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Question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challage forms and conventions of real media products?
First of all as a group we carried out secondary research. We researched different artists and looked at a variety of music video's to gain inspiration and understand different aspects of music video's in more depth. I looked at different video's such as Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' music video and also looked at video's that had unusual aspects by using different media techniques, such as stop motion. I wrote different essays analysing music videos that interested me, such as Beyonce's 'Best Thing I Ever Had' and Dizzee Rascals 'Holiday' music video. I also completed an essay looking at the director Hype Williams, and analysed some of his work. Throughout the whole process I have looked at different people's theories such as Goodwin's, Mulvey and Dyer's, I found these very interesting to see their different idea's and thoughts. I also analysed two different CD covers and a magazine advert to help with inspiration and to understand some of the conventions.We created a music video to a grime/electro house song ‘Bonkers’ by rapper Dizzee Rascal and producer Armand Van Helden. Dizzee Rascal creates rap/grime songs about girls, money and sex. However this song portrays how he lives his life, giving off a less serious feel and creates a fun vibe. ‘Bonkers’ goes against the grain for Dizzee, because of American producer/ DJ Armand Van Helden who collaborated with Dizzee to produce the soundtrack.
Our music video does not follow conventions found in rap/grime music videos that Dizzee Rascal usually produces. However because ‘Bonkers’ is in the genre of electro house/grime we follow conventions found in this genre of music videos. Our video is concept driven and is performance and narrative based, this appeals to a wide range of people. We used performance through our music video because this gave a sense of reality. This relates to Goodwin’s theory, we wanted to have a relationship between the music and the visuals. We also decided on using aspects of narrative throughout our music video because we wanted to show a typical day in the life of our characters, this again relates to Goodwin’s theory and the fact that there are links between our lyrics and our visuals e.g. ‘I wake up’ which we shot people waking up. There is a sense of voyeurism throughout out our video, as a typical day of the characters is shown. A similar video to ours is ‘Acceptable in the 80’s’ Calvin Harris. The genre of this song is similar to ours and the way the video is both performance and narrative based. Usually electro house music videos are surreal and have an aspect of comedy. These are two conventions that are found within our video.
In our video we shot a variety of angles and used different locations for filming. This is to appeal to a wide range of people and make our music video more interesting. We edited parts of our music video to match the style of the song. E.g. when the music gets faster we edited our footage so that there are lots of short, fast clips, when the song gets slower we used a ghosting effect to make our footage appear in slow motion. I believe these techniques to be commonly found in many electro house music videos.
We used intertextuality in our music video. We were inspired to incorporate flashing words on a black screen taken from Kanye West’s ‘All of the lights’ video. We also used stop-motion images of a roller coaster taken from Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’. We took inspiration from Duck Sauce’s video ‘Barbra Streisand’ and Nickleback’s ‘Rockstar’. These videos have different people singing the lyrics, instead we asked random people to dance. And finally we took inspiration from Mr Basista's music video 'Basista Skank'. In this music video Mr Basista is shown in his bedroom asleep in the first few seconds of the video. We liked the idea of this video showing the day out he had, starting right from the moment he woke up. We too created a music video that shows a day out right from the moment the characters wake up. By using intertextuality it allowed us to use great classic ideas and change them to make them more unique and fit them into our own product.
The print screen on the left is taken from Kanye West's 'All of the lights' music video. On the right is the text we included in our music video. We thought this was an effective way to incorporate some of the key words. Because our music video is quite wacky we thought this would fit in well.
To the left is a print screen taken from Basista Skank by Mr Basista. His video included him walking up to a messy bedroom. We really liked the idea of filming a character from the moment they wake up so we decided to film us waking up as well.
On the left is an image taken from Peter Gabriel's music video 'Sledgehammer'. I was looking for inspirational music video's on You tube and came across this video. As I was watching through it I noticed there was stop motion used to create the effect of a roller coaster. I decided to draw on black paper with white and pink chalk and took images of me. I think this has worked effectively.
We also took inspiration from Nickleback's 'Rockstar' music video. They included lots of clips of random people singing lyrics, instead of getting people to sing the lyrics we asked lots of random people to dance for us.
Overall I am extremely pleased with how our music video has turned out. I think we have some Strong ideas within our music video, some of them being our own ideas and others being from looking at other artist's music video's from which we have gained inspiration from. Our strengths throughout creating the music video are the different ideas we came up with. In our music video we haven't used the same footage but in different parts of the song more than two times. I think this is good because it keeps the viewer interested and not looking at a music video contain footage being used again and again and again. However a weakens to this aspect of the project I believe to be the amount of different settings we have incorporated within the music video. Although I believe we do have quite a few different settings I would have like to included more if there were more time.
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Question 2-How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Before we started to create our digipak or our magazine cover we brainstormed a few idea's. We knew we wanted to incorporate a brick wall in all three of our products because this gives an urban feel to our work. As we thought further into the CD cover we had the idea of a person shouting upwards and the word 'Bonkers' written in a speach bubble to make it seem like they are screaming it. After taking a variety of pictures of different people screaming we realised it would make more sense for all four of the characters to be featured on the CD cover. We then took a variety of photographs in front of a green screen and created a bright and bold CD cover. To the right is a picture of an initial idea we had for the CD cover. We knew we wanted to also feature all four of the character on the magazine cover also, to keep a constant theme.
The definition of branding is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumer’s mind, mainly through advertising with a consistent theme. There are elements of branding that are found in all of our products. We did this to keep a consistent theme throughout our work and to create a brand image for Starlight Productions. In our music video we have used different coloured brick walls. We done this because our song has an urban feel to it and we wanted to show this throughout our video by featuring typical urban elements. Another branding element in our video is the flashing words and fast cuts. We wanted our video to be colorful and fun, so we incorporated bright flashing words relating to the lyrics and also lots of short fast cuts to make it more interesting. These are elements found in our music video that I believe to be our trademark techniques.
Regarding our digipak we have tried to incorporate the same colorful brick walls found in our music video. We wore the same crazy clothes throughout the music video and the digipak so we all look the same and it is consistent. We have also incorporated the same bright neon colours found within our music video. For our digipak we have used a graffiti style font to give off an urban feel, this has also been used in our magazine advert, so that when people see the text they immediately think of starlight productions. In our music video we incorporated a split screen of close ups of four characters, the colorful brick walls being behind them. For our digipak we have used the same effect by using split screens with the same four characters in with the colorful brick walls. We were inspired by one of The Beatles album covers and one of Blur’s album covers to incorporate split screens with different people in in two of our media products. We also looked at the artist Andy Warhol as an inspiration for the pop art style pictures he creates. Our digipak resembles some of his style. I think using intertexuality is good because it allows us to develop our own thoughts and ideas on a classic idea that has already been created. Also many people are familiar with both of The Beatles and Blur, therefore they might be more inclined to take a closer look at our digipak if they are a fan of the other bands that have used the idea.
Below is the Digipak we created. For the front and back covers you can see they are similar to Blur's and The Beatles album covers.
For our magazine advert we have tried to follow the same style that is found in our music video and our digipak. In our magazine advert we have used the same graffiti style font found in our digipak, we have also used similar bright neon colours to follow the bonkers theme throughout. We have featured all four of the character found in the digipak and the video, the characters are in different colours and are all pulling strange facial expressions similar to those featured in the digipak. Our magazine advert is shown to the left.In conclusion I think we have created consistent products. I think the way we looked at different magazine covers that artists have done in the past was good because it gave us inspiration to create our own. However a weakness to this aspect is that after taking quite a few photo's and brainstorming we finally came up with an idea. Although it is good to see how our thoughts and ideas were developed on the CD cover, we did take a long time to finally think of the cover we created in the end.
For our Digipak and magazine cover we took a variety of photos with lots of different fun expressions and locations. Below are a few of the ideas we thought of before we came up with our final products. We felt that our end products were the best out of all the experiments we done and this is why we decided to use them.
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Question 3- What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We discussed our target audience profile and agreed that generally our audience would be male and between the ages of 17-25. We imagine our audience to live a fairly normal lifestyle and enjoy going out at the weekends to clubs. The genres of Dizzee Rascal’s music are garage, hip hop and grime, which are genres of music which would be played in clubs. We decided that this would be our target audience because the singer is male and generally rap/grime artists appeal to men. Between the ages of 17-25 most men would enjoy going out with their friends and going into night clubs which would often play this type of music. To gain audience feedback we showed the class a rough cut of our music video and design idea's for the digipak and magazine cover. Overall we received positive comments, however we mainly received positive feedback which was really useful for us.
some of the feedback we received was 'More green screen of people mouthing lyrics to camera', 'Start filming more clips, anything and everything', 'When the music speeds up, fasten editing'. We also showed the class the designs we had for our magazine and digipak cover, we received a variety of comments such as, 'Like the designs, experiment with more images'. This was a really helpful exercise for us to do as we could then make our products better.
We also gave out surveys to our target audience to research about their preferences. We received mainly positive comments; most agreed that our target audience would be between the ages of 17-25. Many said they would often listen to this genre of music and would watch the music video.
We incorporated aspects in our video that would appeal to our target audience. We created a crazy, wacky video that relates well to the title of the song. We included unusual clothes, make-up, and props to appeal to the audience. We also incorporated a mixed gender in our music video to appeal to a wider audience.
The main characters are a group of friends on their typical day out. By featuring a group of friends the audience may feel part of the group which could make them feel more relaxed. The characters in the group come across friendly and willing to have a good time which makes the audience feel more involved with the music video. Filming took place in familiar settings to make the audience feel more relaxed. We filmed inside a house, forest, and garden and we used a variety of editing techniques to make our music video more interesting to watch.
We presented our end products to an audience. They liked that our music video went well with the title of our song. They also liked the bright colours and costumes that kept them interested. Comments were made on the different camera shots and editing techniques which kept them hooked. Our digipak also received good comments. They mentioned how bright and bold the colours were. They thought the digipak went well with our music video because they keep a similar style. Our magazine advert the audience liked that we had good, clear images which described the name of the song well. They liked that the text was clear and big, however not too big to distract from the images shown.
Overall I believe our end products are very successful. Our target audience enjoyed watching out music video and thought our digipak and magazine advert were intriguing because of the bright colours used. I think our video keeps the audience interested because it is a fun video. Our audience feedback suggested that many younger people enjoy listening to this type of music and many people would enjoy our video.
Below is the rough cut for our music video. We decided to re-film all of the parts that are seen in this video because we felt the footage was too dark. We learnt from our mistakes and corrected the footage for our final music video.
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Question 4-
How did you use new media technologies in the resarch, planning, construction and evaluation stages?
We used Web 2.0 which is defined as: A loosely defined intersection of wen application features that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centred design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. We used Web 2.0 to assist us though the overall production process.
New media technologies have assisted us throughout the overall production process. The internet has allowed us to use search engines, YouTube and Blogger to research and gain inspiration for our project.We used the website Wordle which allowed us to create a word cloud of all the key words to our products such as 'Crazy', 'Colourful' ect. We also used Powerpoint to creates slides about what we inteded to to as a group and some of our idea's. We presented this to the class to get their feedback on our initial idea's. We researched a variety of different artists using Google to decide what song to choose to create a video to. We also researched using YouTube to watch video’s in which we could gain inspiration from such as Lady Gaga’s video Telephone and Basista Skank by MR Basista. As we began creating a music video we looked up the lyrics to ‘Bonkers’ using Google, to help us to understand the meaning to the song, so we could create a music video that relates well to the lyrics. We used the sight Blogger to create a blog which stores all the work we have done leading up to, during and after creating a music video.
We used Apple’s Final Cut Express to edit our footage. We had an idea of how to use the software, but after much experimenting and common sense we overcome many problems and we were able to use the software well. We leant how to edit a green screen and how to create split screens which are editing techniques found within our music video. By having access to such software we were able to enhance our music video using special effects. By looking through some of the editing techniques we were able to gain ideas to make our video look unique. To the right is a print screen of us editing a clip on Final Cut.
We looked as a variety of magazines and CD’s to research and gain inspiration for our own Digipak and magazine advert. For instance I looked at Basement Jaxx's magazine advert and Jack Johnson's CD cover. We used a Nikon D40 to take still images for both products. We used a tripod for each shot to keep the camera straight to make the image look professional.
Adobe Photoshop was used to edit the images. Using Photoshop was a challenge at first but after experimentation we were able to use the software effectively. Access to a good quality camera allowed us to produce work that was of quality.
For our video production we had the opportunity to use a Sanyo HD camera, Nikon D40 and a tripod. We used the Sanyo HD for filming and used the Nikon for stop motion. We were taught a few techniques on how to use both the camera’s to get the best outcome from filming and taking pictures. We were taught the importance of white balancing and as well as safe set up of the tripod. We have access to many filming locations such as school, forest, houses and even London; we took great advantage of the amazing locations we had access to. We realised that in some of our footage the lighting was dim; we resolved this by using lights to shine onto the ceiling to bounce off onto the subject that we were filming. We had a great amount of equipment available which helped us produce good quality end product.
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