Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Charlie Potter - Media Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The standard forms and conventions of the indie genre are that the videos tend to be comical with 1 certain band member being the biggest instigator of chaos and comedy. They are also quite random in terms of narratives, mise en scene and character personalities. Another typical feature of promoting a band in the indie genre is that the band is sold as one whole product. we have changed this convention because we have tried to sell each member of the band individually. We did this by varying each members costumes to give off their personalities. For example: Cool, Rebellious, Wacky etc. We also showed their personalities through what they were doing in the music video. For intense, the rebellious one stole the car, the wacky one decided to take a difficult route through some brambles at the beginning and the cool one just takes it easy throughout the whole video. This creates a band image overall that desirable for the target audience. It also creates brand loyalty or fan loyalty because the audience now feel like they know each member individually as well as knowing the band.
Another aim of ours is to meet the criteria of the indie genre. This means making sure that everything we create and do for our project has to be within the boundaries of the genre. This also means that we have to create an image for the band that is not necessarily unusual but shows that the band are in control of the image that they put across.
The ways in which we are going to advertise the band to our audience would be:
- Play songs over the radio and play the music video on music channels such as MTV. This way, we can get the product to our designated target audience as well as getting people from outside of those boundaries to listen to our songs.
- Advertise the release of the album (with the poster) in indie magazines like NME. This is targeted just at our target audience.
- Create pages on music and social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. Fans can keep up to date with the band and what they are doing as well as them getting to know the band and band members better.
Another good way of promoting a new band is at music festivals like
We also want to connect the music video and our digipack in a strong way so that the audience that have seen the video can immediately relate the CD cover and the poster to the video when the go to buy the album or the song. The way in which we have achieved this is using the television as our trademark prop.
It adds a certain comical affect to the band image and also achieves the random type of image stereotypically portrayed by other bands within the same genre. We also used our favourite shot of the whole music video for our CD cover. This creates a link between the album cover and the music video that the audience can recognise immediately.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Our target audience are people aged 18 to 30 who are indie rock fans. The research that we did was mainly based around what an audience would want in a music video from the indie genre. The main expectation was comedy. People wanted and recognise comedy with music video in the same genre. This is a screen shot of one of the com,edy aspects that we incorperated into our music video. Another point was random props. Like the Vampire Weekend video, ‘Oxford Comma’, we tried to meet this demand in the video by using locations and props that were a surprise to the audience. For example, the random props we used while filming were, the TV, a coffee table, motorised John Deere buggy, swimming pool and myself in trunks, goggles and flippers.
We could have included just one small shot of the bag in the pool by itself to make a bit easier but then the video would only have to be watched once by the audience because they would understand it.
The audience that have seen the video did say that they would buy either a copy of the song or album and they would go and see the band live. They said that the most likely way of them buying the song would be downloading it from iTunes.
The image of the band and band members was deemed realistic by our audience. One sentence that did stand out was, “The band actually look real and not like a bunch of A-level students.” They did get pleasure out of watching the video as well. There was laughter whilst the video was playing. I think this means that we have achieved audience engagement and audience pleasure.
The corrections and suggestions for improvement that I have would probably be making sure that when we film a shot, the next shot has to be exactly the same. In our video, Richard is running towards the camera with his hood down. Then when we cut to him running towards the car with the shot through the windscreen, his hood is up. Fortunately, none of our audience noticed this but it has being annoying me ever since I saw it 2 months ago.
We also set up a facebook group in order on obtain some audience feedback. We posted out final video and put a series of questions up for the audience to answer. Go to Our Facebook Group
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
For the construction of our music video, we used a brand new HD camera that the school had bought. We booked it and then planned how we would use it, when we would use it, and for how long. This made our filming quicker and easier becuase we werent sitting about wondering what to do with the camera once we had it.
To shoot our CD covers, inlays and our poster we used the schools digital camera which was also new. We set it to a timer so that we didn’t have to have someone taking the pictures.For the editing side of our construction we used Final Cut Express on one of the schools Macs. This made editing so easy and painless. We also used the Macs for researching other bands in the same genre to see what we could incorporate into our music video and to see if our original ideas would be in keeping with the genres image.
Friday, 4 December 2009
Evaluation
We decided that it would be a good idea to make a video where the visuals and lyrics contradicted each other; this idea came from theorist Andrew Goodwin. We opted to do this as we felt as a small low budget project it would look much more professional than trying to link the lyrics and visuals. I felt that this would have a rather cheesy and tacky outcome.
Indie/rock music is one of the most popular types of music in the world today so we thought it would be a good idea to use this genre of music as it would appeal to a wide range of people.As the tempo of this song is very quick we decided to edit the video so that it cut from shots quickly to keep up with the pace of the song and make it flow, an example of this can seen in the scene below.
We wanted to make our video repeatable so people didn't get bored if they watched it for a second time we done this by making it entertaining and adding in things that may be missed if you were viewing it for the first time, we also made it so each character was different and exciting
The song that we used was in the traditional form of intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus, its very clear when the chorus of the song is about to start and this gave us a better chance of getting good lip sync in our final video, there is a guitar solo in the song that fits in perfect with the main chase scene in our video. There is also a prolonged note right at the end of the song which fits perfect with the pool scene at the end.
I think that our video would appeal to mainly to teenagers as all of the characters in our video are teenagers, although because our video is quite funny and entertaining i feel it could be watched by a wide range of audiences. The song would appeal to people from about 15 onwards as it is much like material from bands such as Arctic Monkeys or vampire weekend who appeal to a wide range of age groups.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We Showed our final video and digi pack to a number of students and teachers mainly around the age of our target audience, overall we got very positive feedback which pleased us as a group, we then created a questionnaire for people who had viewed the video so that they could answer questions about our video, they agreed to answer truthfully and this helped us understand points where we may have gone wrong.They all agreed that our band gave of strong connotations of being indie, which made us very pleased, as we wanted the look of the video to resemble our music’s genre.
There were parts of the video where the audience were slightly confused as to what was actually going on, many people did not actually know why all the characters were running and they also found it hard to understand the narrative.In a way this wasn’t such a bad thing, as we wanted to create an enigma so people had to work out what was actually going on. Although I think it was a slight flaw in our video as we could have shown the bag in the pool a few times in the video as some people did not even notice it in the final scene.
After we had finished asking the audience questions we then explained what was actually happening in the video to those who were still confused and couldn’t make any sense of it, we then let them watch it again and they seemed to appreciate it a lot more than the first time viewing, we took this as very positive feedback as we wanted or video to be repeatable, this made it seem more professional.
We then asked the audience some more questions such as whether they would want to watch the video again and learn more about the band, we were very pleased with the response as they said that they would definitely want to watch the video a second time to so that they could understand it more clearly.
Once we had finished showing our audience the video we asked them what they thought of our digipack, they were very positive about our digipack too, they were very impressed by the way we had made the front cover of the CD look professional and not tacky and cheesy. They like the way we had just kept the digipack quite simple and original the whole way through and not trying to make it look over the top, they agreed that the filter added a nice touch to it and made it look more like a real product.
One thing that audience picked up on that we were very pleased about was the comedic factor our video, they thought we had done this in a very good way by not necessarily trying to be funny but just adding certain points in the video that were random and bizarre that would make the audience laugh, such as when Charlie and goughy run out of the barn with a television and a table, and when tom gets in the go-cart. They said that making the video funny as well as gripping made it very appealing andthoroughly enjoying.
Overall I think the audience viewing went extremely well and I am very pleased with the feedback that we got.
How did you use Media Technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
One of the first things we decided as a group was that it we definitely wanted to film the video using a HD camera, we felt this was essential as we were going to have mainly chase scenes and action shots so we wanted it to be as clear as possible for the audience. We had some difficulty finding the best settings to export our video to, but in the end it turned out fine and we were happy with the quality.
Once we had filmed our whole video we then moved onto the editing side of the project, for the editing we used a program on the Mac’s called final cut express. This was the same program we used to edit our films last year so we were all comfortable with editing the video ourselves, One of the main things we were trying to achieve in our video was very good editing that went in time with the music, in the clip below you can see that we achieved this.
Once the video was more or less finished, we created the CD cover using a program called Adobe Photoshop. We spent quite a lot of time deciding on what colours and fonts etc to use, as there was a very thin line between it looking tacky and professional. We took the pictures for our CD cover in one of our favourite locations in our video, we used a camera that would take high quality pictures and we didn’t leave the location until we were happy with the shots. We also made the poster look quite similar by adding a filter to it and making it seem quite cool and well made. The way in which we made the whole digi pack really pleased me as we didn’t try to make it overtop at all which I think can only be done if you have a big budget and huge experience in editing software. We stuck with plain ideas that were quite simple yet effective and I think this turned out very well, we got inspiration from big bands such as Coldplay as they had a very simple album cover yet it was very effective.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our music video had many different purposes, promote the song, to show off the personalities of the different characters in the video. We also aimed to show our audience that our band matched the typical stereotypes of ‘indie’ and each member of the band had a different personality and style. Overall though, I believe that our main purpose was to entertain.
I believe that we achieved all of these purposes very well, through our audience feedback we learned that all of our characters gave off different feelings and styles and this made us very pleased. One point in our video when the lead singer is singing into the mirror while cleaning his teeth conforms to Steve Archer’s theory as he is performing while in the narrative of the video.
We took our song from an indie/rock band, I don’t think that this had a huge effect on our video as we had decided we wanted to do a chase video before we had even chosen our song. Although I felt that the way our characters were dressed in the video conformed to the typical indie look.
To accompany the video we also made a digipack, this included a CD cover, inlay booklet and a poster. When it came to our digipack, we wanted to prove to the audience that we are an artistically literate band with substantial intellect. We did this by making our digipack simple and cool without trying to make it to over the top.
The target audience for our video would be anyone who enjoys listening to indie music or just anyone who likes to be entertained, i think the scene below seemed to make people laugh and i felt that it helped build the tension for the final scene.
I decided to show our video to a range of different age groups with different views on music. I got positive feedback from everyone who watched the video, some said they didn’t like the song that much although they thought the video was very well made. I feel that we would be the sort of band that became famous through posters and appearing in magazines etc.
The narrative of both the product and our ancillary texts is to show of the different personalities within the band, we carried this on through our CD cover and poster, which show off our simple yet entertaining ideas which we wanted put across to the audience. I feel that our product does connect to the purpose as we are trying to get an up and coming band out there and showing the different personalities within the band. I feel this is a good way to get your band noticed as it shows you want them to know what kind of people you are as well as the music you play. I would like to see our music video on a well respected channel such as MTV2 or kerrang I feel once a band has a chance to have their song played on one of these channels it is vital that the video is well made and shows what the band are about as the video is often how people remember songs.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Tom Abraham's Evaluation
There were many things that we had to take into account when we were researching and making our music video, such as:
-Band image
-Relationship to lyrics
-Narrative structure
(and the most important)
-Relationship and impact on the target audience
Each of the four members of our band are represented and styled in different ways. The bassist is dressed quite eccentrically. He is wearing a shooting waistcoat, a bright orange t-shirt, ripped jeans and battered trainers. He comes across as quite wild, and represents the more outgoing fans of the Indie genre. The drummer is quite rebellious. In the video he is wearing tracksuit bottoms, a hooded top and a beanie hat. All of which are black other than his trainers. All of the band members fall into the Indie clothing category, but they all express and develop their styles in different ways. Quite often in Indie music, band members would wear smart-casual clothing amd they would try to incorporate skinny jeans, quite tight fitting t-shirts and jackets into it.
The lead singer in our band is wearing clothes like this. As well as the superman t-shirt, he is wearing blue skinny jeans, a green hooded shirt and popular, chunky trainers. Shoes like these will often be found in indie videos. It proves that there are many strands leading away from the indie style, this particular one is linked to the skateboard scene, where big shoes such as those are a necessity as well as a fashion statement.In the video we do show some performance of the song, but we don't dwell on it. We were intending of having the characters running with their instruments, but even though it would allow new audience members to see what part each character plays in the band, we didn't feel that it was necessary as
1) It wouldn't fit with the narrative
2) (Not linking to the audience) It would have been too dangerous to run and jump around carrying expensive instruments, as if anything bad happened or anything was damaged we wouldn't have been able to afford the repairs.
Very rarely within this genre will musical synesthesia occur. Seeing as the videos themselves are querki and random, the audience wouldn't need the constant extra confusion. Saying this, you will sometimes come across one video where there is a short synesthesic snippet, adding to the comedic value of the video as a whole. We were intending to incorporate an idea like this into our music video (during the words "I've got to keep myself from drinking on these streets" we were going to show one of the characters perched on the floor, drinking juice from a can - we intended it not to be alcoholic as it would yet again, add to the comedic value of the video), but due to timing constraints we didn't have the time. I don't feel that our video has suffered at all even though we are missing it. For us the most noticeable link between the lyrics and the video, is the fact that the song is called "Money" and the characters are chasing for a bag (which we know is full of money). This isn't incredibly noticeable for audience, maybe for the first few times that they watch the video. This isn't a bad thing though as this sense of mystery creates a good enigma, as no-one knows what the band are chasing for. It definitely adds to the repeatability factor of the music video.
Quite often in music videos there are a lot of comedic references and also intertextuality.
There is definitely some form of narrative in our video, even if it isn't the easiest to grasp the first time around. The whole idea of the video is that the musicians of the band meet up, and race eachother to a bag of money, floating in the middle of a swimming pool. During this time the singer is waking up, and decides to leave the house for a walk. In his travels he comes across the rest of the band, battling it out for the money, and so he gets in on the act. After a comedic take on a vehicle race, they all enter the pool house through in different ways, and just-so-happen to all dive in for the money at the same time. We had always intended the video to end before the characters land in the water, as it leaves the audience wanting more, and we were pleased with the way that the video did end. During our audience feedback many of the viewers couldn't get their heads around the narrative after the first viewing, but after we explained it, it all seemed to make sense to them, which was a relief!
To do this, we used the sound from the actual clip that we recorded on location. What the audience don't see is Charlie from our group holding a laptop behind the camera, playing the song through it's speakers. The fact that the song sounds so compressed from being played out of a laptop and then out of video camera speakers worked well for us, as due to the sound being tinny, it makes it totally believable that the sound could be coming from a mobile phone.
One of the main similarities between the characters in the video and the target audience is age. All of the personas featured within the video are between 17 and 19. This is the younger section of our target audience (those between 16 and 40). The way our characters are dressed reflects the way that the youth of today are usually dressed. Obviously this changes from person to person, and quite often it reflects what music they listen to. You will very rarely come across someone wearing all black, with big leather boots, long black hair, a pale face and black make-up, dusted off with studded belts and piercings, listening to the latest 50 Cent album. We wanted the fans of our band to appreciate our video, and we felt that the best way to do this was to give them a comedic video that was enjoyable to watch more than once. We made sure that the jokes didn't seem to desperate and also that there were small details referencing other ancillary texts that some may notice after watching the videos a few times. We attempted to make a video that would be a memorable experience to watch, not just one of 'those' videos that nobody can remember two days after they watched it.
We have made the CD cover very simple. We didn't want to over-complicate it with too many bright colours and too much text. We have simply used one photograph that we took on location. As the most noticeable part of our album cover is the long road, we wanted the text to be within it, and look as if it as was actually on the road. We did this on Adobe Photoshop by inserting the text layer, then going into the editor, changing the angle to make it sit more suitably on the road, and then we added a filter and changed the colour scheme to make it seem a lot more granulated, as if it had been pasted onto the road.
A lot of bands within the Indie genre choose to have a very simple album cover, take for instance Favourite Worst Nightmare by the Arctic Monkeys. They have a very plain photograph of a block of terraced houses. The atmosphere is very bleak, the sky is dark and grey, and all in all it looks very boring, and lonley. To spruce it up they add an awkward Arctic Monkeys logo with the name of the album directly underneath, both are placed at a strange angle (this is exactly what we've done) and then coming from some of the windowns in one of the houses there are some very bright neon lights and funky shapes. The text on the album volour is yellow, and the fact that it is coming from the sky could represent a lightening bolt, adding some excitement to the photograph. They would have done this to make the logo actually look like it is part of the scene, which is the look that we have gone for in our CD cover. The only difference between this piece of artwork and the one that Animal House produced is that the Animal House one shows the members of the band.
There were many purposes for our music video, to show off our personalities and to promote the song, to show viewers that the band matches the criteria of the genre and also to show that each member had their individual style. Saying this, the main purpose of most music videos is to entertain the audience. I think that we managed to accomplish all of these very well. After hearing our audience feedback we learnt that all our characters came across as very believeable people. Within the video we conform to the notions of Steve Archer's theory, as we have a mixture of performance and narrative within the video. We develop this idea by incorpora
Because we follow the guidelines of Steve Archer's theory, it comes across that the band has a real and positive connection to the music, with is pleasing for the audience to watch. We also follow his theory to more of an extent with our digipack. There is a definite relationship between the narrative of the video and the photos we used in our digipack. For instance, the television, used in both the front and back cover. During the video, when the band are running out the barn, the guitarist is on a bike, the bassist is holding a table and the drummer runs out holding an old television.
The text on the back cover is the same font as the text used throughout the rest of the CD spreads, but instead of lining them up square, we angled them so the line was purposely un-even. We did this to prove that we are not always conforming to the rules made by the media, and that we are not a straight-down-the-line Indie band, we are our own people. The jauntiness of the words could be seen to represent our rebellious streak.
When it came to our digipack, we wanted to prove to the audience that we are an artistically literate band with substantial intellect. Our simple but artistic photos and inlays show the audience that we run our own image and that we're not being controlled by the media.
We didn't want to over complicate the CD inlays. We decided to have three different inlays, all with a similar sort of structure. The background of the photos are subtle colours that are pleasing to the eye, with just "Animal House", written in black underneath the photo, to the right hand side of the spread. The photos are humorous and are not to be taken majorly seriously. The whole purpose of them was the entertain the audience who look in the booklet inside the CD case. We have made the photos fun and enjoyable to look at as it makes the group seem more believable and the individual characters within the band seem much more 'real' and not just manufactured. We wanted the photos to actually look like we'd taken them ourselves without a whole crew setting up a photo shoot. If audience members were to notice this then it would incline them to think that we wrote all our music ourselves, and that we are a totally self-made band.
We had a screening for our video and digipack one lunchtime where we showed students and teachers (around the age of our target audience) and anyone else who wanted to view the video. To say the least they enjoyed it very much so, which pleased us as a group! After they watched the video we asked them a series of questions about their opinions. Before we asked them questions we made them agree to answer truthfully and not to just say that they thought it was good as it was our coursework, which they were all happy to do.
They were all very certain that the video matched those within the Indie genre. One of our younger teachers pointed out that
and that it appealed to them very much. When planning the project we had decided that the video was to come across as quirky, so in that sense, we were over the moon. Bands such as the Arctic Monkeys actually aim their music at students and those in their mid 20's, so to here an opinion like that from someone within that age category filled us with joy."... the video was very quirky..."
There were a few things that the audience weren't clear on, for instance, the narrative. They weren't 100% sure why the band members were running, and quite a lot of them didn't actually notice the bag in the middle of the swimming pool for the last scene.
The audience that we showed the video to also noticed the comedic aspects of our video. This was a big relief for me as when we were filming the music video weOverall, we felt that it was safe to say that the audience were suitably impressed with our project, and as a group, we couldn't have been happier with their feedback.
When brainstorming earlier in the project, we were adament on the fact that we wanted to film the video using a HD video camera. We felt that it would be beneficial in the long run as it would enhance the viewing quality of our film. Admittedly, we didn't export our video into the biggest/widest aspect possible, but we are still very happy with the quality, even when blown up onto a big screen/projector. One of the most challenging shots to get was the swimming pool scene at the end of the video. We wanted to make sure that most of the pool was in the shot, but still allow the characters who were jumping into it seem big, allowing them to be the most noticeable objects on screen.
When creating the CD cover we used Adobe Photoshop to piece all of the layers together. We worked hard on choosing mature fonts and simple colours, whilst effectively making an aesthetically pleasing CD cover. We used a high quality camera to take the photos and we took everything from apperture settings to simply the flash into account to make sure we got the best possible picture. We made the poster in a similar fashion. We added a filter to the photograph to give it a more hand-drawn effect. We did this to catch the eye of a passer by, and to make it stand out when in a magazine or on a shop window. I am glad we managed to create this effect without being too extreme. The subtlety of it allows us to look professional and not just like "another boy band".
Normally the research for a project is completed and handed in on paper. For our media research (as you can see) we kept it all together on a group blog. As well as making everything much more organised, it allowed our teachers to track and comment on our work, meaning that we could improve. Having easy and quick access to the internet meant that contacting bands about whether we could use their song was very simple. It also allowed audience feedback to be simple as we could simply post it onto Youtube. Youtube proved very useful for researching other band's music videos, and we also managed to view previous A, B and C grade worthy A2 Media Studies group's coursework, to see what sort of level we need to be aiming at, or trying to exceed.
One of the most important things within our project is self evaluation and audience feedback. We created a Facebook group meaning that the members of it could view our video and tell us their response. We even posted a small questionnaire in the discussion column. We worded some of the questions very simply and others in a more complex fashion, so that everyone could understand and answer.
Overall, we all felt that we used Media Technologies to a good extent and at a good quality, and we are sure that our project would have suffered without.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms an conventions of real media products?
To give ourselves more freedom to make a good, solid music video we decided that the lyrics would contradict the video. We preferred this idea because it looks more soph
The genre of our piece is Indie/rock. This genre of music i feel bode well for us as it is very versatile as many people can like it as it is not a niche product. The beat of the music helped us a lot to create the high energy music video.
As the song has a quick beat, we had to adapt this to the narrative. We brainstormed a few ideas and looked at a few existing music videos to get a general idea of what we could do. One video that helped us with the chasing idea was the 'Sandstorm - Darude' video.
When making the CD pictures for the front cover and the poster, we thought a lot about making the link between the pictures and the music video. In my opinion, if a band has pictures that relate to a certain video on their album then the video will seem more exclusive and sought after. Each member of the band has taken part in the pictures and we hav
The purpose of our product was to entertain the audience watching. While entertaining the viewers, our goal was to also to put the emphasis on the different personalities that are portrayed in the band. This, i feel, was a major factor in our video as it gave our band a comedy factor and lets us make a video that is slightly bizarre, therefore could appeal to wider audience as it's not particularly a video set around a certain genre. As our song is from an indie band, the genre is Indie/Rock. I dont think the genre of the music really had an effort on our video, however, i feel that the fashion of our band was based around the indie style, especially the look and the actions of our lead singer.
We also made a digi pack. This is combination of a CD cover, In Lay booklet and a
The narrative of both the product and the ancillery text is to (as we are a new band) show our various personalities so the public know what we are about, same goes with the posters and the album cover, it subtly shows our personalities and our sense of humour. I feel these tie in with the purpose of the representation that we want to put across to the audience. Our video for instance shows a group of boy having fun and in the outdoors, this gives off a very trusting image and shows that we aren't trying to be intimidating towards anybody. The product connects to the purpose as we are trying to show a new up and coming band w
I would hope to see our video on the TV, for example MTV or being more specific 'MTV 2.'
I think this would be good as if we show the video with our song then people will get an idea of the look and feel of our band instead of just being a song, it also makes the song memorable and recognisable to the audience. This will then be the start of our band breaking through.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
To get feedback from the audience we put our video on 'Facebook' and also showed it to fellow classmates and friends. Everyone we showed the video to gave us good feedbac
