Critical Analysis of my A2 Advanced Portfolio

By Filza Inam

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

Looking at my digipack you can see the album cover and the track list. The genre of music of my album is mainly teen pop so it can be expected that the type of songs on the album are going to be about love and hope. Seeing how the genre is teen pop, keeping that in mind I’ve tried to make the album cover look as girly as possible. The heart symbol gives off the girly impact which is to gain attention of teenage girls mainly who are usually interested in such kind of music.

So in the picture below you can see the heart symbol, I used it to give off the impression that the songs of the album were about hope and love. Also keeping in mind that majority of the listeners are going to be 12-20 year olds, I designed the cover and webpage accordingly.

The original Music Video of the song has helped inspire and given me ideas for the music video as well. The original music video has been filmed in a studio, in various backgrounds. No other locations have been used, its just a background and dancers. I didn’t use various locations either for filming, instead I used a plain white wall for some scenes and for the other scenes I’ve shown a typical teenage girl bed room where the girls are shown dancing. Because the song is called shake it off therefore there’s a lot of dancing in the video to bring out the energy in the video.

The actors in the video are teenagers, since this is the kind of song that mainly teenagers would enjoy so I used teenage actors in the music video. This is something the audience would like. The actors are wearing different, unique costumes. That is because the song is about being yourself no matter what people say. So in order to highlight uniqueness, I got my actors to dress up differently. It also represents different groups of teenage girls out there. From nerdy girls to gothic girls, something that all teenage girls can relate to.

Also not that many different camera angles have been used for filming this video. The video consists of mid shots mostly and there are some wide shots. Mid shots have been used to show the solo parts of the song, while for the chorus parts wide shots have been used to show the dancing.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

Branding is the marketing strategy that involves creating a differentiated name and image often using a logo or tag line in order to establish a presence in the consumer’s mind and attract and keep customer’s.

In order to establish that sense of branding in my portfolio, I’ve first of all put pictures of my music album cover on my webpage. The album cover has a picture of the two girls present in my music video, there are pictures of those girls present on my web page as well. I’ve added a gallery of images on my webpage that has photos of the actors present in the music video. The logo that I’ve used is the heart that can be seen on the album cover and the web page as well.

Also seeing how the music and songs of the album are about not giving up hope and about being yourself, I’ve added some inspiring quotes on the webpage, to give it that sense of branding.

There are also pictures of the outfits that actors have worn in the video on the webpage. This is so that interested fans can see what the artist wears. There is also a fun fact section on the webpage for the fans to read.

The color scheme that I’ve used in the video, webpage and album cover they’re all not entirely same. But they’re all dark colors with a bit of pink here and there.

So I’ve used such elements for creating a sense of branding.

How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

The main audience for my music video, are teenage girls. The song is called Shake it off and its about not caring what other people say and about being yourself. Girls at this age are rather insecure about how they look and feel and they’re still figuring out who they are. So this song basically tells them to be who they are and to not care about the bullies and haters.

The song can be distributed through many mediums. One of the major mediums that can be used for distribution is the internet. Since the preferred audience is teenage girls then the internet is perfect for distribution. The song’s audio and music video can be posted on social media. Also on YouTube where like every teenager spends hours a day watching videos, so its going to be very easy to distribute the video there. I’ve already uploaded the video on the webpage, where all fans can watch the video. Through facebook and other social media platforms, the distribution of my music video can be done. Like for instance, the artist’s official instagram and snapchat accounts can help promote their music. Because fans follow the artists so the artist themselves can post or tweet about their latest song and music videos. There can also be like a count down thing done, on the webpage there can be a timer that counts down the days until the release of the song so this can also be a way of distributing my product.Also fans can purchase and download the song on Itunes. The song will also be available for fans to listen on apps like spotify and sound cloud.

How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online- in this project?

The equipment and software used for editing my project were, a canon 650D Dslr camera, a tripod. The software that I used was windows movie maker.

Windows movie maker is a really basic editing software. I’ve had a lot of experience with this software because I’ve edited numerous other videos before. Plus it is really simple and easy to use. I shot my music video in different backgrounds and scenarios so adjusting the song and lip sync was really easy onto the scenes, because of the simple editing tools. My video doesn’t have a lot of vague locations or anything, I simply used a white wall for most of the scenes, and I made my actors wear different outfits to make it look appealing and not boring.

So for a particular scenario I also used a monkey bar swing and got my actors to swing on them to bring out the energy in the video. Because I wanted to show that the girls are like hyper and out going and to bring out the crazy in the video.

Now the equipment that was used for filming the project was basically a camera and a tripod. It was pretty easy to shoot and adjusting the song with lip sync was easy too. While filming I played the song in the background and got my actors to lip sync to it while it played so I recorded them lip syncing the song several times in different attires so it was very easy to edit the video. I only had to trim the video down and adjusted the song.

Now we were asked to upload the videos on our blogs. I’ve experience with posting videos online so it was pretty easy for me to do so. I had no issues uploading my video. I uploaded the video on my webpage as well so the fans can watch it there. I’ve never really made a webpage before so at first I had to struggle for a bit but then I got the hang of it once I figured out how to use the webpage designing tools.