Charlotte's A2 Media

When it came to creating our music video we began to plan how we could create a video to the standards of real music videos, and in doing this realised that we needed to follow certain conventions and involve certain criteria in order to make it look and feel like a true video. This included certain aspects that depended on what we wanted our video to be, for example, we wanted it to have the target audience of teenage girls and so we looked into other videos that had this audience to see what they had in common. A well as the look of the video, we needed to apply a formation that suited other music videos, and so this really affected the way we handled shots during direction and also what effects or order we chose to present the video through during the editing process. We knew that we needed to follow these conventions in order for it to be recognisable and accessible as a music video; however we also wanted to challenge typical music video layouts in order to make our video memorable and to add a personal touch to it.

Content
We decided that our music video would be from a narrative viewpoint due to the lyrics of the song having a story behind them. With real media products, most of the time when the lyrics have a story behind them the visuals match the storyline, often creating an obvious music video. However, we challenged this to a certain extent in that we steered away from the obvious ending that would have been made if keeping to the lyrics. Instead of the ending being of the tomboy winning over the person she likes because of her change in looks, we decided to shock the audience by having her reject him, creating a deeper message behind the video. For example, looking at Taylor Swifts ‘You Belong With Me’ we see her change from being a ‘nerd’ into a beautiful prom queen-espue figure, in which she then finally gets the guy. However with ours, our main character uses her new image to get back at the jock character, and then returns to being her true self to get the guy she really wants.
Stereotypes was also something we wanted to involve in order to add a quirky edge to the video, as well as allowing the audience to easily define what personality traits each character would have. This is often portrayed in music videos of the pop genre, and so we wanted to follow this.
As well as this, many films, especially ones set within a school environment and with a teenage target audience, often have stereotypes, and so we used some of these characters costumes to influence our own.
The most important factor that we wanted to obtain from other media products was that of presenting an image of the singer. We felt that in so many pop music videos it is the singer taking the lead and keeping the song together, as well as the one who draws in the audience due to having fans. The singer we presented was fictional, ‘Poppy Hale’, however we used her as the focal point of our video.

Target Audience
With our target audience being of mainly teenage girls, we wanted to use conventions that would relate to them, and so took many aspects from similar videos. The mise en scene in particular allowed us to do this. Each of these costumes below represented an influence of people we knew who were of the same target audience, and so we knew the dress sense would appeal to them, whether it be to instigate their humour, attraction, familiarisation or stereotype understanding. (IMAGE 4)
The message within the piece also gives reference to typical occurances within youth, a time when an indicidual is only just beginning to find out who they are. We wanted to reflect upon this by giving a moral message behind the visuals and song, that you should just be yourself and not change for anyone.
We also played on the idea of intertextuality as we liked how it gave subtle reference to other medias. We used this with both Seventeen magazine’s article with Katy Perry (so not only referencing a major magazine within our target audience, but also on the artist who recorded the song we used), and with using cross reference to our own medias, such as the use of pearls being highly symbolic through both video, digipack and website. (IMAGE 6)

Locations
In a lot of real media, locations act as a significant part of presenting the storyline and complimenting the characters and artist well. I chose the locations very purposefully, as a creative aspect i love to explore is to have the whole frame speaking a message rather than just the focal object, character or lyric.With the locations presented in our piece, we wanted a variety to not only keep the audience intrigues, but to also provide a symbolism for each.

Visuals and Sound
Being of the pop genre, we decided to keep to the convention of having the visuals match the lyrics as there tends to be a narrative playing in the song and it wouldn’t make sense to defer away from this. Many artist tend to also perform by using dance moves or gestures which also match the lyrics, such as Justin Bieber repeating the gesture ‘one’ every time he sings ‘one time’. We played on this visually by using the lyrics of Katy Perry’s song to stimulate ideas of how to perform this narratively, and this also allowed for Poppy’s quirky edge to show because the visuals ended up being very random and colourful.
Another way we matched the visuals and sounds together was through timing, as we based most of or frame lengths with beats, change in pace and through chorus/verse transitions. For example, with the montage shot of different flower positions we used the bass beat as a guideline of when to change shot. Also we used the change in sections (chorus, verse, instrumental etc) to show our change in story, as we felt this was an effective way of keeping the story flowing and to not confuse the audience. For example, towards the end of the song there is a very slow section leading up to the final chorus, and we used this to add tension when the ‘jock’ and ‘poppy’ look as though they are about to kiss. However, when the chorus kicks in we use the obvious change in pace and volume in order to make the rejection have a bigger impact.

The editing process was the most time consuming, frustraing and yet enjoyable process for me. Here are some examples of what was involved when editing.