Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Part One)

Below are nine key frames that I have taken from other music videos. I have decided to use music videos from the indie genre to show how they are similar and different to my own music video.

1.   This shot is taken from the music video for "Foundations" by Kate Nash. The reason that I chose this shot is because at this point the lead character has walked over to the fridge to reveal a lot of beer in the fridge door, this happens when she says "why don't you just have another beer then". Throughout this music video the visuals match the lyrics.

2.   This shot is also taken from the music video for "Foundations" by Kate Nash. The reason that I chose this shot is because it establishes who the lead character is within the narrative. Close-ups of the lead characters face is one of the main conventions of the indie genre. Also this part of the music video shows the lead character lip-syncing with the lyrics.

3.  This shot is taken from the music video for "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellies. The reason that I chose this shot is because it goes against the conventions of the indie genre. Usually the frontman (singer) of the band is the first person to be shown in the music video, and the majority of the time they are the main person to be used within the video, however in this music video, the drummer is the first person within the band to be shown in the music video.

4.   This shot is also taken from the music video for "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellies. The reason that I chose this shot is because it shows the band performing together on a stage. Having performance and narrative within a music video can be seen in quite a few indie music videos as it establishes the band and shows how they interact with each other when performing together.

5.   This shot is taken from the music video for "Naive" by The Kooks. The reason that I chose this shot is because this music video reminds me of my own music video. This shot shows the lead guy in a club/bar walking around looking for someone. The shot establishes him as the main artist of the band as while he is walking around he is also lip-syncing with the lyrics. The use of darkness in this video is uses to represent how the lead guy is kept in the dark by his girlfriend.

6.   This shot is also taken from the music video for "Naive" by The Kooks. The reason that I chose this shot is because it shows a contrast between how the couple used to be and how they are now. Another reason that I chose this shot is because it reminds me of my own music video as the narrative is in quite bright light while the performance is very dark lighting.

7.   This shot is taken from the music video for "Talk You Down" by The Script. The reason that I chose this shot is because it introduces and establishes the frontman of the band and the lead male of the narrative. Close-ups of the frontmans faces is one of the main conventions of the indie genre, this also shows him lip-syncing with the lyrics of the song.

8.   This shot is also taken from the music video for "Talk You Down" by The Script. The reason that I chose this shot is because it shows the narrative part of the music video which matches the lyrics of the song, "grabbed your suitcase called a taxi". This music video is very similar to my own as it contains both narrative and performance within the music video.

9.   This shot is also taken from the music video for "Talk You Down by The Script. the reason that I chose this shot is because it establishes The Script as a band, performing together on a roof-top. Showing the band performing is one of the conventions of music videos within the indie genre.

Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Part 2)

Below are nine key frames that I have taken from our music video.

1.   This is the first shot of our music video and it is from the performance part of our music video. It is a simple shot that shows the lead guys foot tapping to the beat of the song, it is quite a long shot that pans to one of the guitarist. It is mainly music that is with this beginning part of the music video, when the singer says "shit" the lead guys foot lifts up from the floor and properly taps the floor. To follow one of the conventions of the indie/rock genre we have used this part of the music video again later on in the song.

2.   This shot shows the lead guy singing. This shot in the music video shows our lipsyncing. It is quite a simple shot and the camera changes from being on his left side to being on his right side.

3.   This shot is of myself acting as the barmaid in a pub. This shot follows the lyrics of the song that say about the girl behind the bar. In our music video we decided to be different in how we portrayed the narrative, we thought that just because the visuals are matching the lyrics, it doesn't mean that they have to be put together. So in order to be different with our music video we decided to place this shot just after the lyrics because then it seems more like the guy is dreaming about her.

4.   As with shot number 3 this shot follows the lyrics, however unlike shot number 3, these visuals and lyrics are shown at the same time as we thought it would be a bit strange for the visuals to be constantly following the lyrics and the audience may get bored of this. This shot also shows the different cinematography that we have used within our music video. The majority of the cinematography is medium-shots, however here we wanted to capture what the lead guy was singing about, therefore we decided we would use an extreme close-up.

5.   This shot shows the first proper time that we introduce Jack to the audience as the lead singer of a band. The only time we really properly show Jack singing with the band as one of the performance parts of the music video is during the chorus, this is mainly because for the verses we had a lot of lyrics that we where able to work with that had a lot of narrative within them, however the chorus was a lot harder to work with, so by using a performance was a lot easier for us and it also follows the conventions of the indie genre.

6.   Another convention of the indie genre that we have followed is shown in this shot, which is to have close-ups of the other band members. This is a close up of one of guitarists, Tom. It is only a quick shot of him as most indie music videos spend more time of the lead singer rather than the guitarists.

7.   This shot shows one of the transitions that we used within our music video. Most indie music video use a simple cut to switch from different shots, scenes of locations, however, we wanted to break some of the conventions of the genre, and also we thought that by using transtitions is would make our music video more visually interesting and different, and something that audiences would remember and want to watch again.

8.   This shot is very dark and difficult to see, but it is of the audience from the gig that the band did at The Charles Ground Football Club. We thought that it would be a good idea to put in some shots of the audience that we at the boys gig as we were able to realistically show how the audience reacted to the band and their music. Also, groups of people dancing to music can be seen in many indie music videos.

9.   I really like this shot as it wasn't staged, and it looks a lot like friends filming friends which was the feel we wanted for our music video. We didn't want it too looked staged as we wanted it to be a very natural video. Also, if the boys had been staged in everything that they'd been doing then they would have felt awkward, which wouldn't have looked good on camera, and also it would make anyone watching the video feel awkward which wasn't something that we wanted with our music video.

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of you main product and ancillary texts?

Music Video

We used an unsigned band and one of their own songs for our music video, the reason for this was because it was a lot easier to contact them and they were okay with us using one of their songs. We thought that this way would be a lot more easier than trying to contact as signed artist as they may not want us to use one of their songs.

The story behind our music video is quite simple to grasp as the narrative part of the music video links with the lyrics of the song. The video is about a guy who's out enjoy himself with the lads when he sees the girl behind the bar and he tries to impress her. We know the boys quite well and we wanted the music video to reflect their personalities, therefore we tried to have some comical elements within it which I think worked really well in the video.

Digipack

The ancillary products we decided to do where the digipack and the poster. For the inside of the digipack I decided to use some shots of each individual band memeber from the music video. The reason for doing this was so that potential buyers would be able to see these images and relate them to the music video. However, I thought that if I inverted the colours to make them negative it would make the inside of the digipack more visually interesting, and it is also not something that I have seen before and I wanted these ancillary tasks to be different and individual instead of copying what is already out there on the market now. For the front and back covers I've used two staged photographs that I took of the band. I think that the colour works well and isn't too bold, bright or dark.

Poster

My first draft for the poster was quite boring as it was only a white background with colour photographs of the band. I tried to edit the colouring of the pictures but it began to look very similar to a poster that I had seen for The Arctic Monkeys so instead I inverted the colours to make them negative, like what I did with the inside of the album cover. I like my poster and I think that the colouring all works well together, but I still think that there is something missing and its still a little bit bland and boring with a plain black background.



Evaluation: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Music Video
On our first cut of the music video we showed Mrs Stone, who gave us some quite good feedback on how she expected the video to look, she also gave us some ideas of possible changes we could make. She thought that the first shot that we use is too long and doesn't really introduce anyone in particular within the band, she expected to see Jack the lead singer, however we decided that we wanted to try and break a few conventions of the genre. In the end we kept this shot and when showing it too our target audience they all agreed with us on keeping the shot and they liked that it was different and not the same as all the other music videos of the genre.

The main criticism that we recieved from our audience feedback was that the scenes we used from the gig at The Charles Ground Football Club for the performance part of the music video are too dark. I agree with this. When we were editing the music video in Adobe Premier these shots didn't looked quite bright (not as bright as the narrative scenes though), however, as soon as the video was put onto youtube the scenes looked a lot darker and very pixellated.
This would be the main thing that I would change in our music video. Instead of using a proper performance from the band instead I would have rented out The Charles Ground Football Club and staged the boys with proper lighting so that they are more visable throughout the performance. This also would mean that there wouldn't be a massive lighting change between the performance and narrative parts of our music video.



Digipack and Poster
Overall the feedback recieved for both the digipack and the poster has been quite positive, this is mainly because I inverted the colours of some of the pictures to give them an alternative feel and too also make then stand out and be eyecatching to any potential buyers.

Evaluation: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, reasearch, planning and evaluation stages? (Part One)

Throughout this whole course, Blogger has been the main media technology that I have used. It is simple to use and has been a good website to log all of the work that I have done over the year, from research to analysing other products to uploading my own products and pictures. 

It was difficult to find a time to book out a camera and tripod for the same weekend that we were meeting up with the boys to film the music video. Therefore we decided to use Manals own camcorder and tripod to film the scenes.
We used the tripod for the performance scenes that we filmed at The Charles Ground Football Club, this was because the boys where performing live and we didn't want the camera work to be shaky. We also thought that there was more risk of us being pushed and breaking the camera if it was hand held.
However, for the narrative scenes in The Magnet Pub we decided the not use the tripod as we thought it would seem more realistic if the camera was a little shaky, and these scenes would look like the boys where being watched.
I really enjoyed using the camcorder, however I think that if we had used a professional HD camcorder than the scenes at the gig would have looked a lot sharper and not as pixelated.

I used my own digital camera to take photographs of both the band and the locations. Although my camera isn't a high-tech professional camera, I am pleased with all of the photographs that I took of the band.



Evaluation: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, reasearch, planning and evaluation stages? (Part Two)

We used Adobe Premier to edit our music video. I have found this software quite simple to use once I got the hang of it. This software gave us the ability to create a professional looking music video. It also allowed us to use transitions to make our music video more visually interesting instead of using a simple cut from each scene. 

Adobe Photoshop is the software that I used in order to create my digipack and poster to go with my music video. At first I found this software quite difficult to grasp as there are a lot of things you can do to edit an image or to create an image. However, once I got hang of the software I was able to produce what I think are a good digipack and poster which are eye-catching for any potential buyers.

The social networking site facebook.com was how we contacted both Vivid Nation and City Lightz (the two bands that we spoke to about using).

Youtube.com, facebook.com and twitter.com where the websites that we used in order to distribute our film and gain feedack from out target audience. All three are simple to use and because there are so many youg people that use these social networking sites it meant that our music video could be more widely distributed and we were able to get even more feedback.



Annotated Poster and Digipack

*Click the images to make them larger*

Final Poster

Below is my third and final draft of the poster that I have created for City Lightz as part of my ancillary task.

I have changed the pictures on the poster to match the pictures on the inside of the digipack, I have changed the colouring so that they stand out more and are more eyecatching and appealing to potential buyers.

Final Digipack

Below is the final result for my digipack

The changes that I have made from my first draft to my second and final draft are,

1. On the front of the digipack I have changed the background colour to be black and white so that the band stand out more.

2. On the back of the digipack I have changed the colouring of all the picture, except the pool table, to be black and white so that the song titles stand out more.

3. I have changed the pictures on the inside of the digipack so that instead of being inverted colours there is more colour and they stand out more and look a lot more interesting.

Narrative and Performance

The narrative in songs, just like in poetry, is rarely complete and often fragmentary. Music promos tend to suggest storylines of offer complete fragments in a non-linear order, leaving the viewer with the desire to see them again.
Often a promo will cut between a narrative and performance of the song by the band. Sometimes the artist/singer will be part of the story, acting as a narrator and a participant.
However, it is the lip-syncing/close-up and miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos to assure us that the band can really play.
The video allows the audience a more varied access to the performer than a stage performance can.
The close-up, allows eye-contact, observation of facial gestures and role-play within a narrative framework, which isn't possible in a live concert performance.
The mise-en-scene can be used as
1) a guarantee of authenticity of a band's musical virtuosity by showing them in a stage performance/a rehearsal room,
2) to establish a relationship to a familar film/TV genre in a narrative based video,
3) suggesting a setting based on sexual allure - a boudoir/a nightclub,
4) emphasis on an aspirational lifestyle.

We have used all of the conventions of narrative and performance within our music video by setting a scene with a storyline that our audience would be able to relate to.

City Lightz Digipack

Below is the first draft of my digipack that I have made as a part of my ancillary tasks.

City Lightz Poster

Below is my second draft of the poster that I have made as part of my ancillary tasks.

I really like the end result for my poster as it's edgy and eye-catching. In my research I didn't see a poster that looked like this, which shows individuality.