Digipak Drafts

Above are some quick sketches I did whilst planning for my digipak front cover. They are all based on images I have already taken so I will be able to use them immediately. 

• The first is just a basic portrait image of my artist, this would more than likely be the same image I used in my first draft for my magazine advert. The background would be a plain white or grey and the font used would be the same style as that used in my video.
• The second idea is a still from my music video at the end, where it is supposed to be a 'end of party' shot with all the mess on the floor. It is almost a way to foreshadow what happens throughout the song and video.
• The third is similar to the first in the style of a portrait however it would be closer to her face and would be positioned to only reveal half of it. I think this gives a modern and contemporary look however it doesn't completely fit the style of my video.
• My fourth idea was a 'photo booth' style, where the image would actually be four different images put together to look like a photo strip, the images would have all been taken at similar times and would be fun and spontaneous looking
• The fifth idea would be similar to a portrait style but the actual picture would be one of the 'behind the scenes' pictures I took, this cover would be fun and playful in a way to show the artists personality.
• The last sketch is very simple but would be an image of the food colouring and water experiment with the liquid 'floating' and then the words 'Pop Up' infront of it, this would continue the house style of colour and texture through my products and could easily be related to my work because of this. 

Inside of the digipak

In this rough plan I thought the idea of a continuous image that expands over both sections, the image I am more than likely going to use would be a still from the end of my video  of the mess on the floor. I am still undecided as to what to include on the left side of the digipak so for now I will experiment with just images.

Front and back cover 

These are my rough plans for the back and front covers for the digipak. I am debating which image to use for my front cover, so I have left this blank where 

Analysing my video - In terms of feminism

Male Gaze

From researching and watching a lot of music videos where the main artist is a woman, I have noticed how often they are represented and shown under the ‘male gaze’ (Laura Mulvey) and are sexualised and objectified for the visual pleasure of a man. However I feel my own video takes a feminist approach and breaks these boundaries. Common features of the male gaze in music videos are; the camera lingering on a woman’s body, especially curves and bare skin. Also women being identified and relegated to a status lower than that of a man.

I always wanted my artist to be a key, strong and independent female icon. I didn't feel the need to include other characters in the video, especially not a love interest or a male as it wouldn't fit with the song and wouldn't be necessary. By only having one ‘character’ it creates the image that I wanted to portray of a key figure and keeps the focus on the actions of my artist.

This also links with my target audience where my intention was to present my artist in a positive way as a role model and icon for teenagers and young adults, I think that this works well as she is not promoting any harmful or explicit messages to the audience.

Clothing and exposure are also a key part of the male gaze, especially where the less a woman is wearing the 'better'. Even though my target audience is young adults who would most likely be interested in fashion and clothing, I chose not to highlight what my artist was wearing as again, I wanted her to be the main focus and not material items like her clothing, which wouldn't really show her personality which was one of my aims. I kept the outfit simple with a black t shirt and jeans(which were hardly visible throughout the video) as the rest of the video was incredibly busy with colours, textures and effects and I thought block coloured clothing would work best against this.

To conclude, the idea and aim of my video is to focus on the message my artist is putting across, through her song and her actions, that women can be independent and do what they want. Instead of a focus on what she is wearing and how she looks. This extremely contrasts with the post modern view of 'style over substance' as my video almost criticizes this too, where the meaning is valued higher than the appearance. 

Rihanna and Shakira 

Lorde

Robin Thicke 

Audience Feedback for my Music Video

As part of my audience feedback to help improve my music video, our media class conducted a session where we rotated around the classroom watching and giving anonymous feedback on each others music videos, only one of the questionnaires isn't anonymous as the respondant gave her name in error but this hasn't caused any problems during my changes.
Below are the scanned copies of the questionnaires which I asked my class mates to fill in after watching my video.

Strengths of my music video:
From my audience feedback I have noted the things in which other people like about my video, some which I didn't necessarily think worked but it has helped me to get other peoples perspectives of my work.

Most of the respondents liked the use of text/title at the beginning and end of my video 
which is something I also like and will definitely keep it.

A lot of people also liked the overlay I used throughout the video of food colouring and ink.

Another strength and something I learnt from the audience feedback was how people understood the signs throughout my video such as pop and being out of control. The majority interpreted it the way I wanted them too and understood why I chose to include certain props etc.

Weaknesses and things to improve:
Most people mentioned that some of my footage including lip syncing is out of place which is something I can fix by simple editing and moving the clips to fit with the timing of the music. I may also need to cut some of my footage to fit in time with the music.

Another thing I need to change about my video which I learnt from the audience feedback was an issue with the colours and coverage at certain parts of my video where the overlay looks too heavy and you can't see the artist well enough, causing an issue with my idea and picture of a strong and iconic artist who should be bold and constantly the focus of the video. To recover this I am going to need to re watch my whole video and make sure the percentage of the opacity is correct and works well with the image underneath it. 

Another area of my video I need to improve on which was suggested by my audience feedback is how the artist is static and we only really get one camera angle focusing on the front of the artist. I agree with this feedback because I feel that the video gets slightly 'boring' with just one perspective, however my idea was to keep all focus on the artist and their strong image and in some aspects using a range of different perspectives and camera angles may have taken this image away and brought more focus onto the way the music video has been filmed instead of who is in the video and what I want to represent. Now that I have nearly finished my video and have certainly finished all filming for it, it will be a challenge to re film parts in different angles, this leads on to my reason for adding more depth and dimension to my video by adding colour and dripping water which makes it aesthetic and 'visually interesting' 

Skills Development Journal: Tutorials

Being the first time I have edited footage, especially on Premier Pro -  there were some effects and editing techniques that I hadn't mastered but wanted to use in my video. Because of this I looked into searching for tutorials on Youtube, here are some of the tutorials I found, and how they helped me.
I have overlays over the majority of my video, the aim being to add depth and meaning, especially as the added colours act as a sign

Overlays and opacity

 To create this effect of my actress with the colours falling behind her I needed to create layers and use opacity.
I imported the footage I needed, in this case - my actress lip syncing and extreme close up footage of food colouring going into a bowl of water. I aligned my footage so the overlay was on top of my lip syncing. I then brought down the opacity  of the colour and water because it is on the top, priority, line. To reduce the opacity I just dragged the thin yellow line down to whatever percentage suited, in some cases it would be more because of the lighting.
I don't need to adjust the opacity in the footage of my actress because I want her to be as bold as possible with the colour over the top.