Final draft of magazine advert

Here is the final draft of our magazine advert, produced after some minor alterations which we feel as a group truly help it to fulfil its purpose in promoting the band themselves and the album

• The changes made to the advert ensure that it completely conforms to our original designs and that the changes suggested positively effected the advert. An example of this being that the writing that was somewhat overshadowed by the image in the first draft is now completely bold and eye catching as it now bold white lettering over a black strip. This not only helps convey important information but also conforms to conventions of other adverts such as that for the band 'Hooked', depicted below. This link is not os much in the layout of the advertisement but in the way they have the band name and key information portrayed against a dark background, to enhance the lettering and what it is trying to say.

• The album's title 'Broken Pane' has also been made to appear bolder and so promotes the album further.
• Our magazine advert conforms greatly to the conventions of adverts in the indie genre as it is simplistic, features the band is the fact that it is drawn conforms to the sometimes child-like feel a viewer gets from indie album artwork, such as that of The Cure, as seen below.

Representations

In our video we have established representations of things such as genre, class and gender to aid the understanding of our video by our target audience. These representations are constructed through the narrative and the character's behaviour and in some ways the props used, such as the masks.


Genre:

• The genre of our film was indie, a well known genre and one that has many defining characteristics which we tried to embrace as much as possible. For example, indie videos tend to use bright colours to capture attention and give the video something of an atmosphere, we tried to emulate this by using bright colour wherever we could. We used a cafe with a green front, the girl was dressed in vibrant blue colours and the performance shots were set in the forest in the sunlight which gave the shots a bright and airy feel. to heighten the use of colour in accordance with the indie genre we also heightened the contrast to get the best tone of colour for our product.
• The masks used also play a huge part in communicating the genre, as the indie genre is known for such abstract props. The fact that the masks were of animals also conform to the genre as there are videos such as Santigold's "L.E.S Artistes" who use animal imagery by using actual animals, although our production only used masks the concept was still the same. The masks we also used to establish a sense of character and personality of the people wearing them rather than just have the people's faces, this idea is conventional of the indie genre as it is an alternative way of representation rather than going straight for the mainstream concepts.

Class:

• Class was not a theme that was particularly focused on as it was not as relative to the narrative of our product, however there are ways and moments in our video that can be seen to represent the area of class. An example of this is the fact that the main female actress and the male actor playing the boyfriend are both seen to be well dressed. The girls clothes are brightly colored and fashionable and are neat and clean cut. the same can be said for the male character. He wears a clean black coat and has neat hair and a tidy apparel. Their clothes reflect their place in society, perhaps being middle class or at the higher end of the working class. The fact that they are meeting at a dainty yet pleasant cafe indicates that they have the money to do so as a result of their class.
• This representation of the 'higher' class can be contradicted by the shot seeing the jeering male in the pig mask. This is so in the sense that the boy's clothes depict the typical attire associated with the working and lower class. he is seen in a black, tattered hoodie and combat style trousers accompanied with dirty trainers. His clothes combined with his exhibition of behavior towards others is also associated with the lower classes as it appears uncouth and ill mannered and almost animalistic - this linking with the mask we used to represent his character exactly.

Gender:

• Aside the general representations of male and females in our video, our production seems to find a general opinion of males forming as the video progresses. This view appears, by the end, to be that all males in the video are depicted as cowardly, lying and egotistical. This idea if formulated by the shots that see the girl encounter the male characters throughout the narrative. For example, the first character we meet, aside from the artist, is the character of the boyfriend. He is looking awkward and fidgety, as though he has a secret to hide that the audience is soon to find out. This represents males as secretive and possibly as Liars.
• There is only one female in the video and she is constructed as a strong character that is somewhat victomised by the male society, as the landlord and jeering youth are both male. This victomisation could also be reinforced by the fact that the girl is out numbered by the amount of male characters in the video and so appears vulnerable and this is confirmed as she ultimately yields and becomes one of the masked people.

Goodwin's Theory

During the stage in which analysed music videos I did so in accordance with the terms put forward by Andrew Goodwin. He stated that:

• Music videos demonstrate characteristics of the genre
• There will be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
• There will be a relationship between the music and the visuals
• The artist may develop distinctive motifs that may reoccur throughout their videos.
• There is often intertextual reference to things such as existing films etc.
• There is frequent reference to the notion of looking and particularly voyeurtristic treatment of the female body.

Most of these ides can be related to our music video as we tried to incorporate certain ones from the beginning, overall conforming to Goodwin's theory. For example we intended from the outset to portray the genre of indie in our music video by conforming to typical conventions of the genre, such as using abstract masks that you would not find in videos of other genres, such as RnB or Metal.

Our video production also has a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, for example the line in which the artist says "I Wish" sees a jump cut to a sign with the words written on it. This in itself establishes a visual link to the words in the music.

A link between the visuals and the music itself can be seen in that the pace of the visuals shown and the cuts used increases as the pace of the track does and are well times with certain parts of the song. This is illustrated perfectly by the part of the song where the guitar suddenly gets very loud and this sudden burst of volume is paired with a jump cut of the girl treading on a stick and is in perfect time with the loud guitar chord.

Audience Feedback

After finishing our video production we felt it constructive to gather feedback from a range of people, below is the edited feedback uploaded to youtube:

We recieved fedback from our teachers after the first production of our video and worked upon that feedback to improve it. The feedback above sees most people acknowledging the improvements made and even though there are still areas that some felt could be improved. The general view that comes across in the feedback is that the video's narrative has been made much clearer, the purpose of the masks that were formerly misunderstood were also said to have been made clearer and the addition of the performance shots helped establish the video as a music video rather than a short film.

Filming and editing again

After completing our video the first time around, we were given feedback that had some suggestions on how we could improve it. Upon looking at this feedback and reviewing our video we felt it appropriate and indeed necessary to make some editorial changes and insert some new shots which we rejected in the first cut. Below is the final cut of our music video after some changes had been been made:

• One of the aspects of the feedback that we were already concerned about and so agreed with was that the lack of performance shots in the video made it seem slightly more like a short film than a music video as it was intended. In response to this we set aside another day for filming where we found another actress to play the part of the artist and filmed several shots of her lip syncing the words of the track. We edited these shots into our original cut and it immediately remedied the proposed problem and made the entire video feel like a music video production. As a result of the inclusion of performance shots we had to cut a lot of other shots down which lead to our decision in removing the scene where the girl misses the bus. We decided this was a wise decision as although it was intended to be another scenario in which the girl's day continues to go wrong, it was not as important as other such scenes. For example, the eviction from her home or breakup were crucial moments and so it would be a wiser choice to cut the bus scene and include performance shots to ensure we followed the main conventions of music videos in having some performance.


• Another crucial aspect of our video that we thought best to change was the ending. We based this choice, again, on feedback we received upon posting our first video on YouTube. A few people commented and felt that the ending worked well but its intended meaning was a little too ambiguous, so much so that they didn't understand it. To rectify this we decided that a better way to end the video would be to do it concisely and end on the artist so that she is the last thing the audience will connect with the track. We thought it worked best to pair the visuals with the lyrics in the last shots of the video. The lyrics being "my vicious tongue cradles just one", we used two jump cuts, one close up of the artist's hand which she holds one finger out to the word "one" the first time it is spoken, and the second time we have medium close up from a higher angle which sees the artist lift her head as she sings the lyrics. This is an absolute and resolved ending with no room for ambiguity and we all felt this was a better ending and that we had made a very positive improvement.
• We also edited the cheating scenes so as to follow the constructive criticism we were given by our teachers. The concern was that the scene was too explicit and so possibly offensive to viewers. Although we originally felt this scene to be in no way inappropriate, we followed the advice we were given and put on a blurring effect combined with the effect 'ghost trails' that ultimately made the shot content go out of focus, so the kiss between the two characters as well as themselves are made out of focus. This insinuates the idea of cheating without spelling it out completely for the audience, adding a sense of mystery to the shot and narrative which I feel to be a great benefit.

First draft of the magazine advert

This is our first draft of the magazine advert where we have the background layer and the photograph merged together, showing how we hope the advert will look in its final stage. Below is the first draft produced:

• We were generally happy how the poster has turned out and do not wish to change it all that much from now on. However we do hope to change a few aspects, for example, the writing that has been placed over the artist is black and is somewhat lost in her clothing. This will be distracting for viewers and may cause them not to fully take in the information being displayed.
• We also hope to have the album title 'broken pane' edited slightly, perhaps given more colour as it seems slightly lost in the other colours of the advert and at the moment false to make the album title, a very important piece of information, almost inconspicuous.

Initial ideas for digipak

As well as the advert and music video, the final task we were required to do was to produce a digipak case for the album, this involving designing each panel of a four panel digipak according to a template we were given. We used this design process to form the initial layout of the digipak. Below are our initial ideas, simple sketches of how we intend our digipak to look when completed: