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

Overall, I would say that there is an effective mix of conventions across our finished media products, both in terms of adhering to conventions and avoiding them in places. I think that the majority of the technical aspects we have used have been fairly conventional of real media products, as well as products of this genre, whereas the themes and content of our narrative takes a much more unconventional approach.


MUSIC VIDEO:

I think our music video for the most part challenges the forms and conventions both a a typical video, and particularly for a video belonging to this particular genre of music. One of the main ways in which I feel it is portrayed in an unconventional form is that structure of the music video consists entirely of narrative. This is quite an uncommon approach to music videos as there is usually at least a slight performance element about the video, in order to portray the appealing live aspect of the artist, as well as showing them in more direct association with the visual interpretation of the track - this creates familiarity with the audience, and established the image of the band or artist with the audience. However, we chose not to take a performance approach, as we did not know the artist personally, and therefore did not want to cheapen the effect of the video by using a substitute singer. I feel this was fairly effective in making our video more unconventional, as is set the video apart from the typical expectations of the product and genre. This could potentially have positive implications on the artist in the long run, as it is very easy to become 'samey' in this sort of genre, and therefore any alternative methods which serve to distinguish the artist from the rest of the crowd are likely to be embraced rather than rejected.#

Another manner in which we served to make the music video unconventional was through the use of the content of the narrative. Typically in this sort of genre, the narrative would be expected to consists of a typical love story, perhaps the whole boy meets girl cliché. The relationship within the typical narrative would tend to be of a more idyllic nature, likely to be representative of perfection, flawlessness - a similar convention to films, adhering to the audience by making them connect with the aspects of love, longing and desire. Our narrative however put a completely different spin on this typical portrayal, indicating the relationship and dismal and crumbling as opposed to perfect and desirable. I feel this worked in our favour, elevating the feeling of realism we were hoping to convey, thereby making the product much more relatable to our intended target audience than perhaps the traditionalist, worn conventions may be. In doing this however, I feel it may potentially have had a slight negative impact on the song - our narrative plays on these typical portrayals and skews them in a humerus and slightly satirical light, which slightly undermines the lyrics value of the song. Typically, songs from this sort of genre are written from quite a personal and heart-felt level, so potentially challenging the conventions in this manner would be detrimental to the impact or message the lyrics were representative of.

In terms of representation of character, we took a fairly unconventional viewpoint in this - having seen a number of videos from this kind of genre previously, we were aware of the typical representations of the characters in narratives of this sort, including the gentlemanly, dominant male, with the almost princess-like representation of the 'precious' female. We chose to defy these conventions, in order to create comedic effect and to make a video of a less conventional format. Our male actor was portrayed as being a little more on the soft, 'dopey' side as opposed to the gallant, chivalrous hunter-gatherer. We originally intended to portray the female actor as fairly feisty and cold, but I don't think this is an effect that has necessarily transgressed as well as it could have done. Representation was also key in terms of the characters style, as dress and image was important to convey the ideas about the genre and the artist. Overall, Beth dressed in a fairly typical style, in portrayal of the genre, whereas Oscar was shown to be fairly unconventional and not belonging to any particular fashion or style, serving to emphasise the separation between the two.

Alternatively, the video can be see to adhere to many conventions of the typical music video, and conventions of this genre. We used a range of editing varieties to convey meaning, such as flash backs and fades, all of which can be found in real media products. Many of our technological aspects in this stage could be seen as fairly typical of both form and genre - we very much wanted to portray a strong relationship between the music and the visuals, even if the content was not the most typical match. To do this, we edited the footage to fit in time with the song, as is a frequent feature throughout real media products such as this. Many of the camera angles and movements were fairly typical examples of this. Additionally the use of lighting to create a romantic atmosphere in the initial flashback scenes was inspired directly from visuals fitting to this sort of genre, and could therefore be seen as a convention in our product. We aimed to utilise a number of conventions of the genre in the flashback scenes in order to imply the connotations of warmth and happiness that are generally associated with the genre, linking with the theme of the visuals.

ANCILLARY TEXTS:

Our ancillary texts could be seen as much more conventional and representative of the artist and the genre. They obey typical forms and structures as expected of real media products - for example, the CD packaging contains a booklet including song lyrics, the back cover contains information relating to copyright and various other legal information. Additionally, the magazine advert contains relevant information concerning the release date of the album and reviews, all of which are typical expected features of this sort of form which overall combines to create the feeling that this is a real media product.

The use of colour and editing in these two products was highly conventional, I feel. Typically, images from this sort of genre tend to be fairly natural and unedited, which was a feeling that we knew we wanted to convey in our ancillary products. We used only slight amounts of editing, merely to bring out colourings to convey a sense of brightness and warmth. This ensured that the overall impression of the images remained very natural and promoted the desirable sense of realism and relatability that we wanted to convey with our product.

These ancillary texts could also be viewed as unconventional of sorts, again going back to the basic idea that we did not want to have somebody pretending to be the artist due to the overall cheapening and slightly tacky effect we felt this would have. To avoid this sort of representation, we used images of the actor from behind, in order to convey the typical ideas of the pretty, young girl, but not to imply her being the artist. This approach also serves to add an element of mystery and enigma to our product that works to distinguish it from other products in this genre.

Evaluation: 4) C - How did you use media technologies in the construction stages?

MUSIC VIDEO:

Technology was a crucial part of the process during the construction stages. Firstly, we used digital camcorders to capture the shots we required, using 3 separate cameras to allow each member of the group to control one. This allowed us to not only film the main shots that we had intended and planned on the storyboard, but additionally provided us with extra shots of the same footage from different angles and viewpoint - this was effective as it meant we saved time by not having to repeat the same action a thousand times in order to capture all of the necessary angles and footage we required, and it also proved to be a useful technique in the editing stages, allowing us a wide choice of footage to select from. This turned out to be incredibly helpful, as not all of the shots we had captured from the 'main' viewpoint - that which we had planned on the storyboard, ad turned out in the way which we had envisioned them. Luckily, this provided us with the opportunity to substitute clips of the same action, but from a different perspective, without dramatically affecting or ruining the running narrative. The cameras were one of the main problems in the construction stage, due to the fact that we had learnt from last year the importance of being quite thorough in shooting our footage, therefore requiring prolonged periods of filming. This evidently made for trouble with the cameras, as their battery life was not sufficient enough for the extensive filming we had hoped for, however this was resolved fairly easily by the fact that we had multiple cameras, and therefore we were still able to capture all of the footage that we needed.

While our usage of camera in our coursework last year was fairly basic and simplistic, we decided to be more adventurous in our use of camera this year. We chose to experiment with different effects and uses of the camera in order to achieve different visual styles. One of the main effects we had hoped to achieve through the use of camera was that of the conventional focus shift, allowing the two character to be together in the frame, but causing one of them to be blurred and out of focus, whilst the other is clear to the camera. We felt this technique would be effective in our portrayal of the distance between the two, perhaps insinuating the blur that their relationship has become. However unfortunately, this was a technique that we could not seem to be able to create, and therefore we found alternative means and manners in which to convey this idea of separation between the two characters.

From our AS coursework last year, we had learned the importance of using a tripod in our construction stages in order to stabilise the shots and reduce hand shake which can have an abrupt and unsettling affect on the audience, not allowing for ease of viewing. Unfortunately, this was an idea that worked more in theory than in practise, as we were only able to borrow one tripod, meaning the other two camera's had find a different source to steady them. This meant that when the original stable clip was ruled unsuitable and unusable in our video, many of our alternative substitute clips were of a less stable and perhaps even less professional execution. Fortunately we were able to overcome most of this through the use of editing, cutting out any wobbles or shakes that had a major affect on the ease of viewing and the flow of our visuals, however this was unfortunately unavoidable in some places.

In preparation for the filming days, I purchase a pack of 5 mini-DV tapes, which allowed us to have one per camera, and 2 extras should we encounter any problems with the original tapes. We found very little problem with these, as we were all familiar in how to use them due to our coursework from the year before. We had learnt from last year's experience that it was beneficial to wind the tape on for a few seconds at the beginning in order to prevent a loss of visual quality should the beginning of the tape start to become damaged in any way. This meant that we would not loose any of our shots, or sacrifice the original quality of them in any way. We had also learnt not to excessively and continually rewind the tapes for replay, again so as to not sacrifice any of the original visual quality. However, we did recognise the importance of reviewing the shots we had already taken as demonstrated through the troubles we faces in the filming process last year, when we did not review the shots we had taken and therefore did not know how they had turned out and if they needed to be re-shot, which led to problems at the editing stages. This year however, we did take one or two opportunities to rewind and review the shots we had taken up to that point, allowing us to see if any shots needed to be redone.

In the editing process, we used a Firewire to import the footage we had filmed from each individual tape, uploading it into iMovie. We had grown incredibly accustomed with this programme through the AS coursework, and so we were able to navigate the software itself with relative ease. Our group found a number of small complications during this process, but we were able to overcome these fairly quickly with the help of other members of other groups. We each broadened our knowledge of the programme, using it to a much bigger potential than the fairly basic approach we chose to take last year. This year, we experimented with a range of effects in order to create the desired impression, such as editing the flashback scenes to a slightly more sepia colour, creating connotations of warmth and happiness, whilst clearly distinguishing the scenes from the modern day narrative. We encountered some problems at this stage regarding the quality of the footage we had captured - for example in the flashback scene of the couple playing scrabble, our use of low-key lighting to create a romantic atmosphere had not turned out to be the most effective, and therefore the shots we were left with were fairly dark and poor in quality. Unfortunately, almost all of our shots from this part of the narrative had turned out in pretty much the same manner, however we were able to resolve this slightly in the editing stages by changing the brightness and contrast of the clips.



ANCILLARY TEXTS:

We used a digital still camera throughout the entire construction process, in order to document the process in the form of production stills showing our group in the act of filming. It's main usage however was for the various photo shoots for the images for our ancillary texts. We captured each picture shooting mainly for the image as opposed to the effects that could be added during the editing stages. We felt that this was important as we wanted to emphasise the conventional naturalistic themes that are often associated with the indie / folk genre. I personally feel that this was an effective approach to take, as it meant that the editing stage would merely be for enhancement to bring out the full potential of the image, as opposed to creating a much more constructed, computer graphical image that we did not feel would be at all in fitting with this particular genre, and therefore not at all reflective of the music in any way.

We spent the day at the i-City Learning Centre in Horfield working on the construction of our ancillary products. We had already prepared the images that we intended to use in our products, and stored them on a USB in order to transport them with us for use on this day. As a back up, in case anything happened to the images on my USB, I emailed the images to myself as attachments, meaning that if we encountered any problems with the memory stick, we would still be able to access the images to work on.

We were given a brief introduction to Photoshop elements, helping us to get acquainted with the software, and given an indication of how to achieve certain effects. Although this was useful to us in order to help us familiarise ourselves with the programme, this was not particularly adhered to in our group, and we had always intended to keep editing to a minimum to emphasise the idea of naturalism and innocence synonymous with both the genre and the artist.

We experimented again with the brightness and contrast tool, in order to enhance the image slightly and accentuate the colours, in line with the generic conventions. We cropped the images to fit to the size of the template provided for us, which was significantly smaller than the size of our original images. This allowed for some creativity in the framing and composition of the images that we had perhaps not devoted enough attention to when capturing them.

Editing Diary: 6

We have finally completed the construction of our music video, using today's lesson to add all the finishing touches.

Firstly, we decided to make the modern day and the flashback scenes more distinguishable by adding a Sepia effect to the flashbacks. Whilst creating a visible difference between the two timescales, it also serves to emphasis the elements of romanticism, accentuating the use of bright colours and the connotations of happiness and warmth we were aiming to portray. Originally, we had envisioned used the vintage film effect, giving an almost home movie style to the flashbacks, enforcing a feeling of reminiscence and nostalgia. However in practise, the iMovie effect was not in line with what we had imagined, so we decided to take a different approach instead.

The sepia effect also proved to come in useful in the earlier flashback scenes of the Scrabble playing, as it made the lighting seem more natural and overall enhanced the poor lighting. This also allowed us to slightly increase the brightness and contrast of these clips, making them more visible and defined, whilst not causing any suffering to the overall visual quality of the images.

We additionally wanted to represent the flashbacks in a more obvious way, in order to create cohesion between our product and the audience, as we found that this could often be confusing when we showed the video in various stages of completion to members of our target audience. We had hoped to do this in the conventional way of a short, clear flash effect, however, when experimenting with this effect on iMovie, we found that our clips were to sure to apply the effect to, and therefore had to find an alternative. We experimented with the overlapping effect, blending the two images together in one frame, however again as the clip was fairly short, it created a freeze frame at the end of the transition, which disrupted the smooth, flowing visuals of the video and created a really obvious jarring in the comfortable reception a sleeker style allows. Eventually, we decided on the 'White In' effect, which is basically a fade in from a whit background as opposed to black. We feel this effectively represented the 'flash' idea that we were hoping to achieve but in a more effective, and smoother style, synonymous with the pace of the song.

We showed the video to one of our media teachers, who provided us with some useful feedback. She picked up on the section toward the beginning that we had been concerned about - the scene leading in to the flashback. She felt that it would perhaps be worthwhile trying to find a substitute clip to replace the short and abrupt clips that we had been left with. We took this on board and found a discarded shot of a pan across the Scrabble box. We removed the rapid shot-reverse-shot that showed her reaction to the box, and instead replaced it with a clip of this shot, which served to act as a point of view shot. This clip slotted perfectly into the timings of the previous succession of clips, thereby not creating any dramatic effect on the timings of the rest of the video, and allowing a much smoother and more comfortable transition into the flashback scenes.

We added a long fade out effect at the end of the video to keep in line with the more conventional aspect of the image we wanted to portray, and also to heighten the stereotypical generic feature of the 'happy ending', as a fade implies much more gentle and softened connotations than perhaps an abrupt cut at the end may signify. We additionally added a short fade to the beginning of our video primarily in order to contain the titles that we were required to included on our video, but iMovie would not allow us to use these two effects simultaneously. We overcame this slightly by dragging and dropping the title effect onto the opening clip, which added the titles - we decided to keep these basic and simplistic, with the artist and track names being the only information we chose to include, in order to best represent the more simplistic style of the artist and indeed the music itself. We decided to keep the fade in at the beginning anyway, as it created a much gentler beginning to the start of the video, in line with the soft instrumental beginnings of the start of the song.

Now we have finished our video, we will next save it onto the external hard drive for backup purposes, and burn it onto a DVD for the examiners.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a contemporary concept that suggests the artists and audiences have departed from realism in some manner, implying a shift away from the formal modernist rigours. It is an idea that is commonly used throughout many media products in modern society, particularly transgressing through the film and musical styles.

We have not incorporated a great deal of postmodernistic elements in our work as the folk style genre is very much about traditionalist ideas and values, therefore we didn't think an excess of postmodernistic elements would be at all complementary to the track or the artist.

One element of postmodernism that we chose to include was the traditional product convention of the disjointed narrative structure music videos often adopt. We did this in the form of flashback scenes to convey a happier and more jubilant time. We felt that this would create for a more interesting visual than a standard, slightly restricting format would have been.

Additionally, we utilised an element of hybridity in our video, in the form of cinematic conventions. For example, at the end of the video, the couple walk off into the sunset, which conveys a typical 'happy ending' impression that is common through films of a romantic orientation.

Finished Ancillary Texts: CD Packaging

Today we spent the day at the i-City learning centre at the Orchard School, Horfield. The purpose of today was to create and finish all of our Ancillary products using their advanced software that they provided for us. Fortunately, we had a good idea of the images that we wanted to create, and were fortunate enough to capture some effective photographs, so the creation process was relatively straightforward.


We began the day with a short tutorial on how to use Photoshop, in order to acquaint those of use who had never used the software before. We were shown how to use specific tools and brushes to create a number of different effects. Whilst this was useful in allowing us to develop our knowledge of the programme and how to use it, this was not particularly relevant to our group, as we had already decided to keep as much of the image raw and natural as possible, as we felt this was best in terms of representation of the genre and the artist herself. As we each took our own digital cameras to the filming days, we had a wide number of shots between the three of us, giving us a lot to choose from. We collated all of our images together, bringing them on USB sticks for ease of use and allowing us to switch images ands files between each of our three computers. We then hand-picked the best of the images we had, and began to fashion them to make the CD packaging.

CD PACKAGING

This was the first booklet sleeve that we made, for use as the CD album cover (right) and the back cover of the booklet (left) that we will later construct to slot into the front of the CD case. As found in typical media products, the CD cover is usually attached to the rest of the booklet, so these two could be produced side by side, meaning we won't have to do a lot of cutting and rearranging when we come to physically create the finished printed products.

CD FRONT COVER:

For the CD cover, we decided to use the shot of her holding the guitar behind her, back lit by the sunlight to create an almost silhouette-like effect. We liked this image as it was highly unconventional for this genre, in fitting with our video thereby creating cohesion between the products. In this genre, typically emphasis is placed upon the face of the artist in order to promote a sense of familiarity and intimacy, establishing a connection with the audience. It is a fairly elusive image, and the narrative behind it is not obvious or immediately determinable. This intrigues the audience, and encourages them to decipher a meaning or back story behind the image of their own accord. The image perhaps connotes a state of escapism, as she looks as is she is going somewhere, or walking towards the sun. This links to the ending shot of our video, with the two characters walking off hand-in-hand into the sunset together, implying a feel or romanticism and reinforcing the typical film-like 'happy ending'. This could be seen as a postmodernistic element, making reference to typical film conventions which is know as hybridity. This idea could also linked to Blumler & Katz's 1974 audience theory, citing one of the needs of the audience in consuming a media product is often a feeling of escapism and being taken away from reality. This image could link with this idea, and indeed with the ideas portrayed in the video, as the character often daydreams about a happier time, implying a want to get away or be 'escape' the everyday worries she has found herself in. Portraying the image in this light could potentially be seen as putting the artist on a level with the audience, implying a shared level of power and respect, implying no more of an authority than the audience themselves.

We kept editing to an absolute minimum, as we did not want to ruin the naturalistic effect or sacrifice the powerful quality of the original image alone. We kept this idea in mind whilst on the photoshoot, making sure we shot for the image as much as possible, and not for the potential edit. We used the brightness and contrast tool in Photoshop to enhance the colouring slightly, bringing out the vibrancy of the cover, thereby satisfying the semiology of the genre. We created two layers of the image, as we did not want to affect the contrast and colouring of the background, as we felt it was best to keep this natural. We wanted to emphasise the colourings on the shirt, so copied the image into a secondary layer, and used the magic tool and the eraser tool to leave only the shirt to work with. We then slightly boosted the colouring and contrast, and decided to leave the rest of the image as it was.

Hannah spent most of the morning Photoshopping the images of the Scrabble tiles together, which we used as the typeface on CD cover and the magazine advert. This works to create cohesion and synergy between all three media products, showing a recurring visual theme or motif. She cut the tiles out separately, and arranged them in a slightly haphazard manner, as we felt was best representative of the more natural, unpreened style of the genre. We decided that the product we were making was going to be an EP, similar to the existing product Gabrielle Aplin had already put out. This served to make our task a lot simpler than having to come up with all of our own track titles and formats etc, whilst also making the product seem more real to life, as if it could actually be a real media product.

We added the title font in a conventional lower case, handwritten style. This is often used throughout genres such as this to create a more personal feeling with the product, almost as if it has been signed by the artist before sending if off into the big wide world. This is also parallel to the smoother, more fluid style that music of this sort of genre is often associated with, thereby strengthening the connection between the visuals and the music. Given more time, however, I believe we would have spent more time on this element in order to ensure it was as high quality as it could be, as it's current state does look a little rushed, perhaps cheapening the effect of the overall cover.

BOOKLET BACK COVER:

We decided to use this more conventional close-up shot as the back cover, as it drew a lot of focus on her face and hair in a highly typical style of this sort of genre. Additionally, it created a contrast between many of the other photographs included in the booklet, much in parallel to the unstructured adherence, and alternatively abandonment of typical generic conventions throughout our own video. This shot was edited again to only slightly enhance the colourings, and bring out the rich greens and red of the image. We cropped the original, fitting it to the template structure we were given in order to promote a continuous size throughout the booklet and the typical structure of a real-life media product.

INSIDE BOOKLET 1:

We then went on to create this sheet for use as inserts into the booklet. Again, very little editing was used here in order to keep the running visual theme of an almost rustic like naturalism. We selected these shots as they are close-ups that emphasise certain parts of the females body, but not in a typically sexualised way, in light of the male gaze theory. They instead serve as flattering shots that allow a certain element of connection and familiarity to be established with the artist in a way that defies the usual rules of the straight staring gaze down the lens of a camera. We liked these two images as we felt that the colourings in them accentuated the feel of naturalism we were hoping to portray. The image on the right hand side did not turn out to be a successful as we had hoped - it was originally quite a dark image, so we used various tools in Photoshop in an attempt to amend this, however it still turned out much darker than we had envisioned when printed out. If we had had more time on this day, we would have perhaps devoted a little more attention into editing this image in order for it to create maximum impact and reach it's full potential. We originally planned to combine these images opposite a black lyrics page, however we felt that we wanted to stick to the idea of simplicity we had adhered to throughout the creation of all of our products, and thought it would have more of an impact left to itself, further emphasising the idea of mystery and the story line behind the images.

MIDDLE BOOKLET:

When looking at real media products of a similar style, we found that booklets such as the one we intended to make often included lyrics, allowing the audience to create a sense of familiarity with the songs. We decided it would make more of a statement and add depth to the promotion of the song we were marketing with our video for the only lyrics in the booklet to be that of this song. For the background, we used one image which we enlarged and stretched across the whole template. This provided again an element of realism, and promoted continuity across the two frames of the booklet. No editing was applied to this image, as when we cropped it to fit the template, we thought it's appearance was already fitting with the style we were aiming to create by colour and contrast enhancement etc.

INSIDE BOOKLET 2:

This is the third page for use as an insert into our CD booklet. It is another spread of two images, this time revolving around the theme of playing the guitar. This creates obvious links with the musical style, as an acoustic guitar is the sole instrument used throughout many of Gabrielle Aplin's songs. This obeys the conventional feature of emphasis on the music instead of the artist. Again, the only editing applied to these images was cropping them to fit the booklet template.

CD BACK COVER AND INLAY:

The picture on the right is the one we have chosen to use as the back of our CD cover. It depicts an image of the couple sat on a bench in the park, sourced directly from the narrative as opposed to the other images that were not contained within the narrative itself, but showed a number of visual links. This obvious link between the video and the ancillary text creates a synergy between them, allowing the two products to harmonise each other and increase effect. We looked into common conventions of the information that is included on the back of CD covers, and chose to include:

- Track Listings
- Composer and copyright information
- Produced by
- Links to her websites
- Bar code for ease of purchase

These all serve to make the product seem overall much more real to life, obeying product conventions and improving upon realism. To further emphasise this, we added an additional feature of a CD Spine, which would again serve to make the product seem more realistic and like a real media product overall. We created cohesion with other sections of the CD cover, using the Scrabble lettering style from the front cover as the typographical code for the spine. Additionally, the background for the image on the spine was an extension of the image used on the back cover of the CD sleeve, thereby allowing a certain element of fluidity and harmony in the construction of the packaging.

Editing Diary: 5

In today's lesson, we finally finished editing the narrative string of our music video. We are not entirely finished yet, as we will spend then remaining few lessons making final additions and amendments, but at least now we have a full length, almost completed video. I feel this has provided our group with a massive confidence boost, as we were beginning to feel as it our video would never be finished.

We mostly spent this lesson editing the flashback scenes in the park. We did encounter a few problems - for example, we took two spinning shots of Oscar to create the playful flashback scene of the couple spinning around together in the park, and we realised that in the shot that turned out to be the more favorable of the two, a major continuity error was present in that he was wearing a jacket instead of just the vest - furthermore, this was the same jacket used in the unhappier modern day scenes, ruling this clip unusable if we did not wish to confuse the audience in departing from the basic visual themes we had established. Fortunately, we had the initiative to take a second shot for exactly this sort of purpose, which although involved a much closer angle than the original shot, was still usable and still created the same effect. We also realised that we had failed to take a long shot of the couple spinning together, in order to convey clearly what was actually happening in that section of the video. However, we felt that this did not create a major problem, as it was still fairly obvious what was occurring, and we tried to emphasise this further through the use of a shot-reverse-shot between the two, implying they were spinning at the same time, allowing the audience to decipher the meaning behind the portrayal.

Another issue we found was in the shots of them sitting on the bench in the park before running away. Whilst filming, we felt that the light in this scene was almost ideal, as it was bright and slightly silhouetted the characters, adding a sense of intimacy and closeness between the two characters, contrasting highly with the representation of their relationship in the modern day. However, when it came to editing these clips, we discovered that the direct sunlight actually created a full beam of light directly down the centre of the frame - while we felt this could work in our favour, as a manipulation of the common conventional feature of natural lighting in order to imply the impending sense of separation between the two that is to come, we eventually decided against using these clips in our final product, as we felt it would just be too visually disruptive.


Our video ends with a long shot of the couple coming together again, taking each others hands and 'disappearing into the sunset', in a classic romantic style. We have decided to leave this clip in at it's full length, allowing it to trail out, parallel with the ending of the song. We intend to later apply a conventional feature of a fade out to black, in order to heighten the sense of softness and fluidity that has been a common theme throughout our final video.

Finished Ancillary Texts: Magazine Advert

This was the image we used for our final magazine advert that we created at the i-City Learning Centre today. We chose this image as we felt it effectively represented the conventional style of the genre as well as the image of the artist. It portrayed the artist in the fairly typical innocent and youthful light that we were aiming for in terms of representation, whilst also emphasising the running visual theme of nature. Additionally, we felt this was a fairly successful image as it is framed in such a way that shows the entire body, allowing for full dominance of the frame, as well as leaving half the frame vacant, providing the perfect space to include all the information that is conventionally included on a magazine advert.

In terms of the actual image, we did very little editing, as we felt the tones and colours of the image were at their best as they were. One thing we did do was combine the image with another photograph to create the best possible overall effect. We liked the main image best in terms of framing as Beth was right to the edge of the frame, and the guitar was at a visible angle. However, we felt that it would have been a much more effective image overall had we been able to see her full body in the frame, as opposed to cutting off the feet. To overcome this, we found a similar image in which the feet were fully visible, and set about merging this section onto the main image in order to increase effect. To do this, we first copied the section we wanted to edit onto the original image, and pasted it in a new layer above the original. We then used the eraser tool to get rid of any irrelevant outside sections, and the blend and smudge tools in order to merge the images together and make he image look authentic. I feel this was something that we managed to achieve relative success with, as when we asked for feedback at this stage, nobody seemed to be able to notice any difference.

We had previously research magazine adverts, so we had a good idea of the product conventions we needed to include. As Gabrielle Aplin is a relatively small scale artist, we decided it would be beneficial to include a quote of a review on the advert in order to maximise selling potential. This is due to the fact that she is not a big name, so would need a different method rather than a recognised logo in order to give the product selling power. The quote we used was a review from The Guardian, as we felt this was a publication that fitted well with this particular genre of music, and could potentially be real to life.

We used a similar font to the one we used on the CD cover to aid synergy and cohesion between the products. It was not, however, the exact same font, so perhaps if we were to do it again then it would be more effective to ensure the use of the exact same fonts across each product. This was an effect that we have successfully, I feel, managed to achieve with the use of the Scrabble tiles as a typeface, working to create a visual link between all three products, as well as to create a form of recognisable logo for the artist that would hopefully create a connection with the audience and grow to become recognisable.

Some of the information we included on the advert was a small insert of the CD cover itself, which created an obvious link between the products, and showed the audience what exactly was being advertised. We also included the product conventions of links to discover more about the artist, as well as detailing the formats in which the album would be available. We decided that due to the folkier attributes of her musical style, the tracks would be likely to be available on alternative formats such as that of vinyl, implying a more vintage and conventional style to the music.