In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
There are many conventions of music videos which we needed
to consider when producing our music video such as camera shots, movements,
mise-en-scene and editing. In particular with music videos for indie music,
they use a wide range of camera shots mainly close ups, long shots and mid
shots.
Generally indie music videos are very simplistic; therefore
we only used a few camera movements such as zooms and pans. In our music video
we used one zoom and a few pans. I think the zoom we used was very effective of
showing good camera skills and also adding emphasis to the narrative part of
our music video. When the boy is following and sits down on the bench next to
her, the camera then zooms up onto both of them as the girl gets up to walk
away. When the audience are watching this clip they are drawn to the fact that the
girl is ignoring the boy and the fact that she is walking away from him, which
is giving the audience good knowledge on the narrative.
Costume was a very important part of our music video. In our
narrative part we support the theory of the male gaze, in the clip where the
guitarist is flirting with another girl, the girl is blonde haired and is
wearing black and red. The male gaze theory suggests that blonde women are more
attractive and the colour red has connotations of seduction and lust. When his
girlfriend enters the park to see the guitarist flirting with another girl, she
is wearing green. Green connotes jealousy, which is the mood that this girl is
feeling in this clip. We decided to do this in order to make the audience feel
more involved in the music video and to understand the emotions and feelings
the actors are having. In the performance aspect of our video we chose to have
all the band members wearing smart clothing, all wearing dull dark colours such
as grey and black. In result of this the audience will focus purely on the
music and not the band members.
Our editing was included quick cuts all the way through,
because we think made our music video reflect our genre of indie the best. By
using quick cuts creates tension and suspense to the audience, which fits right
in with our narrative part of our video. When looking at existing videos, they
seem to use very limited transitions in their music videos and tend to look
more relaxed. In contrast to pop music videos which are extremely eccentric and
colourful. When editing our video we decided after putting all the clips onto
the timeline that in fact the music video flowed well without adding
transitions and gave it a more ‘individual’ edge to it. The song ‘Footsteps’ is
mainly the same tone all the way through, therefore by having quick cuts and
short clips keeps our audiences attention by having a lot going out which will persuade
out audience to carry on watching the music video.
We however broke the 180 degree rule in our music video,
where the girls back was to the camera. This was in the narrative part of our
music video when the girl opens the door to see the band. This rule is rarely
broken in any types of media, however we came to the conclusion that our music
video still worked well even though we broke this rule.
When looking at the conventions of a digipak under the indie genre
are yet again very plain and simplistic. Digipaks roughly six to eight sides to
a digipak, they include a recognisable font,
name of the band/artist, name of the album, list of songs, price, barcode,
record label, song lyrics, images of the band/artist, history of the
band/artist and thank yous from the band/artist. After researching into existing digipaks from
the indie genre from bands such as Kasabian and The Black Keys, we realised
that they lack vibrancy and colour. This is why we came to the conclusion of
using black and white as our overall theme. Indie music digipaks lack much
further information from the band; therefore we only included the name of the
band, the album of the band, list of the songs, barcode, barcode, record label
and song lyrics for one song. The images we used on our digipak reflected the
conventions used in an indie digipak, by the images not showing the band
members faces, this reflects the genre of indie as they believe the music is
more important than the fame and image of the band. Indie bands generally are
selling their music and not themselves. After researching further into indie
digipaks, we decided we would not include any information on the history of the
band and did not include any thank yous from the band. The reason we did not
include these is because indie bands tend to focus more so on the music, rather
than giving their fans information on themselves. If we were producing a
digipak for a different genre such as pop music, we would have included much
more information, however we thought by not including this information it
reflected the genre of indie much more.
We investigated into the conventions of real magazine
adverts then main ones include, recognisable font, name of the band/artist,
name of the album, when the album is being released, website address, where you
can buy their album, feedback and ratings from local businesses and tour dates.
When planning our magazine advert and researching further into the adverts used
by existing indie bands we came to the conclusion that we were only going to
include a select few of the conventions. We included the name of the band, name
of the album, the date the album is being released, their website and feedbacks
and ratings. We included the same font as we included in our digipak, this will
be a recognisable font to our target audience and this font will be
automatically associated with the band.
When looking into existing indie band
adverts it gave to our attention that very few actually had images with the
bands faces showing, we liked this idea as it would fit right in with the theme
of our digipak and also the genre of indie. The lighting in this image is one
of my favourite parts of our magazine advert, I like how the shadows of the
band members are visible which I think fits perfectly with the genre of indie
as indie music is very edgy and mysterious which are connotations of shadows. From our research we discovered that indie
genre likes their advertisements to be plain and simple, which I think we
gained our inspiration from for both our ancillary tasks. We included feedback
from Q magazine, NME and The Daily Mail; we chose these three as they are all
going to be opinions from different perspectives- NME being the main critic of
bands particularly from the indie genre. Originally we produced two plans for
our magazine adverts, one including the tour dates and one without. After
gaining more feedback from out target audience it seemed that they preferred
the advert that did not include the tour dates. Therefore when selecting our
final magazine advert we took this into consideration and the fact that the
poster including the tour dates looked more compact and untidy, making the
poster less effective on the audience to draw them in to read the advert.
Our use of conventions on our music video and both our
ancillary tasks will appeal to our target audience. Our target audience will be
people who are already interested in indie music; by not have the band members
showing I think will attract more of the female audience due to the fact that
the band members are teenage boys. The link between the footsteps image and the
name of the album which is ‘Footsteps’ will help greatly in attracting our
audience in due to the fact that this will be easily recognisable for the
audience.
How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary tasks?
Having ‘brand identity’ and a ‘house style’ is important
when creating multiple media products so that the band/artist can easily be
recognised by their audience. When producing out music video and both our
ancillary tasks we made sure they all linked in some way. We have created brand
identity by linking the image of footsteps with the name of the album; we then
used this same image in our magazine advert. We also used the same fonts
throughout the digipak and magazine advert; these will then be recognised by
their audiences and will automatically be associated with the band ‘The
Jefferson Brick’. Our theme throughout our music video, digipak and magazine
advert was black and white, with exception to the narrative part of the music
video which is bright and in colour in order to differentiate between the
performance and narrative aspects of the video. The style of our music video
and both ancillary tasks are all very simplistic and dark, both of the
backgrounds of the digipak and magazine advert are black. This is suggesting
straight away to the audience that the genre of the music is indie, which is
backed up by the images on both the digipak and magazine advert where none of
the band members faces are visible.
I think our digipak design will sell our song due to the
fact that the images on the front cover is an image of footsteps which relates
well back to the name of the album ‘Footsteps’. When our audience looks at the
front cover they will instantly know that the image of footsteps is something
to do with the band, which will draw them in to find out about the album. Indie
music will already appeal to our target audience, which is why having the theme
of black and white will draw our audience in as these colours are usually associated
with indie music. By using the theme of black and white is suggesting to the
audience that the band are not bothered about the publicity and fame therefore
their advertisements and merchandise are simple and straight to the point. The
colour black is also suggesting to the audience that there is a hint of mystery
involved in the band, which will draw the audience in to wanting to listen to
their album.
The images uses throughout the digipak and magazine advert
are all in black and white. By having the band members facing the back on an
image used on both the digipak and the advert is suggesting to the audience to
listen to the music and t go and see the band perform. As the bad are facing
the back suggesting that the audience should follow them and open the digipak
to listen to their music. By having ‘brand identity’ and linking both our
digipak and magazine advert they will help sell each other to our audience. By
using the same images on the both the ancillary tasks, they will be more likely
to be recognisable to the audience. I think our advert will help to sell our
digipak due to the fact that it has limited information on the advert,
therefore the audience will want to find out more about the album.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
After hearing the feed back, if I was going to produce this music video again I would change the lighting slightly on some aspects of the performance part. The lead singers face was slightly washed out by the bright lights on his face. I think also due to people having confusion with the narrative aspect of the music video, I would add more narrative to the video, to explain it further. Due to the fact you are able to see the signs and posters in the background of some clips, if I was to improve this video I would zoom up on the images which had the posters in as I think it looked unprofessional.
The process of producing and editing my music video I've been taught that it is a very time consuming process and particularly when filming you need to have good story boards with timings on into order to get the correct clips to fit with the lyrics. Also when filming you need to play the music in the back ground in order for the singer to mime in time, so that when we put it on the timeline it will be in sync with the music.
From our feedback our performance aspect was the most popular, majority of people liked the short clips and quick cuts. The variety of shots was also a positive from most people about our music video which kept the audience involved and interested in the music video.
When first editing out music video we found that due to the fact that the song was very repetitive and all in the same tone, that the longer clip we used just dragged on a bit. We came to the conclusion that the audience would get bored and uninterested in the music video if we had long clips, therefore we overcome this by using smaller clips and quick cuts. Which when we got feedback from our target audience we realised this was the right thing to do in order to make the audience feel more involved and interested when watching the music video.
How did you use media technologies in the construction
and research, planning and evaluation stages?
When working on our construction and research, planning and
evaluation of our work I used a variety of media technologies. Blogger was one
of the main website which we used throughout our work. Blogger helped me to
plan my timing s of when I am going to do certain aspects of my work and also
prepared me by blogging and researching further into music videos, theories and
the indie genre as a whole. Blogger was very easy to use and was a good way of
posting blogs as I went along and whilst filming, editing and producing my
ancillary tasks.
Prezzi was another different form of media technology which
I used when writing blogs, it was a more fun and exciting approach than simply
writing my blogs in huge paragraphs. It was a more visual way where I was able
to add images to the prezzi presentation and made it much easier to analyse
existing music videos, digipaks and magazine adverts. I found prezi difficult
to use as I didn’t quite understand the different paths you created, but once I
played it back it all seemed clear to me.
On the Apple macs we were able to edit, research and blog on
them which was a huge help to our work. Apple Macs were a main technology that
we used particularly in our production of our music video and editing our music
video. Final cut on the apple macs are very detailed and you can do so many
different things to edit our footage which we filmed. The benefits of this was
that we were able to change and manipulate the shots and clips we had taken, to
make it fit better with the song once we put the filming on the timeline. We
had difficulty trying to figure out how to add font to the beginning of our
music video stating the name of the band and the name of the song. We did not
realise that you had to drag the font actually onto the timeline, in order to
show over the top of the clip. Final cut helped us to produce a much more
professional music video by being apple to edit our work on the timeline with
the song on the timeline as well, which made it much easier when trying to lip
sync.
When filming our music video and taking images for our
ancillary tasks we used my SLR Nikon camera. This was a great camera which was
able to film as well as take image, which was also compatible with the school
tripods. The video footage was able to be played and edited on final cut in
order for us to edit the footage with ease. One problem we did have with the
camera is that when zooming on the camera, you can sometimes accidently move
the other camera lens out of focus, which we soon noticed when watching our
practice performance which we produced prior to our final video.
Photoshop was used in the production of our digipak and
magazine advert. This was very beneficial to us when changing the images to
black and white to give the images more of an indie feel. The main image we
used Photoshop for was the image I drew in chalk on the black paper. I edited
this image on Photoshop in order for the footsteps drawn out in white to be
highlighted above the black paper. We managed to add a higher impact on the
image by having a bigger contrast between the black and white of the footsteps,
with the help of Photoshop. Photoshop has helped us to create the right style
and colours of the images which we produced and gave the images more of a
professional look to them.
I also used many internet sites such as Google where I
researched the theories to find out more information on them. This helped me
when planning and storyboarding our music video as we were able to decide which
theories we wanted to support when producing our music video and which theories
were not. When planning and producing our digipak we used a website called ‘Da
font’ this was where you can search through a range of different style fonts,
by doing this it gave us more inspiration on which style of fonts we would like
to use for out digipak and advert.
YouTube was also used for when we were
planning our music video; we filmed a practice performance which we then
uploaded to YouTube and also onto our blog. This was beneficial in gaining
further feedback on our plans and ideas for our final music video performance. YouTube
was easy to use and also compatible with blogger, which helped when trying to
upload videos onto our blog.
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