Friday, 26 April 2013
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Written Evaluation by Rebecca
(By Rebecca)
Question 1; In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before we began production on our media product, we wanted to do extensive research on existing music videos, particularly those within a similar genre to our song choice. This would both give us sources of inspiration and allow us to decide which conventions we would follow, and which we would challenge.
Our first step was to look at pre-existing official music videos for our chosen artist - William Control. His videos used some of the conventions mentioned by Andrew Goodwin in his Music Video Theory; there is focus on the artist as he lip syncs to the song and genre characteristics.
We also identified common imagery within his videos. William Control is known for his unique style of dress, often wearing Victorian inspired suits, which combined with his heavily tattooed appearance, creates a striking look.
We felt that his Beautiful Loser video was most effective, and noticed that on YouTube, it has the most views and positive feedback from fans. This influenced our decision not to use a linear narrative and instead create an atmosphere through the mis en scene, imagery and styling.
To get a wider range of inspiration, we selected other artists of a similar genre to look at - Nine Inch Nails, Joy Division, Placebo and Type O Negative. We were particularly inspired by the use of black and white and high contrast images within some of their videos.
Question 2 ; How have you ensured that the combination of your main product and ancillary texts are effective?
Whilst creating our ancillary texts, we looked at both our music video and real examples of advertisements and CD packaging from William Control's previous releases. It was important to us that, when put together, our music video and ancillary texts had a cohesive look.
We first took note of common imagery within William Control's artwork, for example; Edwardian / Victorian patterns, clothing and furniture, dark make-up, focus on a singular person, dark colouring and texture over the photographs.
Then we thought of the imagery within our music video; focus on our main character, fast moving images, movement of the body, black and white and text.
We tried to combine the style of William Control's previous artwork with imagery and themes from our music video to ensure that all of our media products combined effectively and were still relevant to our chosen artist and target audience.
To further appeal to our target audience, we once again looked at the work of other artists within this genre. This would enable us to pick up on and use conventions that our audience would be familiar with.
An example of album artwork that inspired us was from Placebo's 'Meds' album. The minimal background, focus on a singular figure and contrasting coloured text made for an incredibly effective CD packaging design. We took inspiration from their designer Alex Cowper's blurred portraiture as we felt it conveyed a similar mood as our music video and fit the genre better than a more conventional portrait photograph.
William Control's artwork for Hate Culture was also an influence as we particularly liked it's scratchy texture, placement of text and use of a high contrast image.
We had thought about making our poster and CD packaging black and white, as it would have followed on from our music video. However it wasn't as striking as the colour versions, so instead we desaturated particular areas, and used a black background with contrasting white text. This replicated the mood of black and white, whilst allowing us to use colours.
For Nine Inch Nail's 'We're In This Together Now' shadows are used to a great effect - they enhance the sense of tension, paranoia and mass panic and the black and white creates a closeness that nay otherwise be lost due to the scale of the images.
Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' was comprised of clips of seemingly unrelated scenes, with the use of black and white making them cohesive and encouraging the audience to think about connotated meanings.
Type O Negative's 'Black No.1'
All of these effects are some of the ones that we were striving to achieve in our video, therefore solidifying our decision to use black and white.
Finally, we knew that the main character in our video would be female, leading us to look at the representations of women in music videos. We looked at a few of today's most popular music videos and noticed some overriding themes. In the videos of male artists
This brings to mind feminist theory and the idea of 'male gaze'.
We wanted to challenge the objectification of women in music videos - not by covering them up, but by making clear to the audience that the video was from the women's point of view, and that the body shots were neither sexualised or toned down, but depicted as 'real'.
Question 3; What kinds of audience feedback did you seek for your product and what things did you learn from this?
Audience feedback was extremely important to us through the process of creating our music video, CD packaging and poster advertisement. It helped us to make creative decisions, to steer us in the right direction and to improve on our work as we went along. It also ensured that the products we created appealed to the right audience, and did so effectively.
One example of how we gathered audience feedback was for the first draft of our music video. We uploaded the draft onto YouTube, then shared it on Facebook and asked for feedback. The comments we received both gave us confidence in some of the choices we made, for example, the inclusion of particular shots and the fast paced opening, and made us rethink some other things, for example the syncing, length of each shot and the ending.
We also used social networking sites to gather feedback on our three drafts of our poster advertisements to help us to decide on which one was most effective. This audience input was invaluable to us, as it can become difficult to make an impartial decision on something you have worked on yourself!
Social networks are incredibly useful in gathering audience feedback as you can target particular groups of people whose opinion would be most invaluable, for example; fans of William Control, fans of the genre and people within our target age range. It allows you to easily contact many people at once, internationally and without any expense.
Another great thing about them is how easy it makes it for the audience to leave their feedback, for example through a comments section or through Facebook messaging. This makes people more likely to want to have their say and respond, and we can also reply with more questions if necessary.
Question 4; How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Most of our research was done using internet sites to gather information.Youtube is by far the biggest library of music videos, both from the current charts, and from various past decades. Tumblr is a great place to engage with fans of a particular artist. Twitter allows you to keep up to date with trends within music, and with William Control's latest releases. It also helps us to pick up on the fan response. Google is the starting point for research, it's ability to find information on a particular topic is second to none.
The technology we chose to record our video footage was important to ensure that our final product would be of the highest standard, and of the best video quality. It was also important that it included features that would allow us to achieve all of the shots and effects we had planned. We tested out several cameras; HTC Desire S Smartphone Camera, Samsung Digital Camera, Kodak Flip Camera and a Panasonic HD Camcorder. You can see the variety of cameras in our test shoot video. Eventually, we chose to use the Panasonic HD Camcorder, because it allowed us to record HD video onto a memory card, and it had very fast acting focusing and a very decent optical zoom. All of these features were easy to use and enhanced the level of professionalism in our footage.
We used a portable hard drive to transport our work between different computers and from PC to Mac. This allowed us to use the full range of software that was available to us. It also meant that we could complete work from any location, and bring it back to the Mac computer that we were using for our main video and sound edit.
We used a wide variety of computer software during the post-production stage of our music video and during the creation of our ancillary products. We used both iMovie and Sony Vegas Studio to do our video editing, this meant that we had a full range of effects and features. We were familiar with both of these programs from our AS work, therefore were confident at using them from the start, saving us a lot of time!
Photoshop was essential at each stage of our project. We used it to create a storyboard that was easily rearranged, which allowed us to think more creatively in our planning stage. It was also the main software we used in the transformation our photos from our shoot into our final ancillary products.
As we are both quite camera shy, we decided to create a narrated evaluation video.We used built in sound recorders on our PC and smartphone to record our narration, then transferred these recordings into Sony Vegas video editing software. I chose to use Sony Vegas rather than iMovie as I feel that it has better precision editing features and it's multiple track layout is very useful when importing various kinds of media at the same time.
Making an evaluation video rather than keeping our evaluation is essay for takes more time, however it produces a much more engaging and entertaining evaluation.
Question 1; In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before we began production on our media product, we wanted to do extensive research on existing music videos, particularly those within a similar genre to our song choice. This would both give us sources of inspiration and allow us to decide which conventions we would follow, and which we would challenge.
Our first step was to look at pre-existing official music videos for our chosen artist - William Control. His videos used some of the conventions mentioned by Andrew Goodwin in his Music Video Theory; there is focus on the artist as he lip syncs to the song and genre characteristics.
We also identified common imagery within his videos. William Control is known for his unique style of dress, often wearing Victorian inspired suits, which combined with his heavily tattooed appearance, creates a striking look.
We felt that his Beautiful Loser video was most effective, and noticed that on YouTube, it has the most views and positive feedback from fans. This influenced our decision not to use a linear narrative and instead create an atmosphere through the mis en scene, imagery and styling.
To get a wider range of inspiration, we selected other artists of a similar genre to look at - Nine Inch Nails, Joy Division, Placebo and Type O Negative. We were particularly inspired by the use of black and white and high contrast images within some of their videos.
Question 2 ; How have you ensured that the combination of your main product and ancillary texts are effective?
Whilst creating our ancillary texts, we looked at both our music video and real examples of advertisements and CD packaging from William Control's previous releases. It was important to us that, when put together, our music video and ancillary texts had a cohesive look.
We first took note of common imagery within William Control's artwork, for example; Edwardian / Victorian patterns, clothing and furniture, dark make-up, focus on a singular person, dark colouring and texture over the photographs.
Then we thought of the imagery within our music video; focus on our main character, fast moving images, movement of the body, black and white and text.
We tried to combine the style of William Control's previous artwork with imagery and themes from our music video to ensure that all of our media products combined effectively and were still relevant to our chosen artist and target audience.
To further appeal to our target audience, we once again looked at the work of other artists within this genre. This would enable us to pick up on and use conventions that our audience would be familiar with.
An example of album artwork that inspired us was from Placebo's 'Meds' album. The minimal background, focus on a singular figure and contrasting coloured text made for an incredibly effective CD packaging design. We took inspiration from their designer Alex Cowper's blurred portraiture as we felt it conveyed a similar mood as our music video and fit the genre better than a more conventional portrait photograph.
William Control's artwork for Hate Culture was also an influence as we particularly liked it's scratchy texture, placement of text and use of a high contrast image.
We had thought about making our poster and CD packaging black and white, as it would have followed on from our music video. However it wasn't as striking as the colour versions, so instead we desaturated particular areas, and used a black background with contrasting white text. This replicated the mood of black and white, whilst allowing us to use colours.
For Nine Inch Nail's 'We're In This Together Now' shadows are used to a great effect - they enhance the sense of tension, paranoia and mass panic and the black and white creates a closeness that nay otherwise be lost due to the scale of the images.
Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' was comprised of clips of seemingly unrelated scenes, with the use of black and white making them cohesive and encouraging the audience to think about connotated meanings.
Type O Negative's 'Black No.1'
All of these effects are some of the ones that we were striving to achieve in our video, therefore solidifying our decision to use black and white.
Finally, we knew that the main character in our video would be female, leading us to look at the representations of women in music videos. We looked at a few of today's most popular music videos and noticed some overriding themes. In the videos of male artists
This brings to mind feminist theory and the idea of 'male gaze'.
We wanted to challenge the objectification of women in music videos - not by covering them up, but by making clear to the audience that the video was from the women's point of view, and that the body shots were neither sexualised or toned down, but depicted as 'real'.
Question 3; What kinds of audience feedback did you seek for your product and what things did you learn from this?
Audience feedback was extremely important to us through the process of creating our music video, CD packaging and poster advertisement. It helped us to make creative decisions, to steer us in the right direction and to improve on our work as we went along. It also ensured that the products we created appealed to the right audience, and did so effectively.
One example of how we gathered audience feedback was for the first draft of our music video. We uploaded the draft onto YouTube, then shared it on Facebook and asked for feedback. The comments we received both gave us confidence in some of the choices we made, for example, the inclusion of particular shots and the fast paced opening, and made us rethink some other things, for example the syncing, length of each shot and the ending.
We also used social networking sites to gather feedback on our three drafts of our poster advertisements to help us to decide on which one was most effective. This audience input was invaluable to us, as it can become difficult to make an impartial decision on something you have worked on yourself!
Social networks are incredibly useful in gathering audience feedback as you can target particular groups of people whose opinion would be most invaluable, for example; fans of William Control, fans of the genre and people within our target age range. It allows you to easily contact many people at once, internationally and without any expense.
Another great thing about them is how easy it makes it for the audience to leave their feedback, for example through a comments section or through Facebook messaging. This makes people more likely to want to have their say and respond, and we can also reply with more questions if necessary.
Question 4; How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Most of our research was done using internet sites to gather information.Youtube is by far the biggest library of music videos, both from the current charts, and from various past decades. Tumblr is a great place to engage with fans of a particular artist. Twitter allows you to keep up to date with trends within music, and with William Control's latest releases. It also helps us to pick up on the fan response. Google is the starting point for research, it's ability to find information on a particular topic is second to none.
The technology we chose to record our video footage was important to ensure that our final product would be of the highest standard, and of the best video quality. It was also important that it included features that would allow us to achieve all of the shots and effects we had planned. We tested out several cameras; HTC Desire S Smartphone Camera, Samsung Digital Camera, Kodak Flip Camera and a Panasonic HD Camcorder. You can see the variety of cameras in our test shoot video. Eventually, we chose to use the Panasonic HD Camcorder, because it allowed us to record HD video onto a memory card, and it had very fast acting focusing and a very decent optical zoom. All of these features were easy to use and enhanced the level of professionalism in our footage.
We used a portable hard drive to transport our work between different computers and from PC to Mac. This allowed us to use the full range of software that was available to us. It also meant that we could complete work from any location, and bring it back to the Mac computer that we were using for our main video and sound edit.
We used a wide variety of computer software during the post-production stage of our music video and during the creation of our ancillary products. We used both iMovie and Sony Vegas Studio to do our video editing, this meant that we had a full range of effects and features. We were familiar with both of these programs from our AS work, therefore were confident at using them from the start, saving us a lot of time!
Photoshop was essential at each stage of our project. We used it to create a storyboard that was easily rearranged, which allowed us to think more creatively in our planning stage. It was also the main software we used in the transformation our photos from our shoot into our final ancillary products.
As we are both quite camera shy, we decided to create a narrated evaluation video.We used built in sound recorders on our PC and smartphone to record our narration, then transferred these recordings into Sony Vegas video editing software. I chose to use Sony Vegas rather than iMovie as I feel that it has better precision editing features and it's multiple track layout is very useful when importing various kinds of media at the same time.
Making an evaluation video rather than keeping our evaluation is essay for takes more time, however it produces a much more engaging and entertaining evaluation.
Written Evaluation by Lauren
(By Lauren)
2.) How will you ensure that the combination of your main product and ancillary texts are effective?
1.) In what ways will your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product will challenge the forms and conventions of real media products as the band will not be shown in the video. Therefore, there will be no continuous miming from the band. However, the main character will mime some parts of the song, for example the chrous. We will also use some of the forms and conventions of real media products as typical camera shots will be used in our music video such as close ups and long shots. This will enable the audience to get an understanding of the character's emotions and feelings and enables the viewer to become familiar with the characters identity. It helps to create a relationship between the character in the video and the audience who watch it. The main character in the video wears a black costume, has dark hair and wears quite a lot of dark heavy make up, this is a typical form and convention for this genre of music; electric/ metal. This illustrates to the audience their identity and personality. We are using more influences from video art and short films than simply music videos. Our video also challenges the forms and conventions of real media products as it does not have a narrative whereas, most other music videos do. We chose to do this so that the audience are left open minded and can have their own imagination as to what is going on and whats going to happen. We had to develop conventions from William Control's other music videos as we have combined two of his songs together. The second song is quite slow and depressing and the images used and visuals throughout this section reflect this. Within the editing of our video we chose to use the form and conventions that our artist chose; fast cuts. This was to create an eerie atmosphere and to make the audience feel on edge. It also creates tension and matches the pace of the song.
We have used the forms and conventions from other music videos within this genre as a lot of blood is used and seen in the video. This iconography is strong and powerful as it shows the characters state of mind; quite low and depressed. The mise en scene at the beginning hows a girl bandaged and tied up. This was to illustrate that she does not have an identity and is restricted. Therefore, she does not have any freedom, choice and power.
We chose to use some of the conventions of real media products in our ancillary products as well. For example, we have kept to the dark colours in our album packaging this is so that the video and album combine together/ link together. It makes the audience aware and helps to promote the video t o a wide audience. We have developed the forms of the artists album covers, as we have also chose to use a texture throughout the album cover and magazine advertisement. The stripped texture is suitable for the genre of our video and for our audience.
2.) How will you ensure that the combination of your main product and ancillary texts are effective?
We have ensured that the main product and ancillary texts are effective by matching the style and image of the ancillary product with something within our music video and the artists existing material. For example, the main character in our music video is featured on the front of our Album Cover and on the magazine advertisment. This is so that the main character is recognisable and memorable which will enable them to sell and become popular. We have also used a stripped texture in both of the ancillary products this is so they links together and the audience are aware that the three connect. We have used the logo of the artist on all 3 aspects so that they are recognisable to the audience and have a distinct link which is obvious. We have also use the same font on each of these products which makes it more effective and successful.
We chose to use white font on both of the ancillary products as it stood out the most against the black background and both the colours connect with the music video. This is because in the video we have used a black and white effect which therefore combines the ancillary products with our main product in an effective way.
They work well together and are again recognisable as the costume that the main character is wearing is similar in all 3 aspects. The style is very modern and is suitable and links with the genre of the song.
3.) What kinds of audience feedback will you seek for your product and what things might you learn from this?
We posted a draft version of our product onto a social networking site, Facebook and asked the audience for their feedback. This was useful as the majority of people of our age use this social networking site and therefore gaining access to them for feedback this way was successful. We asked people of our age as this is the target audience of our music video. Overall we received quite positive feedback. Some people believed and suggested that we should change the colouring of the blood to red instead of black and white. The reasons they gave were that they thought it look better, stand out more, be more effective and more realistic. However, we chose to go against this and keep it as black and white because we believe it did not give the look and feeling that we wanted it to have. We made further changes from the feedback that we received. For example, we did not include the swing at the end as it was confusing and did not fit in with the images. The feedback enabled us to find out if our idea was good and if the audience believed that it would work and be successful. We also wanted to know whether it was addressed to the correct audience and the emotions and atmosphere they felt when watching it.
We also gained audience feedback by using audio visual. This was used to show that we could use a range of technology and is more effective and useful than using the same/one type of technology. This was a good idea as it got the audience involved and made us aware of .
We also posted 3 drafts of our magazine advertisement onto Facebook and asked the audience which one they thought had the best layout and which design was more appropriate for the genre and an advertisement. This helped us to decide which one we were going to use as our final product.
4.) How will you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used the internet to research forms and conventions of music videos which are similar to our genre. We also watched music videos created by other Media students on Youtube to form different ideas for our own video and to think about the technical skills that are required to create one. We are going to digitally create our evaluation by using a video camera to film us talking about our finished product and the what we have achieved and the things we could of improved. We also used photoshop during our production stages to edit our images we took during our photo shoot. We changed some of the colouring and the effects of them.
We also used smartphones/mobile phones to contact one another to arrange when to meet to film and to arrange what we will be doing other than work in school eg researching the history of music videos. We also used phones to contact one of the actresses in our video and to let her know what costume to where and when. This was helpful as it was a good way of organising our time and preparing our schedule.
The media technology which was the most effective and which benefited us the most was a hard drive as we had to keep transferring material from technology to computer. This allowed us to complete work at home and elsewhere to then transfer it onto the computers in school. We could then feedback to each other what we found and what we had been working on. This was useful when we were completing research and when we were planning the two ancillary products.
We used the software I movie to construct our music video. This software was very successful as it enabled us to edit the footage including colour editing, detach original sounds and move clips around in the order we wanted them to be in. We chose to use I movie as we had become familiar with the software from our AS course. Therefore, we already knew how to work it and did not waste time learning how to use it.
We used a Panasonic HD camcorder to film our footage, this camera made our footage look of a high quality. It was very clear and in focus which made details and specific things stand out. We also used a SLR camera when we did our photo shoot. It improved the quality of our product as we had high quality images to edit and choose from for our ancillary products.
We also used smartphones/mobile phones to contact one another to arrange when to meet to film and to arrange what we will be doing other than work in school eg researching the history of music videos. We also used phones to contact one of the actresses in our video and to let her know what costume to where and when. This was helpful as it was a good way of organising our time and preparing our schedule.
The media technology which was the most effective and which benefited us the most was a hard drive as we had to keep transferring material from technology to computer. This allowed us to complete work at home and elsewhere to then transfer it onto the computers in school. We could then feedback to each other what we found and what we had been working on. This was useful when we were completing research and when we were planning the two ancillary products.
We used the software I movie to construct our music video. This software was very successful as it enabled us to edit the footage including colour editing, detach original sounds and move clips around in the order we wanted them to be in. We chose to use I movie as we had become familiar with the software from our AS course. Therefore, we already knew how to work it and did not waste time learning how to use it.
We used a Panasonic HD camcorder to film our footage, this camera made our footage look of a high quality. It was very clear and in focus which made details and specific things stand out. We also used a SLR camera when we did our photo shoot. It improved the quality of our product as we had high quality images to edit and choose from for our ancillary products.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Poster Advertisement - Drafts and Audience Feedback
We uploaded four versions of our poster, to ask for the audience's opinion.
Top Left - The very first draft we made. We liked this draft, but noticed that we had made a spelling mistake!
Top Right - Just like the first draft, but with the spelling mistake corrected. We liked the look and positioning of the photograph, however felt it looked bare and needed something else to make it look like an official William Control advertisement.
Bottom Left - We then added some quotes, sourced from real reviews on websites and in magazines. We also added the album cover, following conventions of layout, as well as information about release dates.
Bottom Right - An alternative design using our CD cover, we used Photoshop to create the look of a film reel. We loved the way it turned out, but were also enthusiastic about using a new image in the poster.
We gathered feedback from some audience members, by using the anonymous messaging site, Formspring.me. Here were the feedback comments we received;
'I prefer the bottom right poster because it looks more like an official one. I do like that the CD cover is used on the 4th one, but I really like the other photo you have chosen. The quotes on the poster also make it look like a proper advert, rather than just a photo with text'
'Obviously not the one with the spelling mistake, haha. Other than that I really like all of them. Hmm, maybe the third one because it uses a new image and also uses the CD cover. It looks more like something from a magazine'
'I like the fourth poster because it looks like a film reel, which fits with the music video well. The Cd cover is on it too. The third one looks like it's a real poster though, so it depends what you're going for really'
This cemented our decision that the third poster (bottom left) was the best choice for our ancillary product. This was because a couple of people commented that it looked most like something that would be in a magazine, and authenticity was extremely important to us. It also has both another image from our photoshoot, and the CD cover; tying the two ancillary products together.
We used real quotes from William Control reviews in our poster, once again using real conventions of advertisement posters.
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