Question 1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?

Our task was to create a promotional package for a band this meant we had to think, develop and create a music video addition to two tasks which were to create a diqipak and an advertisement that could feature in a magazine. We chose a local group of boys who are starting up a band, who want to get there music out there and create a following of fans to enjoy their music. We had pick one of their songs to create a music video for their single release. An Advantage of choosing a local band meant that they could feature in the actual music video, instead of getting actors to stand in, this caused to have better lip-sync in and guitar/drum playing. This meant that people didn’t have to learn how to play the song from scratch, instead this would mean for easier editing as they knew their own song. Another benefit was that we could have their influence and ideas of what they wanted in a music video, this gave us ideas that we could develop for ourselves. Making sure that the band had their say. So we could create a creative, unique video that everyone liked and had the best of everyone's ideas.

The purpose of creating a music promo is to advertise a local band called DanceGrenade who are trying to gain a following by their individual style of music and to entertain the audience watching—so they will want to watch the video over and over again. We created a Digipak for our band-DanceGrenade, the main and original purpose of the digipak is to house and protect the CD, so it can be sold to the artist’s fans. This are also seem as collectors issues, with a limited number produced, causing dedicated fans or collector to be interested. 

Another purpose to creating a digipak is to advertise the band, create a unique, individual piece of art for their front cover that could encourage potential fans to purchase their music. The purpose of the advertisement is to be put in magazines like Q or Rolling Stone to advertise the latest release of our bands album to attract audiences to become familiar to their music and encourage them to purchase the digipak. It is helps publicise the single we created the music video for. We finally hope as a combination of these will create a buzz about them, giving the target market an idea of what they are about and what their music values/style.

We hope as a group we can create a unique, representation of the band’s song, to make a quality and creative video that has the ability to be played over and over again—causing the song to get more and more plays allowing it to see seen and heard by our target audience, of male and females between the ages of 15-40.

Taking inspiration straight away from this digipak of Katy Perry Teenage Dream album has a strong conternewaty throughout the design. The common theme of Candy is seen from the CD to the different covers, the sense we get is that her music is fun, sweet and from the pop genre. It really gives the audience a strong idea about the type/theme of the music might be, it appeals to her fans are the colours are Yellow and Pinks—girly. Whereas the front has a provocative theme, appealing to the male audience—this is a clear contradiction. The design of the pack features heavily of images of the artist in this case Katy Perry, showing us that she’s the one and only star, it’s her music and her product. The photos have a clear reference to a cloud like dream that she is living her dreams in reality—this is minored by the title of the album Teenage dream, representing to her fans it was her ambition in life to be a pop star. The type of photos are very typical of the pop artist genre, where we see Katy Perry in the centre of the shot, where the audiences eyes are straight away drawn to her, showing her fans that she is just as normal as they are We hope to create a digipak that does do this, that it sticks to the music genre conventions, this makes sure that we target the right audience and that it appeals to them—causing them to buy and popularise the band. It was interesting to analysis what we think works and does, this caused discussed on what we all wanted to achieve in our digipak—so we were all in an agreement right from the start.
 
A music video almost gives the story behind the song—it allows the audience to maybe see what the song means if they didn’t already know, maybe causing fan to relate and connect to the song make it personal to them. Adele’s hometown single is a key example of this, as it is an emotional song that through the video helps fans think of a time they felt the same emotional that’s shown in the music video. The conventions that help convey this feeling is the use of putting an effect on the shots using black and white, gives softness to the video, the link between old photographs of a happier time have resistant to the promo. The use of close ups on Adele show her emotion, the way the xamera is always movement is significant represents the continue development of her feelings that one minutes everything is okay the next heartbreak.

 In the majority of music videos of a similar genre there commonly links between the lyrics of the song and the video in the narrative parts of the video. Post-modernism--where texts are created by copying and reusing ideas / images that have been used in a previous texts. An example of this is Madonnas Materials girls opening is an exact copy of the Marilyn Monroe film--with the exact copy of the dress and male dancers and the choreography. But seem in some of Fat boy slims videos they are often more playful, shocking, or even unconventional at time as a result of taking inspiration from other resources. This video also featured live performance of Adele singing her song when walking along the river Thames in London. This makes the song become personal, as there are no fancy backgrounds or dance routines, this is her as an artist showing her talent for singing and song writing—representing the raw emotion in the song which in turn causes it to be more powerful. The type of live performance shots are causal, as if they are just thoughts running through her head, again representing her raw emotion. This concept makes her as an artist relatable to her fans, as if the audience watching the video has access to the real thoughts of the musician, that she is just an ordinary woman going through the same things as everyone does—Love, heartbreak and pain. This video also have strong repeatability, although it is simple in conventions, locations, costume and artist, there is true feeling and love behind the song, that every time it is being watched you notice/feeling something different. The location of central London makes everyone recognise where Adele is, creating a sense of home-this is a place where everyone knows.  

Camera-Music videos often tend to include many long shots, close ups and mid shots this tend to be popular across a range of music genres. This helps create emphasis on the artist-who’s is mostly in the centre of screen, main focus. It also forces the audience to take notice of the location and emotion taking place in the video. The close ups are used not only to show emotion but to reflect the words and meaning of the song with the movement of the lips of the singer.  The use of long shots in a video tend to help tell the narrative, show location, live performance of all band members playing—head to toe. These type of give the audience the idea of the world in which the band live in.

Camera movement is often used to follow or trace the singer, for example the tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots. This gives the perspective of an audience member is in a gig environment shot, achieving the mood of being in the moment watching a live bands performance.  This adds excitement and pace to the music video. This particular camera movement is seen in music genres of alternative, Indie and Rock—where the atmosphere and music takes centre stage in the production.  These genres traditionally have a target audience of fans that are likely to attend gigs—so advertising the gig atmosphere within the music video is going to attract people to pay for tickets. Also with this music genre this often rely on ticket sales for gig as a source of money as their music doesn’t appeal to the mass market like Pop music does—so very little album sales. With fans buying gig tickets causes the band to survive in the music industry and continue making music.

Mise-en-scene this is everything in the shot and arrangement of props and performance in the video. It puts importance on the representation of something; an example of this is Mad by Nero. The video involves him walking alone, being in a room alone. This sends a message to the audience of isolation and sadness/lost. This is helped by the costume he is wearing dark clothes represent depression, wanting to almost be a shadow in the world-unnoticed. The lighting has a similar theme; this is just a few examples of mise-en-scene in a music video. The importance of mise-en-scene in a music video is extremely important as these are the things that the audience notices. The use of costume, paints the personality of the actor or the artist, by the clothes that they wear. For example the use of costume that featured in the video. (ADD VIDEO)

Setting is a convention that you can’t help but notice during watching a music video. The use of location can vary from music genres for example a pop video might feature the setting of studios or urban decay environments in contrast with our band’s music genre of Indie/Alternative of outside spaces and rundown locations. You can see the contrast there with Cheryl Cole Fight for this Love and Blurs Coffee and Tv. Where you can see the contrast of locations, which influence our views on the music and the artist.

Lighting-is hugely important in a video, it picks out what the audience sees and doesn’t. The use of black and white light emphasises or shadows a scene. Artificial lighting is often used to enhance the look of the artist showing that they are the aim focus of the video. The use of high key lighting on a video, for example stage lighting that shines on to the band or artist adds emphasis onto them used in live performance shots mainly. An example of this being used is in our music video in the parts where we film at Mama Lizzies the lighting brightly shined on the faces of the performers.

Editing Jump cuts are very popular in music videos. As they create pace in the video, making sure that the editing is in time with the beat of the song. With dance/Pop genre of music building to a point is important as it allows for excitement to build for the drop in the song. It type of editing technique allows for quick jump of a range of different shot whether it is a close or long shot it still works. This is because it allows the editor to suddenly change the pace of the video in time with the music-to the beat. Other transitions like a fade and dissolves are sometimes used--dream affect.  An example of jump cut used to create pace is artists like Rihanna on her video Rude Boy, which feature of mix of different shots that can together for the pace of the song. Editing isn’t always fast, with the Lady Gaga video Telephone which has a strong narrative through the video, before the song even begins has a mix. As the narrative is being told the editing is conventional for a TV Programme or a film with a few long duration shots that tell the story, but as soon at the song tempo comes in it dramatically changes, with a huge amount of different shots with a very short duration on screen. This doesn’t allow the audience to keep up at some points as the flashing images appear on screen.  

Narrative is almost always subordinate to performance. A song rarely tells a complete narrative--not the full begins to end that you would see for a film or a book. This often keeps the audience watching the whole music video from start to end, as they are hoping to see the ending of story created in the promo. It also allows for playback ability, because there isn’t a certain ending as the audience you could interrupt any ending you want. Causing the fans to make up their own mind about what the narrative is about open to ideas and can to make personal to the fans. Music videos often don’t rely on more traditional styles of narrative that you might see if in a film or TV programme.  As the video tend to be incomplete with very amount of characters, plotlines and setting, that doesn’t always tell the complete song. Although against these typical videos sometimes dialogue is used at the begin of the video to set the scene for the audience, so it puts context to the song before it is being played. An example of this is Taylor Swift “I knew you were trouble” The live performance is important is a music video as I shows the band was actual musical talent and merit to their music through playing their instrument or singing along. It also the audience members not to get bored of narrative through flicking between the narrative and live performance it becomes more interesting to watch—appealing to the repeat playability of the music video.  So fan will watch the video over and over again. Another reason why this is an important element in a music video is that audience gets the impression and vive of what their favourite band might be like live in concert, causing them to sell tickets for their gigs.

But there are some music videos that go against any type of conventions, an example of this is Queens Bohemian Rhapsoy, one of the most influential music video of it time, it paid the way for artists to experiment, be creative and think outside of the box when producing a music video. The promo is a total of 6 minutes—in contrast with the traditional 3 to 4 minutes conventional video are. This broke expectations, rules and tradition to cause a truly unique, creative expression—that changed the industry. The use of lighting in the first shot, it consists of one light shining slightly over their faces to reveal a very little amount of the band member’s faces—that sense of not making everything visible to the audience creates that sense of mystery. Instead of other artists in the 70s and 80s where the musician was in constant light—the force was always on them in the video, there were the star and it was to publicise them as people, instead of putting emphasis on the song they wanted to get famous. Compared to this video the band didn’t see themselves as famous, it was more about the music, making good, new, creative sounds.   Another element of the video that was unconventional was the amount and type of editing techniques that were used in the six minute long promo the use of cross fades in particular a close up of the lead singer Freddie Mercury, were we can’t properly see his eyes it becomes unnerving for the audience—again not a typical mood we feel in a music video, there distance from the footage to the audience, going against the convention case in pop videos.  The use of live footage, had never been use before the release of this video, they would traditionally like along with the recorded song. With the band playing their instruments gives the feel that they are real musicians—a technique used regularly in today’s video.

The music video by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen Good Times had particular influence for us on our music video with the idea of friendship, excitement, parties and adventure. This would amplification to the lyrics on our song, which represents friendship for one night-of celebrating being young, free and together. This video represents the similar sorts of themes I hope to create within our music video the use of location-the woods sparked potential ideas with the colours that are created on screen, looks visually appealing.  To create a mood the audience can connect with of happiness, joy and fun with humour and friendship. The use of lip-syncing was continue throughout the video as typical convention for the pop genre.

The elements that influenced us were the use of environment—with the woods, it looked visually very affective on screen with the light of the fire on the black background of the night, was something we really hoped that we could repucate  in our own video. Another element that we really liked was the mix of narrative and performance and how it was put together. It took different angles, shot type or subject matter put it together in time with the beat and it worked. It made us think despite having different elements we could pull it together as along as we have something that continues throughout everything.

Another music video that was particularly liked by the band we were working with was Here We Go Again by Ok Go, this was a unique music video. That didn’t respond to any of the typical conventions of music videos we had researched, but we were interested with why the boys wanted us to look at it and what we could take away from it. The use of humour was very much liked by the group and was an element we really hope to put in our video—this really fitted into the image the way the boys wanted to be presented—that they are friends having fun and making music. It’s unique, creative and hilarious it has been a huge inspiration and really made us passionate about producing a music promo that was brilliant.

These are our location shots with the band members featured in Bourne Woods, inspired by the Good Times music video, but we decided to add our own ideas into the mix. To feature performance shots instead of narrative. This shot in particular is of the band playing live the song with their instruments and singing, this makes for a real representation of the bands attitude/feelings towards the song. 
It allowed us to capture their friendship, talent and love of music. It was a fairly conventional shot and idea of having the band play live, but I think it was needed and showcased their talent. It lighting and framing on these shots look brilliant as the audience is able to see them playing through the long shots but with close ups of the faces to capture emotion. This particular technique is popular with the alternative music genre video seen on such videos like Kings and Queens by 30 Seconds to Mars.

 

Question 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

(ADD VIDEO)

I think the products we created from the music video to the advertisement and the digipak all have a single core focus and style that fits with the band, their personality and style. We have tried to promote the song and the band as much as we could through these products, to promote them as much as possible as this a key reference to why they wanted us to do this for them. All the tasks have a familiar house style; by the way we used the same front for the band’s name, the similar theme of paint splatters in a kind of abstract, unique, different kind of way. This use of one similar image repeated throughout the bands products, makes it unique and iconic t them. Once you see it you almost can’t help me think of the band it was become their identity. The original idea of the paint splatters came from our research into the alternative album covers where we discovered the Stone Roses album art work. Their cover features a mix of greens, yellows, browns and blacks in a Jackson Pollock style piece, that is full of layered paint splattered all over the canvas.

The popular culture at this time was to be daring and different they represented this by their music and their album art. A similar inspiration was the velvet underground album that featured the art work of Andy Warhol. He was a globally famous artist that created the movement of pop art—his works were often prints using bright abstract colours. He featured in his work the trends of the decade with movie stars-Marilyn Monroe and also more unique objects like a tin of tomato soup.  For this particular album art there is a print of a banana in black and yellow colours. This is a bold, choice for an album as it has no relation to their music, their songs—but it gives the audience the impression of what kind of artists they are, individual, unique, daring and creative. This is a similar feel we wanted for our digipak but not to the same extreme of using a banana.

We have created a brand image through all of our products by using the same colour theme of bright abstract inspired shades in the darker specimen of the colour wheel. The use of colours like purple, orange, blue and green, in the form of paint splaters. We thought this really represented the name of the song perfectly--as it is called Korma Chameleon. As a group we found it hard to thik how we could create products that represented them, their music,  the song, and relates back to the video. So we started to think of the connations and ideas that came with the idea of Chameleons, we know that they change colour in order to bend in with their background. This started off idea about how we could possibly use this idea, as a result we played around with the colour contrast on photoshop of the paint spalters and created some bright beautiful colours.
That represent the bands personalit and through the use of photos it also relates back to the video affectively--without looking out of place. As you can see by the picture there is a strong visal link between this animal and our digipak/advert colours scheme .

We use the colour white for the text because, we wanted it to stand out from the busy background, this also made it easy to read for all audiences. It simple colours looks really affective against the more styled background. We used an Internet program called "DaFont" to create the title we looked below the heading "sci fi" as these seemed pretty cool and edgy which is very similar to the band members themselves. So everything we were doing had the band in mind and was important to get right. These are the same ideas we used throughout our products the theme of producing a unique, creative design that are different from what’s already seem in the industry this is the reflection we hope the band’s music is. The picture we used we felt was the best image as it showed their brilliant personality and it doesn't look too made up or fake its true to them and represents the friendship and dynamicrelationship. We used Photoshop to edit out the background so we would only have the band members in the picture.  It was important for us to have a strong band image as it as I have found out through research this is an affective with to launch a new band in the industry—as it helps there fans recognise them from other bands and helps influence potential fans in attracting them by the art work on the album. The brand image has the ultimate goal of helping sell the album/digipak and create publicity for them as artist and become known in the industry. 

The products will be exhibited in the conventional way through the use of music channels—MTV, 4Music, music magazines—Rolling stone, Q or newspapers such as The Times or the Guardian. I chose these companies because they are national known in the UK and popular with the British public. They are at the top of their industry and they are the place where people look for new music, so it is important to feature on these places as this is where our target market will be.  
It was important to go for companies like Q and Rolling Stone because this is are American magazines and we want to appeal to the world and be noticed. Being reviewed or advertised in these magazines with help in this. In particular Q are known for noticing new up and coming talent in the industry , so being feature in there magazine would be the break through the band need as their opinion stand strong with their readers. This will be in conjunction with the release of the album/digipak in record stores or supermarkets. The increase in the amount of download sales has dramatically took off through the popular use of ipods, smartphones and MP3 Players. This means that ITunes is a great platform to showcase the Dance Grenade’s music; I hope the release to buy from this website will allow for maximum coverage globally—this hopefully with spark interest and build the name of the band and their music. This technique reach a large amount of our target market and keeps the mood/feeling of friendship and good, unique creative music that we want represented throughout all of our products. We hope appealing to the download and stores it will broaden our audience and not limit it to yet the people who visit shops to buy the CD. As this particular part of the music industry is becoming more and more popular within the general public, sales have decreased and shops like HMV have been struggling on the high street. So we thought launching our product to a wide range of companies and platforms it would allow us to reach everyone. The growth of social network websites has become a popular form of advertising music bands and artists, this allows them to create a following of fan that can access their music and keep up to date with their latest news and music—this also gives their audience the chance to get to know the artists a bit more personally. Through blog posts, tweets and question, answer sessions. This makes the fan get more involved and create a following for the artists. I think if we didn’t use this method we may miss out on a larger chunk of our target market to promote the new track and artist to. We hope due to the large amount of exposure using these methods, will help the increase in profit it will come from the purchase of the products. We hope to showcase our video through the use of music channels for example MTV, 4Music and NME as they show a similar genre and style of videos, such as ‘The Killers’, ‘Scouting for Girls’ and ‘La Roux’. This would help promote the bands genre and be in keeping with the image they want to show to their fan, this also has another advantage of gaining fans as the platform is global. People could watch such bands as the killers or Ok Go then be attracted to Dance Grenade as a result—open their eyes to new and exciting music.

Question 3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

To gain research for what our potential audience might like, expect and enjoy in a music video was important for us to see as it allowed us to ask people if they liked an initial idea and sparked us to develop something further. We used a wide range of different people to fill out our questionnaire and fill some personally to get an idea of their true reflection of the song and to explain their reasons behind answering a certain question just with a Yes. Our range of people included males and females from the ages of 16 to 40. From students, teachers to family members.  This made sure that our answers were reliable and trustworthy. Although some people did just give the basic answer and other gave details and examples which became really useful when coming up with ideas that could appeal to our potential audience. The people who give us the most information was from the older people we questioned as they had more time to answer, instead of just filling in the questionnaire and not really thinking about what they are doing. Which didn’t make for useful results, although I think the methodology was good maybe, we didn’t ask the right people. I think for next time ask people to take more care of the answers instead of just ticking and doing the minimum. But I am happy with the result we managed to collect, they became really helpful in making sure during producing the video we still had the audience in mind. For the second part of our audience research we  asked a wide range of different people from teenagers to adults, to take part in an interview—where we asked them the questions from the questionnaire and they answered. This gave them chance to maybe explain an idea they had and their honest first impression. An example of this would be “What is your favourite music video and why?” this allowed the people we interview to explain the reason why it was their favourite and how we could use similar elements they liked in our video. So as a group we would learn a lot more from this method than just giving out paper questionnaires.  

 

From the questionnaires and interviews we found out that the typical conventions they thought about in a music video was the use of narrative and performance, should be balanced—so that no one element is more important than other. The result we found were was they liked the song—even if it wasn’t there reference music genre.  The typical convention they wanted from a music video were…I hope to use this examples in our video directly.

We also asked them a question about the visual images they imagined when listening to the song this give us there honest and intimal ideas on what they wanted from a music video. Sparking ideas about how we could develop this information further. Miss Nichol “ “ Jamie Mould “ “ this both had very similar links with the song and give us a starting point to develop from for our music video. This was a valuable question and form of research that helped us be inspired in making a video that our target audience liked.  

For the song personally we played it to our audience and presented a potential idea that relates to the answer of "What's your favourite music video" the reply Ok Go End Love which features some very clear stop motion and editing techniques--this idea is really engaging for us as we could get the real band to perform this instead of using actors. It was good to know the idea we had was good and that we should run with it as a result we gained confidence in the idea and made us passion about producing a great video. Which was an important step to take in the planning and research process of the production? 

We used social network sites Facebook to get feedback for our music video; this is a print screen of what the band thought of the music video, and their friends. We also uploaded the video onto YouTube. As this is a global platform for videos and is used by millions every day, so this was a great way to gain feedback on a video from people who know what they are talking about and from people how might already be fans of the band. This gave us a big amount of feedback from a range of sources, somewhere more useful than others—for example we didn’t get that much from Facebook but YouTube was more helpful,  it was difficult to know how social network sites might respond but we learnt a lot and really opened our eyes what we could do next time.

These comment are valuable in helping us think about the elements we could improve upon for next time specically from Leigh as he has done a degree in Media knows the technicality of creating a music video and different software to use to create a professional looking music video. It was really interesting to get his specialist knowledge on our video. He include some really good points about how to achieve a smooth shot and what kind of software is needed--something I never thought about and getting the shot exactly in time with the song--this is when he showed his experience in the field as we thought it was pretty much bang on. I was really happy with the positive points he made about the mood we created that its fun and suting the song. Overall very helpful comments that we can take on board and consider.

 

The use of producing a teaser promo for our music video allowed audiences to get a taster of what to expect from the full video. This capture audience’s attention as it was funny, creative and well put together, resulting in high expectation for the full video. We released this video on their personal Facebook group the band had set up called DanceGrenade, they have fans of the group and this allowed them to view it. It was great advertising and created build up for the main video, making people excited and interesting in a band they might have forgot about. It worked really well and gave us some good feedback through the comments about what they liked and how the main video could be different from this but still in keeping the humour. 

 

From facebook we also recieved feedback from the band personally via messaging. From what they have said that sounded really passionate and pleased with the result of the music video. They also decided it shared it on there own personal facebook profiles-so everyone could access the video including friends and family. This really showed us that they were proud of what we produced and wanted to let everyone know.This is what they said.

We decided as a group we wanted to conduct some interview to gain some feedback on our music video. We talked to the same people as we did previously, we did this becuase we asked a range of ages and gender, making for an accurlate response from an audience member. In our last interview we question them questions about there intial response to the song and what images and moods came to them when listening, so we thought it was a good idea to ask them to watch the video and see if it meet to there expectations. We found out from the feedback the more older people we asked the more they like the narrative side of the video--commenting "that was my favourite bit" Maybe becuase of the live performance shot were considered to be too dark--lighting wise compared to the rest of the production, which was outside with good natural light. I also think they thought the shots weren't as clean cut as the others in the performance shots, as some were hand held they became wobbly and not as affective in their eyes. Althought this particular comment was out of our control--as we couldn't change the lighting at the event just to suit us filming it was difficult to produce shots that weren't so dark, we did try our best but maybe for next time we shouldn't have film at a gig. Instead taken time to arrange a shooting day with the band to just film them playing. Overall the feedback from the interviews was really useful and helped us understand an outsiders look of the video. We got some really encouraging comments that we were really pleased with and items to consider for next time.

(ADD INTERVIEW)

I also asked my friend Steven Leaks to gain a more rounded informated response to our video from an inspiring film maker and passionate person in the media field i asked my friend Steven Leeks for a few points of feedback for our video he has previously done an A Level Media course, then went on to do a degree and is now working as a cameraman at Ideal Home. I felt feedback from him would be really valuable, as he knows technically whats he’s talking about—with the camera shots, editing and framing of shots. I think he made some really interesting points that were different from the rest of our feedback and give us a view on the music video that we hadn’t consider before. I am really pleased that we got a more professional view on the music video as it would help us if we wanted to go into the industry in the future.

 

Receiving feedback from the interviews was really helpful as we could see what features in particular work and ones that didn’t from an audience member that had no relation to the group or the band—making the results completely trustworthy and accurate. As a result this helped us consider what we needed to improve upon for the next time and what looked affective. It also made us think as a group whether we achieved the mood/message we wanted in the video. We were glad to know that everyone understood the message of the song and that it was an original video with interesting material.

As a group we next decided to gain some feedback from our digipak and our magazine advert. We used the same method of posting it on Facebook, so all of our friends and DanceGrenade fans could view and like or comment. We didn't manage to get many feedback from the magazine advert but there was feedback from 3 members of DanceGrenade and from a student who also does Media A Level, so this meant the comments were accurlate and informative. So we could learnt from them fo next time. I thought it was brilliant that the band commented on how much they liked our products we created, as they said which sides they prefer on the digipak. This was lovely as we worked really hard and to recieve such positive and passionate feedback-was a big bonus for our group. Hannah, who is doing the course gave us more technical feedback in the overall look and keeping a continuing theme throughout each panel rather than a different background or theme on each panel.

 

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

When researching, I chose to use the video website Youtube. This is because it allowed us to explore different examples of videos in order to gain inspiration. Youtube is a free website available to anyone with an internet connection, be it through use of a mobile phone, iPod or computer, as most music channels are only available on digital TV networks such as Sky. This website inspired, influenced and excited us when researching music videos, it allowed me explore what works and what doesn’t in a promo. Due to the wide range of videos available it meant I could see a range of different music genre videos that caused us to research our particular genre and what were the typical conventions. This technology also helped with the exhibiting of our finished promo, from which we can see a range of different people’s responses and opinions, and whether or not our final product was successful. It was effective because we could gain some really valuable feedback from people who know what they are talking about—as they work in the industry. It was also affective because this is the place where music fans go to find good, new music and the new artists. So to gain a following and fans youtube became useful. It was also affective to help research other music video to gain inspiration and knowledge of what works and what doesn’t as well as learning about the different affects and techniques that can be used.

Photoshop: We used this software for our Digipak and advertisement tasks. This helped give a professional look to the tasks with this great technology it allowed us to create a variety of different affects to the photos it allowed us to crop, edit, tilt, lighten, darken and etc.  So we could use to this software to create an effective designs.  For example we used the tool to darken the background and change the contrast with the colours with the darkness and lightness ratio. This made the background become more abstract as new colours/tones have been created as a result of the tool as change a so what boring image to something interesting. We also used the crop tool, this allowed us to take away the background and just leave what we wanted in the foreground. It was used on a photograph of all the band members, which we wanted to include on the digipak, but didn’t want the background. This meant we had o carefully crop the background, it was difficult but with the zoom in feature it made it easier to get an accurate edge.

iMovie: This technology was used in the making of our music promo, we used this to put the selected clips together, add transitions and edit and add effects when needed or when necessary.  We used the specific technique of jump cuts to put together the music video, this is a straight cut between one clip to another-a pretty standard technique that is used to create pace quickly. We used this throughout our video and was especially affective at the end with a montage of different clips being put together to create pace and build up to minor the song. We also changed the contrast of some of the shots in particular the gig shots to lighten clip in order for the audience watching to actually see whats going on screen instead it just being black. Another technique I learnt about was the use of slow motion in clips; this meant adjusting the clip to a slower speed.

We did this by editing the format of the clip and reduced the speed to be much slower, this was a setting at was available once you click on footage. It was a really valuable technique and worked really affective within the music video and linked back into our inspiration of the Ok Go sequence video.

 

 

Blogger: This site helped me to keep updated with planning stages on the production, allowing me to keep all of the research elements in one place. So I could reference these information when making the music video—look back at what the audience wanted from a video, what conventions, techniques and ideas they liked in a video of the genre.  For me personally it helped keep me organised with what tasks leading up to the film days needed to be done in order for the days to run smoothly and affectively.  

Google: This was a needed tool to help me with the research of the band and the alterative genre of music. This search engine found images, information and text about the music genre, helping us research about this type of music and educating us on what we needed to include in our very own video. 

Facebook and Twitter: These social network sites became really useful when publicising the finished music video—we put it on their personal Dance Grenade group Facebook page that all their fan and friends could see and allowed the world view it—creating interest and advertisement to the band. They also become useful for gaining feedback from the target audience. It is a great way in which we are able to gather information to help us take steps forward in the making of our production. This feedback could through comments left on the video and through Facebook Chat. I also used twitter as a means of exhibiting our final products, as it opened them up to be viewed by a wider group of people, meaning that we would get a more accurate amount of feedback on our promo. 

This unit I have learnt and developed from my skills I have learnt at As level, I have considered the different skills needed for shooting, editing and planning to create a affective and creative production of a music video. Through this project I have gained a better understand of using different technologies such as IMovie and Photoshop, my limited knowledge at the start of the process has made me think how far I have come. I have learnt about how to create fast editing in time with the beat of the song, lip-syncing and transitions, I now have more rounded skills of this technology that I can now apply to anything I might need to do in the further.

I have learnt how to create stop motion-even though we didn’t include it in the final production, it was interesting to learn about how it is used the needed techniques and time you need to put in, in order to produce it affectively. I learnt that you need to be organised and know exactly what you are doing, or otherwise it wouldn’t look good at all. Through practising and team work we did manage to produce a fairly good slow motion sequence. It involved trying out a quick sequence the boy could do and taking regular photos as we did it—like for every second. So it broke down each movement to exact positions—it allowed us to speed it up or slow it down. I learnt that it was important to stay in the same position between each take and that the sequences would need to be simple as the more harder the less affective it look. Keeping it simple with the background and clothing as well was needed for best results. This unit has allowed me to experiment with was work and what doesn’t.

I have learnt the importance of framing a shot—really thinking and analyses what it in the shot and being filming. An example of me thinking about the framing was the long shot of the band members in the woods for the Ok Go inspired dance sequence.  This shot worked really well, because of the background of the colours, trees, sky to make a beautiful shot that looks visually appealing on screen. It also worked technically as all the boys were in shot from head to toe with an equal amount of spacing between them—in order for the sequence to work. This compared to the thriller shots of the actress walking in the darken alley—the framing was poor as her face wasn’t central and didn’t exactly work as an affective shot.  With learning to master this skill the use of planning every shot we wanted to achieve was important, this meant that we could think carefully and evaluate whether it would work or not before the shoot. Instead of wasting time on the day of shooting the video. This also meant, we would have enough footage and include everyone’s ideas to achieve the best possible result we wanted. Partnered with this skill it meant I had to affectively use a tripod-this piece of equipment was nothing new to me, as I worked with it for As Media and for photography shot. But this was an important element in creating a straight, steady shot which is a basic requirement to produce a good framed shot. 

Another technique I have learnt during this project was of the importance of creating pace in the editing that fitted the rhythm of the song, meaning that it fitted to the beat of the music. We wanted to build up the editing pace towards to the end of the video, to create a build-up of clips minoring the music in time—this creates a relationship between the two elements the song and the video. This links them together making the video feel part of the song, which it is almost the story behind the lyrics, this was something we certainly wanted and I think we managed to achieve.  The method behind this was to put in a mass amount of clips for a short duration to create a flash of images and clips that work with the music. 

Through the designing and making the digipak and the advertisement, we used the software of Photoshop to create a professional looking piece. I started with no knowledge of this software and not having any previous experience of this technology, as a result of the rest of my group teaching me as I went and through trial and error I learnt the basic skills of Photoshop. I have now experienced what works and what doesn’t with this software, giving me experience for my next project for when I need to use this programme. It learnt the basic skills of cropping an image down, to just revel what I want in the foreground and get rid of the background. I also learnt how you can edit the contrast of a photo, this was particularly important when doing the digipak and advert as this was a key feature that made ours different, unique from everyone else. Another technique I found out was the use of adding text to a photo; I previously didn’t know that you could do this or how to do it. As this is a regular feature on all of our products it was a good time for me to learn for myself how to do it, and then perform it on the advert.  This meant I could be shown how to and then do it for myself—making sure I wouldn’t forget what I did.

Despite using a lot of technical devices, we did encounter some problems during the filming of our promo. Due to wanting to capture all the footage we wanted of the band, it meant that we filled us a whole SD card, so we had to quickly delete footage that we didn’t need and were a mistake. But we did come prepared and had another card, so we could continue filming and not waste time—sorting what footage we wanted and didn’t wait on location.

Another problem that faced us was lip Syncing, when it came to adding sound to our promo, we found that parts of the lip syncing did not match up as well as they could do, this was due to our filming being done at a live performance event the band did, so we couldn’t get the exact timing right as it was a bit faster than the soundtrack. This was something that could not be helped and meant we couldn’t include all the footage that we originally wanted too. But I we tried to magnified the timeline of the clip, helping us to gain a much more accurate result and put in other clips that could also fit at the given point of the song.

Exhibiting our material online it opens up a number of free publicity options for our products. Due to the amount of people using the internet compared to the more traditional methods of sourcing music, our products will reach a much wider target market gaining a lot more publicity for the track and creating a buzz on this new artist.