Deadline Day

Being it the deadline day today for the Evaluation it seems to me like this is the day when its finally over. Despite still having to film our question 4's which i hope to do on Friday or as soon as possible that doesnt really seem to count. I feel as though it is today that the weight of the coursework for this subject has been lifted...finally

Music Video Evaluation Question 1

This is our music video for the song The Competition by Kimya Dawson.
Even though it would be extremely helpful to compare with one of Kimya's own videos she doesnt have any so therefore i cannot explain how they differ and/or are different.
A video from another artist of a similar genre which i will compare and contrast however is Dance Anthem by Regina Spektor. To substitute not having one of Kimya's Videos i will also compare Corinne Bailey Rae's Put Your Records On as this is another of the same sort of genre and one that i have done a textual analysis on in the past.





The main elements to this genre we feel is that despite trying to sell to as many pople as possible the artists want to fit into the niche market and like to think of themselves as independant, without being referred to as the typical indie sub culture. It would seem that in the majority of these artists videos the lead vocalists are the main characters and a lot of the time are having a good time or are light hearted. Regina Spektor may be an excpetion to the good time rule but her videos are still light hearted and i think ours is particularly so - hitting people in the face etc. I think keeping to that typical convention was important for our video because at best its difficult to find the defining rule of an anti-folk video and without this aspect it would be even more so.
As the lead singer is most of the time the one in the narrative of the video we thought fit to do so also so even if an audience only was a short clip of the video they could still tell who it was performing.

Featuring in both the Regina Spektor and the Corinne Bailey Rae videos another typical element to this genre of music is having the location set outdoors during daylight hours or close to dusk. Again we stuck to this convention as we liked the idea of riding a bike (presumably as did Corinne Bailey Rae) and riding a bike inside would have proved alot more difficult.

One thing that is predominant in videos of this sort of nature is the use of stop motion. Although the 'Put Your Records On' video doesnt contain any I know alot of the Regina Spektor stuff does and we liked the look of this opening sequence from Dance Anthem of the 80's so we used some to represent the character crying. We thought it gave a video a nice effect when it swaps to stop motion every now and then, even if we did just use it the once.

Having just one narrative location is typical as well, and if not one then two or the bare minimum. The Corinne Bailey Rae video has only 2 and Regina Spektor's has only one! Our video, like Dance Anthem only has the one but is a big location as most of the shots are tracking.

Unlike either of these videos though and one way our video does challenge the genre convention is that ours has many flashbacks (filmed in sepia) which are a lot of different locations of different places the character has been in her life.

All in all our video pretty much follows all conventions of the norm for this genre, it has strong elements from both the above videos and a lot of our own ideas based on the conventions and fits into the anti folk category quite nicely in my opinion. Our production does only really differ in location but even this difference is surrounded by similarities in that the type of location is extremely similar.

Music Video Evaluation Question 2

With all products in the media industry there is a constant synergy between related produce for example a logo or particular style of an artist. With the professional industry in mind when we were creating our video and Digi Design pack we have incorpporated similar styles and colours in all three so it can be seen as all the same artist.



When we started planning both the inside and outside of the CD cover and the website we knew a constent theme was important from our analysis of other artists so from doing our own textual analysis of our artist we chose a set of colours which represented her best - creams and brows and colours of the natural spectrum. Initially when we knew what we were doing but hadnt yet done anything we started with just a blank canvas, straight away with the creamy colour we liked - The colour of the wallpaper on the website and inside Cd cover.



Despite having problems with just about every stage of the Digi Design process we still kept the synergy between the products.

When we looked at the original artists style, the way her Cd cover and website was laid out there was a consistent theme of doodles. Even though the recent change in style to the artists website meant the doodles were more coloured and 3-d, we wanted to keep to the old style, the scribbled doodles like on the album cover so we doodled our own images and scanned them on...changing the colour to our palet. Like the artist had used the images on both CD and website we also thought it would be a nice sort of synergy to include the doodles in both also.
For the font of the artist we thought a hand written style was most appropriate and chose the font for the CD cover. Because this font didnt exist on the software for the website and because we didnt want to change it we hand made the text of the artist name for the website to our style and scanned them in. Thinking it would be too time consuming and hard to read we did have to change the font for the rest of the site.

Another way we maintained a clear theme and interraleted the website and Cd cover was by using the same location for all our designs. Being as our whole idea revolves around natural images and colours we found this field which was just the right colour so we used it for every stage in our prduction - Inside CD, Outside CD, website and music video. I think we particularly liked this idea of the artist playing in a field or having fun in a field as the message the songs and the message the original artist gives across in her music is that you shouldnt be materielistic and dont need to be to have fun - which i think we illustrate well in our synergy.

As the target audience for our video in young teenage girls we think that by having a running theme of girly type doodles and nacy writing that probably wouldnt appeal to the male audience we have acheived our goal in targeting our right audience category.

As you can see in our video we have continued keeping to the colour palet we chose for the artist, adding a sepia effect to alot of the clips gave us the effect we needed.

Other existing artists of the genre suchas Corinne Bailey Rae have similar styled Cd Covers and videos to the one we have created, using synergy like us in the two maybe relating in location or activity however similarly to our original artist Kimya Dawson, Corinne Bailey Rae has since changed her website to choreograph her next album release. Her album Called Corinne Bailey Rae (2006) has a colour link and style link to that of her single video 'Put Your Records On'. This is like what we have done which shows we have shown proffessional initiative. By using this synergy helps sell the artist because if a passer by were to stumble across one of the three aspects they would know what style the artist was and decide their opinion on them.

Similar to our own video the consistent colours to hers are natural creams and yellows, unlike ours though the sun is a key part in this the idea of sunset being the starring role.

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question Three

After everyone in our class had completed their music video, we all sat and watched each others back, filling in a feedback sheet and giving them a score we thought it was worth out of 40. As stated in a previous post when finding an average score for ours, we found it was 34/40 which is in the top band. I was really pleased with this as i'm glad that other people can see all the hard work that has gone into it.

With our class being a mixture of people, both genders and personality the feedback we got was varied.

Although a vast majority of it was postivie feedback, with things such as 'good lip syncing', sells the artist', 'fits well with the song', 'humurous' and 'professional' there were of course a minority of negative comments, for example 'bad camera angles', 'not easy to watch', 'a bit over the top' and 'rubbish song'; we knew that our song choice obviously wouldn't pleae everybody, as everyone has their own taste in music. We did also try to mix up the camera angles and use interesting heights for certain shots, but obviously this person wasn't keen on it.

There were several sections in which we deiced to keep the volume of the actual clip up, for example when Rosa answers the phone in the office so that we can still hear her say 'hello' and also when she rings the bell on the bike. However there was one clip where Rosa is standing on the bed in fairy wings for the line 'I'll show you who's the best!' at first we simply turned the volume off and lip synced it in time for the music but then we were unsure as to whether we should in fact leave it up like the others or not. Because as a group we couldn't come to a decision we decided to get people that were in the room at the time, as well as everyone in our class to watch it both ways and say which they thought. Although in the end as a group we were slightly leaning against turning it down everyone (minus a few) thought we should leave it up, so we went with the majority and left the volume up.

When we originally did our pitch to the class, I felt that they weren't too enthusiastic about our song choice or idea, but from gathering the feedback and hearing what people have to say about it now that it's compeleted I am really happy with the response.

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question Two

Completed Website

Completed CD Cover



Throughout each section of our work - the website, CD cover and music video - we have tried to maintain a continuous look and feel to everything we've done. From looking into some of Kimya Dawsons own CD covers and her official website, as well as other artists within the anti-folk genre we have picked out different things we liked and wanted to do ourselves.

For instance, as artists similar to Kimya (as well as her herself) are very down to earth, simple and natural we chose to stick to browns and beiges for the majority of our work. As you can see from the above images we edited the doodle (in which Jacques and Sophie drew) so that rather than having a white background like it did previously it was beige. To do this, after scanning the drawing onto the Mac we opened the image into Photoshop where we made a new layer (which was the beige) and placed the drawings on top of the new layer, only selecting the drawings. We also had the writing on the website as a darker brown (slightly red as to add a slight colour so it didn't get too boring) and chose a font which wasn't too formal but looked more hand written, as well as having the 'Kimya Dawson' at the very top of the website written by ourselves which we too then scanned into Photoshop to select each letter seperately; when first analying Kimya Dawson's own official website she too had doodled images at the top with hand written titles for each new page (however during us making our own website based on this she updated hers, we preferred the originall version and so carried on using that as inspiration).

We kept this running through to our CD cover by having the same doodle pattern as the background for the inside cover, we also turned the opacity down on the front/back image and added a slight sepia effect. This suited the image we had chosen perfectly as the landscape behind her sat on the fence seemed more autumnal. As Kimya Dawson is always seen with her guitar we also made sure that she was sat playing the guitar in the image (where we also later filmed part of the music video) and used the sound whole of it as part of the inside cover where the CD would be placed.

To carry on the effect from this we added a slight sepia tint to the narrative sections of our music video, not only did this connect it to the CD and webpage but it also created the effect that each of these sections were events that have happened previously in which she is telling us about. We also ended our music video in the same location as the images for the CD cover and website were taken; we had Rosa sing the last few lines sat in the same place as the CD cover image was taken and she also walks off through the field behind her at the very end as if she's going home after finishing her paper round.

Throughout all of the photoshoots and filming we also tried to make sure that she was wearing the same costume, which you see on all three of our products, this makes the artist instantly recognisable for the audience. Although on one day of filming (the bike section) Rosa was unable to cycle whilst wearing the long skirt and so we had to make sure that when we went back to film that part again she was wearing the same as before so as to not create any continuity errors. It also so happened that she had forgotten to bring her boots and was instead wearing some personalized pumps - although we were worried at first, it turns out that actually these shoes also fit in with Kimya's image with the doodling on our website etc.

From looking at two of Kimya Dawson's previous album covers, 'Remember that I love you' and 'Alphabutt' we can instantly see her simple and down to earth approach to life. Both include handdrawn images with nothing too complicated, they differ in the fact that 'Remember that I love you' is mainly black and white, whereas 'Alphabutt' is very colourful and personally i prefer the colourfullness of the second album as i think that this matches her fairly outrageous personality more so than the plain black and white. Although they are slightly different to eachother, and different to our own CD cover I think that they still fit in with how we have designed ours.

Kimya's website also portrays her personality with the monsters at the top, however as I previously spoke about halfway through us designing our website she updated hers. We all agreed that we preferred her original website as it fit in more with what we had in mind, but the new version still works with what we've got. Just like ours, Kimya has videos on her website, and links to her twitter, facebook or other blogs.

I also looked at Laura Marlings CD cover for some inspiration for ours, although this is very different to ours i think we can relate to this for the fact that the image on the cover is a drawing, however it's a drawing of the artist herself. I'm not too fond of this in relation to using it fully for our own work, mind.

I then went on to look at her website; i found it was very simplistic and felt quite formal. Although obviously we didn't want our website to be too relaxed we wanted it to feel approachable and for our audience to be able to feel at ease with it.

After looking at Laura's and not being too impressed i went back to Kate Nash who we had preivously looked at, I feel like her album cover is very similar to ours, the image on the front looks almost animated and drawn rather than a proper photo (like our doodle) and the artist is on the front cover - instantly recognisable - the font at the top also looks like it has been hand written which has been something key to us in the process of making our CD cover.

Kate Nash's website is also very similar to ours, although it doesn't have a running theme of colour or exact style to her CD cover i feel it is still recogniseable as hers. The title at the top of the webpage is in the same font as on the cover which may help to add to this; the website gives off a far more femine image to her work which obviously appeals to her target audience or teenage girls. Scrolling across the top of the page is also different images with captions from Kate herself. Which is just like the live twitter feed we have on the bottom of our website.

From looking into each of these artists CD covers and webpages I am confident in thinking that our own will appeal to our target audience. Throughout the process of creating them we have kept them in mind and all the time referring back to 'does it work?', 'will it fit in with the rest of our work?' and 'will they like it?' - I feel the answer to all of these questions is now yes! they will.

In all, without the use of the internet I doubt our music video would be very successful at all; we've used numerous use of the internet to mass research into our chosen genre, artist and competitors as well. We have also uploaded our video to YouTube in which within just under a week of it being on there we've managed to reach 300 views already, we have used sites such as Twitter and Facebook to promote our video, passing on the URL for people to watch it. As well as using Blogger to keep track on all the work and progress we've been making.

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question One



Our finished video; Kimya Dawson - The Competition

Regina Spektor - Us

As Kimya Dawson doesn't have any official music videos, I have chosen an artist who is the most similar to her to compare against another artist from the same genre.


Kate Nash - Foundations





Although within the genre of anti-folk in which our chosen artist falls amongst the aim of each artist is to stand out from others, not comforming to peoples expectations; this makes it difficult to identify anti-folk artists. However they each have one thing in common, they each like to be experimental and tend to mock seriousness from time to time. I personally feel that our music video does this perfectly. With anti-folk music videos aiming to be different from others we had to think about what elements of the genres conventions we would use for our own video.

From watching Regina Spektor's video of 'Us' and Kate Nash's 'Foundations' amongst others, we noticed that anti-folk music videos tend to have very strong narratives running throughout the video, with the lead singer as the main character for the narrative (which is highly evident in 'Foundations'); this was something which we really liked the idea of and wanted to do for our own video. We incorporated this for most of our video, such as when she was sat on her bed playing the guitar. But also when she's both cycling and walking down the road.

When looking at the different shot types within the videos we noticed that there was always a lot of variation, so as to keep the audience interested and watching, sometimes when watching videos they can get boring having repetitive shots and not being very inventive. In 'Us' we see interesting high angles of Regina playing the piano and looking up to the camera singing. We tried to do unusual shots like this while she was in bed playing the guitar and on the fence at the very end, swapping angles each line/when appropriate.

From also watching Kate Nash's video for 'Foundations' there were several extreme close ups of their hands doing different things (playing cards, putting the cards down etc) which we felt was a great idea for part of our introduction when Rosa was leaving the house. At the beggining of Kate Nash's video for 'Foundations' there are several different shots such as the toothbrushes, bedside table and a row of shoes, as each beat comes the shots change. This links the action in the video to the song and makes it easier and more interesting to watch and keep focus on. We had a similar idea from seeing this for the introduction to our music video where we started the first beat of the song when he foot pushed off on the pedal.

A big part of Regina Spektor's video for 'Us' is the use of stop motion, this gives the video a very unique and quirky look to it making it something you remember from the video which is obviously something you would aim for. We thought that it would be really interesting to try out doing some stop motion ourselves. We decided to do use it at two different times, the first being when she gets out of bed and looks into the mirror to see 'fat', 'ugly' and 'stupid' each appearing one after the other and the second being straight after this when the tears appear down her face. As i went to film at Rosas on my own i was quite nervous about filming these however looking back i think that they turned out quite well and really work and fit in with the rest of our video.

Looking back at our video and thinking about the conventions of an anti-folk music video i don't believe that we've challenged them at all. One of the main conventions of the anti-folk genre is that they tend to mock seriousness; although part of our video can be percieved as being quite serious as the lyrics are about problems Kimya has faced in her life, we tried to lighten it up a bit with the newspapers being thrown and  hitting the people in the faces. At first i was worried that this wouldn't work and might look out of place, however when watching our video now it's complete i feel that they fit perfectly and do make the whole video a lot funnier and less serious.

A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE EVALUATION (Sophie Avci)

QUESTION THREE

After showing our completed music video to our A2 media class, they filled in some audience feedback sheets (posted in previous blog posts) giving us their opinion on our video and the strengths and weaknesses that we can work on. Our class does contain mixed genders, meaning the audience feedback sheets were not all done by our target audience of females.

Below is a Wordle of their feedback. From this wordle we can see that the most common comments we have received are that our video is suitable, works well with the song, and we have good lip synching.




Our Variety of Camera Angles



Although the majority of the comments received were positive, one feedback sheet had a lot of negative comments such as 'it was difficult to watch'. We know that our music video will not be perfect as we are not professionals however we did make sure we had a lot of variety in the video, from camera angles to narrative ideas, so I think that our video was simply not enjoyed because the person does not like Kimya Dawson's music and anti-folk is not a genre he/she particularly likes.

'I'll show you who's the best'

During the actual making of the video we did ask for some audience feedback so we could alter some of the video to meet audience's needs. One section where we did this was on the princess bit where Rosa is on the bed saying 'I'll show you who's the best'. Originally we were going to have the sound down on this part and sync it so it fit with the soundtrack, however when we played it to a group of people with the sound up, they said they much preferred it with Rosa actually speaking over the soundtrack. By getting people's opinions during the production process we can alter our music video to make it more suitable for the audience.

 

Overall, I feel we had fairly positive feedback and I am pleased with the outcome. I think, however, if we had gathered audience feedback from a more wider unknown audience then we would receive more critical opinions as they would give their honest thoughts to the video.

Music Video Evaluation Question 3

For feedback we asked everyone in the class to fill out an audience feedback sheet so we could review the strengths and weaknesses of our production, we then put the comments into a wordle page.
A couple of examples of the feedback and the wordle...

Reading through these sheets and looking at the wordle we were able to see that most people enjoyed the video, only few issues were raised but we believe them to be minor. Getting positive feedback from both males and females in the room filled us with confidence too as we are aware it is a very female orientated video. The males gave just as good feedback as the girls, despite the song not being their cup of tea, they said it was appropriate.

The only real issue raised in the feedback was that the shots were pehaps too long which we probably could have worked on however the nature of the song doesnt demand the normal quick shots of a music video so we thought it alright, we see what they mean as in this shot...

theres a 9 second clip which is very long even for our genre and is possibly a weakness to our video.

The latter example of the feedback sheet we recieved stated it wasn't attention grabbing and that it was over the top but in our opinion, though we take on board the comments, that it was just a matter of opinion in song choice and as it was the only bad feedback in six, we chose to dismiss it, it did never the less say it fit with the song and it had no syncing mistakes which was nice. To target a wider audience we could of maybe used more shot variety, maybe a more accessable narrative but to be honest if the audience dont like the song theres not a lot that can be done 

During the filming stages we made several decisions based on audience feedback also for instance in the clip where she hits one of the girls in the face with a paper we asked a variety of passing spectators whether we should keep the sound on the clip or not and with a landslide vote saying we should - we did.

We did the same sort of voting technique when creating the website and CD cover too. For the website we asked numerous individuals whether a particular font worked well with our theme or not, on this occasion it didnt work so well and we scrapped it for another more popular font. For the CD cover we asked where we should put the track listings, again we went with our findings and it turned out to be better.

In many ways audience feedback was used right back in the planning stages of our production too as when we pitched our idea to the class we found out that they liked the idea of the main character riding a bike and singing like in our clip of Corinne Bailey Rae's Put Your Records On but they also like stop motion in Us by Regina Specktor, we incorporated both into our final video as these just boosted our already set minds.

A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE EVALUATION (Sophie Avci)

QUESTION TWO

Above are our completed Webpage and Digipak.

One thing we made sure we did when creating our project was keeping a continuous theme throughout. The choice of colours (beiges and sepia tones) has stayed the same throughout each section, for example:

-CD COVER: Brown wood on acoustic guitar. The beige colour on the doodled background. Natural colours in the photograph.

-WEBSITE: Natural colours in photograph (plants, Rosa's hair). Beige doodled background. Brown coloured font.
-VIDEO: Sepia on the narration parts. Countryside looking locations.

There are a lot of things that are present in more than one of our three products, some of these being:
-Rosa - as she is the artist we wanted to have her in all three products so the audience recognises the artist straight away.

SAME LOCATION AS CD COVER

-Costume - we decided in every photograph to have Rosa in the same costume to show continuity, however we did have a different costume for part of the video to show another day in Kimya Dawson's life.

-The location - same location on the CD Cover, the website and the ending of the music video. We decided to repeat the location to show that its a personal place of Kimya Dawson's where she likes to hang out.

DOODLE

- The doodle - which Jacques and I drew ourselves, has appeared on both the CD Cover and the Website. By doing this it looks more professional and shows that Kimya Dawson has a specific look that makes her unique. When looking at Kimya Dawsons website, there is also animated images so we have kept Kimya Dawson's personality in our products.

 

 

 When creating each product, we wanted to make sure they interrelated so on the Webpage we had a section that mentioned the CD album and also 'The Competition'. By using synergy, it helps promote the music video through other media but is seen by the same target audience which is even better. All three products which we have created have the same purpose in the sense that they're all wanting the target audience to listen to the music video. We have done this by telling the audience to watch the music video (WEBPAGE), having the track on the album (CD COVER) and when the audience see our music video hopefully they'll become interested in the artist therefore frequently revisit the Webpage

and listen to all the tracks on the CD. As well as in our own products, we have also used synergy in our music video when the youtube section comes up with all the comments. Although we didn't intentionally have this section to help promote youtube, it shows that some of Kimya Dawson's videos are on youtube for people to see.



Handwritten Font



I think overall, our Webpage, CD Cover and Music Video will definitely be liked by our target audience of teenage females. We have done various thing to aim our products to this audience such as keeping the theme quite feminine with the doodled background and having the main character as a girl so its easy to relate to. More technical aspects such as the main font (Beautiful Every Time) and our handwritten font on the Webpage are very curly and girly, and slightly animated like the font seen on Kimya Dawson's albums. Although the costume is pretty much the same throughout the video (it's the same on Webpage and CD Cover) there are a few different costumes such as the princess outfit. This costume was used, along with fitting to the lyrics, to suit our target audience of females. By having these sort of costumes, it expresses Kimya Dawson as quirky and girly which is what her music is usually described as.

Princess Outift

 

 



We had the same location in the CD Cover, Webpage and Music Video - shows Kimya's personal favourite space



This is Regina Spektor's webpage. In similarity to ours, its simple and unique. Although anti-folk artists are not all similar and infact dwell on the fact that they are individual, they all share one thing which is: they express their uniqueness through their image. From looking at Regina Spektor's webpage we can see how although she has displayed her individuality differently to Kimya Dawson, there are still some similarities. There is a picture of Regina on the homepage which shows the audience who's fanpage it is and makes it more personal. Also, similar to our music video, Regina Spektor's website promotes her album at the top of the page to catch the audience's attention first.



This is Regina Spektor's album. Like our album, it is continuous with colours as it has stayed with the blue and grey colour scheme on both Regina Spektor's Webpage and CD. Like ours, it has the artist and their instrument, however Regina's is in animation whereas ours wasn't because we wanted the audience to recognise the artist at first glance.



This is Kate Nash's CD and I think it's very much similar to ours. It has a countryside looking location, like ours and also has the artist on the front cover. To keep with quirky theme, the font used is very child like which also suits the target audience of female teenagers. The image is the main foreground which makes it more interesting to look at, however I think that the artists name should have been slightly bigger like ours to show the audience who the artist is straight away.



Unlike our webpage and CD Cover, there seems to be no continuity in the theme apart from the font used on the artists name. I don't like this idea, as when I first clicked on the website I wasn't sure whether I was on the official page or not. I think by having a continuous theme, whether its the same background or the same colour scheme like Regina Spektor's, it makes the artist more recognisable to the audience.



This is Kimya Dawson's album 'Alphabutt'. Compared to our Kimya Dawson CD, this is very dissimilar as our CD cover was a photograph rather than a drawing. The 'cute' handwritten effect on the font is very much like ours as it adds a feminine personal effect to the CD cover. When we originally looked at this album in the beginning, we liked how the title was written in the sky,  so when we created our own CD cover, we did the same.  It prevents an overcrowded look that can be too busy to look at.

 



After Kimya Dawson's original website got hacked, a new one was created. Although this means we cant compare our webpage to the original one we were using for inspiration, we can compare it with the updated version. Similar to ours, it has an animated background which represents Kimya as a fun and carefree artist which is what we were going for. Although this webpage is much brighter than ours, it's simple and easy to navigate round like ours with the links at the top of the page. We also had the name of the artist at the top of the webpage so the audience knew immediately who's wepbage we were on.



The internet has been a big input in our project and we have used it mainly for promoting our products, such as using youtube to display the video and obviously a webpage would be shown on the internet. Without the internet, it would be difficult to get people tosee our music video as we have used youtube as well as social networking sites to pass on the URL. In addition to this, we have used Blogger to keep all our thoughts and ideas in the process in an organised way.

THERE IS FURTHER ANALYSIS INTO CD COVER ANALYSIS EARLIER ON IN MY BLOG POSTS. - http://a2blockbbecysophiejacques.blogspot.com/2011/12/a2-advanced-portfolio-reflective.html