1) In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media product uses and challenges forms and conventions from real media products because as you will see from the videos I have selected that both artists that I have researched have both done two types of music videos, all performance or performance and narrative, the ones that I have chosen to compare with are the performance and narrative videos in on performance. The pop/rock/indie genre within the music video was similar to the type of videos that Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson have made within the past few music videos that they have made. Having looked at these I have noticed a few similarities within my video and that of Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson. Within the Bon Jovi video we keep seeing the band on a regular bases, in our video we have tried to follow this kind of setup and showed a performance shot when we think appropriate, unlike in Michael Jackson’s videos when all we see is the singer, as he is the main part of the band, we have also tried to incorporate this into our video by using the main singer as the protagonist to follow him around. The use of close up shots on the singer and also the use of a good match of narrative and performance. As you can see from the video below we have used many creative shots during our music video, one shot that I think challenge the original typical shots that we see in both of the music videos below is the high angle shot that was used for the CCTV footage which has allowed us to add the look of professionalism to the video.
Below is the video from our project and also two videos from Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi.
Michael Jackson - Earth Song
Bon Jovi - It's My Life
Another way that I think that the video challenges the conventions of the music videos is by relating the video to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
2) How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
The brand image that we have gone for is that we are tongue in cheek, laid back and easy to listen to, we tried to get this across through our album covers and other products, as shown in the image below.
Below is a word document that contains our album covers and then compares them against others that have been produced by well known artists
Below is a presentation about my album covers.
Below is our video from our audience feedback, this shows the start of the video, people answering the questionnaire and also the answers from the questionnaire.
We conducted the audience feedback in our class room and were filmed by the media technician, the results are as follows. From our audience feedback I have learnt a lot from both our video and or ancillary tasks. For our video I have learnt that there are a lot of good points about it, I have learnt that the video does appeal to its target audience of teens/young adults that are interested in the genres of pop, indie and rock music other good points that I have taken from the feedback are that we have used a range of good creative shots to keep the audience interested and to carry on watching, for example the ones that have been pointed out to us by our audience are the following; when the camera is on the shelf and the protagonist is stacking the juice on the shelf and then covers up the camera bit by bit another is when we have the guitarist playing in opposite corners of the screen and then in the background there is a picture of the discount store, the two clips then switch corners and finally another one is the CCTV video footage that had been made from a high angle and then edited onto the picture of a computer and then had special effects added to it to saturate and make it flicker. The audience had rated our video from one to ten, the results of that can be found in the power point below. The story of the protagonist runs smoothly with the music and is also upbeat and complements each other therefore giving the video good continuity. The use of generic shots liken us to many other music videos that have been created and therefore we can then compare between videos and spot similarities in videos from different artists.
Although throughout our audience feedback there had been some things that have been pointed out to us that could be improved and then make the video better as a whole. The main things that the audience spotted are that at the beginning the protagonists is laughing as he was waking up and getting out of bed also he does this in other scenes even though it maybe for just a second, re shooting these scenes without the laughing will help create a more professional look for the video also the lip syncing in some of the performance shots is out by maybe a few milliseconds but can be noticed in the scenes that it has happened to, correcting this will again help the video to look more professional. Although the use of generic camera shots does allow us to be like other music videos it does not leave much to the imagination, the use more creative shots and maybe the use special effects would allow us to stand out from the other music videos and would help encourage the audience to keep watching the video. The use of not many performance shots was a big thing that came up in our audience feedback and could be improved by using a variety of places within the store used to film different kinds of performances, doing this will allow the audience to see more of the band and will help them to recognize them. The use of shorter shots was something that came up, this would help improve the video as the song is quite snappy and some of the clips are too long for the beat of the music, trimming these clips down will allow the video to e faster and more upbeat and then in tune to the beat of the music. Another problem that the audience has said is that the protagonist does not interact with the camera s much as they would have liked, correcting this would allow the audience to feel like the protagonist is connecting to them personally and therefore adding a personal touch to the video that some people may be able to relate to.
With our ancillary tasks we split up into two groups of two as there were four of us and we felt that we could not contribute equally to the two tasks that had to be done. One group produced the album covers and a poster and another group produced a website and another set of album covers with different effects. When we carried out our audience research the thing that was most popular with the audience was the album covers from both of the groups was the most popular product, particularly the one with the black and white effects. Although this was the most popular product with our audience the other products still received positive feedback and on the whole nearly all members of the audience said that the products could not be improved on, they also said that throughout all of the products there has been good continuity. One of the questions was that “do you think that the products was up to standards of other artists?” all of the responses said yes, this shows us that all of our products look professional as they look like others that have been done before by big bands. Also when asked if they would buy the real product from what they had seen the majority of the audience would buy it if it was their type of music.
The bad points from the questionnaire was that some people thought that a wider use of effects could have been used with certain products, this would make the products look more creative and stand out from the original non filtered products. Also the writing could have been bigger to allow the audiences with seeing aids to be able to view the product more easily, this would help us be more user friendly towards the customer and therefore show that we cater for all of our customers.
Below are two of our audience feedback sheets, the first one is about the music video and the second one is about the ancillary tasks.
Below is the power point containing quotes and charts from our questionnaire.
I used media technology in all of the stages throughout my coursework. In the research section I used the internet to search for videos of different artists so then I could compare videos and find inspiration, I also used video to show which genre of music would best fit our band. The disadvantage about this was if we found a good quality video but the emmbedded link was not in use then we would have to go and search for another video of nearly the same quality. The use of images allowed me to show the style of album covers that artists of a particular genre produce there album covers.
Within the planning section of the coursework I have again used many different elements such as; the use of blogs to document and show what we have done and a storyboard to allow us to see what the finished project may look like.
Within the construction aspect of the coursework I have used final cut express to allow me to make the video, it also has allowed me to edit the video in the way that suits the beat of the music and to suit that genre, it has a large amount of tools that could be used within it such as different effects and sounds that could be incorporated into the video for example it has a razor tool that allowed me to Cut the video clip in the place that I wanted so then we had had to footage we needed and not a long clip of outtakes. The use of a colour correction allowed me to brighten up the colours in the shop where they might have seemed a bit dim to help bring out the colours and make it look more vibrant. There was a wide range of video effects available to us, the ones we used are as follows, the speed up effect on the bus scene to allow the shot to be shorter as the bus driver was talking to our actor while we was filming also other effects we used was the flicker filter to help us make the CCTV footage, the use of sizing and then laying it onto of a still image of a computer made the impression that someone (the boss) was watching the whole thing on CCTV. The bad points about using final cut express was that because it was on the apple macs the screen would start to seperate due to accidently pushing the buttons on the side of the mouse, another bad point is that when importing the video footage into the programme it someties does not capture it all and then you would have to redo the proccess again, or the mac would crash making you load up your project and restart uploading the footage. I have used video to allow me to make the music video and to film with cameras, the use of digital pictures has also helped in showing things such as the location shots and also was used in our ancillary tasks, the use of a website management software was used to create a website for the band, the use of word processors to write the letter to Tesco’s that later got rejected.
The use of image manipulation softare was used to help create the poster and the album covers. For the set of album covers that I worked on I took a still image that I wanted to make into the covers and then started to use the effects on them, the first efect I used was a cutout effect which allowed the picture to have the cartoon look that I have used throughout, i then added the poster edges effect to make sure that the lines of the person's body/hands and other objects where made visible.
Within the evaluation stages I have used power points to allow a more creative way of getting the information of charts and quotes that I needed to show across to the audience, the use of videos was a big part as it allowed me to compare my own video to that of other well known artists and has allowed me to create a audience feedback video as proof of the feedback is real and to show the finished music video. The use of pictures is a big part of my evaluation as they demonstrate some theory’s such as Maslow and also was used in the word processor to help me spot similarities within different album covers. Word processor has been used as it allowed me to show pictures of our ancillary tasks and allowed me to annotate them to show differences or similarities between ours and other artists, the blog is used to hold all of my evaluation and to present it. Although the problems with blogger was that if you had if you had prepared it in a word processor then you had to make sure that the new settings were activated before it would allow you to paste. Another bad point was that when a picture was inserted it went to the top of the page and not to where the curser was, so this resulted in getting the picture and dragging it down to the correct position.
In conclusion I feel that I have created a brand image well as there is the same style (cartoon or black and white) throughout all of the products and all offer the tongue in cheek and relaxed feeling and look that the music video creates with the song. I think that overall I have done the project well as I have helped in all areas of the production including the planning on on the blogs and storyboards, having a small role within the video as two customers and also helped in creating one set of album covers and website.
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