Our marketing poster.

Made by Samantha Murphy.



Original photo. We used Microsoft Powerpoint to change the lighting of this image and make it much brighter as we wanted the background to stand out more than myself, we felt this would be more eye catching to our target audience. We also added the text in the same font as the covers of our album and also in white so that they could be seen easily against the colourful background.

Audience feedback - Part 1.

Me and Sam decided to start the audience feedback for our music video by asking two people from our media class some questions after showing them the final product. Here are the questions that we asked:

1. Do you think the visuals fit with the song lyrics?
2. Do you think this is typical of the garage-rock/ alternative rock genre?
3. What would be your idea if you had to make a video to this song?
4. Does the video match the tempo/tone of the song?
5. Does the narrative flow?
6. Do you think the focus work is effective?
7. What do you think inspired us?
8. What do you think the on going theme is?

These are the combined answers to the questions above from two media students who are working together in a group:

1. Yes, when the lyrics changed tone so did the visuals. It was clear to see the themes of the lyrics through the visual images.
2. It fits the genre well and wouldn't be out of place among others of the same kind.
3. It would definitely be narrative based. The band would not be present and it would contain one on going story. It would show the narrative of gay teens in todays society and how there is still an element of isolation.
4. Yes, the part of the song where the tempo is sped up and therefore the tone is raised, the video shows a montage of a variety of images to fit with the quick pace.
5. Yes, the narrative is clear and not complicated, it is nice and easy to watch. There is a simple connection running from day to night.
6. Yes, it was very effective. Shows a variety of camera work and is a filler in between scenes.
7. The feeling of isolation and characters which make a stand against society.
8. Rebellion and teens. They really captured the ideology of teens, it was really realistic and a obvious perception of what people really think.

By asking these two other media students we were able to see that our ideas correlated with one another. We could see that the topic we picked (gay relationships) was a well known area for them also due to what they have seen recently across a variety of media platforms. These students understood our idea and could tell what themes were consistently shown throughout the video. When asked what sort of music video would they create for the same song, they came up with an idea which related strongly to our as we did not include any visuals of the band and the video was completely narrative based. This group could clearly see that we were trying to show a sense of isolation from society within our video, they were able to understand the hidden meanings and relate them to an idea of their own.

Symbolism in the music video.

There is a huge amount of purposeful symbolism in our music video to emphasise the continuous theme of relationships, love and isolation. To start off with, the urban setting further highlights the isolation of the girls relationship as even though they are in the middle of a busy city it is only those two that are shown, no one else around them, we wanted this to reflect society as a relationship like the girls have is still a taboo in many areas and they could be rejected because of this. Furthermore, a more simplistic symbolism was the graffiti, we wanted to show the urban setting as being the most significant image of our music video and felt that the graffiti would be the best to show this as it is common to see around a city. The props used such as the empty alcohol bottle symbolises how youths are perceived in society. The traditional 'youth moment' is seen to be rebellious and featured mainly around drinking and smoking which we tried to incorporate within our music video. The clothes we wore as actors were meant to symbolise the garage rock genre as we went for an edgy look, mostly black with a sense of vintage accessories, we felt that this fit with the image of the music. We have included a shot of a lock which is shown after me and Lauren are pictured in the temple meads underpass. We felt this was symbolic of our relationship, that it is locked tight and unable to be stolen or fall apart because we are safe with each other, but also this could be a symbol of being trapped. Seeing as me and Lauren are supposed outcasts from the city, we only have each other which means we are therefore locked with one another's company which could feel claustrophobic. We also included a sign of a smiling face after the scene in the hengrove underpass where me and Lauren are shown enjoying each others presence and having fun with each other which we felt the smiley face symbolised but it also added an urban effect. In this location there was a concaved image of a heart on a tiled wall which we made sure to place in between me and Lauren to emphasise our feelings of love towards one another but also the fact that the heart is tattered and imperfect reflects our relationship and the complications behind it. The spinning shots which are circled around me and Lauren whilst we are leaning against a lamppost symbolise the movement of time, how time is passing us because we are 'out of the moment' and focusing on each other instead of what is happening around us. The circular shots are also supposed to symbolise the on going flashbacks of memories that me and Lauren have shared together throughout the evening. 
  

Finished editing.

Yesterday we spent our double media lesson editing our music video. We knew that we wanted to have it finished by this week so we made sure that we put time aside to complete the editing process. Yesterday all 3 of us were present whilst we were editing at sixth form, Lauren took charge of the computer whilst me and Sam directed her and also gave our input into what we wanted to cut or what we wanted to add in. Sam went to Gloucester road on Monday and took some video footage of graffiti as from our audience feedback we knew that we needed more urban establishing shots. Also on Friday me and Sam went to the temple meads underpass and got some more footage down there as this is one of our main areas because we are using images that we took with that background as our album package. We added both the footage from Friday and Monday into the music video yesterday and felt that it made a huge difference to our video. The majority of editing we finished in our lessons but Lauren took the rest home and continued to edit as well as sort out the music so that it flowed well with the visuals. Me and Sam both told Lauren what else we needed to do with the video to make it complete so she went away and did this at home and brought the finished product in for us to watch today. We are all very pleased with the final video. We made sure that we showed our media teacher as well as fellow media studies pupils the video before we uploaded it onto Youtube in case they felt that there was any changes we should make. Everyone really liked the music video and our teacher said that there was nothing she would want us to change.
Our next steps will be to start completing the evaluation questions and put them on our blog. We have made audience feedback questions which we will start to ask people and then will put their answers onto our blogs.

This is the link to our final music video:

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LEA-J7-gglA

New York grafitti photos.

I visited New York last year and during my stay there went to Brooklyn on a graffiti tour. Graffiti is one of the main visual aspect of our music video so I felt that I should share some photos I took of the graffiti that inspired me. The idea for not only the urban setting, but the graffiti theme that runs through our music video and album packaging came from these photos. I loved the vibe that they created and the fact that they portrayed a number of different messages which is what I wanted to convey in our video. Even though we cannot use any of these photos in our video as I did not actually film any of the setting, they were the basis of the graffiti idea.

Fonts.

We decided to trial a few different font types in order to help us choose the one that would look the best to put on the front and back covers of our album package. For the back cover we will use the chosen font for information such as the song titles and for the front cover, the chosen font will be used to display the bands name.
The fact that we chose on our images based on the busy and colourful background of the graffiti because we thought it gave the urban setting in which we were aiming for, we knew that we had to choose something which would stand out and be clear enough for the audience to read.
The initial font we chose was actually the one used for the JPNS GRLS album 'circulations'. We felt that this one did not stand out as well as we wanted it to and therefore decided not to use it as we didn't want any of the information on the album package to be unreadable. In the end we chose 'Franklin Gothic Heavy' as our font because it gave us a bond title which we felt would stand out to the audience and be easy for them to read, even from a far distance.
We have chosen to place our information down the side of the cover due to the fact that we felt it flowed better that way as it is also looks like I am reading it from the position where I'm standing. There was also slightly less graffiti in that area so we thought it would allow the writing to stand out better.


Made by Samantha Murphy.

Editing notes.

We decided to make some notes on what elements of our music video we would change or add during the editing process. We also showed our half edited video to our teacher before we went any further to get some feedback on what we could make any different.

1. We decided that we would make the ending shot of our video the footage where me and Lauren are looking over the city as we thought that would be very fitting with the urban feel that we were trying to create.
2. During the song there is an extremely fast paced moment where we thought we would add a flashback of all of the scenes to show the memories that the girls shared together.
3. We thought that we would need to add more establishing shots to our video which we also were told from our audience feedback. We are going to include more establishing shots of the temple meads underpass as that is the shots used in our album package.
4. There is a shot during the harbour side scene which our teacher pointed out did not fit with the overall effect of the girls moving through from day to night as the lighting was brighter than the rest of the shots.
5. We need to include more abstract shots. Our teachers feedback was to add more shots of people walking around the city instead of just ones of us.
6. Our teacher really liked the circular shots that we included of us around the lamppost and asked if we could recreate more of those to add in.
7. Whilst we looked through the half edited video me and Sam realised that there were a few too many shots of Lauren looking up at the window during the opening scene.
8. Also during the harbour side scene the lighting is quite bright so we need to lower it first before we can add anything more to it.