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Similar to Q2 combining the main product
Q2 combining the main product
- 1. Q2 - Howeffective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Anand Subramaniam
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- 3. Costume The clothing wornby all the actors and our artist were very modern and fashionable. We had to personally hand pick the clothes they were going to wear for each scene and this was difficult as we did not film the music video in chronological video. This would ensure that the visuals would not confuse the audience’s track of the narrative due to mistake in costume design. We had used a wide range of bottom wear including chinos, jeans and leggings. Shoes ranged from trainers, canvases and heels. Tops ranged from jackets , t- shirts, scarves, jumpers, shirts, cardigans, blazers and hoodies. This ensured that we could identify our target audience based on the clothes alone which were a mix between casual, casual/formal and formal. The costume did vary a little but not enough to mislead the audience into thinking that the music video and ancillary texts were not constructed for the main person. When going through costume planning, we had to think about the actors and our artist wearing a wide variety of clothes as the clothes were one of the main clues to identifying the complex structure of our narrative. It is usually conventional to have R’n’B/Pop artists wear the latest trends but we felt that our audience should be able to relate to the clothes that the actors and our artist was wearing. The clothes that all characters wore were at the latest fashion in the past few years as their wardrobe was quite limited. The costume that we used in the music video and the ancillary texts were quite similar in terms of style. I feel that this may have helped the music video and ancillary texts to compliment each other.
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- 5. Location We used awide variety of locations. All locations can be found in London. There are some clues that indicate that the backgrounds of the ancillary texts were all in London. These include the red London buses, the red telephone boxes and the old fashioned buildings. We have used a wide range of both interior and exterior locations. We had to ‘create Sandhya’s house’ from the interior of 3 houses and a music room that existed in our school. This was due to the specific needs that we had. For example one of the needs we had was that we needed to have a large mirror for the second to last scene when our artist was getting ready. A fireplace was not available at that particular location so we had to use other locations. The exterior locations of the music video included locations that were within the area of Wembley and Harrow. We had originally planned to film more scenes in Central London but due to budget and time constraints we were not able to do so. We had to make do with the area around us. Filming at public places became a big problem for us as we had to continuously ask for permission to film. Many of the places had rejected the idea of having the local area recorded and we were also asked to delete footage on a number of occasions. We decided that since we could not film near famous monuments in central London we had to film near popular places in the area we lived in. This included Wembley Stadium, Wembley Arena, Wembley Park Station and Harrow Leisure Centre. I feel that the locations featured in our music video did not make a strong enough link with the locations featured in our ancillary texts. The reasons of this has already been described above.
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- 7. Font Apart from thefont in the CCTV portion of the music video, the same font was used throughout both the music video and the ancillary texts. The reason for using a different font for the CCTV effect was that we had to keep this bit as realistically looking as possible. If we were to use the same font for the CCTV effect then it would not look as realistic, which is what we intended to do. We wanted our audience to believe that we had asked the leisure centre to provide us with the CCTV footage, that was the level of finish we were looking for when we were creating the effect in Adobe After Effects. The same font was used for the song title and artist name in the introduction of our music video. We had different types of texts in the ancillary texts but we felt by keeping the same font colour and style, we would maintain the consistency and professionalism that we were looking for. I personally feel that the font was one of the strongest links between the music video and the ancillary texts.
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- 9. Modes of Address Weused a mixture of both direct and indirect address. For the music video we mainly had indirect modes of address where the core moments in the narrative required for our artist to be oblivious to the fact that the audience were watching the video. This is known as the ‘forth wall’ where the world around a character is surrounded by 4 walls, naming the audience as the forth wall. However we have broken this forth wall by using direct address. We have done similarly with the ancillary texts. Some may see it as inconsistency however I see it as a way of directing and capturing the audience’s attention. When there is direct address the character is pouring their emotions and feelings into the minds of the audience. On the other hand when there is indirect address the character has to be oblivious towards the audience, allowing the audience to assess the situation and absorb the emotions according to their view point. For example when there is indirect address during the argument scene we can feel two conflicting sides – Zein whom we feel sorry for, despite the amount of begging he does towards our artist makes us feel sympathetic towards him. We would also feel sorry for Sandhya , for the state she is in. On the other hand when there is direct address when our artist is singing lyrics, we can feel what she is feeling as the direct address has a direct impact on us. I feel that the ancillary texts and the music video work worked well together here despite the fact that we had a mixture of modes of address.
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- 11. Colour/Lighting We used anarray of different colours. We did not really control the use of colours apart from the font colours for both the music video and the ancillary texts. However it did work well together even though the colour range was so vast. It is quite hard to control the colours of R’n’B/Pop products since there are a number of emotions that can be conveyed from these genres. We could compare it to Hip Hop media products where the colours used would be quite limited – it is conventional to use darker colours . However we did have to control the colours for the CCTV portion of our music video where we had to keep the colours black and white to maintain its authenticity. Furthermore we made the background of the front and back CD covers black and white to back up the image of our artist and the text so that the audience’s attention would not be diverted too much. We only used high-key, natural lighting for all the ancillary texts to give it the realism that we were looking for. On the other hand the lighting for the music video had to vary to achieve the effect that we were looking for. For example during the letter burning scene, we had to keep the lighting to a bare minimum (low-key) and use the fire place as the only source of light. However due to the camera quality we were unable to capture the light that emitted from the fire place so it did degrade the quality of the video slightly. Therefore I feel that the link between the music video and the ancillary texts have been strong in most aspects of colour and lighting but weak in some other.
- 12. Themes, Emotions andAttitude The emotions that we tried to convey with the music video were varied. The emotions and attitudes we tried to incorporate were happiness, sadness, anger, neglect and forgetting. We wanted to make our music video unique by not going for the cliché of using ‘forgive and forget’ theme in our video. We also felt that love had to be the main emotion that we had to work on to ensure that we got the right message across to our audience. Our music video was about a story that needed to be told. Love is a theme that is seen across a wide variety of mediums like books, films and music . In addition we had to base our story on the lyrics. On the other hand the attitude that the ancillary texts had to have were not so specific since it did not have to be based on a selection of words. However we did have to use an overall attitude that did not focus on the emotions shown in the music video as they are a different media text compared to the music video. The emotions shown in our ancillary texts were not as serious and accompanied with facial expressions should inform the audience that the artist, Sandhya, was moving on from what ever situations she had faced and was not looking back in the past. We feel that this message should be noticed by the names of the tracks that we had brainstormed. Based on the names, you can tell how the emotions have flowed from each track to the music video and then back to the tracks. The last track ‘Something New’ is the final clue we left for our audience in terms of the emotions and attitudes that we expected to be portrayed. Rather than producing ancillary work based on the emotions conveyed in the music video, we felt that it would be better to let the audience see a different approach to our artist, rather than seeing her riding an emotional rollercoaster ride.