G325 Sec A: Theatrical Evaluation of Production

G325: SECTION A Theoretical Evaluation of Production

Question 1(a) requires you to describe and evaluate their skills development over the course of their production work, from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Portfolio. The focus of this evaluation must be on skills development, and the question will require you to adapt this to one or two specific production practices. The list of practises to which questions will relate is as follows:
    Digital Technology (adobe, Photoshop,digital cameras, smart phones, art of the title, online programmes,created a twitter website and facebook) Creativity     Research (prezi, scoopit, pinterest) and planning  Post-production     Using conventions from real media texts (things you expect to find in a music video) In the examination, questions will be posed using one or two of these categories.
Where candidates have produced relevant work outside the context of their A Level media course, they are free to additionally refer to this experience.

Research and planning-cookery programmes, I looked at home right the lighting was-mise en scene included kitchens and restaurants -chefs shown in close up

comedy films-angus thongs and perfect snogging-voice over-bring into As. Cherie art of the title. I watched a lot of sitcoms to show how social stereotypes were presented. in my comedy work I wanted to create an easily recognisable series of character stereotypes. bikers- made sure that their tattoos were presented sideways to the audience-easily seen. outrageous things said by heavy metal- RESEARCH- audience would immediately understand character type a in front of them 'ate my hamster'-used Ozzy Osborne- Freddie star- put down to research

research into post production how titles were used-wanted to create good visuals effects-bring in example-toaster central stage in the screen, as toast pops up and flies out of way, so does the central characters name. milk pouring down chopping board.

3rd soundtrack listening to television sitcom as 'friends, big ban theory, made me realise the kind of music of the introductory sequence signalled the genre- we know that friends is going to have a feel good quality- led me to pour through lists if songs that had an upbeat but slightly quality-I eventually found a track that reminded me a little bit of how successful I thought suits soundtrack was- boogie quality-therefore I picked a song called 'banana pancakes' which I thought was a very creative outcome of my research because the lyrics refer to the culinary world and my film opening was set in a restaurant, but more than that, the odd pace of the music connotes an upbeat, slightly humours tone- in words like 'waking up to early, maybe we can sleep in, ill make you banana pancakes and pretend that its the weekend now'

amoust the music video I researched in order to plan the treatment for my version of miley Cyrus wrecking ball were a range of videos from the directors lable series- from the red hot chili peppers-I can stop- I learned that the music video from often takes liberties from the relationship between the lyrics and visuals-in that particular music video the director is trying to convey more than anything else the individual zani quality of the band and their relationship together- go thought a series of astonishing/wacky behaviours from signing within dustbins to playing guitar surrounded by table lamps, turning on and off...one thing struck me in particular, whilst the visuals didn't illustrate the lyrics-the visuals were cut to the beat-when I started thinking about wrecking ball I felt that the music video form allowed a much more creative approach to  narrative that a film that I made at As- I decided that my miley cyrus was to reveal that inner innocent- innocence of cyrus Hannah Montana- innocence of all children who have something in common with Alice in wonderland-who want to escape from the pressures of the adult world-want to escape and have a private life of fantasy- decided touse the narrative story of alice and wonderland as fantasy

intertextual reference-acknowledge texts outside themselves-confident my viewers would pick up on visual codes that denoted the alice in wonderland story-for e.g. we have alice made hatter tea party- we have alice transforming froma  girl in a pretty, vintage dress into the wild child that tries to break out sometimes in miley cyrus herself. my research into music videos-other artists such as your. also uses fairytale story in her work human benhaviour-also bring in avril lavine-

encouraged me to be playful, Inventive in my work

from my research into Heidi peters I learnt that music video relied on spectacle, nto narrative that us tge quality of visuals that was truly important In keeping the audience interested and wanting to see the music video more than once-and therefore I researched telvisoion commercials which are usually only 30 secs spots and have little time to convey a message with impact. one in particular inspired me. sony bravias trilumioua tv spot where paint flys and equally song bravias paint advert as well as song bravias famous bouncy ball commercial. all my research into song led me to find out more about how powder paint was use in..i decided I would like to use thus creatively in my music video because it seems to show, for me an experession od the

The use of colours breaking out, the idea of explosions of colours, for me, symbolised her need for self-expression, her assertion of her claims to her rights to express herself even if at the time she was making this video, she was under a lot of attack because she turned herself from the little innocent girl into a foreceful sexually active women which many of her former fans could not cope with. I felt that my research into sony and the wholy festival led me to make important creative decisions about Miley Cyrus expressions of her personality. In my music video, we used powder paint on drums and symbols with our singer – hair loss and flying free’ crashing down on the symbols and drums and releasing the powder paint into the air with great energy and dynamism. Feedpack suggests that these moments were amongst the most successful in our approach, therefore, we chose them for our digipack design. I grew up knowing the story of Alice and wonderland, but I also researched the updated versions of the film featuring jhonny dep- I noted the extravagance of many of the costumes which I then tried to recreate in my music video with some spectacle set piece scenes such as the mad hatters tea party with real china teasets, fancy clothes, wigs, hats, in a fairytale woodland setting. My research into Heidi peters work on narrative supported my findings when viewing other music videos that narrative in music videos is primarily about spectacle and star branding. I feel that I successfully delivered both of these.

Please prepare the answer to this G325 Section A question:
'Describe how you developed your skills in the use of POST PRODUCTION
for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your
creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to
show how these skills developed over time.'

From when I first started this course I was very inexperienced and had little knowledge on anything to do with filming, such as the camera angles and shots, lighting and sound effects. 
Looking back at the beginning of my project, I have learned a lot about new technologies, distribution practices and film production, etc.
Throughout our filming, I think it is fair to say we have all realised how important different aspects are, such as getting the lighting spot on, different camera shots and angles and the editing after.
However, once we improved on our filming skills, and our knowledge started to improve, the filming started to gradually get easier.

The first scene we filmed for our film opening was shot in the school cafeteria as we wanted to get a strong location for the scene with Heston Blumenthal cooking his eccentric dishes. Even though we were satisfied with the location, the lighting, on the other hand, was a major weakness as it was extremely dark and unclear from the lack of lighting.
To improve this, we decided to change the location completely, and shoot the scene in the sixth form kitchen, which, along with the lighting, had a much better outcome.

In one off our scenes we filmed, was in the kitchen involving the characters Heston Blumenthal and Dani. Heston appears in his wacky mood of preparing food, where Dani looks at him in confusion while a voice over plays over of her speaking. The voice over was something we recorded on photobooth on the Mac, I had at least 3 tries before getting the accent spot on and the words sounded correctly. We zoomed up onto the food being chopped exaggeratedly, then the dialogue follows in. We tried to portray the chef Heston Blumenthal as an adventurous person with food. As our character was not a professional chef he found it hard to chop the food up fast, so therefore we used post production using Adobe. this was a simple procedure, of just using the slow or fast motion dial.

The voice over is crucial in introducing our central character – Danni, the gap year student. The voice over is important in establishing the point of view and making the audience share her attitudes towards her employer and customers she meets.
Although Danni and her opinions do not feature largely, because they’ll be developed later on in the film, nether the less she sets the tone of how the audience sees what’s going on. Everything that goes on in the British restaurant is all very foreign to Danni as she’s Australian and this is Britain. She’s alternately aspirated and amused with the people she encounters. In doing this we are echoing the convention of other comedy films like Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging where the narrative is framed through the viewpoint of the teenage girl.

The dialogue is in snippets to introduce social satire types. We had one of the celebrities complaining about her hair extension falling out to emphasis the stupidity of the girl.

We researched professional film title sequences in a variety of ways, such as the website 'art of the title'. We focused a vast amount of time on the opening film titles as we felt this was majorly important as it introduced the feel to our tv opening.

As we are making a comedy film opening we decided that an element of surprise and fun was key to indicating genre to our audience. We also knew we had to signal the location very early on, which is a restaurant setting. Therefore we decided we would use CGi to introduce our titles and have them appearing on different part of props in a way that would be visually arresting. We start with our production company 'WLF' where milk is being poured onto a chopping board and displays the name. We edited this on after effects.  In common with most films we build up with the title of our film at the end.  We based our methods on food ink. We tired different variations of how we could produce the names of production onto culinary objects. Our first scene was pouring milk down onto a chopping board which we then edited in Adobe. Other scenes we filmed were, melting butter in a pan and toast popping up of a toaster.Our soundtrack has three main elements, which often feature in film openings: the musical soundtrack dialogue and voiceover. The audience first hears the soundtrack. We listened to music choices such as songs form The Holiday soundtrack, but came to a conclusion that we preferred Banana Pancakes as this had a bubbly happy feel to it, and we felt that because the song is about food this fitted into our theme. It has upbeat, cheerful and lively qualities.

A challenge we had in our group was editing on green screen. We did not know at the time of shooting the two women, that the larger one was wearing a green coat, so therefore we could not edit the background. Moreover if some shades of the green screen are darker this effects the editing process as it becomes all grainy and transparent. We have learn't from this mistake in future editing circumstances.

In our film editing, I chose to use Imovie. Although I wasn't that familiar with it in the beginning, but after the preliminary task I have learned a lot about it and it had made editing our opening so much easier as all of us were quite familiar with it already.

We are all more positive and independent when we do different aspects of filming and editing on our own and I think this has showed in our final product. We have used a variety of tools, such as our blogs, Facebook and mobile phones to help us become more organised and manage our time.

There are also other important factors that I have learned throughout the project, for example like editing, sound and mise-en-scene, etc. They would all help convey the mood and atmosphere of the film to audiences and also shows the genre of the film. I think in order to create a good, successful film opening, the most important thing was that all of the factors that I have mentioned above must be well balanced. You cant spend all your time focusing on getting a nice story but not putting any effort in choosing the right music and dialogue.  

I have learned a lot throughout the process and I believe these skills and techniques would be very useful in the rest of the course and even for my future career.

     

digital technology-  
Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

 

Before starting our productions I made our Preliminary involved....

At AS I made...

At A2 I made...

with blogger + presentational tools an essential part of the production process as I researched, planned, recorded, and sought feedback for my production using tools such as Pinterest, Tumblr, and Scoopit! to collate research which shaped my decision making and helped me organize my creative decisions effectively, especially the access to professional examples that I intended to emulate. communication tools were already part of my everyday working methods (Facebook, Evernote, Skype, email, BBM, instagram) so that I could work effectively with my group and these I developed and extended during the 18 months to include Twitter as a research tool (following Alan Rusbridger's advice that Twitter as a search engine rivals Google, and acts as a news aggregator for relevant information) In order to create evidence supporting my creative decisions that lay behind my productions at AS, I used digital presentational tools like Slideshare and Prezi embedded in my blog and by A2, I was using New Hive (an interactive infographic) to collate my work.

Fro the start, I used digital equipment to film my movie work using a Digital camera cannon 550d to make Cherie (a practice opening) and my prelim. I also made an ancillary products: At As, I made a set of marketing tools to promote my film (film poster, webpage design) and online digital tools such as Facebook and Twitter to market and distribute my film. I had created an audience profile in Photoshop based on NME's.

To edit my film work, I used Apple Macs both at school and at home I quickly became very competent editing in Adobe Premiere (for prelim & comedy), learning to make our comedy opening using green screens, audio, soundtrack, colour correction etc.....I am particularly pleased about learning to use After Effects to make.... later I moved to I movie to edit my music video where laying down the soundtrack was easy but lip-synching in the editing much more challenging as it was very precise work with a huge number of edits and transitions. as Heidi Peeters asserts, music video is all about spectacles, so linear narrative gives way to a succession of visual codes, leading to the interweaving of genre conventions (such as performance, close ups of the star, some illustrative of the lyrics) with spectacle that is cut to the beat. this means a huge skills development for me as I sought to depart from the simple narrative structure of my comedy film opening, which was more or less a series of brief scenes with a voice over, music and titles punctuating the visuals, to an explosion of visuals spectacle that should withstand repeated viewings.

Another challenge was creating a unified whole out of three different products: I had to incorporate visual elements of the music video into the digipack design which in turn had to feature on the magazine advertisement In order for the three to work as a synergistic whole promoting the album.

using photoshop, I desgined the layout of the digipack and magazine advert, bearing in mind the need for clear visual codes, as I had learned from Roland.

 

     Digital equipment: digital camera cannon 550:Cherie, prelim, apple mac. Editing in iMovie: prelim & comedy, greenscreen, audio, soundtrack, for music video lip-synching, audio easier but editing more challenging. Photoshop, design + layout of digipack, magazine advert visual codes Roland Barthes.

I looked at ipc created nme readers profile- to make an audience profile for my own films by creating profile of the gender, age, occupation, spending, buying, viewing and gaining habits of my audience. this was so that I could see how I could market my production to them, for example where I should place my p&a, I created a poster which would target my audience, this website went on my website page and twitter page.

Question 1(b) (theoretical frameworks)  requires candidates to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows:
 Genre  Narrative (how the story is told not the plot, Heidi Peters) Representation  Audience     Media language (knowing how the narrative is made up)

In the examination, questions will be set using one of these concepts only.

  
 Roland Barthes, audience reception (preferred reading of the text), binary opposites.

 

Audience-

Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply.

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre target audience-

I will analysize my A2 production in relation to audience. at A2, I made a promo pack of a music video, 4 pane didgipack design and magazine advertisement to promote Miley cyru's Wrecking Ball.

• target audience: we researched in order to identify our target audience: we researched in order to identify our target audience; tools used, sites that you searched (fans use MC'S website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter pages which had a range of interactive tools encouraging her fans to see her gigs and videos, buy her albums and merchandise, take part in competions, download pictures and so on)
• Cyrus core fanbase-tweens. define demographic more closely. uneasy relationship with fans following controversy: the core demographic of her fan base has evolved over time from her Hannah Montana period to her assertively adult 'wrecking ball' sexualized persona.
• I investigated a variety of audience theory frameworks at A2. from reception theory, I understood that a media text in itself has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience. the study of theoretical positions helped me deconstruct the relationship between audience and text.

• The media effects model, or 'hypordermic syringe model' contends that audiences are passive recipients of media texts. this model led us moral panics about MC's influence, because of the negative examples set by her highly sexualized onscreen and onstage behaviour, such as 'twerking' which impressionable, lyal copy-cat audiences might invest passively without challenging such behaviour. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.
•  for example, Cyrus initially distributed adult viewers and instantly became a martyr in the eyes of her teen-age following-for her strip-tease behaviour in her videos and performance at the VMAs.
• Newer models of audience theory developed by Bulmer and Katz, for instance, assert that individuals choose and use a text actively for entertainment, to develop personal relationships, to support their own values and identity, and to learn what goes on in the world. this model is known as the 'uses and gratications' model. as a Cyrus fan myself, I find her performances challenging and fascinating. she challenges current models of what is acceptable onscreen and probably is no model ''pornographic' than other performers in music videos. she may even be acting ironically, a pioneer in challenging her audience to question traditional male sexual stances which audiences take for granted. therefore i, developed a particular treatment for my version of Wrecking Ball that gives the audience an insight into the hidden conflict within Cyrus, a conflict that reveals that there are two sides to her persona: the innocent, child-like side that dwells in the safe fantasy land of Alice in wonderland, as well as the raunchy side that is a almost forced to outrage audiences in order to keep the lead in a music industry where women have traditionally been objectified by the male gaze of the camera
• i attract and address my audience by offering a model of defiance that i also innocent and playful. in my music video, I show cyrus breaking free from constraints in a powerful scene where she plays the drums and symbols, showering powder paint over herself and the white walls. elsewhere, she tears off her innocent Alice In Wonderland costume to reveal more raunchy clothes. I also included an elaborate set in which Miley has an Alice in Wonderland tea party with pretty tea set, sweets lollipops, a besutied and top hat admirer, all In a beautiful woodland grotto mise-en-scene with rustic wooden seats.
• certainty, the two-step flow model of audience behaviour contends that there are opinion formers in society who are influential. in this model, audiences are seen as open to persuasion about the merits, values and importance of what we see in the mass media because of what their peers or role models think. fans could be seen as manifesting 'sheep  like' admiration of a role model sucb as MC if influential opion formers supported her.

attract and  address audience through the film distributers website called www.launchingfilms.com  on this website which is the FDAs guide to the business of launching films In the UK I watched several video presentations by industry professionals-knew I had to create a twitter, facebook and website page in order to attract and address my audience

At a2 I knew that marketing was a three part business and that the music video was actually primarily to promote the album and maintain the star brand. therefore, through my research into how album were promoted I saw that there was an immersly close connection between the video, the mag advert and the digipack design. these exceplifies visual synergy in that the digipack appears on the advert, as does the star, the star appears on the digipack and the imagergy from both cmes out of their performace in their music video virtoous circle of marketing.

Audience research for me was a continuous progress, I constantly sourt peer group feedback and evaluative comments, implementing changes – one in particular for example in my music video

Posting my As film and my music video on youtube illicited a vartiety of comments  - for e.g the comic exchanges were admired- comic dialogue was admired etc – slickness of the titling sequences drew a lot of attention – green screen uneven

 

Representation

At AS, I made Zest, a comic film in the style of Bridget Jones, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging and PS I Love You. All these films have two things in common: they are 'rites of passage' films about young people struggling with various degrees of success to fit into the adult world and they are diary-like in their narrative form.
In our film, an Australian gap year student comes to work in Britain at a restaurant called Zest in the affluent and leafy Surrey suburbs where she is infuriated by the obstreperous customers and the eccentric, obsessive chef who models himself on Heston Blumenthal.

I have chosen to analyse Zest as it offers many excellent examples of stereotypes as well as the protagonist who represents a Australian teenager and gap year student. Comic stereotyping is the key to understanding representation in our AS film because it uses stereotypes almost as a sitcom does to short cut to audience understanding: we sympathise with the young Australian Dani because of the customers that she has to handle. 

For example, our representations include two loutish, ill-mannered, heavy-metal biker boys who behave as if they are Ozzy Osborne and who scorn etiquette. They sneer at the menu ("Why are there are no bats on the menu?") as if they are prepared to show off doing outrageous things like their heavy metal super hero Ozzy, who reputedly bit the head off a live bat on stage. They put their feet up on the table, ignoring polite manners. For Dick Hebdige, clothing and music codes signal membership of specific subcultures (such as the Mods and Rockers); our two biker boys wear specific clothing codes such black leather jackets, heavy square-toed boots and neck tattoos with Chinese symbols.The tattoos are supposed to be threatening: they are intended to evoke gangland membership such as the criminal underworld of Chinese gangs, just the sort of decoration that these two boys would have wanted in order to seem more aggressive and hard than they actually are. 

They are represented as rather star-struck when they comment " Well, Freddie Star ate a hamster", an intertextual reference to the singer and comedian who made the headlines when he reputedly teased his shocked girlfriend. This incident conferred life-long notoriety on Freddie Starr. We use it to support our representation of two boys who embody Andy Warhol's prediction about society's obsession with celebrity culture that "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."

The second representation is of our Australian gap year student Danni. I compared her to Renee Zellweger in 'Bridget Jones Diary'.Both films have a comedy essence to them. 'Bridget Jones' is a comedy romance and 'Zest' is a comedy'. There are aspects of resemblance which occur  in both, she wears: sturdy jackets, with a smart casual shirt underneath to create a laid back, cool, edgy look. Whilst her hair being messy and wavy shows she has a genuine touch to her. It helps the audiences identify the emotions of the characters easily. Her face expression is stern yet charming looking, as if she is very competent, this is similar to Dani who plays our Aussie gap year student, who comes from a sturdy upbringing and has worked in a restaurant all her life, so she knows how to handle tough situations.  Bridget Jones Diary with the 'voice over' letter from the heroine Dani, who is in the same boat, is sort of confiding her thoughts, this is so the audience is encouraged to take her side.
We noticed that Australians and New Zealanders are often depicted in media texts as having New World qualities of breeziness, humour, and irreverence for Old World conservative, stuffy, and traditional values. For example, characters like Crocodile Dundee and The Castlemaine XXX beer adverts contain comic representations of bold and breezy stereotypes. Our protagonist is a gap year student from Australia who has come to work in a UK restaurant and she is alternately exasperated and amused by the “Britishers” she finds.

One of our characters was taken from the inspiration of celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal. We stereotyped his character to appear cutting edge, wacky and  molecular Gastronomy, obsessed with inventing new recipes with scientific approach. Our actor Max was given a script which we wrote down lines such as 'molecular Gastronomy is all we need' and 'beetroot meringue'. Heston Blumenthal is known for his high profile TV appearances making food documentaries of how he will invent and create certain foods that have not yet been made or done. In March 2009 Blumenthal began a short series of hour long programmes, called 'Heston's Feasts', showing Victorian (Alice in Wonderland-inspired), Medieval, Tudor, Christmas (including dormouse and venison) and Roman themed dinner banquets with various celebrities as guests. A second series of this was commissioned and began a few days after Easter 2010. In this series he created, among others, a Charlie and The Chocolate Factory-style feast, a Fairytale feast and an Edwardian style feast was based on the last meal eaten on the Titanic.

We chose a comic stereotype relating to body image as one of our chosen characters. Fat people are often stereotyped in a negative way as figures of fun; Dawn French, for example, is famous for drawing attention to her large appetite in comedy sitcoms such as The Vicar Of Dibley. In the scene she is seen scoffing down a cupcake, to which she states 'I could do with another one of those', whilst the crumbs fall down her lap and smudge onto her face. Her posture is sluggish, masculine and is seen drawing attention to her large appetite. We represent her as being stereotypically typically greedy and unmannered.

Magazines and online news sites are crammed full of representations of celebrities: Their clothes, their escapades, their spending habits, their love lives and their holidays seem to have an inexhaustible fascination for readers. We depicted celebrity stereotypes as being empty headed and obsessed with their body image. In the scene we see the two girls sitting opposite each other, wearing low cut tops, with their expensive accessories on show. one of the girls is seen to be playing with her hair, totally ignoring her friend and says 'oh my god my hair extension', this is typical of the Hollwood, Beverly Hills Barbie attitude.

Lastly we chose the representation of the posh social climber, like Penelope Keith in The Good Life. We introduce them a glass fine white wine being swirled in front of them as they are the kind of people who think of themselves as the wine connoisseurs. This kind of customer likes to boast and bandy about names of famous restaurants and hotels that they have dined in to show off  about their knowledge of cuisine. They are also the kind of people who follow trends in the press about the latest diet fads. They are likely to shop at Waitrose and want to know that their food is ethically sourced and of the finest quality. The recent horse meat scandal is likely to have appalled them and made them suspicious of whatever they put into their mouths. At restaurants they are likely to talk very haughtily  in a RP accent like Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life. 

GENRE

My A2 Production was a cross-media product composed of a music video of the track Wrecking Ball for the American pop dance artist Miley Cyrus to sell their album. As part of this task, I also produced a carefully tailored digipack design for the album and a magazine advert which would create awareness of the product. In short, I used codes that would maximize all parts of the production as a promotional tool to sell the album and promote the artist: exactly what the music industry expects.
 

Although these three components have different genre conventions, I never forgot that audiences need to see the each part of the package as part of a synergistic whole, so that the advert attracts and addresses audiences with bold graphics and clear text, stating when the album will be released and featuring the band prominently, while the music video will employ a variety of genre codes to spark new audience interest, reassure committed  fans and withstand repeated viewings. Finally, the digipack should have very clear links to the music video with the stars prominent, the style and overall feel of the layout reflecting the band's identity and reinforcing its brand through the appropriate choice of image, colour, font, layout and general design.
 

My music video treatment reflects both research into genre conventions and visual codes that reflect the band's identity. For me, of overriding importance was the need to convey to audiences the artist's genre: Miley Cyrus is distinctively American with universal appeal: she sets out to relate to people across the globe. In her music video she delivers a sexualized performance; in the music video Wrecking Ball, she is shown swinging on a massive ball nude, and licking a sledge hammer. In her recent music video 'I adore you' we see her rolling around on a bed and pleasuring herself whilst looking seductively in the camera, this introduces Andrews Goodwins theory 'notions of looking'.

They have  have mainstream appeal based on easy listening, undemanding lyrics, dance appeal and long chill-out instrumental sections. Therefore,our treatment reflected this. For example, we observe the genre convention of cutting the visuals to the beat, in particular during the repeated chorus of 'I came in like a wrecking ball' which has a upbeat powerful feel.

This is a clear example of the convention of illustrating the lyrics with the visuals. In the lyric 'and now we're ashes on the ground' we filmed the heart broken girl standing behind a fire to metaphorically appear as if her love is 'burning' away. When I compare my genre treatment with earlier examples, say Robert Palmer's 'Simply Irresistible', it is so much more dynamic, busy and arresting: Palmer offers audience a very static set piece with few surprises. Such a treatment would not sell the product nowadays. We opened with an indoor set but we change location throughout the video: artist appears in a variety of outdoor sets including running in forests, twirling around in a playground, throwing powder paint around, and standing behind a fire. Sometimes we have close ups of the girl singing in candlelit lighting, or her performing freely whilst the powder paint is being thrown and banging a drum to the beat.
Andrew Goodwin observes ('Dancing In The Distraction Factory') that the visuals may provide illustration or amplification of the lyrics, or there may be disjuncture. As our band is pop, we wanted to illustrate the lyrics with a maninstream, conventional approach: our lyrics don't really offer the possibility of literal treatment for every line, but she does make certain really key statements that her young audiences would relate to, in particular, the theme of love. We wanted to show the dycotomy between Miley Cyrus public persona in which she acts up to expectations which portray her as a wrecker, and her own much more fragile and innocent inner world based on her past where in some ways she still a vulnerable child. We use the breakup as a way to show this vulnerable side of Miley. We decided to use the framework of the Alice in Wonderland story as a way of explaining how  the public see Miley Cyrus in the full picture, that in fact in the same way as Alice falls down a rabbit hole, leaving behind her orderly conventional even prudish reality, in order to explore a variety of exciting but nightmarish fantasies, and deliciously destructive experiences. Miley has also been propelled along the trajectory of her own success on a path in which she self destructs through excesses like pornographic behaviour.

Although the lyrics of this track suggest a conventional girl/boy break up story, we decided we wanted to delv more deeply into the star persona of Miley Cyrus herself, in our treatment. This is because in the last year and more Miley has apparently instigated and relished a great deal of negative treatment in the press about the way she is pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. In particular her semi-pornographic on stage behavior. We wanted to explore what it would be like if there still lingered, within this star, a yearning for the more innocent days hen the Miley of Hannah Montana could count on the worlds smiling approval of every move she made. What if this provocative behavior was simply a cry for help?

From our readings of feminsitc critics like Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, we have been alerted to the way that the particular system postions women as sex objects. Most images of women are objectified and shaped to give performances as well as red carpet dresses have become increasingly revealing even semi-pornigrapghic and Miley cyrus has a track record of cauting the publics dissaaporvial though shocking behavious such as at 2013's VMA performance where she is seen wearing revealing hot pants and doing certain odd movements with a foam finger.

In other words, we included both front stage and backstage footage: we observed the convention of polished public stage performance, complete with close-ups on the drums and lead vocalist, which is essential in building the brand and promoting the star (Richard Dyer), providing authentication of skill through lip synching and the chance for keen fans to see their stars in close-up, building relationships, and allowing them to engage with their heroes. In these scenes, we followed genre conventions of bright stage lights, some canted angles to suggest movement and dynamism, and a lot of cutting between performers to convey exuberance and cohesion: the band as a successful group.

However, we also intercut the performance shots with the back stage story (Erving Goffman's model of front and back stage behaviours here interpreted quite literally). Here, the audience sees the artist in 'reality' as the couple are placed opposite each other at a dining room table. The beat of the song corresponds to the editing as the camera alternates between close ups of the girl and boy. The lighting is consistently candle lit (for Barthes, this code would convey the mood  as being very subdued, as their faces show neutral expression), there is the use of hand-held and also GoPro lens, all to suggest the diary-like record of the band in real life, providing a flatteringly intimate insight for the audience, who are invited in to share. Miley Cyrus is known for her rapport with audiences (Twitter) and this section of the treatment builds on the intimacy created by her consistent use of eye contact, showing her emotions and direct address to camera delivered during lines such as "I will always love you'

 Therefore, this narrative was very different - if you can call it narrative, because I would support Heidi Peeters' view that narrative in music video is much more about building the emotional environment surrounding the band or star and thereby making connections with the audience than about plot or interpreting lyrics. For Peeters, this ability to connect the band to the audience is the KEY GENRE CONVENTION: 'One would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. While they may seem discontinuous .., the shots (in music videos) are highly connected through the image of the star.” “The star promotes the phenomenon of identification, a process by which viewers become attached to a star, ranging from emotional affinity limited to the context of the movie theatre to projection, by which fans try to become their idols through imitating speech, movements and consumer patterns.' 

To complete my analysis, I must explain that my digipack used genre conventions of photos of the band taken from the music video as well as details of the album tracks. Whereas in the video I could develop both the brightly coloured upbeat side of the band's experience as well as reveal the more intimate struggles, I chose a mix of bright, densely saturated colour and watermark layout and patterning for the digipack: these design elements appear in the video in the chorus treatment and are very eye-catching, therefore suitable for standing out on the shelf in a shop and attracting attention when featured on the magazine advert, a genre convention that I observed, along with institutional information, bar codes and in the case of the advert, release date.
To conclude, I made a conventional treatment. That is, I showed both the public and private face of the band to be one seamless whole. Both narrative treatment and cinematography show this:  I created a Utopian world of which the star seems to be the instigator, as claimed by Richard Dyer's Entertainment and Utopia.  The world of the band, the place where they hang out, practise, play and chill out, is depicted as a video diary of friends enjoying working and playing together. I agree with Peeters that “Narrativity does not seem to be an absolute necessity within the medium. The fact that music videos in this sense are primarily poetic does not mean that clips never contain narrativity. Most music videos do develop a storyline, embedded within its poetic structure and some clips even contain introductory story sequences or non-musical narrative sequences inserted within the video number but "outside" its musical score. Narrative in clips becomes a device to structure the poetic clip world and make it more accessible and recognizable to the viewer.”

What I did is create an emotional connection with my band through a series of poetic montages.