Final Video

CD pack final

Final magazine poster

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

Music Video

For my media product I chose a song called ‘o.g Loko’ by a band called ‘Of Mice & Men’ that comes under the metal genre, this was to be the genre that I focus on when researching, producing my video and finally designing and making my ancillary texts therefore when creating my music video I knew that I wanted to challenge and break the conventions of my chosen genre because this would make it different from all of the other real media products but at the same time still make it represent the metal genre that I had chosen. When researching into existing products from the genre it was clear that the majority had a live performance element to the video alongside a narrative story however because most bands where doing this I decided to make a live video of montage shots stitched together alongside an abstract narrative using paint that would tell the story of the lyrics, in a way that would leave the viewer having to decipher it in their own way and creating their own personal response to the video, this breaks the conventions and challenges the forms and conventions of existing media products.

 The song itself didn't follow a common theme of its genre and because of the ‘boy meets girl’ element that would usually be found in the R&B genre, this is also another reason that I wanted to break certain conventions because if the song does, it seemed like a good idea to make a video that also did that but in a way that wouldn't make it similar to R&B videos so I decided to combine elements of many genres into one and create an entirely new product that wouldn't conform to traditional metal music videos, but at the same time I wanted people to know what genre It was by keeping certain similarities in there, such as cinematography (canted angles, close up’s, establishing shots, zooms, pans) and editing (fast paced cuts) elements I wanted to ensure that I created the same fast paced vibe that is always common in essentially all metal videos.

I did this by using canted angles, to add obscurity to the video, zooms that give an element of the environment before focusing on the character and close ups that really give off the aggression and emotion put into the music that is always present in this genre, then to back this up I edited the shots in a fast paced way that meant the song built up an atmosphere and represented the genre like other videos such as Bury Tomorrow’s recent video for ‘Man On Fire’

 In ways I believe that I have changed and developed many conventions of this genre as well, this is because the colour of my video is different to that of modern day videos due to the fact that I have decided to make the whole video black and white much like older videos such as Motley Crue’s ‘Kick-start My Heart’ Video released many decades ago, this element is also seen in many modern day videos such as  Bury Tomorrow’s ‘Scepters’ and The 1975’s ‘Girls’ and although this isn't a metal video it shows that Black and White videos are becoming increasing popular in the modern music scene regardless of what the genre is and it further proves that not only have I challenged modern day metal conventions but also genre conventions because black and white is largely seen in other genres by artists such as Beyoncé and Justine Timberlake and rarely seen in Metal videos.

Furthermore there are a lot of real media texts that lip sync in their videos however, I chose not to do so because I wanted to create a sense of realism and capture the band as they were, rather than have them act out the way I wanted them to and by doing this I gave an element of what they band are actually like when they perform and practice, although all of my shots are of the band playing my chosen song, I felt it would be more effective to edit this way because it challenges conventions of existing media products and creates a new media product that not only conforms to existing conventions but also challenges and changes them at the same time.

Ancillary Texts

When It came to ancillary texts I wanted to create a product that used conventions and created continuity throughout my DigiPak that could link in with my video in some way, much like artists such as Blessthefall do in their most recent album ‘Hollow Bodies’ were they have similar images throughout the Digipak, poster and even in their video for ‘You Wear a Crown But You’re No king’. I did this by taking abstract shots during the abstract filming and I used these photos alongside some scenery shots that I had taken in order to create something new and exciting that would not only link into my other products but challenge them too, this was done by overlapping two images as well as changing the opacity and when doing this I took much inspiration from artists such as Blessthefall and I Killed The Prom Queen, both of whom are metal artists.

Furthermore unlike other genres, the metal genre doesn’t have a house style font and it is always changing depending on the artist, therefore I didn’t have to conform to any specific conventions and had a lot of leeway when it came to choosing my font, however I decided to go with a simple font that is not usually conventional of this genre and certainly wouldn’t represent the genre if I were a consumer picking up the album not knowing who it was or what genre it came from which is where I have challenged conventions but it is common in many modern day media products and is becoming increasingly popular because they are drifting away from typical stereotypes which can link to Tessa Perkins ‘Stereotypes’ theory (1979) because she suggested that stereotypes are hard to break which is true because from research people still view the genre as dark and evil yet media products in the modern music scene suggest otherwise.

I Killed The Prom Queen and Blessthefall's recent studio albums that I took much inspiration from when creating my own media products, can link to Stuart Halls 'Encoding/Decoding' theory of 1973 because I wanted my product to give off a sense of the messsage I was hoping to give off in my song in a way that meant the consumer would have to decode the message in their own way.

When creating my poster I knew that I wanted to create a promotional album release tour that would combine elements of both my digipak and video into one therefore when researching I took large amounts of inspiration form a variety of genres and combined them all into one, this created a product that was different and in some ways challenged the conventions because a lot of bands these days have pictures of the band on the tour poster whereas on mine I have chosen to have images that represent the album and directly link to it however I have used more traditional conventions such as the use of promoting the band through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter but one that was rarely seen was the use of offering a location where people coming to the tour could purchase the album so I added an ITunes logo on their that tells people where the album is available to buy. Moreover I noticed that the majority of promotional tour posters had portrait images therefore I decided to combine both a Landscape and portrait image into my ancillary texts and with the use of the opacity tool on Photoshop I could                                                                             blend one another so that both images where able to be seen.

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

3. What have I learnt from my audience feedback?

Go Animate Feedback

 

1. do you like the fact that my video has incorporated an abstract element that can help define the meaning of the song and if so do you understand it?

2. does the mise en scene help represent the Metal genre of music and if so does it conform to the stereotypes?

3. has seeing my music video for the chosen song made you want to go and buy that song/album?

4. do the band represent the metal genre?

5. when watching do you think it would appeal to my target audience?

 

Instead of creating a normal audience feedback video I decided to use a Go Animate to represent me and the people that I asked, this was because I wanted to use a different form of technology instead of just videoing the people like the majority of people did and I found it realaly effective because I used skills from AS media in order to create the animation and because I had done it before it took me about the same length of time as it would to video the people and upload it because I simply asked people to write down what they would say instead of speak into a camera that wasy I could write it into my Go animate.

from my audience feedback it is evident that I have succeeded in both sticking to certain conventions of my genre but at the same time breaking them as well, and from my peer assessment I can tell what my strengths and weaknesses are that make the video either better or worse in some cases.

All in all I believe that the video successfully represents my genre and uses the key conventions to its benefit which has been shown from audience feedback.

when I showed people my first draft that was originally just a performance video it was evident that there needed to be something else within the product that made it stand out and have both purpose and meaning, feedback from this was largely negative and it just went to show that a lot was needed to change in order to bring the video up to high standards, although no focus group or questionnaires where carried out, I did sit a group of friends of different sex's and music tastes down and ask them what they thought of my first draft and then my finished product and the responses were indeed very different from video to video, in the first draft there was a lot of negativity that was mainly aimed at the purpose of the video because admittedly at first it was just montage shots stitched together alongside a song however, when It came to changing this I decided to edit more and more tracks to the rhythm of the song as well as adding my narrative abstract scene with paint and the feedback I got back from this was significantly better because people understood the purpose and nature of the video more so now and although the audience couldn't understand the words of my song after I gave them chance to read the lyrics they understood the concept and meaning of how the paint related directly to the narrative.

 

Ancillary Text Feedback

ancillary texts feedback by jacob.stone on GoAnimate

 

For my ancillary text feedback I asked 4 friends some different questions that related to my ancillary texts and from this I decided to make a Go animate that would enable to put the majority view into one answer each time, this meant that instead of my videoing my audience feedback like last time I could use a different for of media in order to achieve feedback which was also a very effective method.

 

The feedback was largely positive but there where some points that where made in regards to the texts not representing the genre, however they where made by one of my friends who is not familiar with the genre and is going by the stereotypes therefore it is understandable that they would not see the products in the same way a metal fan would. furthermore these where the people who offered positive feedback although even then there where some negative comments about the images showing that the products were far from being perfect and that more time was needed devoted to the ancillary texts instead of it being primarily on the video.

although there was still elements of negative feedback it is much better then the earlier feedback I received from my initial drafts of the ancillary texts, this is because the images used had little meaning and had no direct link to my other products which made the entire thing weaker, therefore once I had decided to add the abstract video in I thought it was best to directly link all three texts this way and it produced more positive feedback in a sense that they now linked together in a way that people could easily see.

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

Research and planning

Social Networks

 When carrying out research I found websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and artist’s websites and record labels extremely helpful in gathering information for my work.

YouTube was particularly helpful because this is where I could research into the codes and conventions used by both modern day and old metal style bands, the videos shown helped me build up and understanding of what it was that I needed to include within my texts and without it I think that I would have been a lot harder to get an understanding of what metal bands conform to, not only this but without it I wouldn’t of been able to watch videos by the artists under my genre.

As well as this, when researching into ancillary texts social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter where indeed very helpful because this is the new free way to promote artists on a global scale and many artists are becoming increasingly popular because of it,  these sort of websites offered me with tour posters, album covers, links to videos on YouTube, and finally images of the band so that I had a better idea of just how I could use the mise en scene of my chosen filming location to my advantage and because its free  I found that this was the most common source of information I used in my planning and research purely because it offered me with so much free information that really helped me when researching and planning into my products.

Furthermore because this use of technology has helped my personal band and many friends bands promote their products I felt that it was a really appropriate way of doing research because I already knew what to expect and where to find the information making my research a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Web 2.0

Google was a really effective source of Web 2.0 because it is a well trusted source of information that gives you endless amounts of information for free, and because it is such a large company it is well trusted and one of the largest internet search engines in the world making it trusted and reliable.

Furthermore because it now owns YouTube it was increasingly useful because it gave me links to videos related to the subject and this helped me find a lot more out about the bands within my genre because there where many ‘about the artists’ videos where it explained what equipment they used, how they dressed and what their music videos where about.

Nikon camera

My Nikon D3100 came in very useful when getting my focus group because this was the tool used to film peoples thoughts and ideas on the questions I had to ask them as part of my audience research and although it didn’t pick up the sound as well as I had planned the image quality was good and it contributed towards the development of my products.

Construction & evaluation

Nikon camera

 This is my camera that I chose to film the video with alongside my tripod, it is the D3100 model and has a 70mm – 300mm lens attached to it giving me a really good zoom if I needed it in any of my shots which I did a lot of the time, as well as this it also has a variety of different modes so if there was poor lighting in the room I could switch it to a better mode that would be better suited to that light, also the lens has a manual or automatic focus so if there was little light and the camera had trouble focusing I could switch it to manual mode or if I wanted to create some shots out of focus that went into a focused shot I could easily do this and it proved very effective in some of the shots used within my video and overall the camera was very reliable and has never let me down in any situation.

Ancillary texts

camera

When creating both the CD case and the magazine poster i used my Nikon camera  in order to create images for drafts and eventually the final product,  i think that Photoshop was probably the best option in this case because i know how to use it due to previously being a photography student so i had an advantage over some of the other students which i used to benefit, when shooting the painted hand photos i used two spot lights in a way that i would get a slight shadow on the hands and once i had positioned them correctly i took images from different angles however i only ended up using one or two of the images taken because in my opinion they were the strongest and looked better than the other once they had been edited on Photoshop moreover when taking my landscape photos i had used a tripod because I wanted all my images the same level therefore i used the built in spirit level to achieve this and the outcomes were up to my expectations, i set the camera to automatic as well as having the landscape setting on the top of the camera which adjusted the settings to capture the image at the best of the camera’s capabilities.

Photoshop

Once on Photoshop i carried out many drafts both with the landscape images and with the abstract images before finally coming to the conclusion that they would look better combined, to do this i used tools such as; levels (this balances out the colours within the image), opacity (if there is more than one image or two that want to be blended), crop (to cut pieces of images out), blur (to blur text or images), layers (so that everything is layered), contrast (how well something stands out), brightness (how light or dark the image is), paint bucket (adding colour to parts of the image), black & white, and quick selection (helps remove parts of the image) all of which helped my achieve my final products both on my poster and on my CD case and without it I wouldn’t of been able to create them to a high standard.

Final Cut Pro

final cut is the software used to edit my video, it has both blue and green segments each representing a different thing, the green being my chosen song and/or the muted tracks from my shots and the blue being all of the shots themselves stitched together to create my video, above it is the timing of the video and where about in the video each clips is.

on this image we can see all of my shots in the top of the image which is where they are stored until i chose to use them or not, there is a yellow marker that you can drag over the duration of the clip that you want to use which is really useful because there is no limit to how long or short your shot can be which came in really handy when creating my video.

Here is the effects section, you can have transitions, layered effects such as black and white like i used, and many others, I personally didnt use many because it didnt fall under my genre conventions however it was a really useful piece of technology to have at hand in case i did need it for whatever reason.

This is the viewing section where you can stop, pause, fast forward or even rewind your video and this came in handy because there where times where i needed to re-watch certain parts of the video and as well as this you can also make it full screen to view your video easier and analyse it in more detail.

over all Final Cut Pro is a very easy piece of software to use and it much preffered using that over the editing suites that I have used in the past because they are far more user friendly, however i did have an issue uploading the video to YouTube and this took me several hours before i was able to do so, but other than that it was extremely handy and helped me a lot during the editing process.