would spoil the overall theme of his music videos. Therefore we decided to also create a video in this way, to maintain Ed Sheeran's video style, which would also continue to appeal to his fan base and audience. 

Final Video.

Updated / Final Album Poster

After looking at an existing, indie album poster, it influenced us to change ours to make it more conventional and relatable to our artist. 

The background image is the image from the album cover. When looking at Ben Howard's album poster and the exisiting digipaks, it bacame apparant that this is a trend, and makes sense as it maintains a theme throughout promoting this one album. It allows the audience to become familiar with the image, fonts and colourscheme.

Instead of previousley saying 'Out December 12th', I prefer the simplicity of the '12|12|12' as it gets the message across in a more powerful way, and as this specific day has the same number for the date,month and year, we wanted to play on this and make it look effective.  

In my AS media coursework, when making my music magazine, I used the rectangular blocks behind the text, to avoid the writing blending in to the background. Due to the background being quite busy, with trees and general scenery, I think that this is an effective way of making it stand out.

Another effective way we have changed our poster for the better, is that we have taken what Ben Howard did with his poster and had the font sizes of text get gradually smaller down the poster, as it chatches the attention of the audience with the artist first, then the album title and then the release date.

Existing Album Posters

This is the advertisement for Ben Howard's album Every Kingdom that was released a few months ago. Ben howard, as an artist, is similar to Ed Sheeran. He is also a part of the 'indie' music genre and the nature of his music tends to be very mellow, soft songs predominantly with an acoustic guitar as the main instrument. Ben Howard's niche audience are also similar to Ed Sheeran's, in the age range of about 16 - 25 years old and aims to appeal at this age group. The colours appeal to a mixed sex audience and connote that his music is a calming and idyllic. The font sizes get smaller further down the poster and I believe this is effective and reads well. Despite the fact that this poster does not show the artists face, this does not disadvantage it in any way, because the people that listen to indie style of music typically are quite a loyal audience who can identify an artist by their signature font or name alone, and would recognise that this is ben howard. Even though the album is not out and this is promoting it, they have probably seen the cover on the internet in ways such as seeing it on Twitter, YouTube, or iTunes and other networking and internet sites. Another way that this is effective is because the genre of his music isn't one that is image and appearance obsessed compared to pop, for example. The audience aren't bothered about the latest clothes that Ben Howard is wearing or anything like that, and that is why I believe this poster is very effective for its genre and style of music.

As this is an album poster, the exact same photo and font that is on the album is on this poster. 

We have not done this on our existing cover and would be something to consider when we draft the next version. We also should take into account out genre and audience and ensure that everything in the poster appeals to them and they are able to recognise who the artist is.