How our media product uses,develops or challenges the forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product incorporates many typical characteristics of a rock/indie video. Rock videos tend to have a very strong visual element e.g the album cover and the band usually appear in the video. The ' look' of the band is consistent in each part of the digipack.We have used the same type of font and also the colours. The way the band is portrayed helps to illustrate the bands music (Goodwin). We see them wearing basic clothing which they feel comfortable wearing. We wanted to create an 'easy' look to them so that they do not look to false. The kind of people in such a band would be laid back and we wanted to portray that image.
Many rock/indie videos combine a live band performance along with a narrative, although it may be very loose. An example of this is the Arctic Monkeys- Brainstorm . They are shown playing the song live but at the same time they have dancers at the back acting out some of the lyrics.By having the live band performance it means that the band is able to create a personal connection with their audience. A lot of the bands fans would be aspirers and would want to act and dress like the band. Therefore we decided to dress our band in costumes that could be brought on the high street and easily replicated.
The age range for a rock/indie band would be around the ages of 15 - 30. This is because they are old enough to appreciate the lyrics and are able to relate with the topics covered in it. The older end of the audience will be trying to compare them to similar bands back in the rock era. The audience will have a good knowledge of the genre and would know exactly what they want to get from it and what they expect to see in this genre of music.
We have challenged the conventions of the rock genre by not have the stereo typical rock band member with the visuals of drugs, drinking and smoking.Our reasons for not doing this is because it would be shown to a younger audience we would not want them to think this is the right thing to do. The song that we have chosen also has a slightly stronger narrative that you would find in a lot of rock/indie videos. We have chosen to exploit this and make our narrative very clear. Many videos in the genre also have their live performance at a gig where you would find a large group of fans. We have chosen to stage ours and have it purely for the video.
We decided that it would be best for the band to make as little contact with the camera as possible, apart from the lead singer who would do it occasionally to give a creepy/stalkerish feel to it.
By not having this aspect it gives the video a feel of voyeurism (freud). The audience will enjoy watching them and it is not the same as a pop video where they will be wanting direct contact with them throughout the whole video.Their reason for this as they usually celebrities branching out into the music industry.Whereas members of a rock/indie band wouldn't be as much in the public eye as they focus more on the music than their image. As they are likely to be huge fans of the band they will like the fact that the band does not know that they are watching them and they feel as if they are backstage seeing things that others cannot.
We chose to have a narrative to break up the band performance which if left as a block would be boring and therefore the audiences attention would be lost. It stimulates their imagination. The characters in this narrative were chosen because the audience will be able to relate to the emotions that they would feel, the female appears a normal person who is being hassled by the male.We wanted to also show a divide in social group and we have done this through the clothes they are wearing. The audience may also notice that the male character doesn't change what he is wearing, which would indicate he doesn't care much about his appearance.
We have used a number of shots similar to those found in other music videos such as the parts of a 360 degree shot in Blink 182- all the small things, this gives an all access feel to the video and we are able to see them from other perspectives.We decided that it would look better if we only used a section of the shot as it did not fit with the pace of the song. The clip below shows the 360 degree shot that i took.
Rock videos also tend to use zoom ins on the band members faces with a small tilt of with a sharp cut between each quick take. We wanted to create this hectic kind of approach so we have incorporated this into parts of the narrative. We did the through shot, quick takes adn the transitions are very sort aswell .Another way we have tried to keep it similar to other music videos is by using hand held shots which makes the audience feel as if they are actually there becuase of the unsteadiness.
There is usually a lot of movement in this type of video so we had to lip sync the visual with the song. This makes it seem realistic and as if the band is actually singing it. Some parts were harder to sync than others as our lead singer had an unusual jaw movement.
Our video is complimented by our album cover and poster by having the same colors and fonts carried through all. Both of them also use the same instruments that are used in the band performance that creates a link between them.
How effective is the combination of main product and ancillary text?
On the album cover we have tried to keep a similar colour scheme, those that are found in the tunnel and give the "urban" look. We did this because it made it easier for the audience to associate each of the things with the band. On the poster we have used the same font which creates a continuity between them.We used the same guitar and drums as well which means that we relate each product to each other. The photo was taken in the same place as the video was filmed as it gives an appropriate amount of lighting and the feel of the urban setting. Typically on a poster and CD cover from this genre we would expect to see a photo of the band. We decided not to do this as we wanted to give our band an interesting twist that would draw in our audience. When looking on a shelf with many rock/indie CD's they all look very similar. But, if this was to be seen it would stand out and people would want to read it. The information found on the poster is that typically found on a poster. it has vital information for fans who would want to buy. Such as when it is available. We included it because it gives people a actual date of when it is available, to keep the buzz of the single going there would also be tv and radio advers. This poster would appear on bus stop billboards and also music shops and gigs, as this is where people interested in the band would look to see up and coming albums.
We decided to use the same photos on the middle pages of the album cover and add a different coloured tint over them. It therefore looks modern and fresh.
On our initial album cover we used a photo of the band with a butterfly used as a logo. We decided to do this because we wanted to try and aim the band towards a female audience, we then realised that this was too specific and needed to make the unisex. Our second one did not do this. We used natural colours which would draw in both males and females and had males and females appearing in the video. The font loks hand written which makes it look similar to the graffiti. The bands "tag".
To make it seem as authentic we put on some features typically found on a CD cover. This image is seen on most CD's to tell the purchaser what it is.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We had a showing of our film to a group mixture of both male and females. They are perfect as or target audience as they are between the ages of 20 and 30. They are of a middle class and have an interest in this type of music.They are very familiar with music videos and production and editing techniques. The opinions were similar between the men and the women but the men tended to take more notice of the mise en scene and the women more on the costume and lyrics.After watching the film they said that they really enjoyed the narrative and the mixture of live band performance with it. They didn't notice the few glitches in the song which was positive. But they did suggest that we applied a black and white tint over the narrative as they found it very hard on the eye when it changed between the band which was quite dark and the narrative which was very sharp because of the HD camera. This creates a continuity between the different parts in the film. The image below is an example of the difference.
They really liked the blurriness of the opening shot, they said that it created an unknown kind of atmosphere which was what we were aiming for when trying to incorporate Freud's theory of voyeurism.
We also decided to show the video which we had made the adjustment to, to a younger audience to see if they were able to understand what was happening and if they liked it.The results of their feedback has been posted on the blog. They did not comment on the continuity between the live band perfromance and narrative. They said that enjoyed the video and that they were drawn in by the story line. They found the song catchy and unlike the older audience they didn't notice the glitch in the song. They understood that it was in the indie/rock genre, this was because of the setting and costumes that they were wearing
How did you use media technologies in the:
Construction
Whilst filming our music video we used many different media technologies. We decided to use a HD camera as this would provide a better quality of shot. Previously we had used a mini DV camera which was a lower quality, the shots we got we not good enough. This was due to the low light in the tunnel. To be able to lip sync the footage once we put t on the computer we needed to have the music playing on location. As we had cars there for lighting we connected it to its music system so that it was loud enough to hear.We edited the footage using final cut express which was brilliant for cutting clips and adding in transitions. We also used this to link the images with the song which i brought from itunes.I made the mock up version of the album cover but we decided that it was not quite what we wanted to acheived.
I used photoshop to make this as it was the best programme to use as it allowed me to add layers to it and also to adjust colour levels and balance. The photos for the poster and album cover were taken using a digital camera, it was easier to take them using this instead of the HD camera as it is easier to upload to the computer.
At each stage we recorded our progress on the blog, this enabled each member of our group to see what each other were doing and if there was anything that we still needed to do.
Research and Planning
When carrying out our research into the conventions of a rock/indie music video, we watched a lot of videos on the internet. In particular You tube where we watched the video : Brainstorm - Arctic Monkeys.
As Final cut express is a complicated programme to use we also used YouTube to find tutorials on
how to use certain tools.To upload the song i used Windows movie maker. I put an image as the
whole length of the song and then added the song, so when played we heard the whole song and
then watched just a still image. We found our song using Myspace where we researched Wall Street Riots Website.
To find if the song fitted into our genre and that it wasn't a signed band or the song copyrighted.
Evaluation of your production?
We used blogger to record our data from the audience research and also to display our progress. The band requested that we sent them a copy of the video, we decided that it would be a good idea to upload it to youtube where it would be easy for them to access it . As the file as so large we decided it would be best to back all parts of our work including the digipack visuals to a memory stick, this meant that if the computer was to lose the work we would have a safe copy. It was useful that it was on the memory stick as when it came to getting audience feedback. We needed to make out video portable so we were able to do this by plugging the memorystick into a laptop and then taking it to our reviewers. We then uploaded images to the blog to do this we had to compress some of the files as they were too large. We also made hyperlinks to places where we got some of our inspirations to show where our ideas came from.
