In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My target audience are people who are into acoustic music and also people who like surfing. Not many young people would listen to this music; the age group is people who are between the ages 15- 40. The style of music is chilled acoustic with someone singing. My music video has someone playing the guitar so it would appeal to people who are interested in this style of music because it is mainly acoustic. It is a happy and upbeat song so I have made the singer look happy whilst playing his guitar. I have filmed my music video on a cliff top looking out to the sea because the style of music is what you would hear when you are on the beach. I wanted my media product to work with the conventions of a real media product rather than challenge it in order to appeal to my target audience. The song I have chosen is ‘Free’ by Donavan Frankenreiter ft Jack Johnson.
I wanted my music video to be ‘chilled’ and to flow smoothly like the song because then my video would mainly follow the conventions. I might break the conventions but the video would still appeal to my target audience. I have looked at other music videos by Donavon and Jack Johnson to broaden my view of the different shots they use in the videos and I have looked at music videos which are in the same genre of Donavan. This helped me to film mine to make it fit the style of music. Jack Johnson “You and Your Heart” shows this well, the whole video is of him surfing and singing to the song.
The videos I looked at were mainly filmed on the beach or had the main singer surfing. They also had the singer in a chilled sound studio playing the guitar and singing. I didn’t want my singer to be on the beach like most of the videos I watched, so I have him on a cliff top singing and playing the guitar, with the sun and sea in the background. By doing this I have broken the conventions of location, in my research all the videos have the main singer on the beach or in a studio. I followed the conventions of the sun and sea being in my music video like the other videos I watched. The weather and surf is key to my music video and if I did not have nice weather and nice surf the music video would not work and would break the conventions which might turn my target audience away. This follows Gunther Kress’ theory of genre, which is that the audience will feel content watching the music video as it is a generic text for my video to go with the lyrics. And it also flows Andrew Goodwin’s theory of there being a relationship between lyrics and visual, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics. I also used a lot of close-ups which is a key feature for a music video which is a part of Andrew Goodwin’s theory.I could have had the singer in shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops but the weather was not warm enough. In my research of similar style videos I discovered that they used close-ups of the guitar and the star’s face which shows the singer’s emotions and feelings. Also, because there is a lot of guitar being played it is important to have close-ups of the guitar. So I will use close-ups in my music video to follow the conventions. Goodwin’s music video theory suggests that close up shots are vital so that the artist can develop motifs which recur across their work. Jack Johnson “If I Had Eyes” has a lot of close-ups which follows Goodwin’s theory and it is an emotional song; by having close-ups it shows his emotions and facial expressions. In my research I looked at a number of music videos which are in the same genre as mine. There was one main video which I tried to follow and it was Newton Faulkner “To the Light” because it has the singer in a field with the nice blue sky in the background and he is also playing the guitar; the music is in the same genre as my chosen song.
Instead of my singer being in a field I thought it would go better with the song to have him on the cliff tops looking out to sea. This is because I wanted to follow with the forms and conventions of location to make it more appealing to my target audience. I wanted to follow the conventions of being on grass but broke the conventions of the background scenery. I like the transitions that are used in this video because it makes the music video flow more because he uses dissolves. Using dissolves makes the film smoother and soft on the eyes of the audience. I needed to make a digipak and a music magazine advert as my ancillary tasks. I needed to follow a house style of colour so I took photos as well as videoing. I took the photos in the same place as my music video was set, I also made sure I got them on the day of filming because the weather might not be nice again for a long time, so I had to make sure I got photos for my digipak and magazine advert so there was continuity between my products. I wanted these photos to combine well and to fit with my music video. My main photo is of the singer looking towards the camera with his guitar in his hand and with the bright sun in the background; my title is ‘Carpe Diem’ because I feel this fits very well with my song choice and the location of filming. I used natural colours in my main photo so I didn’t edit the picture because I thought it followed the house style of colour. In a lot of my research for my digipak I found that a lot of digipaks just had pictures of the artists, the songs on the CD and it mainly had a page where people would write thank you to the producers of the song and music video. When creating my coursework someone close to me died so I thought I would do it in memory of them like Jack Johnson’s new album where his dad passed away so he has created it in memory of his dad. In my digipak I have five different pictures of my artist so there is some variety in the pictures and it would stand out compared with the other music digipaks in the shop. I also had to create a magazine advert for my CD and I needed to make sure that it had the same theme as my other two media products, so I kept the natural colours with no editing done to the picture, so the magazine advert followed the colour scheme. I followed the conventions of digipaks because I wanted my digipak to appeal to my target audience and I think if I broke the conventions it would not work, so therefore it would not sell in the music world. I have used stop motion in my music video, this has Broken the convections because is all of the music videos I watched to my research there was not stop motion. I was not 100% sure if I wanted to use stop motion because it might not fit into the music video, but I have decided I wanted to us it and after editing it, it now fits the house style of my music video. By using semiotics I have made sure you can see the sea and made sure I have got some clips of waves breaking. By seeing this people will know that it is a surfer’s song, it is what surfers would listen to. If I didn’t have the sea in my music video it would be breaking the convections, and I didn’t want to break the convections too much because my audience would not be interested. Also when I used stop motion of the beers I made sure it was a fosters. This is because when people see fosters they think about Austria, hot weather and beautiful seas, which is want I want my audience to think about. This is all about Ferdinand Saussure theory about semiotics. I made sure that the Mise-en-scene was right for my music video. My singer fitted the style of music which means I had to follow the convections of clothing so that my audience would still be appealed to my video. Mise-en-scene is important for my video because I need to make sure the singer has a nice guitar and that he is wearing surfer style clothes otherwise it would not look right. I made the actor wear a green shirt, jeans and ankle high shoes which made him fit into the scenery around him.
How effective is the combination of your main product with ancillary texts? In all of my media products I had to make sure they all linked together in colour and theme. Before I started I had an idea of what I wanted and that was to make sure all three of my media products linked. The font I used in my digipak and magazine advert are the same, this is because I wanted all my media products to be linked and to follow the same style. The font I used is very smooth which makes the digipak and magazine advert follow the style of the music video, which is very chilled. The font I used on the digpak is Stencil and the font I used for my magazine is GungsuhChe. I have kept the font colour white on a black background which makes it stand out. I have used the same picture for my digipak and music video because this would make it all link together and I also used the same picture for my magazine advert so that I would promote the music video and the digipak so that people would associate the magazine advert with the music video. I had the name of the artist “Lucas Bland” in my digipak which will tell people who the singer is and I made sure the font of the writing was big and stands out. I also used his name on the magazine advert so that people would want to find out more about the singer after looking at the advert. Also, like in the digipak, I made his name stand out so people are more likely to take an interest. In all three of my media products I follow the media convections so that it would appeal to my target audience and also to a new audience.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
I wanted as much feedback as possible so that my music video would appeal to my target audience and would keep other audiences interested as well. Therefore, I asked a range of people, such as staff, pupils and the older generation to get as much feedback as possible. I asked people who were not interested in the style of music to come and watch my video to see if they enjoyed the video, even if they didn’t like the music. I am trying to make my video appeal to all people. I made sure I asked other media students for feedback because they will have strong views and good opinions about what I could improve to my video and what is good. I had strong thoughts about editing the clips but my focus group did not agree with this; they wanted me to keep the natural colours in the clips because they were very attractive. This helped me know what my audience wanted so I could create a video which would appeal to them. I asked my target audience if they liked the line drawing on some of my clips. They all said yes because the clips I edited where darker in colour so it didn’t follow the house style of colour. All my feedback was very useful because it helped me create something that would appeal to my audience. The line drawing I used in some clips fitted well into my video and my audience liked it and this became very popular in my video. My focus group said they really liked the close-up shots of the artist playing the guitar and they all said it fitted well with the music. They also liked the panning I used at the start and end of my music video because it signalled when the video was about to start and when the video was coming to an end. There are one or two shots in which my focus groups said the camera was too shaky which did not make it fit with the rest of my video which was very smooth. So I had to change a couple of clips to make it fit and to appeal to my audience. My focus group said they didn’t like the effect of the page roll; this is because it did not follow with the rest of the video and this broke the conventions of the music videos I looked at for my research. The group also said they thought that the magazine advert did not fit with my digipak and my music video. They said it seemed dull compared with my other two media products and that it was letting me down because the digipak and music video fitted well. So I decided to change my advert so that it would appeal to my audience. My focus group wanted me to do the full six page digipak instead of the single digipak. I had taken a lot of photos of my artist so this was not a problem. I filled a six page digipak with pictures and my focus group liked this more and also liked the colour scheme because it fitted with the rest of my media products. I used Facebook for some feedback, after making my music video I posted it onto Facebook for a wide audience. The good thing about adding my video onto Facebook this that I can get quick feedback and also feedback from a lot more than in college. And also there is a big age group on Facebook which means I will get a lot of different views about my video.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In my research I used different media technologies such as the internet, music channels (television) and magazines to help me create the best media products I could. These gave me inspiration and ideas for my digipak, advert and music video. In my research the main technology I used was the internet which gave me great ideas of different music videos and the different types of music genres. The main website I used was YouTube which helped me get ideas for my video. YouTube has thousands of music videos on it where I could analyse them and get ideas for my own video; this helped a lot because it has loads of different genres of music videos so I have a variety of shots and angles which I can use in my video. There were a lot of music videos which were the same genre as mine, so this helped me follow the conventions of this media product. I found out the most popular was having the artist singing most of the song with transitions to a different scene. The equipment I used was a brand new Panasonic high definition video camera and a tripod which helped me have nice shots without the camera shaking. This equipment was great for my filming and the footage I got from the camera was very clear and showed the colours well. Once I got all my footage I transferred it onto a new Dell media computer. The programme I used to edit my video was Adobe Premier Elements and this created a lot of problems for me. This is because the software was very slow and would not play clips all the way through without tripping and going out of sync with the music. With it being slow it also crashed a lot which meant that it you didn’t save it you would have lost it which was a big problem. This took up a lot of time which meant I had less time to edit my video. Knowing that the software was not great I made sure I saved every new thing I did to my project. To get feedback I also used www.Facebook.com which was very useful for my project. This is because I could post ideas and get feedback very quickly from people which would give me good ideas for my three media products and this helped me have a wider audience which would give me ideas. The new Panasonic camera could also take pictures of a good quality and saved me having to use a separate stills camera as well so this meant all my footage was on one memory stick which helped me keep management on my footage. Once I got my pictures I uploaded them onto the computer and used a really good programme called Adobe Photoshop which helped me edit some of my pictures which I wanted to use. This software of videos and clips helped me get good material for all three of my media products. Using the new video software I was able to use a wide range of transitions and effects which helped me create my video which would appeal to people because of the different effects and transitions. The transitions I have used in my music video is mainly Cross Dissolves, the reason why I have used this transition is because it makes the music video flow. The image software allowed to me to edit to a better degree than using paint; this makes my images look more professional. With this software it links all three of my media products together. In my video I used a few scenes where I have used an effect called line drawing; this is because the colours in the background didn’t follow the house style. Even though my focus group said they liked the natural colours I thought I needed to change those clips to line drawing because it brightens the clip and fits into the house style. Using this effect means I have broken the conventions, but I think this would appeal to a lot of my audience still and even to a wider audience. I used a tripod so there was less shakiness to the video which made it flow and which meant that the video looked smooth with the music. My focus group liked the fact that I used a tripod to obtain a steady shot. My focus group were pleased with my final video which meant I had achieved my goal to interest my target audience.
I have started to create mt digipak for my music video. I wanted my didpak to follow the same house style as my music video and I need to make sure it has the same style as my advert. I made a Digipak to my focus group and they have comment on things they liked and didn't like. Like: . The pictures used in the digipak . The natural colours . The editing on some of the pictures . The way the songs have been written down on the digipak . It follows the house style . It will fit the same style as my magazine advert Dislikes . Hard to read his name
Because there is not very many dislikes I am going to keep this style and change the artist name so that it stands out more.
I made a link on my facebook page which had my music video. I did this so I could see what other people think about the video, I can get comments on what they think about my video. Having it on my facebook means that it is open to a wider audience.
I have made all the changes to my video and hopefully my focus group will like it.
I wanted as much feedback as possible so that I was going to please my target audience and also my focus group. My focus group are very happy with the final piece and they said you have made all the changes that they thought needed changing. I made sure I had all my feedback before entering it onto my blog.
I have taken the comments from my focus group and made changes to my video.
. Don't like the first transition 0.14 into the video, because the you can see to clips at once. . The video still stops 0.18 into the video . lip sinking is out on one clip . The transition 2.06 into the video doesn't flow because their is a ghost effect which means you can still see the last clip on the next. . The shacking of the camera 2.09, needs to be cropped so that is doesn't shack
Hopefully with all these changes it will be my last and final piece. My focus group are happy with my changes to the video. The clip I had problems with I have taken out because my focus group didn't like it and it didn't fit with the rest of the video. So I have deleted this clip and got another to replace it. I listen to the lyrics and it say " Corner Winds" so I thought a clip of a bird flying would fit well. My focus group are happy with this change and thinks it makes the video look better. I also have changed the second to last clip because I used it at the start, I have filmed a sunset and made it faster so that you can see the whole sun going down. My focus also liked this more.
I have made the changes to my video and shown it to my focus group. I have added a page roll into my video. I have placed this on the clip which I was having problems with and I am going to show my focus group to see what they think about it.
. The clip randomly stops 0.18 secs into the video, this could be down to the transition used . Didn't like the page roll because it didn't fit with the rest of the music video, they suggested to maybe get another clip instead . Still need to make changes of the clip which was shacking a bit, too either us another clip or try remove the shacking
So I need to make changes to the clip which I was having problems with because this clip is still letting the video down.