Wednesday 16 December 2009

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




  • From looking at Dyer's work we are able to see that our video allows the band to be both ordinary and extraordinary. This is done by making the video lo fi and gritty. It gives the video a sense of authenticity while at the same time it shows them as stars.






  • This Video conforms to the conventions of its genre as it shows gritty footage to give it authenticity. Also it conforms because it is trying to be anti-conformist. Anti-conformity is a classic characteristic of this genre, making this video infact conform to its genre.






  • The conventions of indie rock are apparent through the mise-en-scene of the performance. For example the clothes that the band are wearing are that of the indie rock genre. Also the lighting is that of an indie rock video in the performance.





  • After looking at Goodwins critical framework we could see that many other indie rock music videos were largley based around performance and meat shots of the artists. We wanted to incorpirate this into our video but also wanted a narrative aspect which would be slightly different to the norm of the genre.






  • We decided to take aspects from the american teen comedy genre and use them throughout our video. The image below is from a teen comedy film:



  • Our video has strong links with the music and the visuals as the performance is syncronised. Also most of our editing is in time with the music. If the cuts are not in time then we will have placed the clip so that the performance matches the music. For example we have placed the shot of the bassist strumming the string in time with the beat:











  • Due to the fast paced editing and gritty shots, the audience get a sense of liveliness and rebellion which they would like and idolise.






  • We have tried to experiment with our shots. For example the ball cam shot and the 360 pan. We tried to make it exciting, not just through the narrative and performance its self, but through the camerawork as well. The clip below shows the ball cam shot:











  • This ball cam shot also uses the notion of looking and gives the audience a first person mode of address.






  • We have also made the performance in such a way that you feel like you are individually be played to. Also we do do some quick snap shots during the narrative which include the first person mode of address, although they are not long. Below is a small clip of the performance which makes you feel as though you are there at the performance:











  • This clip also shows the grittiness of the shots which contain strong connotations of the Indie rock genre.






  • Our video toys with the dominant ideology of men being tough and strong as some of the characters in the narrative are shown to be less manly than others. The image below shows this through the clothes the character is wearing:






  • Intertextuality is apparent here as our video shows conventions of teen movies, and also a large reference to the film 'Balls of Fury'.






  • Our video can be considered postmodern because it blurs the boundaries between advertising and entertainment. Our video does this by being something that the audience want to consume and also advertising the bands music to them. Also the video is both stylistic and playfull.






  • By looking at semiotics we can see how our video shows conflict by creating a table tennis match between two pairs of people. This is representative of our world being constantly at war in some way or another and reinforces the belief that no matter what we do, there will always be conflict. We have created a binary opposition between the two teams.

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

The brief was to create two print texts, this being an advertisement and a digipak for a chosen band. We have set out to create a cohesive band image to promote the album through using images which we believe show the band in a particular positive light and also ones which would appeal to a target audience.

• The advertisement was designed to run as a full page advert within the magazine NME. This is as we believed the band we are developing these texts for fit in with the genre of other bands which appear in this magazine.

Here are two images from the magazine we wish to appear in, this shows the lo-fi gritty look of the magazine:













• Our advertisement consisted of a collage of ripped out random images of music magazines, polaroids of each of the band members and also pieces of scrap paper with the information we wished to give on the advertisement such as band name and release date for the album. The advertisement conveys many different meanings:
• The advert is unique and original but at the same time conforming to the conventions of the indie music genre. This is as the conventions of the indie music genre is being random and this is what this advertisement is. This idea of being random is to be different and very unique from anything else. For example in the Arctic Monkeys music video it shows people dressed up as clowns fighting gangsters. As shown in the image below:









• A convention of the genre is to be rebellious and this is symbolised through our advertisement. This is as the images used on the advert are all ripped out with rough edges with not much care, this can connote rebellion as it could show kids ripping up books at school, and there is no sense of order and conformity to it.
• This advertisement fits in with the teen culture which is popular in modern society. This is the culture which has developed from films such as:
•American Pie
•SuperBad
•Role Models
These all include kids in America going to high school and being slightly rebellious and foccused on partying. Our advertisement fits in with this as it consists of a cork board with lots of random images on there from popular magazines such as gaming pictures and girls. This can connote a teenagers bedroom as it looks as if it is something which could appear in a teenagers bedroom.

Here is our print advertisement to appear in NME, I have pointed out all of the parts of the advertisement I have commented on (click on image to make larger):
















• The digipak conveys very similar meanings to that of the advertisement as the same image is used. By doing this people can make a clear link between the two and notice it is the same band. The front cover has more of a sense of order to it, this is so if someone glances at the album cover they can instantly recognise what the band look like, the name of the band and the name of the album. But at the same time it also fits in with the rest of the texts as it has the cork board background and a border consisting of random ripped out images. This is also the same as the back cover as we wanted the names of the tracks to be easily visable and stand out so if someone knew of a certain track they could instantly recognise it.

Here is the digipak with each bit I have talked about pointed out (click on image to make larger):













• The advertisement and the digipak link in with one another to help construct a band image. Both of the texts are very original and lo-fi. This also fits in with the music video for one of the tracks as this is also very unique and lo-fi. The music video also fits in with the idea of high school teenagers as almost the whole video is recorded in a school gym. Both print texts are postmodern as there is clear intertextual references to popular media such as the films which were mentioned earlier and a mix of boundaries between film, music and advertisement. They are postmodern as they are stylish, stylistic and playful.

• Both print texts link to the music video as they are all postmodern and all comform to the conventions of the indie music genre. The conventions of the indie genre being:
• Rebellion
• British
• Unique
• Lo-fi
• Gritty
• Iconography such as smoking, instruments shown and casual dressing.
Here is some images showing the iconography of the indie genre from the band Arctic Monkeys as we believe they are very similar to the band we are representing:















Also the faces of all the band members are clearly shown in all texts. We have done this through meat shots are used in the music video and then polaroids of the faces of all band members are used in both the digipak and advertisement.

Richard Dyer’s critical framework on the construct of the star image is relevant to all three texts we have created. This is as he explained how ‘star’ images appeal to people and there is two paradox’s and these are being shown as extraordinary and ordinary at the same time. This is relevant to our pieces as the band ‘Give Get Given’ are shown as being both ordinary yet extraordinary. They appear as ordinary as within the music video there is small numbers of them, shown as having a laugh and recording a performance in a small garage but we as viewers believe we should in some way idolise this band and they are shown as being extraordinary. This is through the use of a number of techniques such as low camera angles looking up at the band and they are shown as being very creative and original which gives the band credibility.

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

• By using Web 2.0 it aided our research as were able to watch a wide variety of music videos of the same genre and of other videos which may influence our own concept on YouTube. We were then able to record our findings on the blog and also embed the music video we looked at on our blog. Also using YouTube we could study music videos which had been made by past years at our school and other schools. We could then get an idea of what sort of music videos we could make with the budget and equipment we had.

Here is evidence of our use of Web 2.0:















Media technologies have been integral in our planning, construction and evaluation. We used the blog as a collaborative e-portfolio to develop ideas and to record research we had carried out. By using the blog we could develop ideas regarding the music video and also the print texts, we were able to comment on each other posts pointing out what we thought could be improved and what we thought was positive.

Here is evidence of us using the blog collaboratively (click on images to make larger):














• Using Adobe Premier we constructed an animatic. To do this we had to draw out a storyboard consisting of all the shots we believed we needed and record each shot on a digital camera. We then captured all the footage and inserted the track in the audio. We arranged all the shots so they were in sync with the music. This was useful as we were able to see how many shots we needed to use and get a sense of the cutting pace.

Here is our storyboard animatic:





• During our planning we weren’t sure how table tennis shots would come out on the computer and how they would look in slow motion. Therefore we recorded Jack and I playing table tennis on a desk in a classroom, by doing this we were able to capture the footage and view it on a computer. We found that it was quite difficult to see the ball as it was white and moved quickly but if we slowed the shot down it looked far more effective.

Here is the video of the practice shots:






• We developed a pitch consisting of our ideas, costumes and locations; we then presented this to the class. We had to do this to check with the teachers that our video concept was viable and the class believed the concept would work with the song we chose to use. We were then able, by using the website SlideBoom, to upload the PowerPoint presentation on to our blog and then we could comment on this and evaluate how the pitch went.

Here is a screeshot of our pitch on the blog using SlideBoom:













• When shooting we used DV cameras. There were problems which we encountered and we had to overcome these.
• To create steadicam shots we used the tripod, this was the majority of our shots.
• We wished to use a 360° pan in our music video. To do this we needed everyone to stand completely still and also somehow needed to make the ball look as if it was attached to the racket. We overcame this by using blu-tac to stick the ball to the racket so it would stay. We used a dolly so we could move the tripod round smoothly.

Evidence of 360 Pan:



• We attempted to use some high angle shots and to this we climbed the rigging at the side of the school gym and held up the camera on the tripod. This created a problem as the shots weren’t steady and we couldn’t see what we were filming, once we put these shots on the editing software we realised they weren’t good enough to use in our final video.


• To edit the video we used the editing software Adobe Premiere. This enabled us to capture all the footage we had recorded and sync this footage with the track itself by using continuity editing. Within this programme we used a number of different techniques to enhance our final video.
• We put the performance shots in our video into black and white, to do this we lowered the saturation to 0. By doing this we believed it made the performance look both authentic and gritty which fitted in with the genre of the music.

Evidence of Black and White:



• As the shots we recorded were very bright we had to change the brightness and saturation. We increased the brightness and also raised the saturation to bring the colour back into the shots, by doing this the shots became clearer and also looked warmer which is a convention of our music genre.

Evidence of Colour Change:



• We changed the speed of a number of shots. We slowed down the shots which consisted of the band playing table tennis, to do this we right clicked on the shot and changed time stretch and decreased this. By doing this it fitted in with the calmer parts of the track and also the ball became more visable. We then had to speed up some shots so it was in sync with the fast paced music.

Evidence of Slow Motion:



• To create movement in one of our shots we zoomed into the image and created a pan so the image moved left in the screen. By zooming in the image stayed on the screen the whole time.

Evidence of Zoom in and Pan:




• We had to split clips up once we had captured the footage. To do this we clicked on the shot we wished to split and the pressed the ‘split clip’ icon. By doing this we could take parts of a shot we liked and parts of another shot we liked and put them all together to create continuity editing. Also this enabled us to create fast paced editing which added excitement to our video.

• We used a digital stills camera to create two print texts, a digipak for an album of the band we chose and also an advertisement. In Adobe Photoshop we scanned in a polaroid one of us had and then within the programme we were able to insert a picture of a band member over the original image by using different layers. We completed this four times for each band member. For the digipak we then ripped out a number of images from music magazines and placed these on a cork board along with the polaroids we had made of the band members and using the digital stills camera we took a picture for the front cover, inside and the back cover all consisting of different layouts.

• For the advertisement we used all of the same images we had ripped out and the polaroids but added information we felt necessary for an advertisement such as release date and the bands website written on scrap bits of paper. We put together a layout we felt was sufficient for a music advertisement and then took a still photo of one of us holding up this cork board against a brick wall. Within Photoshop we were able to alter the brightness of both the digipak images and the advertisement, we felt felt as if we had to make all images brighter as they came out quite dark as we took the images in the classroom.

• Once we were happy with all the images we could then use Microsoft Publisher to create the final piece. With the digipak we created a booklet with all the correct dimensions and placed the images in where we wished them to be, Publisher was useful for this as it was easy to make a booklet and it is also possibly to set dimensions and see borders of what your working on. For the advertisement we could check that all the sizes were correct for the size of the space in the magazine we wished to advertise in.

Here is how we used Publisher (click on image to make larger):
















• To carry out the final piece of audience research we used the website Survey Monkey. By using this we could devise a questionnaire consisting of as many questions as we desired and also whether we wanted them to by open/closed end questions or multiple choice. We could then send the questionnaire to whoever we wanted via e-mail and then people could send their responses back. Using this website was incredibly useful as it was quick and easy to make and the website also collated all the results and put these into graphs and tables which we could then use to compare the results.

Here is evidence of us using Survey Monkey productively (click on image to make larger):


Final Video

Tuesday 15 December 2009

JC-What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Focus Group


We started off with a focus group to test the concept of our video. We showed an extract from the film 'Balls of Fury' to a small focus group and asked them a series of questions.
We did this to try and show our target audience something similar to our own ideas for our video. We played them a clip showing the main character on stage playing table tennis in short shorts and white socks. This was essentially the look we were aiming towards with our concept. The target audience selected for our music video was young, white males. This is what we chose for our focus group and from this we learnt that our concept could be very funny and that it had a lot of potential to turn out the way we had hoped. It was defiantly important to test our concept in pre- production because it allows us to see whether our concept has any potential before we actually begin to make it. Due to the results being very positive towards our concept we were able to continue with what we had planned. Although if this had not worked so well, the focus group would allow us to gain some ideas from our target audience so we could cater more to their likes.





Rough Cut


We showed a rough cut of our music video and of our digipack to the rest of the class to allow us to see if we were still on track with our original concept. The results of this rough cut showed us that we were largely on track with our concepts, however we were told about a few adjustments.
This feedback was useful to us as it notified us about some small mistakes which we had made but were unaware of. For example we were told that some of the drumming was out of sync, so after we were then able to correct the mistake. The feedback also gave us an insight as to whether our video would be more suited to ambient or focussed viewing. We could also see if the audience could get the preferred redaing of the text or if they were getting the aberrant reading. The results showed us that they were getting the preferred reading which was very useful information as it meant that we did not need to alter our video so they could get the preferred reading.

The digipack also got very positive feedback. The class were able to guess the genre of the band very quickly and said that it was a very good eye catching product. This for us was essential because it showed us that it was not just us that thought that it is suitable for the genre. The magazine advertisement was also shown and the feedback was very similar to that of the digipack. We learnt that the audience were easily capable of capturing the information shown in a small period of time because the text was big and clear enough. Also we learnt that the text was direct enough and there was no unnecessary text to divert attention away from the important information.




Final Survey

For the final survey we used a website called Survey Monkey to send out a questionairre via email. This questionairre contained questions about are final products and the results tell us whether the audience can still see the preferred reading and most of all, whether they enjoy the video. Overall the feedback we got was good. The questionairres sent back tell us that the video was enjoyable and is open to repeatability which is very important as it could potentially be shown across music channels. People also said that the video was funny which is a very positive comment as that is exactly what we wanted the video to be from the beginning.

Monday 14 December 2009

JC-Evaluation of Shoot 3

This shoot was very similar to shoot 2. Almost everything was the same but we made the room which we shot in lighter. To do this we bought in a plug in light to put at the back of the room, also we screwed in more light bulbs to give more light. The only other problem that we faced was the noise produced. We got various complaints from the neighbours. However the complaints came once we had finished shooting. Other than this the shoot went very smoothly. All of the shots were efficient and quick. We used the same ideas as before so the previous shoot acted as a practice. This allowed us to get the shoot done quickly as everyone knew what to do.

Thursday 10 December 2009

JC-Evaluation Of Shoot 2

This shoot was very difficult for us because we had problems with lighting. Due to the rest of our footage being very bright and colourful we needed to try and get some sort of match between both parts of footage. The cameara angles and techniques worked well and were able to experiment a little with some camera techinques. One of our problems was trying to cover up a cabenet in the background as it did not match the mise-en-scene that we were looking for. To do this we used a rag which was used to cover the bassists guitar when it is in his case. Another problem that we encounted was trying to set up a mic stand as the singer forgot to bring one. To overcome this problem we hung the microphone from one of the beams in the shed. This actually worked very well in most shots but in some shots it began to swing around too much. Once we captured the footage on premiere we realised that all the footage was too dark. We wernt able to suitably brighten it up as it made the footage look odd compared with the table tennis shots. The only other option that we had was to re-shoot the performance footage again. This meant that we had to do it soon as the deadline was approaching fast.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Evaluation of Shoot 1.

Our first shoot was to film the majority of our music video, the table tennis shots. These are the problems we encountered and how we overcame these problems:
• Our first problem was putting up the table tennis table as it was brand new. This took just over an hour, so we then had to loosely put it together so it stood up then start filming as this time was eating into our filming time.
• Within the school gym there were a lot of mats put together which we had to adjust for the mise-en-scene as the gym would look very messy.
• The light was shining very brightly in the gym so we had to choose the areas we filmed in very carefully otherwise the shots would be too bright. Also as the day went on the sun changed position so the brightness of shots varied, something we would have to adjust in editing so they all matched each other.
• We needed to carry out a 360 degree pan which needed all members to be still and we also needed to attach the ball to the racket. To do this we had to put white tac on the ball to attach it to the racket. We decided to use white tac as it was the same colour as the ball and hopefully wouldn't be noticable.
• The filming turned out very different to what we first anticipated. We included many new shots which weren't originally storyboarded such as the shot of the fan sliding on his knees and the smashing up of the table tennis table. We did this becuase we needed a wider variety of shots not just shots of the members playing table tennis.