Personal Evaluation- Niah

1. In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge formsand
conventions of real media products?
Our media product develops and uses the form and convention of real media products. We
decided to work with three of the styles Lara M. Schwartz sets out; narrative, performance and
concept. As a group we thought the category of ‘story’ would suit our video. Our song “bets” fits
into the Triphop/indie genre, along with our artist Niah. We decided on this genre when coming
across a variety of different music videos of all genres. We grew a quick liking to the music
video boy problems by Carly Rae Jackson, it is about a boy she's lost in her life too but Carley
Rae Jackson expresses her emotion towards the loss of love in a positive, encouraging way,
whereas we wanted to choose a song which was less forward about the feelings of love, and
would make the audience think about the lyrics and meaning of the song more.
We wanted to create a narrative to our song and that was the feelings that come with love,
mostly pain is which we wanted to get across. Creating a narrative for a song is a typical idea
used in indie music videos. We focused on the colour red in particularly in club scene where
Niah is singing in front of the Dry ice machine. We used quick cutaways in our music video
between Niah and me to emphasize the main meaning of the song which is love and
relationships and the strong feelings that come in it. We watched many trip-hop and R&B music
videos to see what kind of imagery and personality they have. The one video that inspired us
most was Runaway by AURORA, we really liked how there were lots of medium single shots of
the artist and the way she looked at the camera seemed intent, which is how we wanted to
portray Niah.

2. We also felt that by having our artist perform, more attention would be drawn towards them, helping
to create a ‘star image’ (Dyer), which a brand could then be built on. We also included the ‘concept’
category, by incorporating the common concept of cutaways.
We then used and developed conventions by drawing inspiration we picked up from other artists,
largely those who fit the Indie/ Trip-hop genre. One concept we found that was effective was
reversal, where the narrative footage is played backwards. The scientist by Coldplay is an example
of a music video done in reversal, it’s a slow song which is filmed with just one singer. We thought It
was really well made as it had a narrative to it too, it ends with a car crash which the girl dies in, the
main narrative is about a mans powerlessness revolving love. Although we didn’t use reversal, we
respected it as a technique. We were going to use reversal but many reasons held us back, firstly if
you don't get It spot on it can look rather odd and not really work and secondly it is not a very
typical trip hop way to go about a music video.

3. 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?As both the main product and the ancillary text are promotional devices for the artist,
we decided to have our artist as the main focus for both. Although this isn’t
necessarily a common thing, we really wanted to put our artist in the spot light, which
is a common indie trait. Lighting and focus on the artists face is a main concept for
our ancillary texts. In my digipack I focused on creative lighting, the darker images
like the image of the darkened eye I used low key and up lighting to make the eye
darker, I also drew over it in black to enhance the darkness even more. I then
practically did the opposite for the other eye, I learnt how to make an eye multi-
coloured and I made it lighter, to show the split personality of our artist, with one dark
eye and one colourful eye.
My design is for the album. My group have either picked a light theme or a dark
theme but I decided to mix the two up and make it not too dark but also not overly
bright. I have orange boarders and an orange theme going on along with the inside
page being bright, however there are themes in my digipack which isn’t so bright like
the back cover is Niahs back and you can only see her dark shadow. I thought by
contrasting both light and dark colours I would create a really interesting feel to the
artist, I didn't really want the audience to blatantly understand her or or identity, as
many indie artists aim to be ‘different’ and ‘unpredictable’, that's what I was going
for. As I maintained the theme of strong lighting, and focusing on the artists face,
there are still links to the artist and the main product. By creating a link between
Niahs face and the lighting, ancillary task and main product are able to create a type
of brand for Niah which she can be identified by, making the combination efficient.

4. For my digipack I wanted to create enigma being using Niahs two very
different looking eyes to illustrate her split personality, or unpredictable
personality. One eye was darkened and the other eye was multi-
coloured. I got my inspiration to want to create a contrast between two
separate eyes from Christina Aguileras album cover where one side of
her face is her very blue eyes, then the other side is covered by
machinery and dark colours. This creates a different feel to her album
and makes her come across as cryptic. This is exactly the kind of feel
I wanted my digipack to demonstrate. By having a mysterious looking
digipack it would hopefully increase the likelihood of the audience
being drawn to it and therefore they'll be more willing to watch the
music video. I covered over the majority of my pictures with a
background layer of stars, to brighten up the digipack and stars
symbolize imagination and wonder. Originally I was going to use the
stars more subtly but when I made them hardly visible it didn't quite
work for what I was trying to go for.
I am confident that the lighting on both Niahs face and on my digipack
in general is attractive to look at. People will be more likely to be drawn
to something if it looks appealing. It is a common indie trait to have the
artist somewhere on the cd. However some artists who see them self
as more practical like Maroon 5 and Coldplay don't include a picture of
them self on their cd cover. They are known as ‘unbranded’ and now
follow that trend as its there ‘thing’ now.

5. For my website I changed the aesthetic a little bit. I wanted to make my website bright and to look positive. I originally
was going to make it a similar feel to my digipack but when I thought about it more I came to the realisation that
digipacks and websites are very different in terms of what you want to get across. An album cover your quite literally
trying to sell it so that's why I made it more abstract and different, because that attracts the audiences attention most.
Whereas with a website an artist will think less about what looks good to sell or what represents the music, but instead
about their own genuine thought about how they want to represent themselves on their personal website. So with the
website because I didn't need to make any symbolisms or think about what looks interesting to sell, I designed it in the
way I think represents Niah, its colourful but simple, I wanted it to be a website which is easy to use, not too wordy, but
there’s some bios written by Niah stating how and when she fell in love with music. My website also includes quotes
from newspapers and magazines saying things like “you wont sing this song in the shower, your think about it all day
long instead”. I included a gallery too which are both photos of Niah and photos of like her guitar to make it that little
more warm. One thing which is similar to my Digipack in my website though is the bright lighting and focus on the
artists face and portrait, particularly in the gallery and Instagram page. The pages I included were tour dates, an about
page an EPK which not many people included, a Facebook page and a contact section. All these pages are essential
information that one may need when going to an artists website.
Additionally I linked in social media to the website. I created Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, twitter and Facebook
accounts for our artist and linked them to the website. This gives fans the chance to see behind the scene features
and keep up to date with Niahs social media page like Facebook. Throughout my ancillary tasks, particularly my
website I stuck to the same font to help create a brand image. By doing this fans would be able to identify the website
and album and link it to Niah wherever they see it. Keeping factors like the font consistent is very important. My
ancillary texts link together using the themes of colour schemes artistic portraits and lighting. These themes help me
create a brand and well know identity for Niah.

6. 3. What have you learnt from your
audience feedback?Our first audience feedback group was with our primary audience, and consisted of member of our class. We then
decided we wanted more feedback from more people so we asked year 9 film club if they wouldn't mind giving us
feedback after watching it and they kindly agreed. We used them for a variety of different reasons, firstly they are a
group of very intelligent individuals who are used to talking about the positives and negatives of films and picture.
Secondly, we knew they wouldn't be hesitant to give us any criticism as they are confident young people who will
speak there mind. Before I played the music video I encouraged them to give us as much criticism as possible
because criticism is the only way we can attempt to make our work better.
it was really interesting to see what they thought of the song just on audio and then what they thought of the actual
music video, once they had finished the questionnaires. Surprisingly, in the year 9 film club one of the boys actually
preferred the audio to the music video! It was oddly pleasant for us to hear that, largely because we respected his
honesty. Some of the most common feelings people had when listening to the music video was “chilled”, “relaxed”,
“meaningful” and “happiness”. With images such as the water, the sun and bright red lights from the club scene
noticed. Most of them successfully identified the genre of indie but only one person noticed it was also trip hop. I
think that's because trip hop isn’t a very blatant genre and often falls into other genres. A lot of people thought it was
“rap”/indie rather than trip hop/indie.
One person said Niah reminds them of Lana Del Rey which we were pleased about because Lana del Rey was one
of the artists who inspired us to make the video in the way that we did. In the second part of the questionnaire where
they looked at themes most of them picked out the correct themes. The themes included were love, breakup, blame,
sadness, heartbreak, and at times positive thoughts/views on love. The song explores loves in many different ways
and what I love about it most is different people interoperate the themes of love differently. Some of the audience
feedback group thought it was more of a positive love song rather than negative, whereas some people thought the
opposite. That's a common trait in indie songs, they let you decide how to view the meaning of the song.

7. Like we hoped, the lyrics helped them build an emotional connection. This was very useful as it helped to understand
that the images and themes we had identified in the song, were also common in our primary audience.
For our second questionnaire for our primary audience we again got useful feedback, both positive and negative. The
audience thought our images matched the song, particularly for the colour scheme of the lighting. Furthermore, some of
the group thought that the pace of the editing matched the rhythm, for example the quick cutaways on the beat to Niah
and then the club scene. Others thought that perhaps we used too many quick cutaways including the club scene and
claimed it got a little repetitive. Fortunately their criticism encouraged us to remove a few of the cutaways and add in
more of Niah herself and less of “clubbers” in the club scene.
All of the audience feed back group said that the video matched what they thought the narrative was about, which is
ultimately love and relationships as a teenager. Our second questionnaire proved to be more helpful for us as our class
gave me negative feed back which we could actually work on, whereas the only proper negative feedback we got with
our first audience feed back group was when one boy stated “I prefer the audio than the video”. Although we encouraged
criticism, telling us he didn't like the video, as a whole wasn't specific enough to allow us to edit any changes.
On our third questionnaire we were given feedback on our digipacks. It was helpful to see what specific features our
audience liked, disliked and which they thought could be worked on. As we each did a digipack each we completed
these questionnaires separately from each other, I got students who do photography and English to give me feedback
because English students are knowledgeable on narrative and would give me good feedback if the digipack gave out
any symbolisms which linked to my music video. Then, Photography students are used to designing things and are good
at noticing if a certain picture works or doesn't work.

8. Both students really liked the contrast between the multi coloured eye and the exceptionally darkened
eye, they said it could be a symbolism of her mixed personality and feelings, I was happy they picked
that up because that is exactly what I wanted to audience to pick up when comparing the two eyes. The
photography students particularly liked the edited photos and the shadows seemingly worked well. The
only criticism I got was that one of the highlighting filters which was stars was too much so I toned down
the intensity of the stars a little bit. My digipack has an orange theme which my audience feedback group
complimented. They also said that the single portraits of Niah make her seem isolated and lonely, which
is ultimately what the lyrics are all about. They also said that the layout, design and font looked
professional, that I was very pleased with because throughout the course I was trying my best to make
small, but important features look as professional as possible.
Some thought that the digipack tied in with the themes and concepts of the video as it focused on Niah
being alone, with the shadows behind her creating a confine feel to it. Whereas some people claimed it
tied in subtly. The entire group felt the digipack helps to create a brand, due to the use of stars and
memorable two eyes, the same eyes, yet both with such a different feel to them.
The set of questionnaires on digipacks were extremely helpful and beneficial, as I was able to see what
worked best for my digipack, and what the primary audience were most appealed to. Once I had done
these I was able to decide properly on my final design, and I was pleased to find out I found it a lot easier
after getting both positive and negative feedback.

9. 4. How did you use media technologies
in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation stages?
In the pre-production stage we used a lot of media technologies in order to plan, research and
develop ideas. One of the main technologies we used were our websites. For our research
regarding our artist we mainly used Soundcloud, and the idea was each member of the class chose
three songs (not by a well known artist) and show them to the class. We would then discuss each
song and decide whether or not we could imagine a music video of that song. I showed the class
my three songs but there were two songs which I particularly liked. However, we because my song
was quite slow and not very upbeat, we decided against them because we didn’t want a song which
is too slow, so we instead when for Mos choice of song which is his neighbour, so that was
convenient, especially when asking him for permission if we could use his track. We instantly grew
a like to this song that is called “vice city” but we changed it to “Bets”. It had just the right feel to it,
the lyrics had meaning and the flow was at just the right pace.

10. Another platform that proved to be useful was Youtube. I used Youtube to search up other
artists and music videos, which are the same genre as us. I found it really useful looking at
other music videos to compare the different ways about making a music video, it’s
fascinating how much a music video can shape a song. A particular artist, which influenced
me when deciding on what our music video was going to be similar to, was Lana Del ray.
She is also in the Triphop-indie genre and has some really well made music videos. They
way her music video “Love” was so inspirational for how we filmed ours. The music video
love is filmed with Lana Del Ray singing in front of the camera with a microphone, and then
quick cutaways to other people doing social things like laughing, talking, skateboarding.
This is very similar to our music video in the way the cutaways goes from Niahs face to
other people (in the club scene). Lana Del Ray also uses the zoomed in image of her one
eye which has stars in it to create a more personal feel to it, I used a zoomed in single eye
for my digipack too. That is just how influential Lana Del Ray has been. Vevo was also a
channel which I used frequently to look at videos from the same genre as our artist and its
good for recently released music videos. The convenient thing about Youtube is that it
picks up on the kind of thing you like to watch, they give you “recommended” videos, so
this encouraged me to watch more music videos. Spotify was another platform I used, to
find indie artists like Niah.

11. We used Pinterest to research images to use as inspiration for our video. Pinterest is great because it allows you to find images which helps convert our ideas,
like costumes, mise-en-scene and lighting. Blogger is something we have been using for two years now and its particularly handy when one needs to store all
of their research and planning. Blogger is reasonably easy to use, which was useful as it made it easier for us to organise and plan our ideas. I often looked
back on blogger to check back on my original ideas.
For the filming and production stage we used a wide range of media techonlogies. There were three different cameras we used for the recording of our
footage. One camera we used was the Canon 7D-a DSLR famously well known for its filming qualities. It has a 16-35mm lens. I found it was most practical for
portrait shots, because we wanted some static shots, as a lot of our shots are moving this camera proved ideal. This camera had a clear, focused image which
really grasped the detail of the actors facial expression.
Another camera we used was the Canon XF 100. This handheld camera was used on a Manfroto Tripod, this helped it keep it still. I thought this camera was
reasonably self explanatory to use. It had a wide zooming range which produced a satisfying image. We wanted to have movement in our shots to cut between
the club scene and Niah singing with the microphone to create an appealing story. The shots from this camera gave a clear image which created a unique
effect. I thought this camera was best to use for internal narrative shots.
We used a LED light set and a Dedo light set for lighting. The LED light set was used for our main lights, because they were less complex to move around. I
Found the LED lights were easy to use with simple dials to change the intensity of the brightness. For one of our scenes which was in the club scene, the Dedo
light set came at handy as we used that infront of the smoke machine to create red smoke. We were eagar to find out how the smoke looked on camera, we
decided the smoked worked and looked really good. Because it was mimicking a club, we didn’t make the light intensity too high.
When it came to post-production we used a large amount of editing software and media technologies. Adobe Final Cut Pro was the main piece of software we
used. We had used this software before in our AS portfolios, and had edited our preliminary task using the software, so we were comfortable using Final Cut,
making it easier to use. I think as a software itself it isn’t that easy at all so we did face a few problems along the way. We started with a rough edit, where we
edited together all the shots of the narrative scenes, and then placed some of the performance scenes of just Niah, throughout. When we watched our second
edit we thought we needed more footage, because we wanted to make the video fast paced. To mark the areas of the footage we used markers, just to the
ones the needed more cuts throughout them.

12. For the research and planning of my website and digipack, I reviewed artists who were similar to mine, mostly all Triphop/indie
singers. Artists such as Sia, Lana Del Ray, Esthero, Florence and the machine and Lorde. I had a browse through each of their
websites and wrote a few blog posts on blogger about them. This helped me plan my ancillary texts, as I knew what the
conventions were to follow. I used Pinterest to research images which I could use for my digipack and website once I had a
general idea what I wanted for my ancillary texts. In general, I just did a lot of research into different types of websites and
album covers, I looked at different kind of artists of different genres to get an idea of the variety of designs certain genres go
for.
When I was making my digipack I changed my idea quite a few times. At first I wanted to include things like an alarm clock set
at 3am to symbolise life as a teenager and how Niah is up all night, not in a good way. I also wanted to include alcohol to again
emphasise the solution to most teenagers problems. I decided that these ideas were a little too cliché for my liking, I wanted to
make a digipack which had meaning but was more subtle. I didn’t want anything to be too in your face or direct. My change of
ideas meant I had to restart my digipack but that didn’t bother me because I knew my new idea of having Niahs darkened eye
on one side and then her multi-coloured eye on the other side would work better than my original idea.
At first I have to admit I found Photoshop quite difficult. Though I found with Photoshop that if you just look up tutorials on
Youtube, you pick up the general idea of it pretty quickly. I started to get more and more comfortable with it and even went on
to teach my self how to create a multicolour eye on Photoshop. I wanted a multi colour eye because I wanted to create a
contrast between Niahs darkened eye to this multi-coloured eye. I was hoping it would emphasise Niahs unpredictable
personality, sometimes being full of life (hence the multi-coloured eye) and then sometimes being dark and unpredictable
(hence the darkened eye). I learnt how to layer images, cut out images, edit their levels and organise layers, along with many
other useful tools.

13. In order for me to include images in my digipack I had to plan a photoshoot which was originally going to include Niah
but because she was unavailable, we used Mos sister, who thankfully was very impressive, and also looked extremely
like Niah! I used a Canon 7D to take the photos of Mos sister Olive along with a Dedo light set, with constant three
point lighting. I decided to go to Kings cross deliberately for my Photoshop because from filming experience I know
there are some great locations there to take pictures. I got some great pictures of Olive standing by the canal with the
clear blue sky. I got some pictures of a boat which was also a book shop which really looked great on camera. There
was the fountains and the birdcage which both are shown in the music video. Along with this tunnel which was amazing
to take photos in. I think it would be special for the photoshoot to be in the same location as the majority of our filming
was, I felt like it was a successful photoshoot. I didn’t find the lighting difficult to set up, because I already knew how to
use this equipment it wasn’t much of a challenge. I was shocked how great the images come out in the Canon 7D, it
really creates specially clear images.
When I got back to school I used Photoshop to edit these photos, I had a little play around with certain aspects on
making the pictures look until I came up with my final one. I included a starry background filter to go over the photos.
One form of media technology that I used to construct my website was Wix. Wix is a website builder, which gives you a
variety of choices and great features to create a website. I chose a template which was reasonably simple, I wanted
there to be a colour scheme on my website and that was light blue. I used the same font throughout which is called
Helvetica Light, I really grew a liking to this font because its not too flashy or different, but its not unattractive either, it
looks neat and professional.