Digipack Research

Adele - 21

Front Cover 

Adele's album cover for her album '21' portrays her as very sophisticated and as a genuine person. The album cover contains a close up of Adele in black and white in the foreground and a plain black background.

Improved Analysis of Music Video from Artist's Similar to Ours

Improved Analysis of Music Video from Artist's Similar to Ours

Leona Lewis - Better In Time

This Music Video for Leona Lewis' 'Better In Time' portrays her as a sophisticated, polite young women. Throughout the music video she is dressed in sophisticated clothing. However the music video doesn't follow the generic conventions stated by Goodwin that all pop music videos have the same characteristics. This music video contains performance and concept elements. The common characteristics for music videos from the pop genre is to have a narrative and performance based video. The music video is set in a photo-shoot, dressing room and movie set which makes Leona seem very upper-class and extremely graceful. 

These black and white close ups of Leona portray her as sophisticated and delicate as most of the time yoga associate black and white with sophistication. Before we watched these videos as a group, Miss Ferdinand suggested that we count how long each shot is. The longest shot was around 5-6 seconds however the camera was either panning or moving slightly. This made us realise that every shot in the music was either moving or something in the shot was moving. We then wanted to incorporate this into our product. 

We discovered that the two shots above were the longest however the camera was constantly panning her or zooming out which suggested that the action never stops. This therefore makes her character seem more likeable as not only is she portrayed as polite and sophisticated a fun side of her character is also portrayed.

These panning shots of Leona, from a close up to a long shot really empathises the effectiveness of keeping the camera moving at all times. It also gives us a chance to focus on the vocal techniques in the close-up and then contrast it with our focus on her beauty in the long shot. The mid shot is an effective way of making the audience focus on both her appearance and her voice.

In the two shots above we see Leona Lewis portrayed as an elegant woman who possibly is a celebrity, actress or singer. These shots establish her sense of importances, and additionally follows Goodwin's theory in which he states that the artist is the main focus of attention. Again the shots are never not moving as they are panning which suggests a sense of action and more importantly it doesn't bore the audience.

In these final shots we discover that she is in fact an actress and the medium shots used of her suggests this as we are given the opportunity to focus on the mise en scene as well as her. The mise en scene is used to show that she is an actress and is also used to show her as a down to earth person as we see her walking with the horse. This creates a comforting sense about her character. 

Blog Post Wednesday 13th November

After analysing music videos similar to our artists with Miss Ferdinand I discovered that music videos from artists I thought were similar to our artist were actually in the completely wrong direction that we wanted to go with our artist. I believe that I just got confused with the pop genre and thought we wanted to portray our artist like; Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez. However after having a group discussion we came to realisation that we wanted to portray our artist as a mature, well mannered, sophisticated young women. More like artists such as; Adele and Leona Lewis. 

Evaluation Question Four

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

Evaluation Question Three

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After doing our audience feedback we discovered that most people expect performance and narrative based music videos rather than concept based. 

Evaluation Question Two

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of our digipak, website and main product complement each other very well.

Evaluation Question One

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

Our Media Product (Music Video) mainly uses and develops the forms and conventions of real media products rather than challenge them. We believed that whilst challenging the conventions of a real media product could prove to be effective, it is a risky strategy and the examiner could portray our interpretation as something completely different. Therefore we decided to develop the forms and conventions of real media products. For example we analysed several different music videos in the pop genre, including; Taylor Swift's 'You Belong With Me,' Katy Perry's 'The One That Got Away,' and Ariana Grande's 'Baby I.' All these music videos followed the same generic conventions of Goodwin's theory. Both Taylor Swift's and Ariana Grande's music videos followed the generic conventions of pop music videos and were mainly narrative based and loosely performance based. Whilst Katy Perry's music video for 'The One That Got Away' challenged the forms and conventions of pop music videos and used a concept based music video. 
However we choose not to follow these artists direction as it is not how we want to portray our artist. We then went on to analyse music videos from artists such as; Leona Lewis and Adele as firstly they are london based artists and secondly we felt that they are more sophisticated and delicate then the other artists we have analysed. Therefore we believed that our portrayal of our artist should be more similar to artists like Leona Lewis or Adele. This means that we are incorporating the forms and conventions from our genre of music videos.