Evaluation - Audience Feedback

To find out what our audience thought of our video, we played it for fellow students and asked them for feedback on what they thought of our video.

In general the feedback that we filmed and the feedback off others was very positive and one of our main strengths was that the video was edited to the beat of the music and that the lip singing was in perfect time with the music.

However, we did receive some useful criticisms that we took into account when finishing the editing. One weakness was that the last shot in the video had been edited to make it brighter, but the audience thought that this did not fit in with the theme that ran throughout the video, Therefore, we restored that part of the clip back to the original colour so that it looked clearer and fit well with the rest of the video. Therefore, receiving feedback was very important and has helped us to improve our video.

Directors Commentary

Our completed music video

Screen shots of our video

1st shot features a split screen long shot (two dancers postioned in the rule of thirds).

2nd shot features a medium longshot of dancers performing their rehearsals.

3rd shot features medium shot of Maria performing( Star Performer).

4th shot features a tilted shot of the song title writen in a diary and maria.

Evaluation

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

When creating the CD case and poster we decided to use the same colour, text and picture on both so that they would compliment each other. Firstly, our main colour scheme is a black background with gold text, we have chosen this because on many of Jazmine Sullivan's own merchandise and advertisements she has used two main colours for her colour scheme and the song has a slight Jamaican element to it and black and gold are two colours from the Jamaican flag. Moreover, the flag is also incorporated into the video itself and when using the green screen, we changed the background to black to highlight Maria singing. Therefore, this helps to establish links between our video, CD case and poster.

Secondly, the poster and to some extent the CD case can help to promote the song because it is eye catching, the design fits with our genre of music and they link to the music video itself. However, it can be said that our design is aimed mainly at women due to the style of the font and colours used. But, this has been done purposely as the song is mainly directed at women. Therefore, our target audience is women so we had to produce products that would interest them into purchasing the CD. In addition, the poster is for a magazine advertisement and the majority of readers will be female so we need to focus on what would attract them.

Evaluation

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

One of our main inspirations for creating a music video which uses both illustration and amplification was to produce a video that was more creative and powerful at portraying the songs message than the original version. In the original video, the main focus is on Jazmine Sullivan singing in a recording studio. But, we wanted to go further than this quite tiresome idea and add a narrative to our version mixed with a performance element. Moreover, even though this artist does not cover the same genre as Jazmine Sullivan, I believe that Michael Jackson is an amazing artist and extremely inspirational to many other artists and very influential to his audience. His music has touched thousands if not millions of people over the many years through the way he has expressed his lyrics. So, we aimed to produce a video where the lyrics are dominant and powerful and the audience can relate to the feelings and emotions expressed by the artist. Just as Michael Jackson had done.

In addition, Missy Elliot is both an artist and producer; we studied some of her work as it is a similar genre to our song and found that dance routines and close up camera shots of the artist are very common in this type of music video. I also researched the R&B/Reggae artist, Sean Paul. In many, if not all of his video’s there is no clear story line and he often uses disjuncture and dance routines too. However, illustration and amplification are not generally found in many R&B/Reggae videos. Therefore, we decided to use a mixture of both an illustration of the songs story line and shots of our star singing and performing a dance routine. By using a mixture of both, we are including the normal conventions of an R&B/Reggae music video and we are being more original by combining it with a storyline to break away from the norm. As a result, we can amplify the songs meaning and make it more interesting and visual for the audience at the same time.

Poster Research

Our poster we have created features the main actress with a close up of her face. we have decided to use a shot of her face because the close up reflects the emotion of the song lyrics, so by us deciding to have this type of shot would definatly target a audience who know about what the song actually means.

What we liked most about the poster would have to bethe black background with gold font. the design layout of the poster worked well with our music video as we decided to stick to a colour scheme. for example the close ups of Marias face often has a brown/ golden glow when we used the lightening effects when edtiting. The gold font makes our poster look bold and classy we decide to go with the gold rather then white, because we wanted to make the poster attract the audience of both RnB & Reggae listeners, it would attract that particular group due to many of their CD /Postercovers having thses colours to distrbute their music.

It definatly fitted our brief because we planned before hand of what we wanted to include upon both the poster and CD cover we didn't make any changes at all so with 100% we stuck to or orginal plan.

We could have improved the poster if we had more choice of images on maria as we could of looked for a better type of camera shot.

Final Locations

At the beginning of our project we decided to carry out our main filming in Castlefield and in the Zion centre dance studio. Although these were good, original choices we found that we wanted to be more creative and include more than just the two different locations. As a result, not only did we use these two locations but we also filmed in Manchester city centre, on a bus through the town and in college itself. This helped our storyline along as, Maria is showing her journey to college with flashbacks about her time with Cass. Furthermore, we chose to use the college's studio to show the dancers and Maria rehearsing their dance routine before going to the proper dance studio at the Zion centre where they performed the routine perfectly. Therefore, we used a variety of different loactions to help our video become more interesting and to show our commitment to filming as footage as possible.

Examples of Promotional posters

Promotional Posters

Our group is going to make a promotional poster to advertise our video

This is going to consist on 1 front cover they are a number of things which will be included on the front of this including:

-The record label

-When the song will be released

-If you will bebale to download it

-The name of the song

-Name of the artist

-A picture of the artist



The main theme of our poster is black and gold the same as the cd cover, we wanted to keep this colour theme consistant throughout our project becuase they are bold and out standing people will regonise our theme. We aim for a simple and emotional poster which will grab the audiences attention.



Me maria and cass have desided the write Jazmine Sullivan in Gold across the top of the poster Jazmine will be written in capitals and size 24 font and sullivan will be written in lower case underneath of the Jazmine. There will be a picture of the singer at front. The song title will be written in FILL THIS IN at the bottom left hand corner under this will be when the song is released and where you will be able to down load the song from. On the write hand side of our poster will be the record label and their logo.

An example of Promotional poster is:











This Promotional poster is what we aimed for ours to be like. It is very simple and affective.

Our you tube link to Jazmine Sullivan Need you Bad

This is the you tube link to Jazmine Sullivan "Need You Bad"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHV5PyPiFjg

Poster research

Before designing the poster to advertise our music video, I need to research the important elements and features that it must include. Furthermore, I also need to ensure that the poster consists of the same theme as the CD cover, they can not look totally different.

After looking at posters featuring artists such as Beyonce and Jazmine Sullivan herself, I have noticed that they have some quite similar features:

• They all include a picture of the artist with her/his name in a bold print


• They give details about an upcoming event or single release, including the song or album title


• They are all colourful or have had the colour edited to suit the mood of the song and are eye catching

Here are some examples:

Furthermore, to make sure that the poster is consistent with the colour scheme used for the CD cover I am going to have a black background and use the same gold font. Moreover, i will also use the same picture of Maria on the CD cover to put onto the poster.

CD.Cover Research

The 1st CD is keisha coles album it is a great cover as it features fancy fonts.

The 2nd CD cover is a simple design with jazmin sullivan of the original Need you Bad song our group is considering creating a CD cover like this.

3rd CD cover is Jordan Sparks cd cover i like this cover as it features a close up of the singer face.

Here are some CD cover which Inspired us

Me and Harriet have both started to design the CD cover of our Music video called Need you Bad by Jazmin Sulivan. We both decided to make the cover look like an RnB/Reggae style by research various CD covers within this Gener. We taking in to count that most of the RnB style covers normally features the songwriter with a close up of their face, so we really based our idea on that. So our initial design will be seperated into three cataoguies 1st would be the CD cover, 2nd The Lyrics of the song and 3rd would simply be the back cover of the CD.

The reason why we both decided to include the lyrics into our CD cover is because it would make our inside cover look really authentic due to the reggae gener often includes a song Lyric within a booklet.

Our Design will based upon two colours which are Black & Gold we are using this because black with gold looks modern. its a colour which is a bold & strong , within RnB cover they often go for strong authentic types of font, with sharp images which look pretty good plus it targets a young adult audience as many people are in to RnB so our main intended focus was to particuly target a young adult audience.

A feature which really works well for the cover is having spotlights as a caputers the thougts of a live performance.

Harriet thought by having the spotlights would also engage Maria as the star performer in the video do overall a good idea.

The front cover will consist of

• A Black background with Gold spotlights



• Gold Font Jazmin in Large size18/20 Bold



• Right Align Sulivan in Small writing Gold Font



• Picture of Maria face from video( real, cartoon, silloute shadow)

Lyric booklet

• Size 10 gold font



• Gold Stars on top left corner/ bottom right corner




• Black Background



• lyrics middle aligned

Back cover

• Need you bad in Gold Font size 18



• picture of out media group or Maria.

Editing

Now that we have all of our footage, Maria has been the main editor of our music video. However, everyone has had an input into how it has been edited and we have each made contributions and put forward different idea's into what should be done.

Once all of our footage has been placed on the time line in the order we wanted it, Maria added the music and ensured that the lip singing was completely synchronised with the timing of the music.

Then, we could start to change the colour of certain shots to fit the mood of the music. For example, we made the happy memory of Maria and Cass brighter and much more colourful, in contrast to the shots of Maria singing where sepia has been added and which have blurring around the edges to show her depressed mood.

Furthermore, we have also split screened a number of shots of the dance routine in the middle of our video. We have a vertical split screen shot of the dancers on the left side and Maria singing on the right side, then the next shot switches them around so Maria is now on the left and the dancers on the right. In addition, we have also used a shot where we split the screen into quarters and had single shots of the dancers in the top left corner and the bottom right corner. Then, as the music changes, we swap the images around again. This effect fits with the beat of the music and so will keep the audience's attention.

Research on website design

Before we can create our own website homepage, we first have to research the main features of a homepage and find out what is essential to include.

• Text
  -Background does not interrupt the text
  -Text is big enough to read, but not too big
  -The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear


• Navigation
  -Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
  -Navigation is consistent throughout web site
  -Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are, what page of the site they are currently on


• Links
  -Link colors coordinate with page colors
  -Links are underlined or bold so they are instantly clear to the visitor


• Graphics
  -Buttons are not too big and an eye sore
  -Every graphic link has a matching text link
  -Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colors
  -Animated graphics turn off by themselves


• General Design
  -Pages download quickly
  -Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
  -Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages

Next, I focused more specifically on what to include for a music artits' website. To do this I looked at many singers official websites including Jazmine Sullivan and Beyonce, and found that they had very similar features. On each homepage they had the artists picture at the very top of the page and had a horizontal menu bar beneath it, they had news about the artists recent accomplishments and upcoming events and most included a recent music video. Furthermore, most homepages also included links to: video's, pictures, a biography, events, news and a blog. Therefore, these are all things that we must take into consideration when creating our own website homepage.

However, after considering whether to create a website homepage or an advertisement, for example a poster, we decided to produce an advertisement as it would be much less time consuming and would help to promote the CD.

editing

We have started to edit the first 30 seconds of our music video which invloves one of our dancers which messes up the dance routine due to her thinking about her releationship with her boyfriend. Our group has also decided to enhance colour to this using filter effects, brightness and contrast, it has high key lighting effect with a red tone. this has created a sepia effect in which our film look old as if we were refering to past events. We used close ups from our footage as it allows the audience to focuses on the main dancer as its a major part of star vehicle.

Also we have edited the main dance routine, using straight cut transitions which features 3 dancers this will match the rest of the choruses throughout the song, this will create an emotional atmosphere as she is talking about her relationship with her boyfriend.

Today we have also logged and captured our footage of Castlefield where our two actors are having a discussion over a table we are now in the process of edting this and putting it on our timeline.

What we have done the last couple of weeks

Throughout the last couple of weeks our group has been in Manchester looking for better locations in order to shoot our production.

In the half term week we have filmed our dance production in the Zion arts centre with the help of to female dancers. This went really well and we managed to get all the types of shots we wanted including:

• dolly shot
• Medium shot reflected in the mirror
• high angled
• low angled
• close up
• feet shot
• medium shot
• dolly shot 360

However, before we filmed the final production of our dance we came into collage and

filmed a preliminary version this was to make sure that our shots were perfect and we new exactly what we were doing. We will be posting some of this on our blog at a later date to show our improvements throughout the course.

Our group then went into town at 7.00 in the evening to film the main parts of production which involved a number of people. This was really hard to do as we had to make sure the lighting was good and we could get clear shots. It was also every important that we did`t get any shadows of us filming as this would look unprofessional.

Now we have returned to collage we have started editing our filming and getting most of it on the time line.

In the next couple of weeks we aim to make sure we are doing really well with our editing and if they are any shots we need to redo making sure we get them sorted.

Preliminary shot list

We have decided to plan our shot list before we go out to start filming to ensure that we have a good idea of how to structure our plot. It is only a preliminary list as we can change and adapt shots to suit what is best at the time.

Before the music starts:

• Long shot from a reflection in the mirror of the girls talking and dancing
• Close up of MiMi
• Medium shot of the girls dancing
• Close up of MiMi sitting down
• High angled shot of MiMi texting
• Over the shoulder shot of the phone
• Extreme close up of the phone screen with music title

Music begins and first verse:

• Long shot of MiMi getting off the bus
• Floor shot of MiMi's feet as she's walking
• Point of view shot of MiMi having a memory of herself and Cass together
• Medium shot of MiMi and Cass during the memory
• Close up shot of MiMi and Cass during the memory
• Medium shot pan

chorus:

• dolly shot
• Medium shot reflected in the mirror
• high angled
• low angled
• close up
• feet shot
• medium shot
• dolly shot 360

verse 2:

• point of view shot
• establishing shot of town
• long shot of traffic
• medium shot of MiMi sitting of the park bench
• medium shot of MiMi and Cass on the park bench for the memory
• point of view looking down
• extreme close up of MiMi's eyes
• close up of Cass and MiMi
• over the shoulder shot of MiMi texting

Hook:

• Long shot of MiMi walking towards the camera
• Close up of her face
• High angled long shot
• medium shot
• close up of MiMi singing
• side on shot of MiMi of looking at phone

Chorus:

• similar shots but in a different location
• establishing shot of castlefield showing MiMi in the distance
• medium shot of chairs
• medium shot of MiMi an Cass sat down
• high angled close up of MiMi and cass holding hands across the table
• close up of MiMi texting
• medium of MiMi walking towards the bridge
• long shot of MiMi spotting Cass and Harriet together
• shot reverse shot close up between Cass and MiMi
• pan down of MiMi dropping her phone

About Jazmine Sullivan

About Jaazmine Sullivan
Jazmine Marie Sullivan was born on April 6th 1987 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania she grew up in the middle of her two brothers. Jazmine as always been bought up around music as her mother is a former backup singer for Philadelphia International Records.
Jazmine began singing in the children’s choir, then a few years later in the adult choir. Jazmine`s exposure to music was initially limited, "I was doing solos in church and someone wanted me to sign to a gospel label when I was eleven but I wasn’t ready to do that," she recalls. Jazmine then she entered McDonalds competition for kids in big cities, every really liked her and she got to perform with Stevie Wonder at his grandson`s brithday at the age of 13. At the age of 16 Jazmine signed a record label "Jive Records" bit the album was never relased, after this she was droped from the label. Jazmine thought back and made her own album al by her self.

Music Career

Jasmine has also been credited as a songwriter on R&B singer, Fantasia's debut album "Free Yourself". She also penned hits for the likes of Christina Millian and her hit single "Say I", among other songs from her 3rd studio album So Amazin. She was also credited as a songwriter on Jennifer Hudson's song, "I'm His Only Woman" featured on Hudson's self-entitled debut album, Jennifer Hudson.

Jasmine first appears with "need you bad" in may 2008 with Missy Elliot which went straight to number one. She then later released her first album in the September of 2009.

She then released her second single "bust your windows" which went to reach number 4 in America. A remix of the song then appeared and was nominated for best Rn B song.

After doing so well in America Jasmine decided to release a single in the UK called "Dream big" in June 2009. She then went on to supporting act for Neyo in his " Year of the Gentleman "

Jazmine has been nominated for a number of awards and won many including:

• BET Awards
  • 2009, Best Female R&B Artist (Nominated)
  • 2009, Best New Artist (Nominated)
  • 2009, BET Centric Award (Winner)

• Grammy Awards
  • 2009, Best New Artist (Nominated)
  • 2009, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance: "Need U Bad" (Nominated)
  • 2009, Best R&B Contemporary Album: "Fearless" (Nominated)
  • 2009, Best R&B Song: "Bust Your Windows" (Nominated)
  • 2009, Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance: "I'm In Love With Another Man" (Nominated)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Informatin taken from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazmine_Sullivan
  Picture taken from:http://www.youheardthatnew.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/jazmine_sullivan_5751.jpg
  
  
  
  

Inspiration

Need you bad was written by Jazmine Sullivan herself and produced by Missy Elliott. Jazmine’s frank, take-no-prisoners approach to songwriting, coupled with her passionate delivery, will quickly establish her as the one to watch this year and years to come. Furthermore, Missy Elliott already has years of experience as an artist and producer so knows what her target audience will want to see.

However, when watching the real video for this song, the group felt that it wasn't very exciting or adventurous. It had the basic elements of a music video but didn't experiment with many idea's and didn't show the story that the song was telling. As a result, one of our inspirations for choosing this song was to produce a more creative and interesting music video than the original.
We realise with no budget this will be difficult, but as a group we all have many good idea's that we have merged together to create a dance element of the video which shows the artist and have planned a story element of the video to illustrate exactly what the song is about.

Location

1st image zion center

2nd image outside zion centre

3rd outside picadillyArndale

4 th outside primark

5th big wheel

6th castlefield bar

7th lake

8th castlefield bridge

Here are some location of Castlefield, Zion centre, Manchester high street which we are using for our locations .

Cassius Bynoe.

Planning for our group music video
In media over the last two weeks we decided to go around Manchester looking for locations to use for our music video.

We decided to do this because it is very important as we will want to look for great places throughout the city which will make our music video look authentic & urban.
We are going to film at Casltlefield because, the location features a Canal which in my opinion will make our video look authentic compare to other music videos, the reason why because we as a group we are keeping to particular theme which is “Love”; so by having this prop in the video represents a location where couples go, to share each other company and its normally a place where a guy and a girl will meet up.

We are filming around Castlefield Park which is a very quiet location. the reason we are filming there is for the reason such as its, a place where your most likely are going to go to clear your head, or may go to sit back and to sum up current events, which happened through out the past, for example Mimi is thinking about here relationship with Cass in the video.

Second Location we used is on top of Manchester Arndale car park, why we decided to film their is because, theirs allot of great Background scenery in that particular location. As theirs the Big wheel which is an iconic attraction of Manchester .Another reason why we have decided to include the big wheel is because we plan to film it in the morning then, in the afternoon as it shows how long for example Mimi been sitting their which could suggest a meaning in how here relation ship keep on going round and round IN circles which is a good technique of irony.

Third location Mimi chose to film Market street as its busy also It gives the music video the idea of an Manchester environmental populated place where it’s a place in everyone’s goes to shop, look around in my opinion market street represent how people can go about their business an do their own thing which fits into our music video as were also trying to focus on Manchester as being a city like urban place to live life.

The music we are going to use is RNB/Reggae style which is very similar to the style of the classic Lovers Rock style as it features heavy dub lines with smooth sweet vocals form the corresponding artist known as Jasmine Sullivan. In contrasts the style of music is more modern as RnB & Reggae are mixed together, where as Lovers Rock features Soul with a Reggae rhythm for example our music chorus starts off with a heavy bass rhythm alongside Strong Patois vocals which the chorus gives a sense of Jamaican Reggae Roots ;then throughout the tune features a cross over between the two genres E.G. Reggae-RnB then back, you can tell this is happening as when the RnB kicks in the vocals of jasmine Sullivan become more stronger & the reggae fades away where as when the reggae hits its straight to the slow pace bass line.

Preparation

The first thing we had to decide on as a group was our song and genre. MiMi suggested using the song 'Need U Bad' by Jazmine Sullivan and after listening to it and reading the lyrics, we thought this would be a great song choice because it has a mixed R&B an Reggae genre and it has perfect lyrics to use for amplification. We then sat together and considered many idea's that we could use for filming the music video, we all had simlilar thoughts on how we should shoot it and discussed our own strenghts and weaknesses. This led us to decided that MiMi and Cass would be the best people to act in the video as they have more drama experience, whilst Harriet and I would do more of the filming and directing as we work better behind the scene's.

Next, we brainstormed some locations which we thought would be a good idea to use and went wrecking straight away to make our final decison about which places we would actually use. Castlefield, the Zion Arts Centre and the rooftop of Manchester Arndale shopping centre appeared to be the best choices for our video, where we could be as creative as possible.

Finally, we have met the dancers who will be performing in our video and MiMi has started learning the routine. So, the rest of the group have been considering all the different costumes and camera angles we can use when filming the dance routine and pictures we can take that can be used for promotion later on.

Planning

Throughout the last couple of weeks our group has done a lot of wrecking around Manchester, and seen some every good sights in which we would like to do shot our film. Some of our location include Zion centre in Hulme and Castlefield in the centre of Manchester, we are also doing other establishing shots around Manchester.

Our group have also started learning a dance routine which will be playing in the chorus this is progressing every well and will hope to be film this soon. We have also planned out the story line to the film and how our film will flow.

In the next couple of weeks we aim to start filming our dance routine and to get some filming done in our locations in order for to start our editing in 6 weeks.

Locations

As a group, we all took the time to go an visit different locations around Manchester before we decided on the final few locations where we would film.

Firstly, we decided to start our music video by opening with an establishing shot which will be taken from the roof of Manchester Arndale shopping centre. This enables us to have a birds eye view of the town and include recognisable buildings in the shot.

Moreover, after walking through it, we have decided to use different parts of Castlefield for the main part of our music video. It is a striking, quiet location with features that suit the lyrics and mood of our song. For example, it has a beautiful quiet park where the character can remember her happy memories and a dull canal and bridge where she has a heart braking moment.

Furthermore, we found the most favourable place to film the dancing scene's for our music video is the Zion Arts Centre. It has special dancing studies where the dancers feel comfortable performing, where we can control the background and lighting and where we can take many different camera shots. This will then make our music video more creative and exciting.

However, we chose not to use a train station as we may not have been able to get permission to film and it would have made keeping continuity difficult, as different people are there everyday.

Finally, we also decided not to film in Manchester town centre or in our college as they are popular an boring location choices and we preferred to find somewhere different an new.

Planning

I had personally picked the song over summer and my group agreed it would be a good choice, so we picked the song Need U Bad by Jazmine Sullivan as it is different and not widely known. The song's genre is called lovers rock, we thought that it was a perfect choice because one of our aim's is to have our project stand out and be different and it is a genre that is not popularily displayed . This is wikepedia's defintion of the genre;

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lovers rock is a style of reggae music noted for its romantic sound and content. While love songs had been an important part of reggae since the late 1960s, the style was given a greater focus and a name in London in the mid 1970s.[1]

After listening to the song and learning about the three ways in which music videos relate visuals to song, (through illusration, amplification and disjuncture) ideas flowed easily and we decided on a concept that would embody a mixture of illustration and amplification through narritve and performance as well as concentration on star image.
Some of the reasons we chose to portay the video this way are because of our inspirations from award winninig R&B videos such as Michael Jacksons' Thriller and award winning Reggae vieods like Sean Paul's Get Busy. This way we could combine the two styles to create something new and different.

We wanted to get started immediately so we have gone wrecking on locations around Manchester's Piccadilly and to a place called Castlefields- a pretty and secluded area that we decided was ideal due to its romantic and yet isolated essence. Also we have started rehersal for the dance section in our video, using the Dance Space in the Zion Arts Centre where we will also be filming.