In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In our finished music video production for the song Photograph by Nickelback we used a number of ways to help promote a image that we wanted to portray: this is linked to Richard Dyers star image theory were we were hoping to achieve the image of youthfulness, creativity, originality and talent. And also with Negus' Organic/synthetic theory we also wanted to promote our band being organic.
In our music video we chose to incorporate a Performance and narrative video format, throughout our video we have many different scenes and camera shots of our selected band performing our chosen song, along side the performance we also created a narrative that in turn fit in within the theme of the song. Throughout both performance and narrative we chose our actors to be young adults or teenagers so it would promote the star image of youthfulness. By also doing both narrative and performance in our video it also promotes our creativity star image.
In our video we look to aim for a younger audience in the ages of 16-24 as we felt in our video our actors would also be in the same age range, to try and appeal to our audience
In our video we look to aim for a younger audience in the ages of 16-24 as we felt in our video our actors would also be in the same age range, to try and appeal to our audience
we included a number of elements within our video to do so. Firstly the type of clothing that we wore are very typical of what our audience would wear, such as hoodies, jeans and in general casual clothing, along with appealing to our audience wearing normal clothing would also show our band as being a organic product as Negus says about how bands are either organic or synthetic, and being organic has certain characteristics such as casual clothing or playing own instruments.
Looking at the textual elements of our video we did a number of different things through Mise-en-scene, camera shots, editing & sound. Looking at Mise-en-scene elements within our video we chose to have our actors wear normal clothes of what a young adult/teenager would wear to help promote our youthfulness star image and to appeal to our audience, things such as hoodies also when we chose helped up to a point mask a persons identity which helps keep the audience guessing and keep the narrative ambiguous, and the use of the casual clothes also is a common convention within the alternative rock genre.
Within our video we used a range of different camera shots.
Panning Shot
The use of a panning is used in our video to help at the start of our video to establish a setting of our narrative video, at the end of the shot we see our main character in the video which leaves the audience asking what has happened.
Close Up
We used close up's frequently within our video, one shot is of our singer, so the audience can clearly see he lip-syncing to the song which helps promote our star image of being talented. We also used a close up on other members of our band playing the instruments which again promoted our talent star image.
High Angle
The use of a high angle shot in our video helps seem one of our supporting characters in our narrative story seem vulnerable to the audience, it also makes the audience maybe feel that something is possibly going to happen. A High angle is placed on our main character at the start of the video when he is first shown to show his vulnerability and to the audience will think what happened to get like that.
Long Shot
Long shots within our video help establish the settings of our different scenes, whether that be the forest in our performance or the different location in which our narrative is set.
Also within our video we have used a number of different editing effects. The use of fades both in and out of scenes helps keep the flow of the song. The use of fades help transition between establishing narrative and performance scenes. Also within our video we use dissolve effects when we wanted to establish a flashback in our narrative when using photographs to reveal how our main character got into the situation where the audience first find him.
In terms of sound we are limited of what we can do due to the video having the whole song being played, but in our first scene of our video we used digetic natural sounds before the song to give the feeling of peaceful normal day life then when the shot of our main protagonist is shown the song begins. Also in our car stealing scene we used the natural sound of the car to give the effect of a rush or danger.
Throughout our video we also included a range of themes that appear thoroughly throughout, these themes have been linked to lyrics within our chosen song and within the story of our narrative we are telling, the themes also help promote the star image's of which we are trying to promote with our band.
The first theme that we have included through our music video is the use of photographs throughout our narrative, with our chosen song being called "Photograph" we thought that a good portion of our video should include some usage of photographs, and in doing so the photographs that are featured help trigger flashbacks to what actions what our main character has done in his past to show what he has done to get him in the predicament he finds himself in, in our video.
A Second theme that we have used throughout our video is the use of flashbacks, linked in with the use of photographs flashbacks play a important role within our music video in advancing the story in our narrative, the flashback scenes are linked in with certain lyrics within the song, for example with the lyrics "Criminal Record Says I broke it twice" it allowed us to use 2 flashback scenes of our main character committing 2 different criminal offences, our first scene being him stealing a car, and in our second scene along with the previous lyrics we also linked the second flashback with "blew every dollar we ever made" with a mugging/robbery scene with our main character stealing money from someone.
One final theme that we decided to use throughout our music video production, is due to our chosen song being in the "alternative rock" genre our music video includes a number of different scenes to show a performance aspect with our chosen band members performing "Photograph" the scenes show the lead singer lip syncing the song, and the supporting members performing with the selected instruments in a acoustic, electric guitar and the drums.
These common themes in our music video help promote the star image of our band, for example the use of photographs and the use of flashbacks helps promote the star image of being creative as we used a object in a "photograph" to be a important role in our video, in comparison to the original video by Nickelback which doesn't feature them as much, also our use of photographs help trigger memories in the shape of flashback's within our main character mind to help him figure out what happened and why?
The common uses of performance scenes throughout our video helps promote that our band are organic, Negus says that organic bands tend to perform and play their own instruments so we made sure that we did include a performance in our video to show that we a an organic band.
During the planning stage of our music video production we did some research of other video's within our genre to look at similar themes of ideas that we could put our own twist to.
The one main aspect of our video that we really look to do similar to is with are forest scenes in our performance are similar to Paramore's "Decode" video in which Paramore perform there song within a forest setting, collectively we both thought it would be a good feature to take as it would have a good linked alongside what we had planned to do in our narrative.
When originally planning our ancillary products we wanted to make sure that they went alongside the same ideas of our music video production, this meant including similar themes to what we produced and using images from our video within our CD cover and our advert. For example within the middle of our CD cover we included two images of which we used for our photographs within our music video.
also on the back of our CD cover we included a picture of our band performing within our video. Which we took similar inspiration from Linkin Park's "Minutes To Midnight" album which is also black and white image of the band.
We also wanted to create a feeling of nostalgia or looking back of memories within our CD cover, to do so we decided to make our images that we used to be black and white so it created a feel of looking back on memories or events which ties into what happens in our music video. The black and white images also link into the black and white photo's that we used also in our music video. Also to keep our video and print text's similar we decided to include lyrics from our song "Criminal Record says I broke it twice" on our CD cover that links the video and the texts together.
we also set out to make our CD cover look real and genuine like CD covers should in real life, we looked at a number of features that always appear on CD covers, such as a bar-code, Name of Band and Album, a spine featuring the Band name and album, and also a record label logo, combining all of these helped create a genuine looking CD cover.
Within our video we used a range of different camera shots.
Panning Shot
The use of a panning is used in our video to help at the start of our video to establish a setting of our narrative video, at the end of the shot we see our main character in the video which leaves the audience asking what has happened.
Close Up
We used close up's frequently within our video, one shot is of our singer, so the audience can clearly see he lip-syncing to the song which helps promote our star image of being talented. We also used a close up on other members of our band playing the instruments which again promoted our talent star image.
The use of a high angle shot in our video helps seem one of our supporting characters in our narrative story seem vulnerable to the audience, it also makes the audience maybe feel that something is possibly going to happen. A High angle is placed on our main character at the start of the video when he is first shown to show his vulnerability and to the audience will think what happened to get like that.
Long shots within our video help establish the settings of our different scenes, whether that be the forest in our performance or the different location in which our narrative is set.
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| Video Fade In & Out |
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| Dissolve Effect |
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| We Used Natural Digetic Sound At the beginning of our video |
The first theme that we have included through our music video is the use of photographs throughout our narrative, with our chosen song being called "Photograph" we thought that a good portion of our video should include some usage of photographs, and in doing so the photographs that are featured help trigger flashbacks to what actions what our main character has done in his past to show what he has done to get him in the predicament he finds himself in, in our video.
The common uses of performance scenes throughout our video helps promote that our band are organic, Negus says that organic bands tend to perform and play their own instruments so we made sure that we did include a performance in our video to show that we a an organic band.
During the planning stage of our music video production we did some research of other video's within our genre to look at similar themes of ideas that we could put our own twist to.
The one main aspect of our video that we really look to do similar to is with are forest scenes in our performance are similar to Paramore's "Decode" video in which Paramore perform there song within a forest setting, collectively we both thought it would be a good feature to take as it would have a good linked alongside what we had planned to do in our narrative.
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product and ancillary texts?
Along with producing a music video, we also have to produce two ancillary texts in a CD cover and an Advert promoting the release of the song.When originally planning our ancillary products we wanted to make sure that they went alongside the same ideas of our music video production, this meant including similar themes to what we produced and using images from our video within our CD cover and our advert. For example within the middle of our CD cover we included two images of which we used for our photographs within our music video.
we also set out to make our CD cover look real and genuine like CD covers should in real life, we looked at a number of features that always appear on CD covers, such as a bar-code, Name of Band and Album, a spine featuring the Band name and album, and also a record label logo, combining all of these helped create a genuine looking CD cover.
With our advert text we also decided to take on similar themes to which we based our CD cover on, With our poster we used the same image as we did on the front of our CD cover in black and white again giving the nostalgic feelings and memories. Also with our Advert we looked at many other adverts from our genre and what they contain, most of which were very basic containing the same image of the album, the band name and album title, release date and occasionally a promotional offer for the audience. With our final product we looked to include of of the previous features of our poster and we feel that it does what it should.
Feedback Of Ancillary Tasks
Viewer 1: Simon Richardson
Liked: "The CD and Advert are linked by the images and have the same format/look to them"
Improvements: "Use a formal band picture instead of a shot out of the video", "The text could be clearer / use a better font on the back.
Viewer 2: Ross Kindred
Liked: "The CD cover looks of real genuine quality", "Both the CD and Advert have the same theme and go together
Improvements: "The Advert could be neater in were the text is placed", "You could also include were people could by the product"
What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?
Throughout the whole planning and production process we have gathered constant feedback from our initial ideas to our final products that were produced.
Feedback Of Initial Ideas
During the planning stage of our music video video production we presented our ideas and our chosen song to our media group which is also within our target audience range, from there they gave us some feedback on our ideas on what they liked and what they may improve or include to make it more appealing, with our chosen song we took part in a synaesthesia activity so that our feedback group could give feedback on themes that they saw when listening to the song so we may look to include when we get to the production stage to help fit our target audience.
When we finished the synaesthesia task we were presented with a list of themes that our feedback group gave to us from what they thought of when listening to the song.
Love/Anti Love
Goodbye's
memories
flashbacks
summer
performance
empty rooms
earthy colours
black clothing
photographs
black and white photographs
holding pictures
'then and now'
Synaesthesia feedback was a huge help in deciding what to produce when we got to make our music video, we considered and used a large number of themes that were given to us through feedback such as Memories, Flashbacks, earthy colours, performance, black clothing & black and white photographs, all of these helped make our product appeal more to what are target audience would think when listening to our song.
To Further gain feedback from our target audience we constructed a questionnaire that contained questions about of chosen genre of music and ideas and themes that we had built on from our initial synaesthesia task.
After Collecting our results we had further feedback from our target audience on the themes and ideas that we had built on from the initial feedback given to us.
Results from our questions such as:
What other ideas do you think we could use in order for the protagonist to be hated?
we gained a large number of ideas that we could use if we could not carry out one of our original ideas, of which happened during our filming stage we could not do one of the original ideas so we used one of our back up idea's which was "something that happened in the past" in our final product.
Throughout the whole process of creating our music video production I have used many new media technologies to help with planning, research construction and the evaluation stages.
Research & Planning
Cutting Tool
After completing the filming of our music video product and importing the video files into the editing software the use of the cutting tool helps remove parts of a video file that were not needed, this tool helps trim the clips so that what appears on screen when it needs to lip-syncs with our selected song in time.
When we finished the synaesthesia task we were presented with a list of themes that our feedback group gave to us from what they thought of when listening to the song.
Love/Anti Love
Goodbye's
memories
flashbacks
summer
performance
empty rooms
earthy colours
black clothing
photographs
black and white photographs
holding pictures
'then and now'
Synaesthesia feedback was a huge help in deciding what to produce when we got to make our music video, we considered and used a large number of themes that were given to us through feedback such as Memories, Flashbacks, earthy colours, performance, black clothing & black and white photographs, all of these helped make our product appeal more to what are target audience would think when listening to our song.
To Further gain feedback from our target audience we constructed a questionnaire that contained questions about of chosen genre of music and ideas and themes that we had built on from our initial synaesthesia task.
After Collecting our results we had further feedback from our target audience on the themes and ideas that we had built on from the initial feedback given to us.
Results from our questions such as:
What other ideas do you think we could use in order for the protagonist to be hated?
we gained a large number of ideas that we could use if we could not carry out one of our original ideas, of which happened during our filming stage we could not do one of the original ideas so we used one of our back up idea's which was "something that happened in the past" in our final product.
What Would Be the best location for a 'theft' or 'stealing' event to occur?
With this question we had a number of locations for a theft/stealing to take place, upon gaining our results we had 2 clear places that were an alleyway or a quiet street/road, in the end due to restrictions of our love affair idea we decided to do two stealing events and use both location for different events.
What, [In Your Opinion] makes a good music video?
For this question we wanted a more of an understanding of what our target audience wanted to get from a alternative rock music video to make them watch it and what they like in music video's so we can help appeal to our audiences needs even more, the majority leaders of things our target audience look for in a video included things such as the video, "being believable", having a "good narrative" and also having a performance in the video.
Post Production Feedback
After finishing our music video production we went about gathering feedback on our final product to see if we appealed to our target audiences needs from what we gathered from the initial synaesthesia and questionnaire feedback
Firstly we went about selecting a few people within are chosen target audience to sit down and watch our video and help give us feedback on what they thought about the video and how would they didn't like and what they would improve.
Viewer 1: Jack Reynolds: 18yrs Old
Liked: Liked the video and the concept
Improvements: Said we could have used more different and varying camera shots in the performance.
Viewer 2: Kyfer Murton: 17yrs Old
Liked: Liked the choice of song and went well with the narrative told in the video
Improvements: make the narrative much more simple and easier to understand
Viewer 3: Mrs. Arnott: Teacher
Liked: Enjoyed the concept and how well it was put together
Improvements: Make the characters look more believable (i.e look injured)
Improvements: Make the characters look more believable (i.e look injured)
To gain even more feedback we have uploaded our final music video production to YouTube to allow a wider viewing audience to watch our video and leave there feedback via the comments section available to them
I Have also uploaded our video to social media networking sites including our Facebook and Twitter to gain other feedback from our peers
I Have also uploaded our video to social media networking sites including our Facebook and Twitter to gain other feedback from our peers
Evaluation Of Feedback
Looking over the feedback that we have gained i feel that we have achieved our target of appealing to our target audience of 16-24 year olds. From the people who watched our the majority liked our video and liked the concept and story that our narrative told. this shows that the conventions that we used to appeal to our audience was a success.
However when gaining feedback from our target audience there were also things we they thought that could be improved to make the video much more appealing towards them.
Firstly one improvement that was suggested by one viewer was that we could use more varying camera shots in our performance, looking at this comment we would agree and if we would the project again then we would try and use more different camera shots for different parts of our performance, due to time restrictions we were not able to do as many variations as we would of liked but is something we would have considered to do in the future.
Another improvement that was suggested by one view was to make our narrative much easier understand, we again believe again at times our narrative would be hard to follow looking in from the outside and not knowing what we wanted to achieve. If we were to the project again there would be a number of things we would do to make the narrative more believable. Things such as making our main character look more vulnerable such as in his appearance and the acting.
Evaluation Of Feedback on Ancillary Tasks
However when gaining feedback from our target audience there were also things we they thought that could be improved to make the video much more appealing towards them.
Firstly one improvement that was suggested by one viewer was that we could use more varying camera shots in our performance, looking at this comment we would agree and if we would the project again then we would try and use more different camera shots for different parts of our performance, due to time restrictions we were not able to do as many variations as we would of liked but is something we would have considered to do in the future.
Another improvement that was suggested by one view was to make our narrative much easier understand, we again believe again at times our narrative would be hard to follow looking in from the outside and not knowing what we wanted to achieve. If we were to the project again there would be a number of things we would do to make the narrative more believable. Things such as making our main character look more vulnerable such as in his appearance and the acting.
Evaluation Of Feedback on Ancillary Tasks
Along with our finished music video we also got some people from our targeted audience to look at our produced ancillary tasks to see if they fit with our video and if they appealed to our audience and also what improvements they would suggest to make if we were to remake them.
One viewer [Simon] we asked to give feedback on our ancillary tasks. He said one good thing was "The CD and Advert are linked by the images and have the same format/look to them", this showed other people believe we have constructed a genuine looking product that was linked across both the CD and Advert. However He also said that some improvements could be made such as: "Use a formal band picture instead of a shot out of the video", with this comment we would consider if we were to remake the products then we would consider taking a more formal picture rather than take a screenshot out of our video. also he suggested "The text could be clearer / use a better font on the back" again if we were to remake the ancillary products we would think about using a much better font to make it easier to read.
Another person who viewed our ancillary products [Ross] also gave some positive feedback as well as some improvements that could be made. Firstly he commented that "The CD cover looks of real genuine quality", This shows that someone within are target audience feels that our products are believable and look real. also similar to Simon, Ross said that "Both the CD and Advert have the same theme and go together" which again shows that the products we have created appeal to our audience. Ross also suggested some improvements that we could make to our products such as "The Advert could be neater in were the text is placed", if we were to re make the products then we would consider carefully choosing where the text on the advert would go. another thing also he commented on was "You could also include were people could by the product", one thing that we did overlook and forget to include was a part on were people would be able to purchase our album, something like adding in a iTunes advert or a small list of stores were it would be available would be something that if we were given the chance to add in on our advert we would look to do.
How Did You Use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the whole process of creating our music video production I have used many new media technologies to help with planning, research construction and the evaluation stages.
Research & Planning
At the beginning of the media studies course we took part in practising our lip-syncing and editing skills by creating a mini music video to show off and practice our lip syncing skills.
The lip syncing task helped us improve a range of skills that we would need to use in our final production such as trying to get the shots to link with the lyrics sung in a song and to get used to the same editing software that I would use for the final production.
Another new media technology that I have used throughout all of the stages of this media course is the use of a blog to present my work, before this year I have had no experience in using any kind of blog software, but using blogger I managed to pick up on how to use various different features such as publishing posts, creating links to videos and other websites and also adding in images and screenshots.
To also allow for more viewers to look and comment on my blog i have linked my blog into my own personal twitter account to allow the people who do follow me to look at my blog when they wish.
Construction Stage
To also allow for more viewers to look and comment on my blog i have linked my blog into my own personal twitter account to allow the people who do follow me to look at my blog when they wish.
Construction Stage
During the construction stage we have used adobe premiere elements software to edit our music video, the software has lots of features available to create certain effects and techniques for our music video.
Fade In & Out
The Use of a fade in and out in our music video helped us keep a flow to our video, within our video we frequently change scenes and without using a fade effect the video appears jumpy but the use of a fade keeps the flow of the video. To add in the fade we right click on the video clip and then select fade, then fade out/in video.
Fade In & Out
The Use of a fade in and out in our music video helped us keep a flow to our video, within our video we frequently change scenes and without using a fade effect the video appears jumpy but the use of a fade keeps the flow of the video. To add in the fade we right click on the video clip and then select fade, then fade out/in video.
After completing the filming of our music video product and importing the video files into the editing software the use of the cutting tool helps remove parts of a video file that were not needed, this tool helps trim the clips so that what appears on screen when it needs to lip-syncs with our selected song in time.
Editing Sound
To make sure that sounds that should be heard are heard in our music video production the use of the diamond tool helps turn down or increase the volume of the video files so that the natural sound of which was filmed can be heard, we used this to help fade out volume of the video files before our chosen song started playing to being our music video.
Disslove
The use of dissolve shots in are video are a essential and important part to our music video, the dissolve effects in our video help trigger flashbacks in our video, to insert dissolve effects in our video we selected the "transistions tab" and then drag and dropped the effect on the editing timeline, this then applied the dissolve effect on the video.
Photoshop
Along with creating our music video we were also challenged to create and produce two ancillary tasks in a CD cover and a Advert, to create these product we used adobe Photoshop, with very little experience using Photoshop software I found using the software very easy learn and along with that create a genuine looking CD cover & Advert. Below you can see what features of Photoshop I mainly used to create our ancillary products
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| How I Used the different features of Photoshop To Create our ancillary tasks. |
Evaluation Stage
To try and gain a wider range of feedback on our music video, we used new media to help gain that, by uploading our video to YouTube by clicking Publish and share > Online > YouTube. This Can allow anyone in the world to see our video and give feedback to us, uploading the video to YouTube also allowed us to easily share our video on other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter to gain feedback from our friends and peers.
If we had a choice to we would also allow VEVO to upload the video to there website, by doing this is would allow us to get exposure to the mainstream audience and allow for a much larger group of people to comment on our video and access the video much more easily without searching through loads of pages on YouTube.
To See our final music video production in full you can click the video down below to watch.
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