In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product contains and uses various media theories in the way it is being filmed and the shots used or with the mise en scene of these shots. Our band is supposed to appeal to the audience as part of their unique star image, they are of a similar class to those listening to and watching them. This makes the band appeal to the audience more as they can relate to them on another level, rather than the audience of a mainstream band or artist would. For example a fan of Alexisonfire would only aspire to being like the band they saw in the video’s, unlike our band, with our audience watching a video and feeling like they could actually be part in a similar situation to them or have been at a gig and can connect with the band on a more personal front rather than just seeing a video of a mainstream band on a music channel. This makes the for the fan base to be more likely loyal fans as the band appears more ‘down to earth’ and ‘realistic’ to them. This makes them more approachable and there music would become more attractive to those fans.
This is portrayed in the album cover well, showing the 4 band members loitering against a brick wall, in black and white with a light tint taking the main focus away from them and lets the band name and album title stand out from the artwork, as these are the only parts in colour. This brings focus away from simply how they appear even though there is still an influence from them as they are obviously still part of the cover unlike the majority of the high end mainstream market where the main focus would be the band even when they try to make it appear that it’s all about the music and not just their image. This is typical of punk album covers and is one of the main reasons we carried this through to ours.
Due to the genre of punk being fairly dated the bands attire does not match that of today’s modern trends and this makes them appear different to mainstream bands which although not the best option from a marketing or business point of view it remains that this is not what our band is about and because of this can appeal to a different audience entirely who may find highly produced music to appear ‘fake’ and prefer the more realistic approach that our band offers.
Therefore the majority of the video being in black and white and in relation to our questionnaire results the band are seen performing more with more relation to the music in the video. Because of this we can apply our video to Archers theory of having a strong relationship between the narrative and the performance sections of the video and joint with Goodwin’s theory that the narrative sections amplify and in some cases can contradict the lyrics of the song.
With the visual being overly literal to bring in to it instead of simply portraying what the lyrics are saying. Therefore we have tried to keep non performance sections to a minimal and to verge on being random. We hint at Freud’s theory of voyeurism in the party scene as we filmed it so that it appears as if it is not staged what so ever, and yet every aspect of it is set up especially for the shot just it does not come across like this due to how we filmed it and makes it appear as if the camera isn’t there and all performers are appearing not to be conscious of the camera as no one noticeably reacts to it and appears almost as a point of view shot.
The sections of our video containing the half naked girl can be based on Mulvey’s theory that the presence of the women is solely for the purpose of display. As we put this in to the video primarily because of our audience research with a number of people saying that they would like to see “boobies” and “naked ladies”.
How effective is the combination of main product and ancillary text?
The purpose of the album cover is for it to relate to the music video, this is achieved by continuing the dated black and white theme throughout the performance sections of the video.
With little focus on the band doing anything other than playing, except in the case of the album cover where they look like they have stopped playing for a cigarette. This means that as one of the first things the audience will see being the album cover it will give an insight in to what they should be expecting - an old style of music accompanied by a matching persona and image from the band, this also appears in the promotional poster as this may lead people in our specific target audience towards buying the album. As both the cover and poster have a similar look about them which the audience will notice easily. Both must attract the attention of our audience not only in genre and style but a similar design to previous bands as it will be more noticeable to the audience, therefore catching their attention more effectively as the audience is more specialised meaning it must catch their eye.
Our main product links in with our album artwork well as we continue the ageing look with the bland and white editing of the image. This make the link together with the performance sections of the video as the cover shows the band being calm but this contradicted by what is inside the case with upbeat punk, yet still with the focus on the band and their music.
Each inner page of our album shows the a different band member this is to let the audience learn something about the band they’re listening to as each page shows a band member with their name and their role in the band which makes the audience attach to them on a new level.
The centre page in all of this shows the band messing about, obviously taken just after we took the cover shot. This is an enhancement to how the CD inside the album would have an effect on the audience, seeing the band calm and collected on the cover, but with everything becoming slightly mad once you open it up, as this is what would happen with the song. This gives the audience a parasocial relationship with the band as they are brought closer to them, knowing more than just how they look and the music they play but there personalities shown through a believable picture.
What you learned from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback told us that we had produced a product that matched the demands of our consumer as many thought our video fitted with our genre of punk. It is obvious that it is not a mainstream video and this reflects on the band and their music as well, which was one of our primary objectives when planning the video and the appearance and characteristics of the band which is common in this genre and style of music. By using our audience research what we put in to our video would catch the attention of that audience, with people seeing what they wanted to see such as “the band just rocking out” and “random s**t”. Suggestions like this gave us a wide range of what we could put in to our video and still have it appeal to our audience. The majority of our audience feedback came from showing our final product to a number of friends and other students in 6th form as they fall in to our age category. Further research was conducted by the final video being shown to a few working adults in their 20s, who are enthusiastic in regards to the subject. The majority liked black and white editing as it fitted with the theme of the video and related to the poster and album cover as they are both edited like this as well.
From watching various video's on Youtube before planning our video we could learn a few attributes about our target market.
This video of Buzzcocks performing Ever Fallen In Love is a typical video of the genre and contains numerous similar characteristic to our final video, by studying videos like this we could learn more about what our audience wanted to see from the video, with typical shots and angles for example showing the guitar being played, as the bands performance is what makes up the majority of the video as this 'performance style' is what is important in punk videos,
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and development and evaluation of your production?
To construct our video we used a combination of two cameras, primary camera was my own personal Panasonic SD10 HD camera, we used this as I had it available to use constantly and it had a better specification than any of the other cameras available to our group, however when filming the main performance sections of the video’s we filmed twice the amount by running two cameras at once and used the schools Panasonic SD9 HD camera which gave us a second set of shots with a very similar quality. For the majority of the filming we used an Opteka wide angle lens that allowed us to capture a lot more in a shot, especially with the limited space we had to film in with the performance sections and the party scene at the beginning of the video where this effect was very useful as without it the shot would have consisted of a close up of the actors legs and the vital parts of the shot would have been a lot harder to capture. The effect that the lens gave also links to the punk genre as it is typical of similar video’s and reflects on the semi professional/amateur low budget effect that our audience wanted to see and is also typical of punk video’s.
We used a standard size tripod to film almost every shot in the video other than the performance and the party scene, this enabled us to keep a steady shot and various shots this was vital to allow us to edit each clip together, to gain the desired final effects with the drawn eye that blinks, when “only as far as the eyes can see” appears written and the “gimme gimme” shots. This would have been impossible without the tripod as each shot would have ended up at a slightly different angle each time and along with lighting and size which would have rendered the shots useless.
Similarly we used a monopod for the “running after me” piece where the camera was attached to it and then held much higher than would have been possible without it and by tilting the screen back towards the floor what was being filmed could still be seen and we were able to maintain a steady focused shot, as if the character was being watched from a height rather than simply appearing as if we had filmed him from ground level.
For the party shots we needed to adapt the lighting of the shot as the mise en scene of a party is at night time with a dark crowded room, therefore we needed it to appear dark but not so dark that the picture quality would suffer because of the low light causing 'noise' in the picture. To get around this and to achieve the right effect for the scene we used a strobe light to emphasise the party theme and to provide a level of lighting that wouldn't cause the image quality to deteroiate, to make the room dark we covered the windows with black out curtains from the outside which effectively made it appear as if it was at night. Other lighting techniques we used were a lot simpler. We took a number of shots in the schools drama studio as it is a totally black room which gave us a very blank canvas to draw attention primarily to the subject in the shot so that the audience does not get distracted by the background as it would not be relevant to the shot. The drama studio is equipped with a lot of high level lighting which we used to our advantage, using only the direct spotlight to minimise shadow and to remove any detail from the background we could get a shot that only focused on the subject. In other shots we used 'natural' lighting, "running after me" shots used streetlights, although beyond our control we choose a time that would mean the streetlights would need to be on. The performance filming needed a very different lighting technique we didn't use the rooms normal lighting and instead used a halogen spotlamp to backlight the shot, as direct light defeated all other light in the shot and so by backlighting we could capture a 'dark' shot that still showed everything that we needed in the final image.
