As for the third question, assessing the engagement with the audience, I did a presentation os Visme, a new platform i discovered. I kept the red and green theme, along with adding images suiting the music video, such as a rose, a broken plate and the Caspian Sea. The first picture was what drew me to this template, I liked the fact that it's underwater and black and white, matching to some point, my brand.
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For my final question, I wanted to do something a little different, so I recorded myself on my phone, in a sort of informal video diary format. I had a lot of fun shooting, and editing it afterwards. As I didn't want to read the text while filming, to make it look as natural as possible, I first looked over the written text and talked about the main topic more freely, so not exactly as written, but I do make all the point made in the essay too. Hope you enjoy it!
For the second question I wanted to do a podcast-like recording, having Aletta ask me the question after which I answer it, and having a faint song in the background. I remembered last year that it was an easy process to add the recording from my phone to Final Cut Pro and add the song, saving the audio file afterwards, so I thought the same process would be done in Da Vinci Resolve, but after exporting my project, I saw that the format wasn't mp3 or mp4, therefore I couldn't upload the file on SoundCloud. This is quite a limitation with this new software I started to use, which I hope will change in the future. I decided then to use FCP again, and the whole process took less than 5 minutes, and I'm quite satisfied with the result.
For the first question, I chose to do a prezi to present it. At first, I chose a random color theme, but afterwards I decided to have it be part of the brand too, so I used a palette of green red and black, matching the color editing in the music video.
How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups of issues?
While researching conventions for trip-hop music videos, I didn’t see a clear pattern that the videos would follow, unlike for more conventional genres of music, such as rock or hip-hop, where symbols were clearly established from the beginning, and were recurrent throughout most music videos, with little variation. This could mean the symbol of money and wealth in hip-hop, or live performance for rock music videos. What I observed were symbols of the cosmos, referenced to to other movies (such as the reference of the little twins from The Shining in Massive Attack’s ‘Karmacoma’), or in general a more surreal feel to the video, whether that was unusual camera movements or animation, or special effects. For my music video in particular, I chose the theme of femininity, and how it can empower women or be used in manipulative and toxic ways. With my gear and knowledge being quite limited, as compared to big productions, I had to work my way around what I had. I decided to use the symbol of flowers, a classic for representing femininity, in addition to water and fairy lights, all three symbolising tenderness and hope, for Francesca’s parts. To add authenticity to the video, I let her dance freely, listening to the song, without putting any rules or limitations as to how it should look like, and it ended up looking natural and suited for the mood. As for Aletta’s part, I chose broken plates to represent the negativity, feeling of being shattered like a plate, and irreparable. Then, I chose glitter for the scene with the boy, where the girl manipulates and uses her charm in a destructive way, the glitter being her power that she abuses on him, visually represented as spreading the glitter on his face. The use of these conventions can be seen as both breaking or challenging the conventions, as it can be said that the music video follows the pattern of an illustrative, abstract music video through the presence of frequent symbolism, but it can also be said that it doesn’t follow the conventions of a trip-hop music video, as mentioned above. Moreover, the colors play an important role in the symbolism of the video. I chose to edit all scenes and pictures with Francesca with red-pink nuances, while the ones with Aletta with green. This mostly follows the convention of red and pink being associated with femininity and sensuality, while green is a more versatile color that could have very different meanings, but in my case, I chose it to show distress and frustration, as the the neon green is quite strong, unlike the more natural tones that would bring about feeling of peace, and the green hued skin color of Aletta from the scenes where she breaks the plates creates a sickening look for her. Some shots i chose to film in low light, then up the exposure to bring out the grain and make it clearly visible, as I saw that Sevdaliza uses this effect on her website too, and it, again, adds something to a rather usual looking shot. Another effect I added to some shots was the horizontal blur, due to Victor, the only boy playing in the music video, not being the focus of my theme, and only having to be a male figure that the girl can seduce, thus I chose to add the effect to anonymise him. In Sevdaliza’s last single, that debuted recently, her face was blurred out too, so that also gave me the inspiration to use this filter. While looking into other music videos, in addition to the use of visual symbolism, I also observed the repetition of one specific shot or shots from one scene on particular parts of the song, this adding more of a structure to an anyway vague storyline (compared to a short film, per se). I chose to put the shot of the plate breaking each time a musical motif of the song is heard, not only because it matches the music, but because it makes the audience understand that the plate breaking is an important symbol in the music video, and should pay attention how it adds to the whole meaning. Finally, at the end, after the lyrics finishes, I introduced shots with Aletta picking up the broken plates. This has a strong significance, representing the intention of picking oneself up from distress, and starting over, with a different mindset. Mirroring the very start of the video, where Francesca is submerging into the water, I end the video with the same scene, where she gets out of the water, symbolising the dream state that some suggest we may all live in, and the awakening that could occur, and the hope that no matter how deep ‘underwater’ we go, there will always be a way out. Conclusively, I think that through research and creativity, i managed to both follow and challenge conventions of music videos, in order for the audience to recognize some generic symbols, but all the while being also intrigued by some new approached I took. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding? Sevdaliza’s unconventional, surreal and highly symbolistic style can easily be observed through not only viewing her music videos, but also through her album covers and official website, in addition to her Instagram account. I noticed her unique brand even before creating my advanced portfolio, being one of the reasons for which I chose one of her songs to represent visually. Half-human mythical figures, such as for the music video for her most well-known song, ‘Human’, where her lower body is one of a horse, the ‘centaur’, and cgi futuristic-like visuals are consistent throughout her works, from videos to her website album covers. While I did use some elements of her style of branding when creating my work, I also put on my own twist on it, to create a good balance between the two. To mention a few, I got quite inspired by her website, the way the background rippled as it followed the motion of the cursor, idea which was implemented on my website as moving waves with a black grid overlay, the framing of the text, along with the font and the 3d sculpture-esque looking black and white designs, which I tried to do by taking some images of surreal-feeling sculptures and editing them so they match the color palette of the website. Furthermore, the album cover that I chose and edited maintains this look by being rotated upside down and edited to be quite dark, in addition to the prism that I held in front of the camera when taking the picture, that added a sort of ‘underwater’ effect. The back of the digipak is Francesca, one of the two girls from my music video, standing backwards, with a rose in her hand, as flowers were a prominent motif in my video. I chose to have her standing with her back to the camera, to make the audience question whether her hair covers her whole face, or it’s just her back, rather than having her simply hold the flower in her hand while looking into the camera, which wouldn’t have been as interesting or mysterious. The inside of the digipak continues the dark and ominous theme, with Aletta on the floor, with bits of broken plates in her hair. The broken plate, again, is a recurrent symbol throughout the video. How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products? First of all, the scenes were my actors are breaking the fourth wall are very important for the connection I wanted to make with the viewers. It is a frequently seen thing for the singers to look straight into the camera in a music video, to make the audience feel more close to them, and to break the barrier that technology creates between the viewer and what is viewed. Then, my website is done is such a way that it interacts with the audience, but not in an excessive way that would bother them, such as demanding too much personal information and putting the focus on getting the audience to buy the marketed product, rather than enjoy it and afterwards choose to buy it or not. The viewers are able to see a few pictures of Sevdaliza’s Instagram, and her account username, if they want to further connect with her and her work, but this can be seen after scrolling a bit down on the website, because I wanted to put the focus on the new album and the actual music, not promoting the artist herself, or making her look like the female unattainable ideal, method that can be seen implemented by many artists. The other method of interacting with the consumers is the last section of the website, which allows them to sign up for an email subscription, to get updates and news about Sevdaliza. If it were a real media product, I would like it to appear on Youtube, as it’s the most used platform, that would reach a wide audience, if promoted sufficiently and recommended by the Youtube algorithm for those listening to similar music. Another way that I would promote it would be through Instagram, because this platform also has millions of users, many of them having an interests in finding new music, therefore would be interested in encountering new artists and songs. Sevda also did this, I saw ads for her new single ‘Dark side’ when looking at the Instagram stories. As for television or radio, I wouldn’t promote my product through these media platforms, as the generations using these forms of media are usually older, so I don’t believe they would necessarily like the visuals I chose to match with the song, or the song itself, due to the few years this genre has been around for, and for its musical uniqueness. How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online in this project? Firstly, I worked with my dad’s Nikon D70 camera to shoot both the music video and the pictures at the photoshoot, being the best camera we own, and having many features that helped me when working with it, such as touchscreen and many variations of video and photo format. I chose the 640 x ? one for the scenes with the green neon, to add a twist for the identical looking shots seen nowadays, format-wise. The lens I used was ? mm, and it worked very well with what I needed, as no big zoom was needed for either of the shots. For editing, I first began to work in Final Cut Pro, as it was the programme I used last year too and I knew how to use it effectively, but after very many continuous crashes and long lags, I chose to work in a new found programme, Da Vinci Resolve. At first it was a little confusing to work with it, as I was so used to the last one, but after watching may Youtube tutorials, and making a good team effort with m media teacher to figure out a few settings, the workflow was quite good. What I really like about this software is the very advanced color editing they offer, even for the free version that I own, a way more in detail one compared to Final Cut, which allowed me to play a lot with colors and shades, creating the look I think most fits the mood. For editing the pictures I used Adobe Lightroom, a programme I didn’t use before either, but I, again, looked for online tutorials to help me use it to its full potential. I have used Adobe Photoshop before, but so little that I had no idea how many tools for editing it has, so with the help of my teacher, I managed to edit the pictures (using the clone stamp to add black background to the picture, making it longer) and have them look how I imagined them. Finally, for editing, I used Adobe Illustrator to add all four pictures and make them look part of an actual digipak. Weebly and Wix were used for sharing the work I did this year. I used Weebly for my AS work too, so I was used to its features, but Wix was a new platform that I started using this year, and fortunately it was quite easy to learn, and I believe offers many more options to personalise it than the other one. Finally, for communicating with my actors I either spoke to them directly, or send them messages via iMessage or Facebook Messenger. In conclusion, this year I learnt a lot about gear and software, and while some impediments appeared throughout the creation process, I can say that I’m very happy with my progress and I’m looking to expanding my knowledge even more. |
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