Ideas

These three photos were created as a back up for the CD cover front, inside and magazine advert. We tried different ways to create the images to see which we would prefer for our music video and which would suit our CD cover video and which could represent our music video.

How do I breathe - Mario

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts

The video, cd cover and magazine advert promotes the product in different ways. The video story helps the video sell the product, as well as the lyrics. Audience which would genuninely would like slow r&b soul jams, would prefer our product. A video has a lot to offer to the audience. The music of the music video, nice relaxing with nice beat. the ancillary texts of our magazine advert and cd cover, subordinates to the music video. The CD cover is helps sell the image of the product, which in a way is selling the project. The image of the performer, which shows the facial expressions of the character, showing emotions suggesting heartbroken, and lost in memories. Our music video would very efficient to the category r&b soul music. As it would be first of all promoted by the category, suggesting what type of music it is. Then later the CD cover and also the magazine advert would be second in the process. And the last would be the music video. Music Video Elements such as Love, Romance and Heartbroken would help it sell the product as you also have heartbroken lovers in this would which would want to listen to a song like ours.

Target Audience

The target audience for our music video would be young adults, in the age range of about 15-25. This age group are most likely to consume the product - by listening to music and buy albums; this ensures that the record company will make a profit. Also as the singer Mario is younger than 30 it means that the audience will be able to relate to the experiences he describes in his songs. The lyrics specifically for this song "How do I Breathe" have connotations of love, relationships, trust etc; overall both males and females will be able to comprehend what he means.

The target audience would also listen to male singers such as Neyo, Joe, Boyz II Men and also female singers like Mariah Carey. All of these singers are similar in that they sing songs about similar topics, have similar voices and would produce similar music videos/ CD covers.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages

Researching in to music video's and genre's had helped us to construct our music video e.g. we looked into Brandy and Monica's song 'that boy is mine' and we all wanted to create a music video that would tell a story and give us opportunities to involve some editing techniques as well as be creative when using the camera e.g. zooming from a long shot to an extreme close-up that allowed us to use jump-cuts in our music video. We used http://www.youtube.com and http://www.google.co.uk to research into music video's and CD/magazine covers and referred back to them constantly to help us with our group project e.g. previous posts with show we used the music video 'McLean-Broken' as an inspiration to create a similar effect with our music video e.g. on one of the 'memory' shots both performers are arguing and they both have another figure walk off in the opposite direction slowly whilst still standing there, this was created not only to have a connection with the audience but to also show the audience that the artist is remembering the past events with his 'girlfriend' and what happened e.g. the two figures walking away whilst another version of the performers are arguing show that they broke up and left each other.

We didn't think greenscreen would be a good technique to use in our music video as it was a romantic/sad theme and we thought that using greenscreen would be more effective if we did a different genre of music e.g dance/niche.

Final Cut Pro was the software we used to edit our music video and found the camera angles/techniques we had used whilst filming could have effects that would make it look more realistic and professional e.g. desaturating shots up to 62 to allow it to look like events from the past and putting soft edges up to 10 on every angle allowed it to look like a memory, however we did try a numerous amount of effects such as making the shot look completely black and white - desaturating it up to 100 but we decided to keep the desaturate to 62 as it had colour that was faded and the soft edges of 10 seemed to be realistic as more than 10 seemed to make the shot more black from the edges and only part of the shot could be visually seen. We also thought of using transactions such as wipes before and after the 'memory' shots but we thought they made it look non realistic and didn't go well with the theme and so decided the effects were obvious enough to establish between the 'memory' shots and 'present' shots (lipsynching and walking past his 'ex-girlfriend' with another 'man').

Another effect we used throughout our music video is Crossfading. We used this frequently between 'present' and 'memory' shots and it was also used at the beginning of our music video where we repeated a shot of Syed stood on the bridge to make it look like a jump shot.
Towards the end of the music video we began slowing down some shots e.g. one is a 'memory' shot of Syed and Chelsea on a swing followed by a freeze-frame that purposely happens before a beat so when the beat comes the shots start again.
Another example of using slow pace shots is when Syed walks past Chelsea who's with another man the reason is so it flows with the genre and lyrics of the song aswell as the emotion, e.g. having the song full of memories and lipsynching then seeing Chelsea 'ex-girlfriend' with someone else.


We used Photoshop to create our CD cover and magazine advert. This was a great experience as it was the first time we all had used Photoshop and therefore had no previous skills. The CD cover was a shot taken from the music video we had created, the shot was a close-up of Syed sat on stairs we used this shot for numerous reasons such as it was a close-up of the performer which was seen to be 'the meat' that sells products and because this shot looked realistic and perhaps could look like a posing shot.
We researched into the CD cover and In the shot he is looking to his left and is placed on our left side of the CD cover therefore after we analysed CD covers we realised some of the artists that were featured on a CD cover facing in a direction was usually placed in that direction e.g. facing to their left placed on our left of the CD cover, facing to their right placed on our right of the CD cover with the artists name and album/single name in the space left e.g facing to their left they would be placed on our left and the titles would go on our right. Such as,


We used 'Colour Range' to change the colour on the CD cover and when we were choosing the amount of brightness etc we all decided upon having the colour greyish as the black and white looked too simple and didn't show the artist in as much focus as we would have liked.
We thought due to having the CD cover grey it would look more appealing to have the artist name 'Mario' in white and Bold and in slightly bigger font size as it is usually the artist who sells the product. For the title we thought we would use the font Apple Chancery and it could be written in light blue as it also had connotations of sad/depressing emotions.
For the back cover we used 'Post Edges' this allowed us to make the image have a cartoon/artistic feel to it that seemed to look professional. The shot we used for the back cover was one where he was walking across the bridge but was on the right side of the bridge this was a perfect shot to have as it allowed us to have enough space to also write the song titles.
One of the inside covers is a close-up of Syed sat on the bridge, we decided to used this image and make four sections of him in different effects, here we used lighting effects and had four different colours.
Another inside cover is going to be lyrics of the single, 'How Do I Breathe' and have an appealing background, one that is simple but attractive. Looking into albums such as 'Blue - All Rise/One Love/Guilty'

the font size is small and is put into coloumns also when the chorus is sang the first time it displays the lyrics but when repeated just says 'chorus' or 'repeat chorus'. This is where we got the idea for our inside CD cover. However when we did our inside cover we decided to only use the chorus 'How do I breathe, without you here by my side, how will I see, when your love brought me to the light, where do I go, when your hearts where I lay my head when your not with me, how do I breathe, how do I breathe'. This is in four different colours - the same as the four colours for the other inside cover, red, blue, green and purple. We thought the lyrics for the entire song would result in having an extremely small font that would be difficult to read so we only did the chorus as these picture

inspired us.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When we completed a rough cut of our music video we decided to get a fellow student to watch our music video to provide us with feedback on what we could add to our video to make it look better. This is what she said to us "Overall the video so far looks good and professional. The majority of the lip-syncing looks right, it looks like a conventional rnb video however some shots are too long. You could cut them down by adding a variety of camera shots like close-ups and long shots or add more reminiscing shots." - Maria Rafiq. We were grateful for the information she gave us and this is what we were told her "A problem we have with cutting down shots that are too long is not having enough raw footage. We are going to attempt to film some more shots and add it to the timeline; hopefully we'll do this before the deadline." After we were given this feedback we made some changes to our music video. We ensured that all of the lip-syncing as perfect however this was difficult. As we didn't have the time to re-film footage , we replaced the bits that were too slow with either shots of memories or simply shots of Syed posing. Another thing we changed was the shots that were too long we cut them down. We did this by filming more footage. We added more shots of reminiscing to the shots of him lip-syncing and vice versa. We also zoomed into shots of him lip-syncing and inserted these into the longer shots; this meant that there was variety in the shots. Overall due to her advice we believe that our group has benefited hugely to her neutral feedback.

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

Our music video is inspired by other music video, in the same genre due to love jealousy and heartbroken elements. Other video such as Birthday Sex by Jeremih is another slow jam but it is more sexual attraction track. The difference between our music video and the Jeremih music video is, How do I breathe is more of a heartbroken music video whereas Jeremih Birthday Sex is more pleasure music video of sex. We had to research about different type of videos of the same genre of ours music video and which for we had to identify different aspects such as location, different way to portray the reminiscing, for example, shot after shot would show the reminiscing and lip-synching would be played in the background, our music video viewed reminiscing scenes as well as the lip-synching. There are similarities between our music video compared to others, but there also differences compare to others. Lyrics, storyline, performance, locations, facial expressions viewed in different ways for example joyful moments and arguing are viewed as for and against. These were the differences between our video and other music video. The similarities between our video and other music videos, is mainly the moral of the story, which is things are not working out, and then the couple break up, and it leaves the guy as a heartbroken. In a way that could be suggested as a difference as most of the videos would be mainly be about heartbroken due to being hurt either cheated on or the person they love has moved on to a new life. These are part of conventions of real media products, as this all features in every day life which makes it real and help develop an idea, which helped us make our music video with different scenes.