EVALUATION OF MUSIC VIDEO

As you cannot see the name badges we prepared clearly due to the camera quality; Left to right - Emily Roberts, Christie Robbins (me), Kirsty Shakespeare

During this performance I believe i performed to the best of my ability, during the dancing, acting, singing, building the website, editing and also creating the magazine cover.
When planning the music video, we decided not to stick to the conventions of 'girl band'/'pop group' at the begging of the planning stages, we were going to convey four different sides of Lady Gaga as I have earlier explained. However, due to the complications with the group, all our ideas were changed, and we decided to completely conform to the girl band genre. Commonly known as sexy, sassy and fierce. However, when planning, we did our story boards with 3 people, as we thought Emily would be involved in the filming, however, after the incident Emily could not perform, therefor we had to use the story boards but change the shots to suit 3 people. I believe that our music video developed the conventions of the real media products we used as inspiration; for example, usually in music videos, especially male rappers, the female is at the back dancing in dark colours, or sitting on the mens laps and giving them what they want. We decided to use our two actors as the main focus of the footage, and make them fierce, and turn the idea of men being more powerful on its head.This is how we developed and challenged one of the conventions of music videos. We then conformed and used some of the features to enhance our footage. We decided to use the 'strutting forward' shot that tends to be in all girl band videos. We used this with a wide shot with the focus directly on me and Kirsty, this made us look strong and powerful, and also looked realistic to the genre of girl band;





As you can see here we used the same sort of image as Girlicous, and many other girl bands use to look fierce and strong. We also used the shot of me and Kirsty separately on the floor singing, this was just a head shot. This is using the same conventions of many girlbands, and also Lady Gaga, who uses a similar shot in her music video. We used this because it is sexy and appeals to men, which is also conforming to the use of the theory of the Male Gaze, which we have researched. Being on the floor looking 'seductive' will appear to the male gaze, but keep us as the focus point looking strong, which will therefore also appeal to females. We also used the fake dallas, emulating Gagas original footage, and this made it look real and professional. This is using conventions of music videos to our advantage;






We also used a smoke machine, as this fits with the themes of girl bands, and also again Lady Gaga uses a smoke machine in Beautiful Dirty Rich. This was for effect when shooting, and also to make our film look more professional and high budget.;




As you can see at the bottom of the shot there is smoke entering the shot. This makes it look more professional and expensive, and also adds the effect of mystery and sexuality.

I believe the music video together with the two ancillary tasks is very effective, and creates a professional and realistic look. The thought we out into the colours and the shots creates realistic footage, and also the conforming to real girl bands helped us to create a band worthy of you tube. I think viewing all of the three articles together makes the band look very realistic and makes our band seem real.

When our finished footage was seen by our fellow class mates, and also a class of teenagers, we asked them to fill out questionnaires to get some audience feedback. From the feedback, which was 99% good, we found that the favoured part of the music video was the pink background with our pink clothes throwing money;

and also our first shot, of us standing on the podiums. They said they liked these shots as they gave them the general idea of the film, and also they liked the effects and the editing. We then found that the use of lighting, editing and mise en scene went down well, with many saying that they thought the use of props made us look like a real band. Most of the comments said they would not change anything about the video, however a few said they would not be as revealing as us, which we took well, but thought that this was a good reason to direct our footage at older teens rather than younger, as they did not appreciate the image we were trying to portray, whereas the older peers in our group said they liked the clothing and the ideas uses, as they went with the genre. We also asked if they thought our footage fitted with Lady Gaga, most replied with yes and said that the fast editing and the strange sharp shots (and 'weirdness') of the footage was much like Lady Gaga's unusual style. They also said we looked like a real girlband. From this we believe most people like our music video and we aimed it at the correct audience, (17+) (I have created a new post showing the actual audience feedback sheets and gone into more detail about this)

During our research, planning and evaluation stages, we used as much technology as possible. When planning our music video, we drew up our Story boards, scanned them and uploaded them onto our blogs. This is an easy way to access the pages, and makes sure we cannot loose them. I also created a Prezi, which is linked to my blog, to highlight our target audience, which helps clearly label and explain the reasons why we chose to do our footage for 17+. I did this to make sure we all understood who we were aiming at and to make sure our video was going to be suitable. During the research stages, we used Youtube mainly to find out about our chosen genre. We also used the T.V to look into different footage and music videos. This helped me as when I was editing I was able to edit for the right audience, understanding who it was meant to be aimed at. For instance, the sexy images used, and the use of the 'romantic' setting I used, would not have been appropriate for younger viewers. When evaluating, I have used print screens of images to upload onto my blog, I have also uploaded our music videos onto the page. We decided then to sit and record ourselves evaluating parts of the film. We then uploaded this as you can see above. We tried to use as much technology as possible when planning and making this music video, to make it look professional.