Closing Post

This is my closing post,

My main Research and Planning goes from June 2010- January 2011

My final Print Production texts are in December 2010

My final Music video is in February 2011

My evaluation is in March 2011

This Blog is now complete and is ready for assessment.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback was really important during these set of tasks, we needed to make sure that we were sticking to our target audiences likes and dislikes. It gives them the time and space to voice their individual opinions and point out the positives and negatives of the product.

Our target audience was:-

Aged 16-21

Individualists & Aspirers

They have part time jobs at minimum wage

They have second hand cars

Read NME magazine

and are predominately males.

A good qualitative method is Facebook, it was a huge success for most people because it allowed easy access to each others image and uploads, and facebook has a large audience so we were all able to find our target audiences on there.

I posted our video on facebook and asked people to comment on it-

Facebook does contain our target audience but sometimes people are afraid of being too negative towards the work because they are friends and it isn't anonymous.

So we asked peers in the class to watch the video and write down on pieces of paper their thoughts about it, and it could be anonymous. We gave them one specific question which was about the Cinematography and whether they thought it was appropriate for the genre. This way, people were not afraid of saying what they wanted.

Feedback from class peers

Pros

- 'Really Interesting shots, good use of technology'

-'Looks professional'

-'I think the sped up parts link in well with the beat of the song'

-'Really good performance shots, really good angles, lighting is very effective'

-'The cinematography is great, i particularly like the sequence at the beginning with the traffic coming into focus.'

Cons

-'Narrative doesn't really make sense'

-'More lighting could have been added in some areas'

-'Unsure about the narrative here'

-'Some shots are too long, not sure the actor fits the genre, sometimes the lighting was too dark'

-'Some shots seemed quite pointless'

We learned from this that most people didn't understand the narrative of the video, and we also agree that the lyrics don't have much to do with the song. We originally wanted to achieve Goodwins theory of 'links between the music and visuals', and create an amplifying video for our audience because after research we found this best for the indie/alternative rock genre. But our audience feedback proves that we could of perhaps thought more about thy lyrics and making a stronger link with the music.

One of our group members also posted the video onto The BBC 606 forum, so that we good gain some more constructive feedback. It has to be acknowledged that the audience on the forum are of a different Cultural Capital than our audience on facebook. The age ranges are different and our facebook audience had a more but it was important to get all sorts of feedback.

The hypodermic needle theory suggests that the audience have to be passive and open to new things. The video would have to have a direct effect on the audience for this to work.

Our media video didn't particularly inject out audience with anything to change how they thought about things. This was probably because we didn't have a particularly strong narrative to our video and only simply wanted to create another layer to the song- an amplifying video. It is more difficult to create something very new and for it to have a direct effect because of developing technology such as media 2.0 which allows audience to have more of a say.

Overall we learned that our video didn't have a very strong narrative structure and that it didn't make much of a link between music and visuals like Goodwin suggests. In future we will consider this more. Also, that in some shots it is too dark to see what is going on. This came from our idea of wanting to challenge some of influences ideas and work at night time instead of day, but if we did it again we would consider more lighting and perhaps working in daytime.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We had to create a promotional package that contained our music Video, along with two print tasks a Digi-pak and Magazinne article.

These two texts had to have a coherent house style that worked with our audience.

I placed my two print designs on facebook and asked:-

Are they Coherent?

Do they link well together?

Do the Styles match?

My feeback was:-

'I feel these are extremely coherent designs, combining the tones from the flames with similar hues within the headlight blurs. The black background as well as the bold, open centre sans serif font appear in both designs, forming a coherent package. and similar but varied images of the flame are shown throughout. My only criticism concerning house styles is that this focal image flame does not appear in the video text (as far as i can remember). Otherwise, awesome.'

' only criticism, not 100% on the line that says "W*ith* exclusive bonus track" - colours and font blend a little making it hard to read. Coherent style throughout, but achieved by repetition of a single image, even from different shots seems a little jarring but i dont have any frame of reference, just mah opinion. Looks ok though, wouldn't be out of place as album art.'

From this feedback I found that the criticism was only do with the repetition of a very similar image and that this image didn't appear in the video.

Overall I think I was successful in making my package coherent and continued a good house style throughout, my only criticism would be that I would link it slightly more to the video.

Video:-

Overall , after analysing all my tasks, i found that there are elements of coherency throughout all three.

Such as the dark night time feel, and the use of blacks, and the lighting created by cars or other objects.

If i were to do this again, i would make sure there was more of a coherent link between my video and print tasks because i feel that is one area where i lacked.

1. In what ways does your media use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video took a lot of inspiration from the Kooks videos:

- 'Sofa song' & -'Always where i need to be'

We watched these videos and analysed all the different aspects of the videos, such as effects, shot types, lighting, themes, costume, mise-en-scene and editing.

'Always where I need to be' was a particularly big inspiration for us, we like the city location which was shown in the video by good establishing shots:-

Theirs:-

Ours:-

We thought this was a brilliant way of connoting the urban indie feel that we wanted to achieve, so we included this in our video.

We also liked the hand-held, haphazard shot in 'Sofa song'

Theirs:-

Ours:-

We challenged the ideas in this video in the way that we worked at night time. Both our influence videos were in daylight, but we wanted to work at night because we had ideas about strobes of lighting and the idea that night connoted a more lonely, solitude atmosphere than day time did.

Steve Neale said; "genre consists of instances of repetition and difference", which we have tried to achieve here, we want to use some of the same ideas in our video as our inspirations but make it different so it is enjoyable for the target audience.

Using similar fast paced shots of the traffic throughout gave it a fast paced feel, which is quite a redundant idea.

Print work:-

After researching alternative and indie print texts, I developed my own ideas for my print work.

I found that not all print work has to include the artists themselves, it can be photography or artwork, i found that with this genre, they were photographs of a slightly entropic nature, but keeping in touch with the 'earthy' 'urban' theme of the indie genre. However, it is noted that within the indie genre, the artists do like to be seen with their instruments on print pieces, which i have challenged, because i do not have that on my own. However, in our music video we had our performer carrying his guitar, which uses the idea of the artist carrying the instrument.

Found-

Mine-

As you can see the house styles of each set is quite similar, they are all very dark texts, connoting a mystery haphazard, urban life feel, However the Kooks have used the artists on the covers, whereas i havn't, i did this because i wanted to challenge this idea and have a small level of entropy in my work.

I felt that my print work was a little less creative due to the fact that we had stick to generic advert and digipak conventions so that it was recognised as a marketing product:-

These conventions include,

Barcode

Record Label

Copyright details and

Track listings