1) In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media projects?
I had recorded a director's commentry to show examples of how we challenged and conformed to conventions.
While creating our music video, poster and digi pack we tried to stick to the conventions of these forms of media. One way in which we did this is that we made each of our products to conform to the genre of music that we had decided on, acoustic. From my research of the music industry I have found that this genre generally has a relaxed style and we wanted to reflect that in our products. This is evident in the settings that we chose to use which were secluded areas as we wanted to create a calm, thoughtful atmosphere in keeping with the conventions and style of acoustic music videos.
Another way in which we stuck to the conventions of music videos in general is that we tried to have it reflect and represent the lyrics of the songs. Most of the music videos that I analysed interpreted the lyrics in a literal way. To do this we took each line of the song and interpreted it and came up with ideas of how we could convey these words in the video. When we looked at the words we came to the conclusion that the song was about a couple that had been ‘growing up together’. Because of this we decided to show several different couples laughing etc. together to reflect the happy mood of the song.
One way in which we challenged the genre is that we did not have the actual band in the music video due to the band being busy when we were filming. This contradicted out audience research as it suggested that most people preferred the band to be in the video. Therefore we decided that we would have someone else in the video taking the place of the main singer / guitarist in the band and performing the song so that it was more conventional. We also wanted the singer to represent the laid back feel of the band so we chose someone who fitted this and got him to dress in casual clothes. This is also emphesised in the location in which we shot his scenes, a public path next to a river, as it was a tranquil place and reflects the song.
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I feel that we have effectively created an image for the band using the products that we have produced and that they tie in together well. Each of them conveys a relaxed tone and I think they represent the band and music style well.
When creating our music video we wanted to set a relaxed tone and I feel that we have done this effectively through our mise en scene in the settings and costume and through editing in that the cuts are slow paced. I feel that the poster and digi pack tie in well with the music videos in the settings and relaxed tone. Although we felt that all the products needed the same feel we didn’t want the poster and digi pack to be exactly the same as the video as we wanted them to represent the other songs on the album as well as the one we have used. Therefore we used the same sort of peaceful settings in the products, next to a river in the video and in a forest / park for the ancillary texts.
To illiustrate my points I have annotated the ancillary tasks
3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From the audience feedback I have found that people think that our poster and digi pack were successful but the video did not match up to the standards of professional music videos. The feedback pretty much reflects how we feel about our work, in that the video could be improved in several ways. Initially our idea was to do some stop frame animation to of tomatoes growing and ‘playing’ together to represent the line “we’ve been growing up together”. However, due to lack of time and the difficulty of actually carrying out the animation scenes, which proved to be impossible, we had to quickly find another idea. This is evident in the video as the different parts of the video are too long where they would have been broken up with the stop motion sections. The audience feedback shows that people noticed that it was not a complete video and became bored with the long areas of performance. To breakup these sections we had to quickly film a narrative to make the video flow better. However, due to lack of time we couldn’t get the actors or locations we wanted so had to rush a version of our idea. This is where the audience feedback shows that the video is weak as it is not believable.
Also, the feedback showed that our syncing of sound and video was not spot on and in some places this was noticeably out. The reason for this is that the actor we had got had not learnt the words or timing of the song as well as he thought so it was out in some places and we only noticed when we were editing the video a while later. Since we’d shot this footage a few weeks before the actor had changed his appearance and also the setting had changed noticeably as the weather was different so we could not go out and get more video so we had to make do with what we had for these sections.
The positive aspects of the feedback that I learnt were that people felt that the costume and settings fit in well with the song as they reflected the laid back tone. They also said that the poster and digi pack reflected the feel of the band and effectively gave the image we were trying to create. The negatives of the poster that were given was that people felt the colours should have been brighter although they liked the editing of fading the black and white into colour. They also said the digi pack could have flowed better but that it was done well.
I asked a variety of people in the target audience so that I could get the opinions of each age group. Here are some examples of what they said:
Josh, 25
"I enjoyed the music in the video and thought the settings and costumes went well with the laid-back music. However, I feel there should have been more variety of shots as the same ones were used all the way through and it became boring."
Alex, 19
"The lip-syncing and acting were poor throughout the video and I did not think the black and white narrative scenes fit in with the style of the video. The editing was good and matched the pace of the music well but it was too repetitive and could have been more varied."
Liz, 39
"The digi-pack and magazine poster matched the video very well and you can tell the genre of music by looking at them. The artist could have been focused on more in the poster and the colours could have been more vivid to make it stand out in a magazine, however the black strips around the edges catch your eye as it contrasts with the colours."
Emma, 17
"The video was entertaining and I thought it matched the lyrics well. The fades and special effects were effective and matched the music."
4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many new technologies in the execution of our project. For example, in our initial research for the project we used youtube to view music videos so that we could analyse them. This website is a good source to find music videos as it is free and the video can be viewed several times which is good for analyzing thoroughly. By viewing and analyzing these videos it helped me see the conventions of different genres of music videos.
We used a social networking site MySpace to find a band that we wanted to use for our video. This site is ideal for this as you can search bands’ profiles by genre so we could find bands for the genre we wanted, acoustic. The information on the bands’ profile that we chose was not in detail so we contacted the band on this site and asked them to write a small description of them that we could use in our digi pack. However, they didn’t really take it seriously so they information may not be reliable and we adapted it slightly.
To film the video we used a Canon XM2 camera which was a good camera for the project. Before we started filming we had to make sure the settings were in the right mode as other students using the cameras would be using them for different projects and may have changed the settings.
We used a tripod to hold the camera steady whilst taking serveral takes of the same shot, for example the bench shots. This ensured that each take was consistant and we could use all of them in editing the video. It also helped us do a range of shots that would not have been possible if we just held the camera, such as low and high angle shots. In the narrative scenes we used hand held camera
To take pictures for the digi pack and poster we used a Casio exlim and also used this for pictures for evidence of us filming on locations and editing.
To edit the video we used adobe premiere which I felt had positives and negatives. Some of the features were easy to use once you had been shown how and had gotten used to it, however, some things were quite complicated to use. To make the digi pack and poster we used Adobe Photoshop which I also feel is quite complicated but luckily we had some experience with it and knew how to use some features.
In conclusion, I feel that the products that we have created have been successful but could use more work. If we had more time I feel that we could improve the video and bring it up to a higher standard.
