End of A2 coursework

I have finally come to an end of my coursework and I will now be studying/revising in preparation of my media studies exams soon. I am very please with what we have produced and I have learnt many skills that I can use in the future.

Advanced Portfolio Evaluation

Below is our A2 evaluation. It includes information on how my group and I created specific media products within our coursework and many more. It was challenging yet rewarding as when looking at previous students evaluation we would have never thought we could produce something that consists of so much time, we were unaware of the extra effort required. Overall, we are very happy with our finishing product as we have all agreed with everything within the evaluation and we made sure that everyone's contributions were included. I am personally very happy with what we have produced and feel that we completed this evaluation to the best of our ability and worked extremely hard. This was done within school and our homes as we felt that this was so important that we did not want to waste any time what so ever. We kept the text and background simple with a black and white theme and soothing music to start off with as we wanted to keep it professional, it was then followed by different genres of music to prevent any viewers from possibly being bored.

Final Cut Of Music Video

Below is the final cut of our music video:

We improved our music video after reading feedback from our target audience...
We decided to base most of our music video on our actress by taking a lot of close up shots and tracking shots within the video and also using more narrative to keep it conventional. We decided to cut out the beginning bit where our actress is making a phone call for the reason being Rihanna face is usually shown in the beginning and as we decided to keep our music video conventional, it was important for there to be narrative of Rihanna in the beginning.

My group and I arranged for Jemina to do our actress' makeup and we going for a subtle, natural look. We went for a natural look as we did not want our actress to come out of her comfort zone as it would show in the music video.

We decided to do a black and white effect in part of our music video whilst editing as we wanted to portray the memories of our actress and her ex in sense that the memories are faded away.

As you can see our actress is in different outfits throughout the video, this was important as we were able to portray her fashion sense which is conventional as Rihanna usually does this.

Ancillary Task - Print Advert

This is the finished poster for Rihanna’s A Girl Like Me album which includes our PS I’m Still Not Over You song.

Ancillary Task - Digipak

Front Cover:
For our front cover we decided to keep it simple by having a black and white them. This is effective as it shows how we attempted to keep it conventional as Rihanna usually has simple front covers and so do other pop singers such as Beyonce.
Examples:












For the inside left cover:
We decided to have our actress looking downwards so that she doesn't reveal much emotion through the eyes. This is effective because her face itself says a lot and can lead the target audience thinking about the emotion our actress is feeling. Is she upset or happy?
 Examples:

An example of this looking down effect would be on Rihanna's digipak for the album 'Loud' she is looking down and her target audience is confused as to what she is feeling.


Inside right cover:

Rihanna usually does abstract poses in her pictures and we wanted our actress to portray that. This is effective as it shows how we use every way possible to attempt to remain conventional.


Back cover:

Identification of bits that need to be worked on or re-filmed

Although my group and I was not impressed with our rough copy, our audience feedback encouraged us to change our video more. Our audience feedback was very harsh, people mostly spoke about the blank spaces and weird structure of the video.

Moreover, we will work on our music videos, we plan to re-film and re-edit the majority of our music video, this will be stressful but rewarding as we will surely make a music video we are happy with. People were sympathetic to our actress and felt her emotion in some of the sad parts such as catching her boyfriend with another girl therefore we intend to add more emotional parts.

Inspiration

Analytic of chosen artists music videos.

It is clear that in most Rihanna music videos she has close up shots on her statement jewelry or her face, this could be done to show her target audience that she is glamorous/stylish. This can also lead her target audience to copy her fashion sense. Throughout every music video of Rihanna's she has close up shots of her face, this may be done to show her audience the emotion she is feeling so that it can therefore be transferred to the audience which will effect there understanding of the song, making them understand the lyrics better. Throughout most of Rihanna's music videos she also has long shots which are done to show her body language and attitude. The introduction of Rihanna's music videos and usually time consuming as she loves to make an exciting intro to her songs showing off her stylishness and good looks, also she usually lip sync's her first lyrics which I ensured our actress did too . Moreover, my group and I made show we developed this convention as we want our music video to be as similar to Rihanna's as possible.

DigiPak/ Ancillary task

This is the rough copy of our digipak. As we received tons of criticism we will change our whole digipak completely. People criticised our digipak for not relating to our actress and they also said the theme of the digipak was not good enough. We will resolve the problems with our album cover by making most of the pictures of our actress and changing the font style and colour so that it is neat and does not blend in with the background picture.

Rough copy

first draft for poster

My group and I decided to chose a black background as we felt that the simplicity represents Rihanna best. We kept it conventional as Rihanna does not usually have colourful backgrounds that reveal a lot. Black represents Rihanna's personality as she is usual seen to be a rebel and does not reveal much emotion on her face. Black symbolises sexuality, mystery and elegance which represents Rihanna as she is seen as a sex symbol as her dress sense usual involves her revealing a lot of skin however she always tries to keep is elegant. The image we used in the poster is the same as the image on the digipak, we felt this would be most appropriate as it would promote the album more. Rihanna is seen as a fragile and mystrerious lady in this poster which is always shown in her facial expressions on her album, it could be argued that she is trying to portray hurt and sorrow.

Problems

We were unaware that our artist would be changing her hairstyle several times, this problem was challenging yet rewarding as we figured it was not a bad idea for our actress to change her hairstyle after all as in most music videos the singer is usually changing their hairstyles.
For example:






These are all print screens from Rihanna's music video 'unfaithful' although it does not look like it is from the same video. This is because Rihanna has different hairstyles, this is effective because it can portray that she has been with her lover for a long period of time and it can also portray how glamorous she is, therefore we felt that our actress changing her hairstyle a lot was beneficial as it helps portray Rihanna better than we thought it would.



Furthermore, another problem that encountered was that there was not much lip synching of our actress which was a downfall as that does not help keep our music video conventional.
Examples of lip syncing within Rihanna's music videos:







We resolved this problem by making our video mostly narrative.

digipak

As a group we decided to take a picture of Evangeline's face looking down in a close up shot. We felt that a close up shot was the most appropriate as a persons emotion can be portrayed clearly. Evangeline is looking directly into the camera, this was done to portray worry. We wanted Evangeline's emotion to reflect track 10, in this track Rihanna sings about how she is not over her ex, she is pouring her heart out through the lyrics as she says ''don't you know I've tried and I've tried to get you out my mind'' this shows how she hates that she still thinks about her ex.

For the back cover my group and I wanted to keep it conventional to Rihanna's original back cover so we decided to put an image of trees and grass as the scenery as Rihanna's original album consists of colourful plants and trees. Our aim was to keep it original in terms of what Rihanna would normally do.

   

Features of a Rihanna video

Features of a Rihanna video:
- Constant change of outfits
-Loads of close-up shots
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Examples of Pop CD covers.

As you can see most Pop covers mostly have close-up shots of them as their background picture. Pop music usual appeals to teenagers as it is a bland watered-down version of rock'n'roll with more rhythm and harmony to emphasis on romantic love therefore close-up shots will reflect the artists emotion more.