The final music video

The final website

http://www.jfs10236mediawebsites.org/Daniella_Tal/Home.html

The inside cover

The inside cover is more personal to the band rather than the theme. In the centre is illustrated where the CD would be held and again the two sides fold on and finally the top fold over. As the top would be the first side to be opened, the band name sticks out emphasises it by having it written boldly on a plain black background.

The final digipack cover results-Outside Cover

We decided on this format for our digipack covers. The back is in the centre and is the side which holds the actual CD. The sides fold on on top of it, first the and then the. Finally the top one comes down and is the front cover.

The back cover is like the typical back cover of most CDs as it has a bar-code and other songs to make it realistic.

On a final note...

This project was very enjoyable as it provided us with a lot of creative freedom. I mostly enjoyed filming as we didn't restrict ourselves to simply what we had put on our storyboards. Furthermore, I enjoyed working with another person as we found that our creative differences as well as our similarities, allowed us to produce better work.

The editing was more of a challenge as we had so many different ideas and only so long to complete them in. We also had to make sure not to overuse the special effects.

Coming up with the idea of the digipack was fun as I personally love fairy-tales and took pleasure in applying my own likes to our project. Similarly, when we created the website, I enjoyed researching our inspirations for our final website as I got to continue exploring something I already loved. however, I found the graphics very challenging and so I've discovered that although I am pleased with our final results, I can not work with such minute details very well and so I find it very difficult.

I also found lip- syncing a lot more challenging this time than with our earlier lip syncing task as you had to be more precise and exact and it was difficult to find exact timing.

Post Production Results

When we asked this question, 'If you could describe this music video in one word, what would it be?' we got a range of responses. The 5 most common ones we found were: Girly,Bubbly, Dull, Long and Fun

When we asked ’Is this music video similar to anything you've seen before?
If yes, what?’ Our most common response was Avril Lavigne’s videos because of the skate park and the Georgia’s vocals in the song.

Did any specific shot stand out for you? Which one and why?

Two shots were mostly mentioned. Firstly, the shot of Georgia sitting on the washing machines while also walking into the Launderette because they thought it was clever and done well. The other shots mentioned were the skate boarding ones because they said the shots were ‘cool’.

Were the locations appropriate? If not, which one(s) and why?

Many people thought that the Launderette was a random location as they didn’t think teenagers of that age would spend their time in a Laundrette.

If not, how would you suggest we could have illustrated the differences?

Not many suggestions were given for this question as people didn’t know what to suggest however, a couple of people said they thought the fades worked to show the differences.

If not how could we have improved it?

No one responded to this question.

What would you have liked to see in our music video that isn't there?

The most common responses were: A faster pace, more appeal for a bigger audience range and More Special Effects.

Sleeping Beauty cover

We asked our actress to lay on a bold colour background so that it would be easier to edit afterwards. We asked out actor to lean over her as we thought it emphasised her as the focus if he was looking at her.

As we decided this would be the back page of our cover, we added the bar code to make it more realistic.

Rapunzel cover

This cover took longest to create as we had to take the pictures of the two actors separately as they had to be at two different levels.

Additionally, we had to edit the tower in so that it matched our colour scheme but was also still visible. We adjusted the colours on the tower so that it became part of the background rather than the main focus.

We also had to consider a realistic height to have the actor in comparison to the actress in the tower.

Post Production Questionnaires

We thought our best chances at having a big audience would be to post our video online. However, as the video was too big, we had difficulties and so had to find another way to do our showing and questionnaires. We uploaded our video onto Youtube and then used Facebook to link the video to our audience and send them our questionnaire. We sent it to 20 people each and now we are waiting for their results.

When deciding our questions, we tried to cover as many different aspects that we had considered in the first place in order to see if our video turned out how we planned successfully or not.

Beauty and the Beast cover

In the image above, you can see the editing effect in place.

Our complication with this cover with how to show the Rose without leaving our colour scheme. After much debating we finally decided on the image above and decided to darken the colours until it fit the colour scheme as close as possible.

Cinderella Digipack cover

Using Adobe Photoshop, we removed the backgrounds from our initial shot until we were left with just the two figures in the picture. We did this by using the the tool which allowed us to erase large sections at the time and then used the rubber tool to make a more accurate close in on the two figures. Next we used a colour adjusting tool in order to create silhouettes of the two figures. This took a long time as it was hard to make sure that the colours were just right and that it was still possible to identify the figures in the picture.

We changed the background colours depending on what colours we made our silhouettes. In this case we made a pink background for our black silhouettes however, we intend to alternate this with two of our other covers. Pink silhouettes with black backgrounds.

We put 'Cinderella' to emphasises the theme of fairy tales.

This is our front cover so we decided to have the band's name on it. The Glow on the name illustrates the focus of this cover. Also by having a glow we felt that it suggested an unnatural element which we thought we could relate to the idea of fairy-tale fiction.

Finally, we decided to give our figures another dimension and so decided to emboss our image to make it look like they're coming off the page.

Over the next week or two I hope to have uploaded all four of our covers.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0

We used Adobe Photoshop 7.0 to create our digipack covers. With this program, we were able to manipulate our images and change them into our final results.

We used this to play with the colours, the backgrounds and the graphics of the pictures.

Through using this, we felt that our final results will reflect those which we planned to begin with.

Over the next week or two, I will upload the results of editing our digipack covers with this program.

Digi-pack covers

Following the theme of fairytale, we looked at other stories where there is a 'fantasy boy' character which have their happy endings. The ones we decided on (In order going down) are Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Beauty and the Beast. We hoped that through the positioning of the women, they would look like they were the main focus of the picture suggesting a modern view on the portrayal of women. The men in these images are still the heroes, yet they have a more passive role in these images. We used images that would be most recognizable to an audience as we intended to modernize them and only use silhouettes. The images below are a plan of what we would like our Digi-pack covers to look like. We continued with our colour scheme of pink and black as it represents female pop-rock artists in our opinion. At the top we considered having the name of the album and the band's name 'Mia-Mae' at the bottom.

Above is our modern interpretation, we intend for the man to have a head as this is just a plan. The converse matched our colour scheme and also showed our theme of fairytale modernized to the 21st century romance.

Above, we have sleeping beauty, the way which we modernized the bed by not having the large grand bed in which she has often been portrayed. Equally, she is a natural sleeping position whereas in many interpretations she is laying on her back which we thought made her look too much like an object.

Above has been taken from the story of Rapunzel. This image corresponds to that of our website and is the only one which meets the usual expectations of a classic fairytale. This suggests that there is still the side of romance which is represented by chivalry.

Here we have Beauty and the Beast. In the story, the beast is protective over the rose and allows no one to come near it. In our image, both characters are of equal distance from the rose leaning towards it, besides removing the idea of his power of hers, the rose, similarly to the story represents the romantic side of the song which isn't considered much anywhere else as we feel it isn't a major theme in the song.

Narrative Vs Band Shots

We were wondering if there was a way for us to present a clear distinguish between shots that were story lines and our band shots so that we could contrast them as much as possible.

After looking at various music videos, we decided we most liked how it was done in the Bryan Adam's music video Summer of 69 as he split his music video into the past and present by using black and white for the past and colour for the present.

We thought that while we wanted to use black and white for narrative shots, we would focus more on colour when it came to the band shots in order to emphasise the difference.

As our colour scheme is bright, we thought that a similar idea would have been good for our music video so that it follows a theme.

The black and white, we feel, gives the narrative the look of being a memory of the artists which felt fitting to the lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f06QZCVUHg

Exploring Gothic Fantasy

As both of us are English Literature students, we felt we could apply our knowledge of the subject when creating our artists' image. Our A level English Literature focuses on Gothic Literature, we looked at our texts Wuthering Heights, Dr Faustus and especially The bloody chambers for inspirations.

We looked at the position of women specifically in the Gothic.

In Wuthering Heights we focused on the older Catherine and their position within the novel. The first time the reader meets Catherine in the novel is as a ghost. We adapted this idea by having our artist Georgia appear everywhere throughout the video but not always seen by the other actors in the video. Furthermore, Catherine is described as a passionate character, we thought we could try to portray this through her lyrics as they discuss her strong desires for her 'Fantasy boy'. Moreover, like Catherine and Heathcliff, our character is unable to be with the man she wants to be with.

Dr Faustus only contained two women one of which was used as a victim of the male gaze. We subverted this idea by not showing women as sex objects but illustrating them in two ways of which we believed were more plausible characters. Our subversion was also due to the modern interpretation we took for our music video. We had one artist in brighter and with more or a 'girly girl' image, this was done by using a huge emphasis on the colour pink. Our other artist was shown as a darker side through the use of dark colours to show a contrast between the two. This idea was influence by the aforementioned music video by Paramore for their song Misery Business.

The Bloody Chambers had a wider exploration on women. The women in the fairytales were often the desires of men however, with the modern interpretation we approach our music video with and the lyrics, we made the man the object of desire. In the stories ' The Lady of the Love House', 'Werewolf' and 'The Bloody Chambers' are the only three stories within the book in which the female is able to take control and become more powerful than the male. In the other stories though, (also in parts of the Bloody Chamber story) the women is a victim or a spectator to other acts of heroism or violence. This suggests that the woman is powerless and inferior to the males. Our protagonist does not act or win over the man she wants, but watches him and sits on the side lines throughout.

The Website

One of the requirements for the course is to create a website promoting the band. We kept with our theme of Gothic Fantasy, specifically looking at the 'damsel in the distress' idea. As neither of us had ever created a website before, we had to learn the technical sides before we could bring our ideas to life. We were introduced and developed our skills through the Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Fireworks packages.

After having grasped the concepts introduced to us through the packages mentioned above, we were able to develop our ideas to make them fitting to the theme we were following and we were able to indulge in our creative skills in order to produce an appealing website.

We looked at Avril Lavigne's website: http://home.avrillavigne.com/ since we felt her image and voice most suited our artists. At first we designed our website as below:

Our problem with this was that it became to simplistic and didn't leave us enough creative possibilities and so we added our fire breathing dragon and the tower. We felt that all this together made the page too crowded and we wouldn't be able to add anything without making it a mess. By overcrowding the website it would make it unappealing to an audience as it would be too difficult to look at.

Our final result:

meant that we were successful in creating a website that followed our colour scheme of black and pink as well as following our Gothic fantasy theme. Fantasy was a clear and obvious theme for our artist and through our knowledge of the Gothic through our Literature lessons alongside what we had imagined our artists may be thinking when they wrote the song. Although the image above is not the complete website, we saw this is a good basis that would allow us to include more detail about our artist without overcrowding the page.

To create the dragon and the tower, we researched Gothic towers, looking at Rapunzel in particular. We chose the tower that mostly said 'Gothic' to us and put a picture of our protagonist in the top to illustrate the damsel idea. Likewise, we looked at various dragon images and then adapted the one we thought was most fitting and made it follow the colour scheme we wanted. We would like to make the fire move using flash to animate our website. We already started this idea of animation by embossing the dragon and tower so that they look like they are slightly coming off the page.

Mia-Mae... Stereotype or Subversion?

We looked through our ideas of Gothic Fantasy and the aspects of Gothic and Fantasy which we had learnt through English Literature and other research we've done. We found some similarities between our music video and others of the genre but, there were also ideas which subverted from our chosen genre.

Stereotypes

Our protagonist was a passive character who looked onto the situation without taking any action. She sits back throughout the video and watches situations pass by her.

On our website, we have the girl trapped in the tower. This meets the the stereotype of the passivity of women and how they need a chivilrous man to come save them.

As I study sociology, I introduced Daniella to the theory of a 'bedroom' culture. This is the idea that as girls are more controlled than boys, they develop a situation where they communicate with their friends through phone conversations or over computers. This means that girls have a more advanced grasp of language, according to the theory. I found I could apply this to the music video as the artist wrote the song herself which shows her using language in order to express herself yet does it in passive way which is mostly illustrated by her sitting in a bedroom singing throughout the narrative.

Our colour scheme of pink and black seemed to be a conventional pop/rock yet feminine theme which suggested that the target audience were likely to be young pre teens to teenaged girls.

Subverting

Through our research of artists such as Avril Lavigne and Paramore, we noticed that the Gothic didn't often coinside with this specific genre of music. Even though our style is very similar to those artists, by introducing the Gothic to it, we made it our own orignal idea. The Avril Lavigne website was closer to our first website idea however, we felt that this was too feminine and so we adapted it by using feminine colours but not specifically feminine imagery for our theme.

Unlike many music videos, our artists are not shown to be objectifyed by the male gaze. We noticed that this was not obvious in the videos by Paramore or Avril Lavigne yet, it was hinted through short and tight clothing or having very little flesh covered. In our music video we catogorised the artists as two seperate images. Georgia, was dressed brightly in pink, with her hair straightend potraying a 'girly' character. Our other artist was dressed in dark colours with red hair which gave her more of the 'rock chick' image. These contrasting characters showed what we felt was a more realistic image of what girls tend to look like.

Georgia Bedroom shot

(3.22)

This shot is the complete opposite to the other artist shots. By having these shots as quite bright, we were able to contrast the differences. On this side she shows the hopeful side of not having what you want whereas on the other hand the the other artists' darkness shows the more heart-breaking side of the song.

The lighting is coming from the window above her and a window right opposite this allowed as much natural light into the room as possible.

By having a low angle shot, we felt that it showed her in a powerful potion which contrasted with the lyrics 'You're just something I can't set free'

We didn't add any effects to it as it was already a bright shot and we didn't want to over do it.

Fantasy Boy and Signs

we looked at the signs which we had presented our audience with in the music video, the website and with our ideas for our digipack.

Our images of the artists can be seen as iconic as they represent what we deem to be a realistic girl opposing the objectifyed woman often portrayed in music videos. Equally during the band shots, having the words 'Fantasy Boy' written up could be seen as a representation of every girl in our audience and so this provides them with the message that they have a shared experience with other girls their age.

We saw the pink guitar as a feminist symbol as pink is often assoicated with femininity. The eletric guitar can be seen as a powerful instrument and so we thought this was a subtle symobol to suggest 'girl power' amongst the audience.

Mia-Mae joint shot

(3.15)

For the first time both artists can be seen singing together though both from different angles. The
differences between the the two can be easily viewed. On the left our artist's brightness contrasts with the black background of the artist on the right. We used the shots that illustrated a day-dreaming look from both our artists. The idea was that they look like they're fantasising about the boy they're singing about. We ended with the iconic guitar again as the guitar is part of a dominant theme in the video.

We added a romantic lighting effect to it as it created a more fantastical, surreal image. This made the images brighter and we found it emphasised the pink in both images. I used 4 point garbage in order to shrink the 2 images and then overlap them so that they sing together.

Researching the band's image

We looked at influences of other bands in order to find a similarity between our image and other existing artists.

When I first heard the artist's voice, it reminded me of Avril Lavigne and so I thought it would be a good place to compare the image of our artist and Avril Lavigne.

We looked at Avril Lavigne's website: http://home.avrillavigne.com/

The colour scheme of Black, Pink and White was one that we had already considered using.

We decided to explore the theme of Gothic fantasy. We thought this was fitting to the title of our song 'Fantasy Boy' and so we looked at the fairytale/ fantasy conventions. For our website therefore, we decided to use the idea of the damsel in distress being trapped by a dragon as we felt this was fitting to the lyrics. The other songs written by our artist also helped us conclude that this was the correct theme for our artists.

Guitar close up

(2.49)

As the Guitar is symbolic to the artist and the music video, we included an extreme close up of her playing it. We made sure that the lighting was directly on the guitar so that the main focus of the shot was the guitar rather than her playing it. We zoomed extremely close to the guitar so make sure it filling the shot as much as possible. We used this shot to link one of our artists to the next.

Back in the studio

(2.10)

This shot is a big close up of our actress' face as we wanted to emphasise more on her facial expression as that is where she acts the most as I mentioned earlier. With the shot, I was filming her while moving the camera in a semi-circle around her so that the camera was constantly panning around her. I thought that moving with the camera was an interesting and original idea and also allowed us to continue with our experimenting with lengthy shots and shorter shots, so that the pace was varied.

As with the other studio shot we also used our colour scheme. There is still a pink tint on this shot as especially with a close up, we didn't want the black background to override the actress. The pink tint lightens the video which matches the brighter images throughout the other actress' vocals.

Her make up is a light pink colour too as we needed everything other than the background to be light so that the black doesn't overly dominate these shots.

The lighting is still in front of her, though this time it was a problem as I kept walking around her creating a shadow.

Skate Boarding

(1.44)

Our duration in the Skate park was enjoyable as we had the most freedom here. When editing we tried to do fast cuts between the skate boarding and the girls to give it a vague montage effect.

We asked the actors just to skate around the park while we chose random places to stand with the camera and chose random zooms according to what the skateboarder was doing. In this shot, I stood on the same level as the skateboarders but safely out of their way. I noticed that there were two skateboarders skating in opposite directions and decided it was interesting to film. I decided the best angle to use would be a long angle shot as it meant that I had enough scope to film anything they do when they were skating up and down the ramps.

Again this is black and white as it is part of the narrative, we used this as part of our attempt at a montage. We asked our actor to dress as casual as possible so that he looked natural for someone who was skating around a park.

In the Skate Park

(1.18)

The Skate park proved to be a good place to film as there was different levels on which I could stand with the camera or I could ask the actors to go to. In this shot, the girls were sitting on a wall while I was standing above them with the camera filming them from a high angle. I thought that this angle brought the audience into the video as it is almost looking at the same view as what the actresses could see. The emphasis of this shot remains on Georgia as she is the protagonist.

Although this shot is also in black and white to show narrative, Georgia's hat as well as her guitar, are both pink and her hat is on her throughout the music video. We saw this as something that was iconic to her. By having a pink hat, she is symbolising a 'girl power' which is represented by the colours.

Bedroom 2 shot

(53 secs)

We filmed this all in one shot as we wanted to show how Georgia magically appeared on the bed. In this shot, Georgia is supposed to be a ghost like character so that only the audience can see her. We had difficulties with this shot as we could see the bed moving as Georgia got on it. The shot was supposed to pan from an empty bed onto our actor and then back to the bed, to where Georgia would have magically appeared, but as it was visible to see when she got on the bed. We had to break up the supposed to be one continuous shot with a side on close up of the actor and then a big close up of his computer screen with her message to him. The whole sequence filmed in this room however, was all done in one take.

To show that this shot is narrative we added the black and white effect to it. Other than that we didn't edit it except for adding the close ups as mentioned before. As we had many quick cuts we wanted to try having one long cut and see how it fit. We thought it worked well because it illustrated what we wanted it to, Georgia's random appearance on the bed.

The only lighting we used here was window light as it felt most natural and the two actors were positioned in the right place for the light to emphasise them yet not too light that the image is lost to the light.

Adobe Premiere Software

We're using this program to edit our video. We found that it was easy to manipulate and edit using it. There is a large range of effects which we intend to experiment with until we find effects we like.

So far we have used the black and white effect to differ between the band shots and narrative shots. Also we used 4 point garbage to bring to shots together and re-make them into one.

I find that sometimes accuracy is difficult as I have to be able to cut at an exact second which is easy to miss by a second. Equally, sometimes finding the appropriate effect is time consuming as there is such a wide range.

Looking at specific shots

(40 secs)

We used a simple idea for this shot. We found a black background in the studio and decided to set the camera up in different areas of the room and see what happened. The actress in the video was specifically told to wear black and pink so that she fit in with our chosen colour scheme. In most of the shots of her we asked her to stand still and only show that she's acting through her facial expressions. She often portrayed distress as the song is about wanting something she can't have. In this shot, she was allowed to move and show more actively what the words of the song are trying to portray.

The lighting on her was only from in front of her so that we could avoid shadows forming as much as possible and also lightens up the dark background. When we edited this part we decided to adjust the colour on it to give it a slight pink tint so that it wasn't so dark. The tint is subtle however, it is visible as it brightened up the shot obviously.

As she was going to be moving in this shot, we filmed it as a mid shot so that she wouldn't walk too far out the shot or disappear from it all together. We found that this was a good idea as it meant that she was able to move without having to worry about leaving the shot. We could have moved the camera to follow her if she moved too much but we decided we wanted it to be a still shot.