A2 Media Studies - Advanced Portfolio: 2012

For the advanced portfolio, I chose to create a music video together with a cover for its release as a digipak and a magazine advertisement for the digipak. I chose to work on my own because then I’d be solely in control of what I was doing and there’d be no clashing personalities or drama. However, looking back, I think I might have preferred working as a part of a team just because it would alleviate some pressure. I also think that if I’d been working in a group I would have spent less time worrying and more time working. I have a habit of putting things off until the last minute, which was a big issue when it came to this piece of work. I think I must have thought it would be really easy, but when it came to actually doing it, I found it much more challenging than I had expected. It didn’t help that the girl I’d originally chosen to feature in my music video and had based all my storyboards and ideas on backed out at the last minute, leaving me a little bit lost. I did, however, find another performer willing to help me out, which was a huge relief because I thought I wouldn’t be able to get anybody to be in it. I chose the digipak and the advert because I felt those would be the easiest to do at my level of expertise. I considered the website homepage, but just felt it would be too advanced for me. I did take ICT last year so had experience in creating websites, but I thought it would be too challenging. I also chose the other two texts because I have experience using Photoshop from creating a music magazine for my portfolio in AS and from using it a lot during ICT.

I spent quite a lot of time choosing which artist and song I was going to use for my music video because I felt the image I was going for in my video needed to be matched with the style of music I chose. I narrowed it down to a few songs - Angel Taylor – Epiphany, Aimee Mann - Today's The Day, Bonnie Somerville - Winding Road, Ellen Foley - Let Me Be The One You Love, Sarah Solovay - You'll Never Know, Imogen Heap - Hide & Seek. I chose these songs because they were by lesser known artists and I wanted to do a video for somebody like that. In the end, I chose the song Hide and Seek because I’ve always thought that song was brilliantly odd and thought it would fit with the abstract video I was hoping to create. I also chose Imogen Heap because I’ve seen other videos of her songs and they match the abstract theme.

The idea I started off with was based off of an old building near where I live. It’s situated in a farmer’s field and might have been the old house, but it’s been abandoned for years, half-demolished and crumbling. I liked the idea of using that in my video because it’s a bit spooky and weird, which I think the song is. From there, I thought about using the locations I knew around that building, such as the long lane that leads away from the building and the overgrown forest at the end of the lane. What I really wanted my video to do was bring nature to the foreground and show where it meets with humanity. I’ve always loved the areas that I was filming in because they’re quiet and full of nature, which was the sort of feel that I wanted to give my video. I wanted to do the same thing with my ancillary texts as well, which is why the background for both is of nature. I also chose an image of my model with an owl to put on my digipak to show that she is one with nature. I chose to focus my coursework on how humanity and nature can be one because, as well as my love for nature and the environment, I felt like not many videos really focus on that subject. Maybe it’s because they think other issues are more important, maybe it’s just because nobody’s ever really thought about doing a video about it before, but I think my video is different to the sort of video you’d expect. However, upon editing my video and putting it together, I realised that the video I’d created and the song I’d chosen were not really that well-matched. I’d analysed the song lyrics earlier and come to the conclusion that the song was about two people breaking up and somebody leaving somebody else’s life. The video did not, I felt, reflect the true meaning of the song. Which is why I decided that a different song was needed. It was either the song or the actual video that needed to be changed and, at this late stage, I did not have time to refilm an entirely new video. The song I replaced Hide and Seek with was another of Imogen’s songs, Let Go. Technically, it’s by Frou Frou, the band she used to be in with Guy Sigsworth. I felt this song fitted more with the image that I was going for in my music video than Hide and Seek did. I originally planned to have the person in my video lip-syncing to the song, but decided against it, partly because I felt I didn’t have the expertise to do that kind of editing, but mostly because I just felt it didn’t go with the style of my music video. I wanted it to be more about the surroundings and environment than the actual person in the video. I chose not to use a tripod during filming because I didn’t want the video to be really structured and perfect; I wanted it to be a little rough around the edges. I edited the video afterwards to be in black and white in order to really emphasise the snow and the coldness of it.

I created my ancillary texts using Photoshop due to the fact that I was already experienced in using it both at college for my foundation portfolio in Media and in ICT, as well as using at home myself to create graphics in my free time and post them online on the blog site Tumblr. This experience that I had already gained meant that I was fairly confident using the program and could get on with my work without having to get used to it. Because I’d based my video on nature, I felt my ancillary texts should reflect that as well, which was why I chose the background to be of the countryside. I actually took the photos a very long time ago and thought to use them as soon as I had the idea of using a natural background. I think they’re quite striking photos and add a certain amount of drama to the texts. For the pictures, I asked the model to wear something less like what she wore for the video due to the fact that the video was set in the snow, whilst the digipak and advertisement were set on a grassy clifftop in summer. I spent a lot of time trying out different fonts for the digipak because I wanted to get it perfect. I think there’s a very thin line between nice and tacky when it comes to fonts. I wanted it to be striking and special, but not so much so that it looked cheap and amateurish. I searched the free font website www.dafont.com, found ones that I liked, but then looked at them for too long and started to dislike them. I eventually came across one that I really liked because the patterns reminded me of vines and the jungle and also it looked a bit worn, which is the kind of quality I was looking for. After that, I did the same thing with the track listing until I found one that I felt looked okay. I also spent a while deciding where the model was and text were going to be positioned on the pictures. Because the girl was superimposed into the photos, it meant that I could choose to place her wherever would look best. I couldn’t decide whether to have the name and album at the top or just underneath the model. In the end, I chose to have it at the top because when I put it underneath the model, her back covered up the view of the backdrop, which I felt was an important element of the cover. For the back of the digipak, I chose to have the girl at the left facing towards the text in order to bring attention to it. I wanted the pictures used on the digipak and the advertisement to kind of be a contrast to the video because of the winter and summer kind of thing. In order to complete this opposite kind of effect, I enhanced the images to make them brighter and more summery. This was emphasised by the actress’ summer outfits. I named the album Let Go because that’s the name of the song I did my video of and I felt it should be the main focus of the album. The other songs listed on the back of the digipak were ones I came up with myself and also kind of came up with, in my head, what kind of song they’d be in style. For example, If Only would be a sad, melancholy and thoughtful song, whilst Let The Rain Fall would be an empowering, loud and rocky song. Obviously, these microdetails wouldn’t be that important and everybody would probably see the songs in different ways, but I felt like I should put all my effort into every detail and aspect of the album. For my digipak advertisement I chose a backdrop from the same selection of photographs so as to keep the continuity and house style the same. The photo of my model was one took before the project, but I thought it might be a good picture to use just because I think the bird of prey added a certain amount of spark to the image. As well as being a connection to the nature element of my project, the owl was a metaphor. It was a metaphor for the girl taming the wild as well as letting go, a link to the song and the album name. For the text, I originally chose the same font and colour scheme as my digipak because I wanted it all to match and I wanted people to be able to tell that went together. However, upon finishing the ad, the writing just didn’t fit with the rest of the picture. The reason I’d chosen those colours for the digipak was because they were the colours extracted from the model’s shirt, a little tweaked to show up better, but they still technically came from what she was wearing vaguely. However, for the advertisement my model was wearing something different to what she’d been wearing for the digipak so the colours didn’t match very well. The font just wasn’t right either. There was something just a little off. The text was too extravagant for an advertisement, it was suitable for my digipak, but was too much for the ad. I settled for a simple font, which worked much better. The colour scheme needed to be changed. Black and white seemed the obvious choice, since that was what the model was wearing. I tried it out and things looked a lot better, but I had to add a glow to the edges of the lettering in order to make the white stand out against the light background.

My audience feedback was interesting. I asked somebody, who’d rather remain unnamed, to have a look at all three of my texts and then give me their verdict through questions that I had prepared. When first asked what they enjoyed about the video, the person said they liked the incorporation of nature, which was good because it meant that my original aim to base the video on the natural aspects could be seen in the video. They also said they liked the actress running down the lanes, which I’d put at the beginning and end of the video in order to give a kind of parallelism to it. I’m glad that came through in the video. I next asked what they disliked, to which they replied that the fact that some of the shots were in portrait and others in landscape came across disjointed and a slightly unprofessional. I’d actually thought this myself, but my actress didn’t have any time free to refilm the bits that were portrait so I’d had to leave them that way. However, if I ever redid this then I’d know to stick to one camera angle and keep it that way. They also said that they found the clips of the actress walking a little repetitive. I’d actually planned to film more than just her walking, but our last filming session had to be cancelled due to a family emergency on the actress’ part, which was unfortunate but clearly couldn’t be avoided. What I asked after that was what they would change if they’d had the chance; the person said that they’d have had more of a variety of interactions with the actress as opposed to the constant walking used throughout. Like I mentioned previously, I’d actually planned to have different things happening, but when my actress could not attend due to personal commitments there was nothing that could be done. I couldn’t cast somebody new and refilm everything because there wouldn’t be enough time, as well as it being very short notice for anybody I could get to help. In order to fill the gaps in my video that were left blank due to not having the scenes available, I did some more filming of nature. This was when I filmed the horses, which the person I questioned said they enjoyed. I also filmed the birds used at the beginning of my video at that point, which were a rare species of finch, I found out after researching them later on. They also said that they would have focused less on the nature aspect, which again goes back to the fact that I had planned more actress interaction, but had to fill in the gaps with more shots of nature. I asked the person about my digipak next, asking them if they’d pick it up if they saw it at a music store, to which they replied that they would walk past. However, they were quick to explain that this was nothing to do with the packaging of the digipak, but just because female singers do not appeal to their personal tastes, which is understandable. Not everybody likes the same thing and I wouldn’t expect everybody to buy this album. Obviously it would be great if this happened, but it wouldn’t. Each person likes a different kind of music and that is what is to be expected. When asked if they thought it looked professional, they said they thought it did, except for the track listing. They explained that they found it amateurish, which was a little annoying, but completely understandable. The annoying part of this reply is that I explained earlier how I’d spent a very long time trying to find a font that looked both striking and exciting, whilst still looking professional and not tacky. It might have been better if I’d matched the track listing font to the font used for the artist name and album. I asked them what liked or disliked about the digipak and they said they disliked nothing but the track listing, but really liked the nature theme running through all the pieces. This was good news because it meant that my goal of keeping the theme on track and centring the whole project on nature could be seen throughout. The advertisement was what I asked them about next, asking them whether or not they thought it looked like the kind of ad you’d see in a magazine. They replied that yes, it did look like it should be because of the bright colours of the sky and the captivating font style. I actually enhanced the colour of the sky using Photoshop in order to make it brighter and more summery. It’s good that the font style was described as captivating because I was worried that it might be a little obnoxious. The artist’s name is written in quite extravagant calligraphy and I wasn’t sure whether it might border on the line between striking and too much. I next asked them whether or not they would associate the style of the song used in my video with the organisation of my advertisement. They replied that, yes, they would. They explained that the song had a kind of eerie quality to it, which was matched and enhanced by the setting. They also said that the owl helped complete the effect. I’m glad this was picked up on since it had been the kind of thing I was going for. The song is not a mainstream kind of song, it’s just a little bit odd, which was part of the reason I chose to include the owl. Owls are not really associated with music advertisements, which was why I used it. I knew it would stand out and reject common music conventions. Like I explained earlier, the owl represents the metaphor of the artist taming the wild and also letting go, a reference to the song. When asked what they would change if they could, the person replied that the blank space above the girl’s head was a little odd. They suggested that it might be better to have the reviews there instead. This is a fair point and I did have my anchorage up there in my first draft, but after looking at other advertisements, I saw that most let the image do the talking with less anchorage than mine originally had. This was why I edited it a little. I also felt that the picture of the sky in the background was quite striking, but couldn’t be seen through all the writing. Finally, I asked my person if they thought that all three texts fitted together okay and whether or not they gelled together. They replied that yes, they did think it was achieved. They explained that the nature theme running through was the main reason because it sort of bound them all together. Because natural images aren’t often used in music this theme was a defining element in my project, it made it unique in the music industry. They further explained that a direct correlation could be seen between all three texts, which worked well. They also said that they felt the nature landscaping was a very good choice and the fact that the ancillary texts were both very bright helped it work well.

I used media technology a lot during the creation of my texts. I used film-editing programs such as Adobe Premiere and Windows Movie Maker to create my video, whilst Adobe Photoshop was used to create my ancillary texts. I was a little experienced using film-editing programs, but was pretty much a beginner. However, it didn’t take me very long to get to grips with it. The program was well-designed and easy to use, which meant that I found the editing part of the project fairly okay. Obviously, it took a while to fit it all together and I had to spend a lot of time editing things out, but it was pretty easy to get the hang of. I didn’t use it to put many effects on my video apart from a black and white filter because I quite liked the rawness of it and I didn’t really want to lose that element of it. In the first stages of my planning, I’d wanted to add lots of effects in post-production, but when it came to it, I felt it might just be overkill. Plus, when I’d first thought up my idea, I’d been going in a different direction to the way in which it ended up so the effects I’d planned to add to it just wouldn’t really fit now. Photoshop was more my speed because I’d had experience with that and knew how to use it more than I did with the video-editing programs. I really like using Photoshop just because it’s very easy to use and you can create really good things using it. One of my favourite tools during this production was the magic wand tool. It really was very useful for editing the backgrounds out of the pictures of my model quickly and easily with no fuss and no hassle. This meant that the process of image editing was not time-consuming and an irritation. I used the internet a lot during my creation of this project. I used Blogger in order to post updates about what was going on with my texts and post up drafts of them. I also used YouTube to upload my video since the file was too big to upload straight onto Blogger.