- 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In our music video we decided to follow certain conventions of the music video such as the performance crossed with a loose narrative, fast and rhythmic cuts to compliment the sound track and engaging to the viewer, this was inspired by theories by Andrew Goodwin.
The use of the “behind the scene” studio location to show the artists are usually used in freestyle videos on the internet or remix or cover videos, these locations are recognisable with artists very into their music and it’s a personal window into the making to the music we listen to, it is also linked into the internet (2.0) generation where YouTube is the main site used for music consumption.
The use of other locations such as the park and outdoor stage was a sort of documentation as well as a performance as we are with the artist just sort of hanging out and getting a performance.
We used Andrew Godwins music video theory specifically to construct elements for our music video along with genre conventions. Rapid cuts and genre related visuals compliment the music and amplifies the music and performance shots amplifying the lyrics through performance shots showing medium close ups of our “stars” creating a sort of “a star image”, giving the video an iconic, low budget, “do it yourself” feel that can relate directly to our target audience. We decided to not use any intertextual references since the track is a throwback in itself with modern artists lending vocals.
We used performance shots dominantly to create a star image of both actors/singers, as well as adding a slight voyeuristic touch it is also another convention we have decided to include in our video. The minimal storyline and visuals are challenging the conventions in a sense that the story line and visuals are meant to be a fast and not 100% clear, just glimpses to imply the idea of a flashback or memories flashing on screen to give a loose narrative as the song itself has a loose narrative to its lyrics.
Editing techniques are inspired by me looking at dubstep video “shot yourself in the foot again” by Example and Skream. The cuts are on beat with the music and compliment the melodic bass. Our editing technique uses the cuts in the same way but superimposing two images to give a better sense of disorientation and a flashback quality where you are not quite sure what you are focusing on rather than showing a full on narrative.
Also showing a shot of the song title on a computer
- 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
How do different things like star image effect, and representation with star image and the artist (hot have you constructed the representation of the artist)
Genre importance and audience to the genre (sub genre)
Branding (typography, branding related to marketing)
Mise en scene andtextual analasys and how and why you created your mise en scene and how effective it is. RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AUDIENCE. Digi pack stuff too
In the video our actors/singers/stars are represented as fun, playful young people with talent, we chose to reflect this on our front cover and Ad, we hope use this element as a selling point and this should fit in with the tone and mood of the song. This affected the video and digipack in the sense of instead of having a conceptual theme it will be more focused on iconography.
I chose to not focus on a straight up star image but to have a colourful and abstract edge to the digipack and the blurred lights over the two actors was an idea that I thought reflected the chilled vibe and urban theme of the video, also the colour scheme reflected the chilled vibe the song has. The video seemed to have an “edge” to so in the final drafts I chose to have our stars through shapes to make more striking and interesting visuals opposed to a conventional portrait, explored in drafts and ideas. The font used was chosen especially because it was a casual font yet didn’t have too many connotations attached to it. The clothing of the performers was casual yet not conforming to any genre (eg: hoodies and caps to connect with the hip hop crowd), this look is open to connect to any genre or subgenre of music and attracting maybe more than just garage fans, this also reflects onto the digipack and the advertisement.
The idea is to use an urban setting to connect with the audience and urban themes to solidify this in the ancillary texts. Keeping a low budget feel, this connects with audience as our target audience is used to consuming music from youtube and the video has the feel that it is made be one of the target audience themselves.
Without feeling glamorous, the stars of the music video connect with the audience by looking at the camera, smiling and having a relaxed body language as if they are with the audience performing especially for them. We chose a low budget studio setting for our performance shots to show the passion for music and show the creation of the music and pringing the music video to a more personal level. With the “narrative” the “London at night” theme connects with most of the target audience as it is recognisable and the aftermath of a party scene along with fireworks creates a celebratory feel, the fun fair then the stumbling home creates a live atmosphere winds down and the drunken night continues at home, relatable to most teens who have experienced this.
All of these features are important to conforming to the genre/subgenre because it solidifies its place with all the other music videos and ancillary texts but standing out at the same time. It conforms to the conventions but at the same time brings a few more features to the table such as having pop and indie artists singing on a garage instrumental and not be generic.
- 3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From constant audience feedback throughout the editing stages as well as the pre production stage, it has help us ground our ideas and stick to themes and ideas that would appeal and attract our target audience. Reoccurring themes such as couples, parties, love and the “night out” along with the “morning after” all reflects on our target audience socially and just by having the themes present makes the video more entertaining. The feedback from the music video was mainly positive and the feedback told us the fast cuts and contrasting visuals were engaging and compliment the visuals and was a interesting break from the performance shots.
- 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Firstly, using the Cannon xm2’s for shooting the music video was a lot easier than using the Panasonic to record on tape. Using SD cards gave us more freedom when it came to shooting indoors and outdoors; we didn’t have to worry about the tape jamming in the changes in humidity or temperature and overall the cameras were smaller and this made travelling easier. The only downside was that all the settings were automatic so we didn’t have as much creative control when it came to focusing and auto focus did create some aesthetic problems at times.
Using Final cut pro to edit was easy, accessible and I learned to explore more techniques to recover or enhance the music video. Colour correction was the main filter used to enhance visuals, it pushed the visual quality past a home-made video quality. Using opacity to superimpose images gave a flash back quality, it allowed me to show scenes from “the night before” without revealing exactly what happened and this added to the effect of being hung over, not remembering what you did last night.
Websites we used were sites like slideshare, prezzy and youtube to upload videos, documents and slideshows and use embedded links to use them on the blog. Not only were they easy and practical, they made the blog look better.
During research, Facebook, Blackberry Messenger and youtube helped when it came to audience research. Comments on youtube videos where a place where we observed peoples feedback on our and similar videos. For example out “prelim” task got two positive feedback comments, one from the producer of the original track and one from a random user. Blackberry and facebook let us contact our target audience and ask questions using instant messaging services and screen grabs for recording the conversations.
When searching for artist information or record label research and even looking at past products, google was the easiest way of finding what we needed to look for. For an archive of album covers, I simple searched for album covers to compare and get inspiration for our digipack.
I mainly used photoshop to put together the digipack and the magazine advert. Since there are preset layouts installed onto photoshop it was easy to customize and create a digipack/advert with maximum creative control. With choosing font i had control over the length, spacing, colour, transparency of the text, and if the font i chose wasn’t to my liking i could manipulate it to suit my vision. Without using any presets, a vision in my head could easily be transferred onto the screen and perfected over a few drafts.
