In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses the typical live performance convention of existing media products. This is due to the fact that our chosen song, Girls On T.V by Be Your Own PET, was a very heavily instrumental influenced song. The way we develop this convention is by working the narrative around the location of the live performance so both the performance and the plotline are given this sense of merging. Having a narrative also challenges the typical conventions of an instrument based band. Most instrument based bands, for example, Paramore, seem to generally produce mostly instrument based videos, focusing more on the performance of the band as opposed to any storyline that may reside within the lyrics. Having our narrative linked to the lyrics and to the live performance helps challenge the typical conventions. Our ancillary tasks, the digipak and the promotional poster, also use typical conventions. Our chosen song is an Indie song and the ancillary tasks fit in well with the typical indie conventions. The digipak contains images of Bryony and me in an alternative indie environment, i.e. the middle of the woods near a rusted out car. This is typical indie as it is edgy and different and tries to challenge the mainstream style of music. Our poster is also that of a typical indie style as again it shows both Bryony and me in the run down setting. We done this to try and keep consistency so people would recognise our products. The way our digipak develops real media products is through the use of a competition. We introduced a competition within the inside left of the digipak. This was done as a way to connect with the fans of the band as most existing bands have some kind of offer or free gift i.e. poster badges to promote the release of there new album.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of both our main product and ancillary texts worked well as they both complemented each other. There is a scene in our music video which contains Bryony and me running through the woods with the rusted out car in the background. We decided to use the woods and the car as a theme as it fits in with the edgy, alternative convention of the indie rock band. On both our poster and digipak we continued to use the woods and car theme. This would also be used for the benefit of our audiences. Because the theme is recurring audiences and fans would be able to see our products and instantly recognise them and associate them with the band. The recurring theme ties in with bands such as ‘Them Crooked Vultures’ who used the recurring theme of a vultures head on top of a human body. The poster also combines well with the video and digipak as the poster issues an ‘album out now’ label. This would show fans not only who we are but would direct them towards the album which also contains the actual music video. I think the recurring theme of the car and the woods would encourage people who knew of the product to buy it as they would instantly recognise it.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback in general was very positive. However there was one issue at first which received many comments and that was on our splitscreen technique. This involved having three moving images of me on the screen at the same time. We had lined them up and timed them together very well but the issue came with the lighting. A lot of comments were about the natural lighting and how the three splits didn’t quiet match up due to the lighting. This was fixed as best as it could be through adjusting the lighting on the stills. We also received comments on the cuts. To begin with our cuts seemed slow and sloppy and were encouraged to make quick snappy shots. We done this once we had an opportunity to re-film and gain a larger variety of shots. The completed feedback received much positive feedback. Our ancillary texts also received positive feedback. A colleague of our teachers had been sent our promotional poster and commented on it saying they knew what to expect straight away. This means that our idea to create an edgy poster to promote an indie rock band was successful. Our digipak also received positive feedback. We had been told by other media students that it looked like a believable C.D cover that would be sold in shops. There was however the issue of the track listings. Some people struggled to read the font due to the colour of the actual font in contrast to the colour of the background.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used new media technologies throughout the process of creating our music video. Initially we began with the new long road media music video blog. We posted blogs recording our current process as well as using posts to inform of upcoming events such as filming, production meetings etc. We then employed the use of a phone camera and regular camera in order to take photos of the location of which we were going to film. These were later uploaded and placed on the blog. Once filming began we used a camera, a tripod and a c.d. player. The camera was used to capture footage necessary for the music video. We used the tripod in order to gather a range of angled shots, either high or low. The c.d. player was used to play our chosen song so we could easily work out timings once the footage was uploaded. This all had to be uploaded to final cut. We used final cut to cut up footage, lengthen it, shorten it etc. This time we used it to resize frames in order to fit more shots into one. We also had to cut frames in order to get the split screen effect of the three of me. For the ancillary texts we used primarily photo shop. This was used to edit pictures and layout for both our digipak and promotional posters.
Music Video Project Evaluation by Claire Millett
In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media products developed the conventional Indie-Rock ideas behind real media products. For example, Indie-Rock videos are usually performance based to emphasise the importance of a ‘real musician’ in today’s music industry that is continuously undermined by reality television stars. However, our performance was not particularly conventional as we created a band by duplicating the mime character which featured in our video as a link to our narrative which gave the video more depth and interest for the viewer. We made the opening sequence eye catching by using a split screen to introduce the instruments of the song. The singer of the band was focused on through her appearance being bright, colourful and individual which made a strong contrast to the black and white of the mime’s costume. We decided to duplicate the mime character to add to the surrealism of the narrative as it linked to the lyrics “and this ain’t real like the girls on TV”. This factor reflects the lyrics as instead of using a typically dressed boy and making a fairytale romance as found on TV we used the confusing motif of a mime to highlight the singer’s confusion and anxiety. This type of scenario is that of which many listeners are able to relate to which the production group thought was ideal because music is commonly used to influence and inspire its listeners creatively.
Another reason for including a narrative within the video in order to create the image of our band as unique, abstract and avant garde. This is due to the fact that the image of musicians does remain as an important factor as it can be used to market the band and also influences the fans with several artists of today also being known for their personal and often controversial style such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Whilst researching we found several bands such as The Gossip and Paramore influential with the image and style that the videos portrayed. This is because Paramore also feature a woman lead singer making the focus of several of their videos on her and also the band used conventions of live performances and then developed them to create an edgy and unique style. The image of the Gossip was also influential, particularly in the video for ‘Heavy Cross’. The iconic clothes and make up of Beth Ditto made the song powerful and it also featured elements of a live performance. The ideals of the two bands were similar to that of what the group aspired to create.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The two products were designed to compliment each other well and this aim has been achieved. From planning well in advance the group was able to have a photo shoot on set of the music video, this helped with timing later on in the project as it gave us a longer opportunity to edit the images. It also meant the photographs used were of higher quality and the image that was created of the band made the ancillary texts bold, edgy and vibrant. The car, which features in the music video, was also used in the ancillary texts as an iconic and original prop in order to create a link between all of the products for the audience. The digi-pak used similar images to that of the magazine advert which meant that audiences could easily find the album recognisable from seeing the advert. We put an image of a television on the male band member, rather than the female, as a link to the music video of it not being a fairytale romance as seen on television and that the obscure mime character was the lead singer’s own version of that in reality. We also included an ‘out now’ banner on the advert with the HMV symbol so that audiences would be encouraged to go and find the album within those stores.
Usually in the industry, the release of a new album results with a tour to promote it. Because of this, we added tour dates to our magazine advert in hope of creating the image of a realistic and modern Indie-rock band. The competition which features within the digi-pak is given authenticity from the sponsorship of the popular social networking website, Myspace. The website is regularly used by many music fans as well as artists making it an ideal feature for the band to be involved in. Also, the support shown to unsigned bands is designed to create popularity, publicity and success for the band within the industry. In addition to featuring Myspace, we also used references to NME music magazine which we knew to be popular with our target audiences as it is popularly read by Indie-Rock fans and the magazine is renowned for their annual award shows - of which Apollo Station had been awarded best newcomer and four stars for the album – with these factors making the magazine ideal. The font we chose reflected the image of the band as edgy and messy and we found it to be a good symbol of the band which would be recognisable in the industry.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Overall, we received very positive feedback for example “the overall design lets me know exactly what kind of band we’ve got here” (ex-art editor of Future Music Magazine). This was what we wanted to achieve: the image of a band, rather than just a video, that would please the eye of the public and the industry. The feedback we received on the rough cut edition of our video highlighted that our video did not have enough cuts throughout making the pace a lot slower than it needed to be to create an authentic video. For our final cut we made a strong effort to correct this and made the video quicker and also added in a new sequence throughout the instrumental section which we cut to fit the beat – this had a lot of positive feedback for the final cut. Another issue that we had with the rough cut was the split screen looking too obvious due to change in light quality in between takes. For the final cut we corrected the colours to the best of our ability and made the effect much more subtle. Also, for our final cut we included more close-ups of the singer to add more focus onto her as requested from the feedback on our rough cut. Other feedback we received led to rethinking the layout of the magazine advert and also how we would use the features within the ancillary texts such as NME and Myspace to effective but realistic use. For example, we made the text on the NME award headline smaller to put more focus on the band name.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Predominantly, the Internet was our main source for researching the conventional music videos that fitted our genre. This meant that YouTube was particularly useful in addition to the production team’s online blog. The blog was used for analysing other media products, planning production meetings and also documented our progress and changes to the plans we originally made. We also used the blogs to receive peer feedback; this was particularly helpful for taking our first draft to a higher quality for the final edition. Final Cut was the editing programme we used to put together the music video by using several techniques for example, by using a split screen to help make the clips dynamic and punchy. In addition to this the overlapping footage we used to duplicate the mime character played with the conventions of a performance based video. We also used Photoshop to compose the ancillary texts and to create the TV image of the mime’s head. The fonts used were downloaded from the internet using the website www.dafont.com as the fonts we found on a typical word application were not what we wanted and the effect of the downloaded font was much better for the image of the band. Digital photography was also used to document the filming progress, photographs of which we entered onto the blog and also for the photo shoot that took place on set for the ancillary texts. We also used a camera phone to get images quickly and conveniently to other members of the group, something we found particularly useful whilst planning the video shoot. Final Cut was also used to bring the entire video together as we brought together the audio and video using this programme to create our final product and achieved from this an authentic and good standard of video.
My media products developed the conventional Indie-Rock ideas behind real media products. For example, Indie-Rock videos are usually performance based to emphasise the importance of a ‘real musician’ in today’s music industry that is continuously undermined by reality television stars. However, our performance was not particularly conventional as we created a band by duplicating the mime character which featured in our video as a link to our narrative which gave the video more depth and interest for the viewer. We made the opening sequence eye catching by using a split screen to introduce the instruments of the song. The singer of the band was focused on through her appearance being bright, colourful and individual which made a strong contrast to the black and white of the mime’s costume. We decided to duplicate the mime character to add to the surrealism of the narrative as it linked to the lyrics “and this ain’t real like the girls on TV”. This factor reflects the lyrics as instead of using a typically dressed boy and making a fairytale romance as found on TV we used the confusing motif of a mime to highlight the singer’s confusion and anxiety. This type of scenario is that of which many listeners are able to relate to which the production group thought was ideal because music is commonly used to influence and inspire its listeners creatively.
Another reason for including a narrative within the video in order to create the image of our band as unique, abstract and avant garde. This is due to the fact that the image of musicians does remain as an important factor as it can be used to market the band and also influences the fans with several artists of today also being known for their personal and often controversial style such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Whilst researching we found several bands such as The Gossip and Paramore influential with the image and style that the videos portrayed. This is because Paramore also feature a woman lead singer making the focus of several of their videos on her and also the band used conventions of live performances and then developed them to create an edgy and unique style. The image of the Gossip was also influential, particularly in the video for ‘Heavy Cross’. The iconic clothes and make up of Beth Ditto made the song powerful and it also featured elements of a live performance. The ideals of the two bands were similar to that of what the group aspired to create.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The two products were designed to compliment each other well and this aim has been achieved. From planning well in advance the group was able to have a photo shoot on set of the music video, this helped with timing later on in the project as it gave us a longer opportunity to edit the images. It also meant the photographs used were of higher quality and the image that was created of the band made the ancillary texts bold, edgy and vibrant. The car, which features in the music video, was also used in the ancillary texts as an iconic and original prop in order to create a link between all of the products for the audience. The digi-pak used similar images to that of the magazine advert which meant that audiences could easily find the album recognisable from seeing the advert. We put an image of a television on the male band member, rather than the female, as a link to the music video of it not being a fairytale romance as seen on television and that the obscure mime character was the lead singer’s own version of that in reality. We also included an ‘out now’ banner on the advert with the HMV symbol so that audiences would be encouraged to go and find the album within those stores.
Usually in the industry, the release of a new album results with a tour to promote it. Because of this, we added tour dates to our magazine advert in hope of creating the image of a realistic and modern Indie-rock band. The competition which features within the digi-pak is given authenticity from the sponsorship of the popular social networking website, Myspace. The website is regularly used by many music fans as well as artists making it an ideal feature for the band to be involved in. Also, the support shown to unsigned bands is designed to create popularity, publicity and success for the band within the industry. In addition to featuring Myspace, we also used references to NME music magazine which we knew to be popular with our target audiences as it is popularly read by Indie-Rock fans and the magazine is renowned for their annual award shows - of which Apollo Station had been awarded best newcomer and four stars for the album – with these factors making the magazine ideal. The font we chose reflected the image of the band as edgy and messy and we found it to be a good symbol of the band which would be recognisable in the industry.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Overall, we received very positive feedback for example “the overall design lets me know exactly what kind of band we’ve got here” (ex-art editor of Future Music Magazine). This was what we wanted to achieve: the image of a band, rather than just a video, that would please the eye of the public and the industry. The feedback we received on the rough cut edition of our video highlighted that our video did not have enough cuts throughout making the pace a lot slower than it needed to be to create an authentic video. For our final cut we made a strong effort to correct this and made the video quicker and also added in a new sequence throughout the instrumental section which we cut to fit the beat – this had a lot of positive feedback for the final cut. Another issue that we had with the rough cut was the split screen looking too obvious due to change in light quality in between takes. For the final cut we corrected the colours to the best of our ability and made the effect much more subtle. Also, for our final cut we included more close-ups of the singer to add more focus onto her as requested from the feedback on our rough cut. Other feedback we received led to rethinking the layout of the magazine advert and also how we would use the features within the ancillary texts such as NME and Myspace to effective but realistic use. For example, we made the text on the NME award headline smaller to put more focus on the band name.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Predominantly, the Internet was our main source for researching the conventional music videos that fitted our genre. This meant that YouTube was particularly useful in addition to the production team’s online blog. The blog was used for analysing other media products, planning production meetings and also documented our progress and changes to the plans we originally made. We also used the blogs to receive peer feedback; this was particularly helpful for taking our first draft to a higher quality for the final edition. Final Cut was the editing programme we used to put together the music video by using several techniques for example, by using a split screen to help make the clips dynamic and punchy. In addition to this the overlapping footage we used to duplicate the mime character played with the conventions of a performance based video. We also used Photoshop to compose the ancillary texts and to create the TV image of the mime’s head. The fonts used were downloaded from the internet using the website www.dafont.com as the fonts we found on a typical word application were not what we wanted and the effect of the downloaded font was much better for the image of the band. Digital photography was also used to document the filming progress, photographs of which we entered onto the blog and also for the photo shoot that took place on set for the ancillary texts. We also used a camera phone to get images quickly and conveniently to other members of the group, something we found particularly useful whilst planning the video shoot. Final Cut was also used to bring the entire video together as we brought together the audio and video using this programme to create our final product and achieved from this an authentic and good standard of video.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Commentary
To allow all of our the members of our group to feature in the DVD commentary, we may have to use a youtube clip of Tom because he is ill but we still want him to take part. this will also add other elements to our commentary.
Idea's for DVD commentary
For the evaluation of our final products, a DVD commentary is required. Our ideas for this were inspired by the weather forcast on TV:
We wanted to use a green screen like the weather men/women, allowing us to actively show our points within the commentary visually. however due to time restraints this will not be possible. instead we are going to talk into the camera with still images cut in and clips from the video also being shown.
As using a green screen to show pictures will not be possible. we have had the idea of using the magic tool on final-cut which will allow us to put a back ground of our choice behind the clips.
We wanted to use a green screen like the weather men/women, allowing us to actively show our points within the commentary visually. however due to time restraints this will not be possible. instead we are going to talk into the camera with still images cut in and clips from the video also being shown.
As using a green screen to show pictures will not be possible. we have had the idea of using the magic tool on final-cut which will allow us to put a back ground of our choice behind the clips.
Feeback from ex-art editor Future Music Magazine
The overall design lets me know what kind of band we’ve got here straight away. Moody. Avant garde (grown up speak for indie). Leftfield. It’s nice that you’ve used – what I guess – are the band members in the advert too.
Nice work on the photo manipulation, the black and white to colour looks professional. Though when you decide to roll-out the tour posters maybe talk to iStockphoto about buying the TV image... [cough]
Great name - Apollo Station. Maybe look at taking the NME rating down a notch, it’s great to have a qualifier from an independent source that people trust for finding new music, but it seems odd to dominate the album title.
The Girls on TV typography is fun, the way it works with the television set – you can see the begging's of a logo/icon for the merchandise. But I struggled to get the TV bit straight away. It might work better if the T and V were placed underneath the set, letters side-by-side. And White too.
Considering you are AV students and not graphic designers, it’s impressive stuff.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Magazine cover/Poster
Our ideas for the black and white background and the TV around Tom's face all went according to plan. We decided to put Tom's face in the TV as in the lyrics, one of the lines is "and is it real like those girls on TV", which gave us an image of surrealism and abstract, therefore we wanted to show this in the poster. We thought that, stereotypically, people would expect Bryony's head to be in the TV as she is the girl, but we went against that stereotype and mixed it up with Tom's head.
By putting Tom's head in the TV and making the background black and white, we had to work with the layers and make new ones then merge them etc. It was a long proccess but eventually it was done and we're very proud of how it's come out.
In the end, we decided that we should have TV written down the side of the TV as it would look better than either side. We made the font a purple/pink to contrast against the black and white background, and to link with Bryony's tights so there werent too many different colours on the magazine cover/poster.
The font we used for the band name and title of the song was used as it looks retro and rough, as the band is supposed to be percieved as rough around the edges and indie. We found the font on www.dafont.com and just changed the size to make it fit the structure of the poster, and as we needed the band title bigger than anything else on the page.
We then needed to think of a font for the tour dates, when the tour dates would be, where they would be, where to put them on the page and how they would fit around the other things going on on the magazine cover/poster. We decided on a font again from www.dafont.com that was memorable and slightly American. We liked this font as it has 2 different ways that come up, for example the "2010" on the poster looks transparent and the word "TOUR" looks is in white. We decided on white for most of our fonts as we thought it stood out from the black and white background but didnt take the attention away from the band members and "out now" banner. We decided on when the tour dates would be by writing in random dates for next year all in the spring/summer time, and we decided on the location by typing in in Google "arenas in UK" and chose from the long list.
At first we put the tour dates at the bottom of the page in a small font on the right hand side of Tom, but we then realised, and from feedback by our peers, that it wasn't standing out and wasn't really noticeable compared to the other happenings on the page so we decided to merge it into the frame more. We came up with the idea of slanting the tour dates by playing around with it and trying it in different ways, and chose the slanting idea as we thought it looked the best, running through the band members. We thought that it was a good place to put them as when the reader looks at the band members, the tour dates are immediately shown.
Like all reputable band posters, we chose to have a review from a well-known magazine, so we chose NME. We decided on the review by thinking of reviews we had seen before, and Tom thought of best newcomers, as Girls on TV would be Apollo Stations' new single! By adding on NME's review, it made the magazine cover/poster more realistic and like any other we had seen and researched.
We also used stars in the review to show the reader how good the song was and how it was rated by NME. As it was given 5 stars, we thought it might stand more of a chance of being bought, as we in the group have learnt this from past experience.
We also researched the font for the hmv logo and found it on Google after typing in "hmv logo font". It was easy to find, but we had to guess the colour for it. In the end we decided to have the same colour as the 5 stars and the word "TV". We added in the hmv logo as it's a very up to date, well known music and DVD store, which young people of today go in to buy their music and music technology. By associating our magazine cover/poster with hmv, we thought it'd draw more attention to it and open more to a wider range of readers.
By adding an "out now" banner, we thought it would show the readers that it was ready to buy now, as if it was what they had been waiting for. We put it in yellow and red so it was the brightest thing on the page, therefore telling the readers to grab the album as it may not be there long. We think the colours and font (which we used for the tour dates and reviw) work really well, as yellow and red clash, and the diagonal banner looks like a real one that is used in real magazine covers/posters of today. As we haven't used those colours anywhere else in the magazine cover/poster, it really captures the attention of the reader, and makes it unmissable that the album is out, which is ultimately what we want - sales of our single.
We are overall very pleased with our magazine cover/poster as it has taken a lot of time and effort, but it is certainly worth it. It really showed off our technology capabilities and by tweaking bits here and there we have really paid attention to the smallest of detail in all the right places.
By putting Tom's head in the TV and making the background black and white, we had to work with the layers and make new ones then merge them etc. It was a long proccess but eventually it was done and we're very proud of how it's come out.
In the end, we decided that we should have TV written down the side of the TV as it would look better than either side. We made the font a purple/pink to contrast against the black and white background, and to link with Bryony's tights so there werent too many different colours on the magazine cover/poster.
The font we used for the band name and title of the song was used as it looks retro and rough, as the band is supposed to be percieved as rough around the edges and indie. We found the font on www.dafont.com and just changed the size to make it fit the structure of the poster, and as we needed the band title bigger than anything else on the page.
We then needed to think of a font for the tour dates, when the tour dates would be, where they would be, where to put them on the page and how they would fit around the other things going on on the magazine cover/poster. We decided on a font again from www.dafont.com that was memorable and slightly American. We liked this font as it has 2 different ways that come up, for example the "2010" on the poster looks transparent and the word "TOUR" looks is in white. We decided on white for most of our fonts as we thought it stood out from the black and white background but didnt take the attention away from the band members and "out now" banner. We decided on when the tour dates would be by writing in random dates for next year all in the spring/summer time, and we decided on the location by typing in in Google "arenas in UK" and chose from the long list.
At first we put the tour dates at the bottom of the page in a small font on the right hand side of Tom, but we then realised, and from feedback by our peers, that it wasn't standing out and wasn't really noticeable compared to the other happenings on the page so we decided to merge it into the frame more. We came up with the idea of slanting the tour dates by playing around with it and trying it in different ways, and chose the slanting idea as we thought it looked the best, running through the band members. We thought that it was a good place to put them as when the reader looks at the band members, the tour dates are immediately shown.
Like all reputable band posters, we chose to have a review from a well-known magazine, so we chose NME. We decided on the review by thinking of reviews we had seen before, and Tom thought of best newcomers, as Girls on TV would be Apollo Stations' new single! By adding on NME's review, it made the magazine cover/poster more realistic and like any other we had seen and researched.
We also used stars in the review to show the reader how good the song was and how it was rated by NME. As it was given 5 stars, we thought it might stand more of a chance of being bought, as we in the group have learnt this from past experience.
We also researched the font for the hmv logo and found it on Google after typing in "hmv logo font". It was easy to find, but we had to guess the colour for it. In the end we decided to have the same colour as the 5 stars and the word "TV". We added in the hmv logo as it's a very up to date, well known music and DVD store, which young people of today go in to buy their music and music technology. By associating our magazine cover/poster with hmv, we thought it'd draw more attention to it and open more to a wider range of readers.
By adding an "out now" banner, we thought it would show the readers that it was ready to buy now, as if it was what they had been waiting for. We put it in yellow and red so it was the brightest thing on the page, therefore telling the readers to grab the album as it may not be there long. We think the colours and font (which we used for the tour dates and reviw) work really well, as yellow and red clash, and the diagonal banner looks like a real one that is used in real magazine covers/posters of today. As we haven't used those colours anywhere else in the magazine cover/poster, it really captures the attention of the reader, and makes it unmissable that the album is out, which is ultimately what we want - sales of our single.
We are overall very pleased with our magazine cover/poster as it has taken a lot of time and effort, but it is certainly worth it. It really showed off our technology capabilities and by tweaking bits here and there we have really paid attention to the smallest of detail in all the right places.
