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

When planning our final product we thought about the image that we would put across.

This was important to us as we are aware of how a bands image can influence fans.

For our Band/Artist image we wanted to seem extraordinary and stand out from the crowd as being quite quirky and adding different styles to our music videos to appeal to lots of different audiences. We wanted the band to have different personalities within the band so we seem appealing to many different groups of society. We deliberately made our band to have a cheeky exterior to give ourselves more depth and seem interesting to the audience. We thought if our band was to have many diferent personalities then we could add another dimension to our music video making it repeatable.

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

isticated and professional. In my opinion i feel when the lyrics amplify the visuals and ruins the

video as it cannot flow as well, and also there are certain boundaries we would have to stick by. It also takes away the freedom from making a fun video that the audience can be entertained by on all levels. For instance some of the best scenes in our video are nothing to do with the lyrics, for instance the pool scene at the end and the chasing scenes in the woods, therefore the viewer can see that we have used our imagination to make the video. This swimming pool shot came from researching various songs on the internet, to be specific we had the idea from a video called 'Friendly Fires - Jump in the Pool'.

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.

One of the themes that we liked was the running aspect of the fast paced music videos. This gave us the idea of a chase scene. Having a chase scene pushed us towards making quick cuts therefore making it repeatable to the audience. As there are four people in a our band we thought it would be good to have four different stories going on at the same time emphasising our different personalities, both through movements, props and costumes.

The musical structure of the song is very traditional; Introduction/verse/chorus/verse/chorus. As it was a clear song this meant that we could easily base the video around the different parts of the song, for example when the chorus kicks in we have the lead singer in the shot. The guitar solo in the song was al

so very good for us as it gave us a great marking spot to have a story building shot where everything almost come together. I feel we did a good job on filming parts of the video to certain parts of the song, for instance when filming the tractor scene we knew that was going to be for the guitar solo, therefore we weren't wasting time thinking of what to do or thinking how long to do it.

Nowadays i feel that the Indie/Rock genre can market to all ages, but overall as a group we have set the target audience to 18-35 year olds. We feel this gives us a lot of leeway as we have no limits to our video in terms of humour and storyline. As our target audience is older than the characters in the video, i feel this add to the entertainment and fun nature of the video as the viewers will not take it too seriously but can still be appreciative. The target audience in terms of genders can be for both as the song and the video are very versatile. The video is not based on the theme of voyeurism therefore it is light hearted and appealing to both.
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

e not been biased towards one individual which makes the relationships within the band stronger.

I feel this challenges the forms and conventions of other band pictures as they tend to have the lead singer in the spotlight, with the other band members in the background. As our genre is Indie, I feel that our band style is the retro kind of style. Therefore we had to make our pictures look retro by editing it in a very stylish and retro way, which makes us look intellectual and in touch with our artistic side. I feel the large writing on the poster shows our bold personalities and shows the audience that we want to be noticed. The image and the writing looks very authentic, this again shows our retro side as you can see from our front cover at the top of the page.

As our band just has a few pictures with a simple poster it makes our band seem very low key and professional and appealing to the audience as we don't seem like a manufactured band that is run on money and no talent. As you can see from some of our images in the digi-pack below;

How affective is the combination of your main product and ancillery texts?

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

poster. The purpose of our CD cover was to highlight our new single and highlight the genre of our band. As the front cover of our CD is stylish it shows that we are artistically literate with substantial intellect therefore we will be taken seriously and not looked down upon as being a manufactured band being fed money. I feel it also shows that we are out to make our own image and not run by the media, as many bands these days are. The target audience for our band is anyone who enjoys indie music but also anybody who just wants to be entertained. I showed the video to people of all different ages ranging from 14-58 and they liked the video and all gave positive feedback, therefore i think we have achieved making an entertaining video for a wide ranging audience. I feel the publication for a band will come from such advertising as posters and being inside music magazines, for example NME.

I feel if our band is shoved in peoples faces through the TV and the internet then we again will feel manufactured and will not be known just for our musical talent.
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

hile also showing the various personalities that are depicted in our band, i feel this makes our band very likeable as we aren't hiding behind our instruments and just letting the music do the talking.
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

k. By gathering comments from the audience, it made us realise what we achieved with the project. As the audience was not entirely sure why the characters were running therefore agreed with us in saying that we had created an enigma, thus making the video repeatable.

The audience also agreed that we have made a comedic video. This is important to us because if the audience did not understand the comedy that we were portraying the video it would be very confused as to what we were doing.

For me, the one objective i wanted to achieve was to make the video repeatable to the audience. This was made possible by having 4 different characters in the video, all taking different routes in the story line. I feel another dimension to the video which made it repeatable was the 'random quirkiness'.

Overall i am very happy with the feedback that we got especially as the age of the audience that viewed the video ranged from 13-58, and each person appreciated the video.

As we are students we all know that the most popular social networking site is Facebook. We used this new technology as we knew we could get a wide range of people to have a look at our final product and easily give us some feedback, using both the comment area and the questionnaire provided. Here is a snapshot of what our profile looks like. Our Facebook Group

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

During the planning of our media project, the new technologies that became available to us became very important. When planning our music video, our first instinct was to look at various music videos on 'YouTube'. This helped us look at videos from bands of a similar genre and gave us inspiration for what we might want to do for our final piece.

I think the real new media that helped us in the project was the 'Blog'. This meant that any ideas that we came up with, weather it be at home or it the classroom, we could all upload ideas and discuss them as a group.

When deciding what track to use for the video we used a social networking site called 'MySpace', this helped us find unsigned bands that we could use for our song. This is how we found our band, 'YellowGarage'. Although we knew the band members, we could still choose the song we wanted to use in the video by listening to the songs on the website. After listening to the track 'Money' we had to find a way to contact the band members to ask permission, we did this by contacting them via another social networking site called 'Facebook'. It was a ver

y quick transaction and shortly after we asked they gave us an answer, therefore we could get on our way to planning the storyboard.

In the construction part of our coursework we used media that was very new to us therefore we had to learn how to use to get the best results out of our video. We first of used the High Definition camera to film, for this we had to learn what the best lighting was to film and how to get the best results. For the first scene i was the camera man so I had to make the audience believe it was morning while still getting adequate lighting.

As the cameras can pick up the slightest movement from below, this made the filming of the vehicles very hard. For the tractor scene we had to make sure the shot was perfect and the driving was smooth as we were running out of light, therefore before driving i had to make sure that the camera was stable. We put the tripod in the back of the car and surrounded the legs with clothes. It turned out to be one of our best scenes. As you can see from this action shot, the picture is very clear and the right lighting has been used.

After completing the video we took turns and worked as a group to edit the video using 'Final Cut Express'. This new technology helped us gain confidence with using editing software, i feel it also helped in the filming stages as we knew the limits of the software and what we could do with each shot. As our video consisted of many fast shots, the Final Cut Express software became vital when trying to get the perfect timing for the cuts to go with the music. One of the shots which i helped to produce to go with the music is shown below. This took a while as we had to get 4 cuts in a very short amount of time while sticking with the cymbal beat from the drums. Another example of timing that we had to get right was the end scene where we jump into the pool, this was important as it is our trademark shot.

In our evaluation stages we used a mix of new technologies, ranging from the Internet Blog to Final Cut Express. In this last stage we needed to mix the two to get the best outcome for our evaluations, we wrote our views about the video and how everything went on the video while showing short video clips from the video and photos. On Final Cut Express we had to learn a new skill of exporting video clips into a separate file and move it onto the internet blog.

In conclusion to the project, i feel it went perfectly and everything that i imagined to be in our music video worked very well. I feel this was down to having a good up beat song to go with our up beat video and also the technology that was available to us to use.

Evaluation of progress and Ideas that have come through

As we have finished putting our final piece on the DVD i feel this will be a good time to evaluate the progress that we made through the project.

As a group i feel we worked well together and all coming up with very good ideas for our media project. I feel that we seemed very professional with our approach to study and came up with artistic ideas, especially with our front cover. The other day we finished producing our pictures for the front cover, in lay and back cover. Our one goal was to produce a video that looked like it hadn't been done by four teenage media students, therefore we had to make our artistic pictures look professional and fit with the personalities that are portrayed in the Animal House video.

Personally i was pleased with how the project has come out, looking at many other media projects i didn't want to make a video that seemed half hearted and unprofessional. 

The Bag

Unfortunately due to none of us actually owning a briefcase that we wanted to put in a swimming pool, we had to use a different, and less smart, recyclable holdel bag.

Even though we had to make this change, the new bag does actually add to the comedic aspects of the film as the audience may be expecting a smart briefcase full of money, when actually it's a 'Tesco Bag for Life".

Obviously nobody knows what is actually in the bag, and we intend for nobody to find out.

What we did in the lesson

In yesterdays lesson Richard and Emiel took charge of the editing and came up with some good ideas and ended up with 36 seconds of our video fully edited to how we wanted it. Our video so far is running very smoothly and our ideas that we have had from the start have not been interrupted in any way so we are all very pleased.

What we achieved while filming

We filmed the full film on Sunday 18th, apart from the swimming pool scene. 

The filming went very well and and we managed to film on a sunny day which made the shots look a lot better, and the scenery around the villages in which we filmed were suitable for how we wanted it to look. As we started the filming during the morning and throughout the day, it looked very realistic because as we filmed the daylight slowly went which rapped the video up nicely.

Overall we think that the filming went very well and we are happy with what we have got so far, unfortunately we were unable to transfer our footage onto the macs this lesson, however once we acquire the correct CD we will be able to start editing our footage.

Storyboarding

Today, Richard and I started the storyboarding for the chase scene, we planned the first shot and discussed ideas for the rest of the video. Soon we will be filming the shots of the singer singing the words, only two members need to be there to film. Once that is finished we can move straight on towards filming the chase scene, and once that's completed, the filming's finished.

Final Plot

3 characters meet in location (to be decided) all receive texts . As they all take their separate routes. There are cuts back and forth from the singer, who, differently to the other members of the band, is waking up, and taking it slow. This is what happens until the guitar solo, when the singer then sees the briefcase in the swimming pool in his back garden and starts to become more suspicious. He goes outside to see it, and turns around, then to see the other 3 members hurtling down the road towards his house. The cuts between the 3 members and the singer will become more and more frequent the nearer they all get to each other. Eventually, the singer breaks away from his "chilled" exterior and gets in on the action by turning round and storming towards to swimming pool. All 4 members of the band then throw themselves, mid-air into the pool, and the video just cuts out before they all hit the water.

We feel that the contrast between the fast paced action from the instrumentalists and the slow, step-by-step morning routine from the singer will be effective and also not to difficult to capture. When it comes to editing, we can really bring the pace to a halt when it cuts to the singer through quick transitions and different lighting techniques in the filming.

More Costume designs

For our different characters in the band we need to have different costumes to identify our different personalities.

Firstly, the lead singer ; Tom Abraham

- As he is the lead singer we have made him the 'cool' one, therefore how he acts. As he is waking up in his home he will be wearing pyjamas, but he will be acting cool and doing everything in a slick style and lip-syncing the words into the mirror.

Second Character, the Drummer ; Charlie Potter.

As he is the drummer he will be the wacky character, so therefore charlie will be wearing ripped jeans, with maybe some tweed to go with his country boy esque transport. This will make it funny to watch him, also his facial expressions will be very 'crazy.' This will all add to the comedic effect of the video.

Our Bassist is Emiel Pronk ; His character will be the 'cool' one, therefore his clothes will be smart casual. He will be wearing a cool suit that will end up getting wrecked as he tries to find the money.

The last character is Richard Gough who is the Guitarist ; He is the rebel of the band therefore he will be wearing a hoodie and some baggy/scruffy trousers. The transport will be a 'stolen car.'

This will add many dimensions to the band and help achieve the 'random' video idea and make the video repeatable to the audience.

Another video idea

After watching a music video for 'All American Rejects - Give you hell' it gave me an idea of how to add more comedy to our video. In the All American Rejects there is a scene where he is very tired and waked up in bed, this small scene gave me the idea of having another dimension to our video; While 3 people are desperately running to get the briefcase from the swimming pool, the other person has no idea what is going on and just wakes up as usual and goes down to the swimming pool (in his garden) and discovers the briefcase, he goes into the swimming pool in his pyjamas and gets the briefcase. As he comes up from the bottom of the pool the three 'runners' turn up and discover what has happened, even so they still all jump in to the pool and there is a freeze frame of the runners in mid air above the man in pyjamas. The story of the 'man in pyjamas' waking up and stumbling to get a bit of toast slows down the music video slightly but makes it more interesting and funny.

Below is the image that i gained this idea from, i got the idea simply because the character looks very tired therefore gave me inspiration for another character in our video.

Ideas for Storyboarding

This lesson we have looked at many different videos to get ideas for our storyboard;

- Vampire Weekend, Oxford Comma: From this video we gained ideas about what to have going on in the video, from the video we have been been influenced to have many things going on in the background, we feel this will add to the video and make it repeatable.

- Beck, Odelay: This video was used as a preference because it is very much the style that we want to achieve; for example having very random goings on in the background and the video seemed very clever and cutting edge.

- Blink 182, All the Small Things: This video works on the basis of intertextuality making it very humorous - we like this video because it brought comedy into the music and we would like to add comedy into our video. We also liked the weirdness of the very random 'What's my age again' video by blink 182 which also showed signs of intertextuality.  With this music video we alo learned techniques of camera angles, for example the running round the corner shot shown at the top of the post.

The last video we looked at was by Chikinki, Assassinator 13; We like this video very much as it uses a range of weird clips and many different costumes on one person. Watching the video you realise how long it would have taken to make therefore you watch the video and appreciate it.

Locations

The locations that we intend to use include Charlie's field and forest, and also for the unique ending to the video we need to ask permission to use Leanne Saunders' swimming pool. We definately need to ask Leanne for permission as the intended ending for our music video is one of our best parts therefore we don't want top ruin that by simply being lazy and changing ideas.

Learning the song

Today the three of listened carefully to the song that we are going to use (Money by Yellow Garage). We took notice of key lyrics, timing within the rhythm and also the use of instrumentation. There are some sections where the drum beat is off-beat and unexpected, these would be great times for quick cuts and modern transitions to maintain the variety and franticness within the video.

We were also thinking of maybe incorporating split screens and tone editing such as having some of the shots in black and white. 

What we need to do as soon as possible is post a copy of the lyrics onto the blog and then also a detailed analysis of where we could change shots and how we would. We also need to finally decide the routes being taken by each member of the band to get to the destination that they are racing for.

Yellow Garage - Money

After going on to the myspace page of our desired band and listening to the track that we are going to use, 'Money', it has given me various ideas about the the video and how we could go about doing the pursuit. I thought that the four people randomly chasing something could meet very strange things on the way, this could represent them going crazy over worrying about money. Then it would be clear that they are all desperately running for money then when they arrive the package isn't what it seems, or we could end the video without actually seeing what the package is and just end the video with a still of two people jumping into the pool.

Indie Music: The genre

The genre we are going to work with will be Indie. We have already researched into the various songs we could use for the final piece and have found a suitable track, from an unsigned band called 'Yellow Garage.' The track is called 'Money', the reason we picked this song was because we think it will work best with the video we had in mind as the tempo is reasonably fast. The song also includes a clever riff which will go well with the whole 'pursuit' idea.

I think we have made the right choice choosing an indie song to make a video for, as it will include lyrics therefore adding an extra dimension to the video. Also, with the video having four people all chasing an object, and the lyrics being about money, this gives us an idea of what they could all be chasing.

Video research

We were researching various videos on YouTube as we thought we would like to take some techniques out of them to use on ours. The two videos that we looked at were ; 'The Prodigy - Voodoo People' and 'Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma.' We like the style of these videos as they have very random scenes in, this made us want to make our video very unique by having events in the video that nobody will expect.

Developing our own stars

Our stars will be male icons for the indie/rock music of the early millennium. They will conform to the dress sense linking to that genre at this time, yet will slowly start to make it their own. At the moment when performing, indie performers normally wear casual clothes, as it is more about the quality of the music, rather than the performance given from the band. Here's what indie/rock musicians would normally state as their attire:

- Smart shoes or pointy boots, normally black or brown leather.

- Smart, yet tight fitting trousers. Usually black but white is appearing more and more.

- Often a small, slightly worn-out t-shirt, with a loose long sleeved shirt on top, almost always with the sleeves rolled up. The shirt has a sort of 'dusty' look to it.

- Miscellaneously, they would wear sunglasses, rings, they would have badges pinned to their shirts or their guitar straps, loose belts, rags hanging out their pockets. Recently, there has been a surge in the number of Trilby hats being worn.

Looking at Album covers, Posters and DVD covers

For homework i looked at a range of different covers and postrers for artists.

The first album cover i looked at was by 'Pixie Lott.' It is a very simple album cover with just a picture of her on the front with her name below her. As it is just a picture of her looking away with quite messy hair we get the idea that she is young and 'wacky' and just likes making music. Other factors that put this across are the font used, the font used is meant to symbolise handwriting, therefore making the album seem personal. The fact that she hasnt used much technology or striking bright colours gives the effect of a very acoustic, simple album.

The second album cover i looked at was by 'Pete Yorn,' and the album was called 'Scarlett Johansson.'
At a glance of the album cover we straight away get the idea that the music being created is low-key and personal. The album cover looks like an old photo of Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson relaxing and making acoustic music in their own homes. I feel that wha they are wearing gives this away, Scarlett Johansson who is a famouse actress and normally very glamourous is wearing a baggy wooly jumper.

Audience Profile theory

Obviously we will find out the Audience Profile for real once we have carried out the actual research on audiences with Indie music, but this is a good idea of what we think the audience will be:

Gender: The majority of the audience will be male but there will definitely be some female appreciators.

Age: The indie/rock age range is those around 15-30. Some of the older generation don't enjoy the music yet those younger than 15's music taste may not have matured yet.

Interests: The average person within this age range would probably enjoy going out with their friends to parties and dancing. They probably feel that music plays a big part in their life as they listen to it a lot, whether it's at home on their computer on on their MP3 players, when they're on the move.

What they expect to see: Indie/rock music videos can normally contain anything. If you look at say, the Arctic Monkeys, there are no definitive plots in the video, quite often it's them in picture-esque locations and then there are cuts to the band performing.

How we will appeal to them: Animal House want to incorporate some sort of pursuit within the video, we think it would be quite interesting if the audience didn't necessarily see what the members of the band were chasing for, as it would add a sense of mystery and would also conform to the general rule or randomness within Indie videos.

How we are going to research our audience

There are many possible ways to research our audience and get a very good idea of what the audience will be like, demographically and psychographically. We can carry out questionnaires and also look at download records and comments on video steaming websites such as Youtube or Google Video. Looking at the comments and also the Youtube usernames of the people who have commented.

These are the set-in-stone methods of research that we will undertake:

- Questionnaires

- Looking at Video Streaming website comments

- Looking at the most common fan age ranges from the popular music genres of today

- Play the song that we will use to people that feel it would appeal to, and also play it to people that we know it wouldn't appeal to, and get them to note down their reactions/opinions of the song.

Album Covers we looked at...