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. 

Poster | First Draft

Here is the first draft of our poster, to promote the album, to go along side our digipak and music video. 

The image we used is an image that Kelly took herself when she went to see Ed Sheeran live in Birmingham. Due to the crowd , a blacked out effect has been created at the bottom of the photo, which conveniently allowed us to put the title of the album and the artist's name here, and it is easy to read and eye-catching. The colour scheme ties in well, the greeny blues are similar to that on the digipak and work well with the colours in the picture. 

Our Finished Digipak

Front Cover:

• Editing the image by putting an effect was added to the image dull the colours down slightly, as it is not typically conventional to have bright colours, and instead the indie genre tends to use a more serene, natural colour pallete. Such as Ben Howard's album cover in a soft blue tone. 
• The spotlight effect on the image focusses the attention to the 'UNI'
• The small font is conventional of Ed Sheeran's album covers, as they are not 'in your face' and reflect the calming tone of his songs. 

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Here is a video we made to clearly show what part of the digipak goes where, and how it would be viewed. 

1. This is the front cover, and the  cover for our artists album.

2. This is the back cover, and contains the bar code, the QR code which has special features for the 'fans'.

3. This would be one of the plain pieces of card on the digipak. However it features our 'doodle' effect that features key images from his songs, and is the background for other sections of our pack. This creates a theme and continuity through the whole digipak. 

4. Something common with albums is a message from the artist, a thank you note that includes information and would be quite conversational to maintain a relationship with the audience. 

5. Although you can't see it  fully made, this is where our lyric booklet would go, and the front page of it. This is something that is common with albums and is simply for the benefit that the audience can read and learn the words to their favourite songs! As Ed Sheeran's songs are full of meaningful lyrics and tell stories, we thought this was important to include.

6. This page is simple, yet it keeps it branded and heavily associated with the artist. It also fits in with the overall theme and colour scheme of the digipak. 

Editing | Incorporating Lyric Videos

EDITING



Something that is becoming more and more common is artists releasing lyric videos along with their actual music videos. Although these don't appear on television and music channels, they are put up on YouTube. Often, people watch music videos on the internet now anyway, and with these lyric videos gaining millions of views, they are clearly a successful way of people listening to their music. As well as this, people can also learn all the lyrics to the song they like.

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We noticed that these lyric videos related to the song and artist in terms of the lyrics, nature of the song, and if the artist has any particular trade mark fonts etc. 

For example, Taylor Swift's We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, is quite a childish song in terms of the lyrics and is intentionally like this so it is catchy and infectious! Taylor is also associated with being a young, innocent character and therefore her lyric video is fitting with this. As this song is clearly a girl singing about a boy, and her fan base is mainly girls, it enables the lyric video to use feminine colours and little features such as a sun, stage and the 'girly diary.' 

Opposite to this is One Direction's That's What Makes You Beautiful. One direction has a massive audience, and although they are mainly girls, they are still a boy band and therefore wouldn't have a very feminine lyric video! The use of gender neutral colours like red black and yellow,  fits the mixed sex audience. It is a way of the band maintaining their young image with the use of notepad paper, 'doodle' drawings. They also have their logo constantly in the corner as a way of enforcing them as a 'brand'. 

Pink's  lyric video for Try is altered to fit her song and overall image as an artist. Pink is quite a pop-rock artist, and has a mixed sex fan base. This song in particular is particularly meaningful and slow, therefore her lyric video uses a dark colour palette which is gender neutral, the use of dark colours fits in with the emotion of the song. 

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After analysing this, it influenced the way we created our lyric section of the music video. 

 As previously said, one of the reasons people enjoy watching these is due to the lyrics on screen. As our video is a very literal video, and the lyrics are very meaningful in general and with relation to the music video and we want to reinforce this by including these lyrics. 

We decided to have the lyrics in a simple black colour, and use varying different fonts. This makes it look more interesting than just sticking to one font. 

Ed Sheeran is associated with very basic colours in his CD covers and they look very illustrated,and has almost become a trade mark for him. We conveyed this with the stick couple, as this looks hand drawn. 

To make this work when putting it into the video, so the words appeared one by one as they were being said, using Pic Monkey, we had to create lots of different images as we would expect them to appear on screen, like this; 

'Thats why you..."

"Thats why you and.."

This took quite a long time to do, but it was worth it and I think it works very well in the overall music video, as it is quite coherent with our music video. This is because of Ed Sheeran being associated with this art work, and also in our video we have the 'I love you' doodle that is used throughout, which is another reason that makes it 'flow' better as a video. 

Ideology

What is ideology? 
The ideas and beliefs behind a media text. These sets of beliefs are those held by groups within society, and the prevalent ones are those held by the ruling/dominant groups. Individuals/Groups hold these to be important. 

Dominant Ideologies
It is apparent that the accepted and agreed beliefs, that are repeatedly shown through the 'ruling class' and those with 'ruling intellectual'. Such as the government. 
Generally, these are the ideas such as gender roles, and those about society and what is socially acceptable and not; that we have become accustomed to and believe to be right and normal. Similar to this is a Hegemony, which is not an idea forced by political movements, but are taken hold by many and used to 'fit in' with the cultural values of their time. An example of this is football, which is extremely popular among many... but no one is forced to watch/listen/play.  In the media and music related business  at this moment in time the pop/r&b artists appear to be the hegemony, and are hugely advertised and popular. However recently it has become apparent that people enjoy listening to music outside of this, and the term 'main-stream' defines music that 'everyone listens to', and some people enjoy finding artists undiscovered and that are not 'mainstream.'

Ideology of the Indie Genre
The term indie used to be a term used for unsigned bands who got into the industry without a label and weren't particularly well known. It has since evolved into a music style, and is a very natural way of performing the song that may appear rough and improvised, but this seems to be one of the attractions to it. The music is narrative and tells a story of particular emotions. In the particular subdivision of indie music that I worked with, which is indie pop/folk with the use of guitars and fairly up beat tempo. Fans enjoy the ideology that the indie music is still almost of the unsigned nature and produced not as a part of the global industry, but for the 'fans'

Effecting our representation...
Our music video is influenced by dominant ideologies and those of the indie genre. Dominant ideologies include the use of a heterosexual couple, not that a homosexual one is not 'normal', but it just so happens that in the videos studied, when a male artist sings a song about love, a girl is featured in the lyrics and also in the video... and the same goes for the opposite sex.  Having said this, gay couples is becoming a lot more 'normal' in society so this dominant ideology could perhaps fade in years to come. 
Our target audience are both genders, so we did our best to convey equality with the sexes. The male in this music video is showing his emotions and how it is normal for a boy to show feelings. This is important as the male sex of are target audience are not stereotypically harsh, strong and with no emotion! They are just regular young people, who are often at the stage in their life where they experience different relationships and break-ups. Similarly, the female is not objectified in a negative way. In keeping with this theme of 'normality' is the mise en scene. Props such as the guitar, are associated with the indie genre and reinforce the musical interest of the audience and artists. The people and location were fairly basic , as this is meant to be a story of two people who the audience can relate to. 
Our genre would drink alcohol, but socially. In our video we showed the main character to have the beer cans pile around him in quite a comical way. We wanted to make sure that we were not promoting drinking in any way, and therefore showed him alone, implying that this is not something that he does normally. We ensure not to feature them again, so people do not associate the success of them getting back together at the end, as anything to do with being a benefit of drinking alcohol! 


Audience Pleasures

-Diversion: Escape from routine and problems; an emotional release; entertainment

-Personal Relationships: being part of a group; conversation about media; substitution of media for companionship

-Personal Identity: Value reinforcement or reassurance; self-understanding; role models

-Surveillance: Information about the world around us

The pleasures used in our text are Diversion and Personal Identity. This is because our text tells a story, and is a form of escapism. When watching and familiarizing 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. Although this sounds slightly cheesy, it is still reassuring  and entertaining.  


Memes & Tropes
Those that occur in our media text include;
-non aggressive
-artistic
-instruments featured
-no sexism
-fairly well dressed, but appearance is not the main focus.

Filming Day | U.N.I

"How did you do that...?"

Jump Cut: is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way. For this reason, jump cuts are considered a violation of classical continuity editing, which aims to give the appearance of continuous time and space in the story-world by de-emphasizing editing. Jump cuts, in contrast, draw attention to the constructed nature of the film. 

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Inspired by Ed Sheeran's 'Drunk' video, we decided to incorporate a collage of pictures on the main characters bedroom wall, of images related to the girl he has just split up with. It adds quite a comical value to the nature of our narrative video, where the lyric says "Now I'm in a position to be another stalker" We focussed on this particular 'I love you' picture, and used it 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. 

To create this, we had to leave the camera videoing as we placed more images on the wall one by one. 

This meant that in editing, we could use jump cuts to create the look that we wanted, when our actor stayed in the same position, so it looked like the images were appearing on the wall.  

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Another way we used jump cuts was to fit in with another lyric, is for the line " I don't drink like everybody else, I do it to forget things about myself."

Therefore, to make this quite literal, we decided to have him, on his bed. We wanted to make sure he was alone as he 'doesn't drink like everybody else.' 

We used empty beer cans and placed them on and around him one by one so they build up, with the same effect we used before. 

I think that jump cuts work effectively to signify time passing. As he has just experienced a bad breakup, he is naturally going to feel depressed and sad, so things around him will move while he stays quite still, and we wanted to convey this emotion.

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Updated Draft

What we changed:

• The beer can scene fits in more with the lyrics 'I don't drink like everybody else..'
• We added in a scene of my stuff on my dresser disappearing, as it looks effective and reinforces that she is leaving... and leaving him feeling 'empty'. While this may seem quite cheesy with these hidden emotions behind our work, it is sentimental to the song and therefore we see it as a must!
• We wanted to convey that she didn't answer her phone and actually talk, but that he left her a voicemail. To do this, when we were editing we recorded the voicemail woman speaking, we assume everyone is familiar with this as the audience use technology. 

Uni | First Draft

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Here is the first draft of our music video to the song U.N.I by Ed Sheeran. 

We kept these the same, as it is a powerful close up that fits in well with the lyrics.

We slightly changed this bit, but I prefer how it looks on the video. Instead of having a side shot of the flash back, it was easier and looks better the way we did it, having the camera behind them. 

We adapted this as we loved the idea to use jump cuts for beer cans to appear one by one. The room we used to film, the desk was facing a wall and it proved difficult to film him sat at the desk from different angles. We could film the back of his head but we couldn't find an effective way of having the camera facing him, so we couldn't get a good angle of his face and expression.

We improvised by keeping him sat on the bed that he had been on before, and view the pictures on the iPad. The beer cans still built around him, but they were positioned on him and next to him on the bed and I think it creates a comical effect that he has got really drunk!

We managed to make this work exactly, as we think it was such an effective sequence of shots, where he is on the bed writing the song, and this is his way of conveying his feelings- by putting them onto paper! As this is a sensitive, heart-felt song, we think this fits quite well and although he is not the main focus of this scene, it still fits in well. The main focus is the wall behind him, where the images of his girlfriend and memorabilia of things they have done together build up on his wall. We created this in the same way as the beer can scene. It shows the audience just how upset he is by this break up. 

The only slight thing changed here is the fact that we chose to focus on one particular image, which was the I love you drawing, which creates continuity in the whole video as it features more than once and is how we signified a time lapse. Similarly to what Ed Sheeran did in his video for Drunk, we zoomed into the feature wall and then on the main drawing, and once it was in an extreme close up of the image, we cut to a shot of the same drawing in an extreme close up, but it is a scene from when they were together where the drawing originally came from. 

As our audience are mainly teens, and constantly on social networking sites and using technology, we decided to feature a tweet, posted by the girl saying how she 'Can't wait for Uni!' As they are not in contact anymore because their relationship is over, this was an effective way of him still being able to know what she is doing and how she is feeling. When he see's this tweet which implies that she doesn't feel too upset about leaving him and everything behind, the audience can relate and sympathise for him. 

He then has a moment of 'madness' and in his fury, rips down his wall of photos. It isn't until he sees a photo of her on the floor and 'realises' what he just did, he then phones her to speak to her.

Things we changed

As predicted, when filming day arrived, some of our initial ideas on the story board proved difficult to create in reality. Such as the train station scene. Although this was a good idea, it was a bit difficult to recreate in reality. We could not 'hire out' the train station and therefore had no control over when trains are arriving and leaving, how people would react to being filmed and it was just too ambitious. Instead, we had the boy waiting for the girl about to leave for uni outside her home. It turned out that we liked this better as the audience would be more familiar with the surroundings and can assume they are outside her house, leaving. 

We also added in the jump cuts of the drawing in the chorus. This fits in with the similar sketches throughout the video such as the 'I love you' drawing.

Next steps

To make the animated chorus scene look more professional and potentially computerise it instead of the hand drawing. 

The lip-syncing scene where he is leaving her a voice mail, needs to be more in time with the music. 

Digipak - Welcome/Thank you page

When the digipak is opened, it will reveal two faces of the card. The next part of the pack we ideally want the audience to see is the 'Thank you" page to almost welcome the audience to our digipak.  Within this, we will greet the audience in a colloquial way and be very talkative as a way of relating to the reader and fan base. Also an exciting feature in this is the QR bar code where it can be scanned and will direct you to a real web page with a poster we created oursleves. I believe this is a good feature to include as alot of music based merchandise is digital recently, and this is our way of being modern and up to date. The back ground is the same as the images we created ourselves which will be maintained throughout the whole of the pack. We decided to use a mossy green colour to fit in with the front cover which is of a very natural, greeny scene with trees, and this fits in well with it. 

This is what the digipack will look like when the first card (on the left) is opened. The thank you message page will then be revealed, and to see the cd and the digipak opened fully, the next step is to life and open the thank you page. This diagram explains it; 

I am happy with the structure of our digipak so far. 

Digipak | Whats inside...

When the digipak is opened there are typically two pieces of card either side of the cd, which is in the middle. To fill the gaps either side of the where the cd will be situated, we decided to be in keeping with Ed Sheeran's theme of doodles and sketches to represent his song lyrics and meanings. To do this, we looked at various different lyrics from his songs and wrote down what stood out most to us that we could then transfer to the page. We decided on the following;

Snowflake : "Maybe you're loveable, maybe you're my snowflake" - Wake me up

Kitten : Taken from the music videos main theme - Drunk

Wings : "Its too cold outside, for angels to fly" - The A Team

Lego : "I'm gonna pick up the pieces, and build a lego house" - Lego House

Bird : " My little bird" - Little bird 

Sofa : "On the sofa, where we lay, I wanna stay inside all day" - Sofa

As '+' is his current album name title, I decided to incorporate this into the doodle to fill in the gaps, and I also played on this idea and included similar symbols for something a bit different. The paw print is another symbol linked with Ed Sheeran, so I decided to include this too.

Story Board

For our music video, a story board is needed to clarify final ideas of what shots to use and what needs to be included when it comes to videoing. 

U.N.I - Ed Sheeran | Lyrics

I found your hairband on my bedroom floor,
The only evidence that you've been here before
And I don't get waves of missing you anymore,
They're more like tsunami tides in my eyes
Never getting dry, so I get high, smoke away the days never sleep with the light on
Weeks pass in the blink of an eye,
And I'm still drunk at the end of the night
I don't drink like everybody else,
I do it to forget things about myself,
Stumble and fall with the head spin I got
My mind's with you but my heart's just not

So am I close to you anymore, if it's over
And there's no chance that we'll work it out

That's why you and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied
You and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied

Everybody said we'd be together forever but I know that,
I never wanna settle down, come around, break up the love like Lego now,
Never wanna turn into another like you,
Sleep with my thoughts, dance with my views,
Everything's great but not everything's sure,
But you live in your halls and I live in a tour bus,
Now I'm in a position to be another stalker like every thing I say seems to always sound awkward,
Like our last kiss it was perfect, we were nervous,
On the surface,
And I'm always saying everyday that it was worth it,
Pain is only relevant if it still hurts,
I forget like an elephant, or we can use a sedative and go back to the day we fell in love just on our first kiss

So am I close to you anymore, if it's over
And there's no chance that we'll work it out
Ohh you and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied
You and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied

Wo-ooooahhhh [x2] oohh ohh

Because, if I was gonna go somewhere, I'd be there by now,
And maybe I can let myself down, wo-oahh
And I'm thinking that I'm unaware, I keep my feet on the ground and keep looking around, to make sure I'm not, the only one to feel low,
Because if you want, I'll take you in my arms and keep you sheltered, from all that I've done wrong
And I'll know you'll say, that I'm the only one
But I know god made another one of me to love you better than I ever will

Cause you and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied
You and I ended over U N IAnd I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied