Q1234

Q1in what ways does your media product use develop or

challange forms and conventions of real media products.

Video

Clothing When we had chosen our genre, we then researched the fashion in other indie music videos. We also set our thoughts on a survey to check feed back from real indie fans. This then all came together in our video. we used this as a base for our fashion in our own music video to create our own indie look. The essential clothing were skinny jeans, shirt buttoned to the top, Vans or smart pointed shoes. We made sure all our band fitted together in the same dress code.

Camera work and editing• From our research we noticed that the camerawork in most indie videos

had many straight on simplistic constructions, many pans or tilts and smooth transitions between shots. It was clear this was a convention as pop rock band Blink 182 used a fish eye in the video First Date. They also aren’t dressed as themselves but characters to fit in with the lyrics.

In our video we followed the convention we found using pans, tracking shots etc, but also decided to challenge the convention by adding other genres and other styles of cinema photography. Our main parts to this would be time lapses and slow motion shots. Both a juxtaposition to the typical genre cinema photography.

Performance and narrative • We focused our video around the band as we wanted this to be a

promotional upcoming bands music video. The performance shots were kept simple as found in other indie music videos and we balanced the performance out with narrative. Our main convention was to follow the typical narrative of the band members themselves like an autobiography in video- we found other genres doing this as well such as Black Tide in their promotional video Shockwave.

Mise-en-scene

• For our narrative shots we wanted to build up and image of the lives of our bands so we incorporated age fashions skateboarding, pool, and new fashions fixed gear bikes to keep up with the new age and ever changing genre.

Digi pak

Fonts

• For our digipak we decided to use a simple font as in our research we discovered that many indie bands album art included this code. We thought the font cooper black was well suited. We followed what other indie bands had done to follow the conventions as we wanted our digipak easy to read and to stand out to our target audience in mind.

As shown by this current indie bands album cover the font is very simple and easy to read with a black and white image of the band.

Images

• The main point of the images from the digipak and the advert was to suggest that they were going somewhere included in the black and white(monochrome) that this is a very mono direction of the band. the close ups and stills from the video are to create a visual for the audience to base their image around. Many bands do this. Also included with ours was to make this whole image stand throughout the video, advert and digipak.

Colour

• We decided to take away as much colour as possible to keep the entire image as clean cut as we could as appose to loads of colour clashes which can make images start to look amateur and giving the product/band a lower profile in retrospect to their profession.

Album advert

• While researching we came across the music video My Sun by The Temper Trap which used an editing effect where an image had been separated into sections using vertical lines. We liked this idea and it inspired us to somehow incorporate it in our album advert.

Q2 How effective is the combination of the main

product and all ancillary products?

I feel that all our products connect together to produce an authentic look that will sell as a full image of a band. The music video allows the audience to connect with the band through the fashion sense, attitude to life and the hobbies they enjoy. The digipak is connected to the video through its still images taken from our main product, the music video. This emphasises again the outlook on life, the fashion and hobbies. The close ups helps show the band members as individuals as audiences always seem to connect with one member of a band more than the others. The only image that isn’t a still from the music video is taken at the train station of an empty bench represents the movement of the band and that fact that they are moving on and getting to where they want to be in their career. In addition to this the advert includes the train station tying the other products into it. This makes them easily recognisable as a group. We used different images on our advert to our digipak as we wanted to break the convention of using the same images again. This let our product show more of the band, enticing the audience with more knowledge and the urge to know more about the band individually. This in the end means our product works and would have a higher sell rating if it were based on the image of the band.

Q3what have you learnt from your audience

feedback?

These are the results of a questionnaire we made to gather feedback after producing our products. Posting this around on Facebook and Youtube to mostly people we knew that liked this genre because they would know what sort of things make up a good indie music video. As seen in the results, we usually were rated between a 3-5 which was the higher end of the scale. In conclusion to this it was clear our product was liked and fitted in with the indie culture.

We received 467 views and counting and 5 likes. That generally showed that people were interested in our work and what we were able to produce. However we found when writing surveys for the first time, when open questions were asked, viewers wouldn’t take the music video seriously and answered with silly things which didn’t help us. Thus for the questions to the left we only incorporated one open question and the rest were multiple choice.

The above comment is taken from a site we used to get feedback from, Survey Monkey. They gave us mainly positive feedback saying the video was ‘Brilliant’ and ‘I’m off to go cry that mine isn’t as good.’ this then made us feel confident that we had complied with the brief and did it to the best of our ability. The only negatives, but taken as positives, were the same as our views for example, the slow motion skateboard shots. We felt, as well as the feedback, that these shots weren’t up to the standard of the rest and let us think about how we could have improved this area of the video, but the only answer to this criticism is to use professional equipment that can capture more than 25 frames per second. In conclusion to this particular feedback, the persons responses weren’t specific enough as to how we could understand what we did correctly . For example the critic instead of just saying the location shots were perfect for the indie genre, this could have been developed and said what aspects of the location made it a ‘perfect’ place to shoot.

Audience research

• As we knew a lot about the indie genre to start off with, the audience research confirmed our understand about the forms of the genre. If we were to do the research and the products again we would include more open questions but send them out to professional sites and forums to get real honest feedback. Questions that we wouldn’t ask next time would be those of age and gender due to the fact that they don’t really help us develop our product.

Q4How did you use new media technology in the

construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research stage

• In this stage of the project, I used the internet to find images of current and past media products that related to the brief.

• I mainly used Youtube to research current and past music videos relating to the genre I chose.

• BlogSpot was required to present our work in a chronological order.

Planning • We used SlideShare to put our powerpoint presentations onto our blogs

so they could be accessed easily. The main reason was to share large gatherings of information-storyboard/shotlist within a small space on our blog. This presented our work in a easier linear viewing manner.

• A HD video camera was used to show potential locations and to film audience interviews.

• Survey Monkey was used online for primary research to add to our secondary research making a better understanding for ourselves. This was mostly posted on Facebook.

Production

• To capture the footage we used a high definition video camera.

• We used a mobile phone app to check weather conditions for our shooting schedules. Also using mobiles to contact each other on the days of filming.

• During shooting we used portable speakers and iPod to insure we were in time with the music.

Evaluation• I used Powerpoint presentation and uploaded

it to SlideShare to present my work in a clean tidy fashion.

• I used many ‘print screens’ to visually show my points.

• I used the internet and BlogSpot to revisit my work in order to fine tune my evaluation.

Some sites I revisited were Survey Monkey, Youtube and Facebook.