Dear Moderator,

My name is Shona Reilly and this is my blog; it contains all of the work undertaken as part of the G324 A2 Coursework Portfolio Unit within the OCR CGE course in Media Studies.

I chose to work in a 2 to produce a music video to the track 'Mouthwash' by Kate Nash.

Please use the navigation bar on the right of the page in order to access my work, as organised into 12 categories.

I hope you enjoy my work!

Yours faithfully,
Shona Reilly

Completed Music Video

DigiPak & Magazine Advert

Magazine Advert

CD Front Cover

Complete DigiPak

 Interior Front Panel

Back Exterior Cover

Spine

Interior Panels

EVALUATION: Question 1 - In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In order to understand our genre of indie Pop/Rock, we sourced music videos from artists ranging in the genre. Both Kate Nash's music videos Mouthwash and Foundations included key ideas that we would use in our own. We got key ideas from Kate Nash's 'Foundations' such as the idea of using toothbrushes, using a doll to represent her body image and a setting if her own home showing how she is in a natural state. The song ‘The Fear’ by Lilly Allen inspired us to feature an element of comedy into our coursework through our artists silly persona. We used a lot of stop motion throughout our music video, we were inspired by the Lenka video for her song ‘The Show’ which features special effects similar to ours.

Using Andrew Goodwin's 7 must have conventions; we’ve analysed our music video and concluded that we successfully included all seven conventions whilst still creating a video that is new, interesting and entertaining for the audience.

Firstly, we linked the lyrics to the song to the visuals in the video throughout the majority of its duration; this helped to amplify the meaning of the lyrics to the audience.

Our genre of Indie Pop/Rocks conventions consist of being unconventional. This is seen in the way the artist dresses by wearing formal attire in a forest which is unconventional for the environment. This idea is further exemplified through the comedic element of the artists persona, for example she is characterised as cheeky as she skips about the forest and regularly smirks at the camera. We used woods, although audience research showed an urban environment with derelict things, but that doesn’t fit with the song so we decide to break that convention but use one that is commonly used in other types of music videos, because we wanted to show her freedom, being her natural self.

We didn’t use may intertextual references in our video, but through the stop motion of vinyl records, the video was connected to 80s music and artists, and a wide mixture of different types of people, something that inspired our artist. We featured numerous magazines in our video to display how society views women and how they are represented in magazines like ‘Home Woman’ and ‘Women’s Health’, however the artist uses these magazines ironically to suggest that she doesn’t care about being like these women and is more interested in being herself.

Using the Goodwin's convention of the notion of looking, we broke the fourth wall between the artists and the audience by having the artist look directly into the camera throughout the video, creating a relationship between her and the viewer. The notion of looking is seen in the shot of the artist looking at her reflection in the mirror, furthermore, we included so many close ups of the artists to meet the demands of the record label, another one of Goodwin's conventions.

By displaying the artist in her natural home environment, it gave the audience an insight on the way in which she lives, showing them how relatable she is to the ordinary viewer, as she leads a very normal life; exemplified by her relaxing at home on a Friday night, and by seeing her family photo albums.

We created a relationship between music and visuals by changing shots in time with the music at important points in the song to influence the mood of the video.

We portrayed iconography n the recurring image of the sky and her chic mushroom bob, unique to her personal style. These elements helped to make our video and artist recognisable to her audience easily.

Aside from Goodwin’s conventions, Voyeurism is not a convention seen in our genre and doesn’t link to the songs theme, furthermore we didn’t want our artist to be representative of they way in which today’s society sexually views women.

EVALUATION : Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your music video and ancillary texts?

2. How effective is the combination of your music video and ancillary texts?

We made the combination of our music video and ancillary texts effective by making them clearly representative of one another. The repetitive use of the sky throughout all three media products created iconography and made each individual product recognisable collectively to the audience. 

The sky is relevant as it is representative of the idea of freedom and escapism, and is suggestive of living your life in the way you please. This makes each product, the music video, DigiPak and magazine advert relevant as they all portray the same message as the song of inner contentment. 

we used a clear image of our artist's unique hair style to create synergy between all three media texts. This reinforces the conventions of our Indie Pop/Rock genre and makes the artist clearly recognisable to the audience when seeing any of the music video, DigiPak or magazine advert.  

We kept the same theme on out DigiPak and magazine advert, linking them with clear association between the two products, creating synergy so that the audience can easily recognise our's artists product through the use of the same typography. 

We used the name of our single as the title of the album to create synergy and enable the audience to become familiar with the album and artist.

We transferred the mood and atmosphere of the song successfully into the media products using cool colour tones and casual fonts, with an artistic and modern styled layout. 

EVALUATION: Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We collected a study group of 6 of our friends, aged 17 and 18, who had completed our audience expectation interview and survey. We showed them our completed version of out music video, and these were their thoughts:

1. Firstly, what genres of music do you listen to?

We especially wanted a range of music lovers to evaluate our music video so we would have am idea of how much our Indie Pop/Rock music video would appeal to people favouring other genres. Interestingly, we found that everyone in our study group listened to some form of Indie Rock/Pop, even if it wasn't their preferred genre.

2. What genre would you class our video in?

All but one person described our music video as Indie Pop/Rock, accept for Avneet, who said it was more like a pop video as she thought there was 'nothing indie about it' although everyone else disagreed.

3. Would you agree that our music video would fit in our genre?

Everyone agreed that it could/did.

4. Who do you think the video is aimed at?

The general consensus was anyone, mainly young adults.

5. Do you think the video matched the tone of the song?

Yes.

6. How effective is the performer?

"Fabulous", "Brilliant", "A very good actress" - A quote from herself

6.5 .... the settings?

All appropriate and well decorated, the woods being an especially relevant idea.

7. What did you enjoy about the music video?

The music video was interesting with the variety of different scenes and the stop motion. Some thought some elements were funny and that it was a feel good song and video, with Mollie portraying a positive vibe. One viewer, Miranda, thought the shots of Mollie walking in the woods was especially good.

8. What would you change about the music video?

This question brought up much discussion. Emily, our other media student commented on how the music video didn't have much progression, not ending on a completed plot line. However, the rest of the study group and us, disagreed, saying that the song didn't really have a progression lyrically, and thought that, combined with faster editing at the end would look strange and that they (the audience), preferred the longer shots at the end.

We asked a group of year 9s (aged 13-14) who absolutely loved the quirkiness of our video and the diversity of location. A class of year 11s (aged 15-16) said: good,  like the barbie bit, clapping, felt happy, change: no, watch it again yes, 9-8/10.

We showed music video director Terry Hall, a cut of our music video. He said that he loved our quirky ideas, especially the shots of Mollie spinning in stop motion. He noted we had kept a good connection with the audience and our performer with our frequent use of lip syncing and close ups. The choppy-ness of the close up of our performers lips that flip up and down really added to our theme.

EVALUATION: Question 4 - How did you use media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technology in the construction and research, planning 
and evaluation stages?

A quick selfie whilst evaluating...

99% complete Mouthwash

Music Videos that Inspired Us

For the evaluation task 1, we are planning on showing what aspects of which music videos inspired us in the making of our own video and used the conventions of the Indie Pop/Rock genre.

As we were using a song by Kate Nash, we looked at a number of her videos, and took inspiration from the song Mouthwash, which is the song we used for our music video, and the song Foundations, as it uses stop motion in a similar way to how we wanted to use it.

The song The Fear by Lilly Allen inspired us because the artist portrayed a similar care-free persona to the character we were hoping to create in our music video.

Finally, the clever and quirky use of stop motion in the song The Show by Lenka, gave use many ideas to use for own music video.

Here is a short video montage of the specific clips that inspired us:

A Developed First Edit of 'Mouthwash'!

Final Filming Day!

Behind The Scenes: Mouthwash by Kate Nash

On set!

Shooting on set for the first shot of our music video using a green screen.

2nd Edit of Music Video

2nd Edit of our Music video, with nearly all the stop motion and some rough cuts of other non-stop motion work.

DigiPack Update

This week, we decided to add to finish the front of our digipack, completing 2/6 panels. We stuck to the conventions of the indie-pop/rock genre by keeping the design simple yet eye catching using a basic photograph but an abstract picture of the artist in the centre. In the last 4 panels, we intend of keeping with this theme, including information about the artist and the album as well as personal selfies of our artist with her celebrity friends. For the magazine advert (last), we made it so it was exactly the same as the album cover so they could easily be associated with each other.

Stop Motion - 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWL0FtpOjOI&feature=youtu.be

Behind the Scenes: Harry Potter

On Thursday (15th) we visited Harry Potter World in Watford and saw how certain aspects of the films were made and the real sets and props used in the films. We also had a behind the scenes lesson in which we learnt how delicate each and every prop can be, the different shots used in the films and their effects on the audience as well as how Hagrid was made to look 7ft 10 tall.

We also learnt some trade secrets such as the non existant ceiling in the grande hall, green screen used to film the flying cars and broomsticks, 4 different types of snow used at different places and sets, the art department and how they create the masks for each and every individual creature, the paper sets made so the camera positions can be marked on before filming starts and of course, the FAKE Hogwarts which uses a green screen to make all the landscaping shots.  

Feedback (Very Rough Cut) from Director Terry Hall

Today we Skype'd Terry Hall, a music video director who gave us some feedback and ideas to change on our music video rough cut and general ideas. Here is the feedback that he gave us:

• We want to keep a fluid style and tone in our music video so instead of having moving shots, we should use still frames so we do not contrast drastically from the amount of stop motion in our work.
• We need to ensure we include a lot of lip syncing so we keep a relationship between the artist and the artist
• Steps: have multiple mollie's moving and they layer them (The White Stripes- Hardest Button to Button, below)
• Random little shots that add to the theme (eg. just her turning in stop motion)
• When editing, take some frames out every now and then to make it more choppy
• try a new technique to reveal out initial keyboard shot (like a pan) 
• have our actor perform at half the speed and then speed that up to give it a weird jerky effect
• https://www.youtube.com/user/PESfilm/videos - the link to a directors channel that Terry suggested we should look at  
• http://vimeo.com/46287665 - sharp movement (zoom) within a moving shot

First Very Rough Cut

First cut of some stop motion