1. By Penda Sosseh

2.  We wanted to create an authentic pop video for our media
coursework. We did a lot of research into music videos of a
similar style and genre to ours to gauge what kind of thing
we should be aiming to create.
 As our video would be mainly narrative based, not
performance based like some pop videos it was important
that we established a setting for the audience to
understand the context of the video.
 We tried to follow the conventions of real media products
in our music video by discussing the conventions of videos
similar to the video we wanted to create. We wanted to
make a typified pop video similar to the artists we were
emulating like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Pink, Avril Lavigne.
 We created a star image based on these examples, we
wanted a young female performer that would appeal to
young audiences, specifically girls aged 11-25 who liked
pop music.

3.  We created the pop star, Lois
Lame, and wanted her to emulate artist
like Taylor Swift, and Avril
Lavigne, they are both strong
independent young women who present
strong morals to their fans.
 We also wanted to adhere to pop music
video genre conventions so we wanted
the video to be colourful, eye-catching
and lighthearted.

4.  We noticed that popular music videos often
had a simple narrative that focused on teens,
similar to a TV show or short film, so we
created a narrative out of the lyrics of our
song, ‘One of The Boys’ by Katy Perry, this was
similar to the music videos of Taylor Swift
which often feature her playing a character in
her narrative.
 Lois Lame is playing two characters in her
music video, so we used costume to
distinguish the difference to the viewer, our
key item was a wig, since we had viewed lots
of different successful music videos by artists
like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears.

7. Examples of artists using wigs to play characters in their music videos

8.  Our video has a simple narrative, our main character played by Lois Lame, is a
tomboy who wants to date one of her friends, a boy, who already dating a
‘girly’ girl. So she decides to have a make-over but then decides she’s too good
for him.
 We analyzed the lyrics of the song to come up with a narrative that we could
create visualy without any dialouge.
 As our video would be mainly narrative based, which is typical of music videos
from young pop artists we wanted to have our narrative take place in a
school, this also made it easy for us to know where to shoot. Many artists have
set their music videos in schools.

9.  Normally the star or performer have a glamorous
look in their music video, they normally wear a
lot of make-up and have fashionable clothes, so
we wanted to emulate this in our music video.

10.  We had a photoshoot using some
of the costumes and props from
the music video so we could use
the images for our digi-pak and
album advert, we used them
because we wanted the audience
to be able to see the link between
the video and the digi-pak and
album advert.
 I wanted the album advert have
the same visual or overall theme
as the digi-pak so I decided I
wanted to focus heavily on star
image for these media products.
 I researched some album covers
for inspiration for our digi-pak.

12.  I decided that we wanted to have
a very clean, and simple digi-
pak, similar to the things I’d seen
other female pop singers use. So I
opted out of having a colourful
background and decided instead
to have Lois Lame wearing a
Superwoman outfit on the cover
because I thought that the
colours would be very eye-
catching against a plain
background.
 I decided that Lois Lame needed
a signature font like many
contemporary artists, so I tried
out many fonts till I decided on
the one on the cover.

14. Digi pak

15. Album advert

16.  When we created our star, Lois Lame, her name
became part of her image and thus we decided to
include the SuperWoman motif in all of our media
products to create a ‘house style’ so the audience
could recognize that they were all linked.
 When we had our photoshoot for the star, we used
both outfits from the music video and we also took
some pictures of Lois’ signature glasses to include in
our ancillary products. All of this plus the overall
‘look’ helped to shape our house style.
 We think that we appealed to our target audience of
young teenage girls by adhereing to the pop music
genre conventions and by following in the footsteps
of other pop artist by for example making Lois play
a ‘character’ (SuperWoman) similar to example
Miley Cyrus playing Hannah Montana.

17.  Both my digi-pak and album advert have a plain white
background which is common for artists who want to focus
on star image like Beyonce and Miley Cyrus.
 This can however be linked to the music video when Lois
performs in a studio in front of a white background.

18.  The song that we picked helped influnce this, one line in the song goes
as follows-
 ‘‘And caught you staring at me…But now you're gonna have to take a
number.’’ this is referring to the boy that Lois loves in the song, after
she transforms into ‘One of the girls’ and changes her appearance she
decides she’s too good for him so we thought that portraying her as
SuperWoman showed that she was a strong, independent girl who didn’t
need a boyfriend to complete her.

19.  We screened our music video to an audience we thought
would be similar to our target audience young people
(mainly girls) under the age of 18.
 After we screened our music video we asked them the
following questions-
1. What do you think was successful?
2. Can you think of any improvement that could be
made?
3. Who do you think the target audience is, and does
it appeal to them?
4. Does it fit the genre?
5. What is the narrative? Is it clear to the audience?
6. Do you really like my work?

20.  We asked three groups of four people to answer
our questions and here are the results-
 They all found the narrative easy to intrepret and
understand and found that they plot was similar to
other pop music videos
 They identified and could relate to our character
 They said it was evident we had a variety of
different shots and locations
 It was pointed out that we needed to improve
some of the lip synching and guitar playing
because it could have looked better
 They identified that the target audience would be
young people/teenagers and that we had
interpreted the song well.

21.  Weused Wordpress to present our media
portfolio. It was simple and easy to use and is a
well known platform that was available on our
computers, smart phones and tablets.
 Duringplanning and research we used Youtube
extensively to watch music videos when we were
studying music video theory and when we were
looking for genre conventions and influential
videos.

22.  During production we needed a quick and easy way to
communicate, and to send each other links, files, and
pictures, so we created a Facebook group for this purpose.

23.  We used the social networking site Twitter to
ask Katy Perry for permission to use her song-

24.  During shooting we used two different cameras to film our video-
 For when we shoot out of the studio we used a Mini DV camera –
Canon Legria HV40, this was useful as we could easily carry it to
our locations like the park.

25.  We also used a used HD Camera, the Canon XF305. It
was great to be using more advanced equipment for
things like extreme close-ups and also to be able to
review our footage straight away as it was a digital
camera.

26.  During editing we used Adobe Premier Pro to cut our
music video together and add music and any after
effects or transitions, I have experience with it from
our AS Media coursework so I found it easy to use.

27.  Tocreate our Digi-Pak we used Adobe Photoshop
and Illustrator, we had a photoshoot in a studio
and used a Canon 600D to take the photographs,
we then edited them in Photoshop and then
created the Digi-Pak using Illustrator.

28.  During my evaluation, I used Microsoft
PowerPoint to present my evaluation questions
in a slide show.
 I uploaded our music video to YouTube and used
the link to embed it into my blog and take
screenshots for the evaluation.
 For the director’s commentary side of the
evaluation we again used the HD camera in the
television studio and also green screen to show
footage of our music video behind us as we
evaluated and discussed our video.