In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We had to produce a music video as well as an album cover and poster advertising the band and album. We wanted all of these to look as realistic as possible so we did lots of research into similar bands and looking at what they have produced. We decided that we wanted our products to have conventions of other similar products with out being exactly the same. I watched videos from bands like 'The Clash' and 'The Sex Pistols'. I noticed that a lot of the videos from the punk genre contained a lot of performance from the band, for example in 'The Clash- Should I Stay Or Should I Go' and 'The Buzzcocks-What Do I Get'. A lot also included some narrative as well as performance, which is what we chose to do for our video. But we have challenged the convention slightly by adding in lines that instead of being narrative relate to the lyrics.
For example
Using a gun with the word 'BANG' on it when the word 'bang' is used.
A mega phone along with the line 'Wont listen pretty muma'
And 'Gimme Gimme' written when the line 'Gimme Gimme' is used.
Although this is quite daring as it does not follow conventions, we found out from the questionnaire that the target audience of 16-30 year olds like to punk videos to be 'random', 'different' and 'interesting' so this is why we decided to do this.
As Laura Mulvey states woman are often used in videos solely for the purpose of display. Although half dressed woman is normally a convention of a dance or pop video (for example Eric Prydz- Call On Me) we decided to include some of this in our video. We decided to do this because this is what our audience said they wanted to see in a punk video, which is Mckee's theory. But as we didn't want to challenge the convention too much, we put it in but in a different way. We decided to write the lyrics 'Gimme Gimme' on to a female body, and using editing techniques to make the text appear on its own. This includes what the audience wants, but making it different.
During the performance scenes to fit into the correct camera conventions we included a lot of close ups of the lead singers face and the band members hands as they are playing the instruments, as well as long shots of the whole band.
From watching other videos I noticed that cuts are often in time with the beat of the music, we have therefor done this in our video, which makes the whole video run smoother.
We decided to use pictures of the band themselves for both the album cover and the poster, as this shows the audience who is in the band, and they can then relate the music to the band members. We asked the band members to stand in a very laid back way, as this is goes with the laid back, relaxed theme of the band. We took photos of the band standing against a graffitied wall, as the graffiti fits in with the punk theme. The band standing together in this way is used in some similar album covers for example 'The Essential Clash' album cover.
We found that a lot of punk album covers simply used the bands name and did not include a photo for example 'The Sex Pistols- Never Mind The Bollocks'
But we preferred the idea of showing the band on the album cover.
We decided to use black and white for the album cover and the poster, as this links into the punk look and it also looks older. We decided to use a messy, hand written style font as this adds to the laid back, silly look we want our band to portray. This is also a convention of punk as shown in The Sex Pistols album cover. We made the font a red, as this stands out over the black and white and i saw it in other albums and thought it looked effective.
On the inside pages of our album cover we included photos of the band members performing as this shows them doing what they do best.
How effective is the combination of the main product and the ancillary texts?
The main product is the music video and then then ancillary texts are the album front and back cover, and inside pages and a poster. The main purpose of the C.D cover is to accompany the C.D when it is on sale. But it is also to inform potential customers and grab their attention. The back cover gives a track list and the inside pictures tell the audience the band members names as well as showing pictures of them performing. The purpose of the poster is to advertise the band as well as give information about when the album is released, this connects the two products.
We decided to include an image of the band on both the album cover and the poster. From looking at similar bands covers and posters we noticed that a lot included photos of the band plus some 'obscure' images. To include conventions of both we decided to use images of the band but we made the stand as if they were messing around.We put both images into black and white as this is the same as the performance part of the video. We also made the album cover look like it has Polaroid photo's on it, this makes it look older. We chose a graffiti style font, as this goes with the 'punk' image. We decided to put it in red as this is a contrast and stands out against the black and white. On the back cover we used a photo of drums for the background and used the red graffiti style font again.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In order to construct a successful music video we needed to know the conventions of music videos. I watched different videos from the 'punk' genre through youtube on the internet, as well as on music channels on the television. I watched a selection from different bands and noticed the kind of things they include such as live performance and humor. We also researched these artists album covers and posters, to give us ideas and so we knew the kind of thing to include in ours, we did this by using a search engine as well as looking through our personal C.D's.
To help us find out what our audience wanted to see in the video we carried out questionnaires. We put it onto an internet forum as well as asking people we personally new to get to a wider view. This worked very successfully and we tried our hardest to include what the audience wanted to see.
When it came to the filming, before each shot we did a couple of practice shots to test the camera, lighting and to check that what was happening the shot was correct. This helped as it meant we didn't make too many mistakes resulting in having a lot of unwanted footage.
We decided to use an HD camera for filming as it is much better quality. As Chris has his own this was very helpful as we always had access to it when we needed to film. When filming the performance section of the video we also borrowed the school HD camera so we could have two of us filming at once which meant when it came to editing we had quite a few shots for each clip to choose from.
We used a tripod for quite a lot of the static shots, for example the eyes moving, the body shots and the 'only as far as the eyes can see' lines, this was good as it kept the camera steady.
This is an example of a shot that was quite complicated to both film and edit and therefor needed a lot of technology to make it successful.
To help us find out what our audience wanted to see in the video we carried out questionnaires. We put it onto an internet forum as well as asking people we personally new to get to a wider view. This worked very successfully and we tried
When it came to the filming, before each shot we did a couple of practice shots to test the camera, lighting and to check that what was happening the shot was correct. This helped as it meant we didn't make too many mistakes resulting in having a lot of unwanted footage.
We decided to use an HD camera for filming as it is much better quality. As Chris has his own this was very helpful as we always had access to it when we needed to film. When filming the performance section of the video we also borrowed the school HD camera so we could have two of us filming at once which meant when it came to editing we had quite a few shots for each clip to choose from.
We used a tripod for quite a lot of the static shots, for example the eyes moving, the body shots and the 'only as far as the eyes can see' lines, this was good as it kept the camera steady.
This is an example of a shot that was quite complicated to both film and edit and therefor needed a lot of technology to make it successful.
To film this clip we had to film a lot of very short clips. We put the HD camera onto a tripod and pointed the camera down, like a high angle shot. We wrote a letter then started filming then stopped and wrote another then filmed again and stopped again and repeated this for each letter until we had finished the whole line. When it came to editing the clip there were a lot of shots of slightly different lengths, and as this was my idea i offered to edit this bit alone. I had to place each shot onto the story board and make them all the same length and altogether last the whole line of the song. It did take a long time but was worth it in the end as a lot of people have said they like this bit.
What have you learned from your audience feed back?
We showed our video as well as the album cover and
Overall our screenings were successful as everyone enjoyed the video and gave some very positive feedback.
Four of our questions were answered using a rating system, this is what we found.
During the questionaire we asked the audience to rate the the video, poster, album cover and how well they met the punk conventions, 5 being very well and 1 not very well. As you can see we got very possitive feedback from this which we are very proud of.
We also asked what their favorite part of the video was, we got a mixed response for this but there were some parts that came up a lot. For example a lot of people enjoyed the line 'Running down the street on the right hand of the law' which is a boy running down the street, but it is sped up. This is because it is humor and what the audience wanted to see. They also liked the performance parts as it looks relaxed and fun which also is what the audience wanted to see. The older end of the target audience also appreciated how well the lip sync is done, and the timeing with the music to the instruments. I was very glad at this as personally i spent a long time editing this, especially in the last instrumental parts. I am also proud of the part (shown in the video bellow) when thr lead sings 'OOOWWW' as i had to slow part of the video down to make it fit, and i think it works well.
The last part that the audience enjoyed was the line 'Only as far as they eyes can see' When the writing appears on its own, that i discused earlier. It was because we used clever editing techniques to do it and couldn't work out how we did it, which they liked. I was also very pleased they liked this bit as it was my idea and i also really liked it.
Overall I am very proud of what i produced for my work. I found out that many poeple enjoyed the video and liked the album cover and poster. From research i found out what needed to be included and i feel this was done successfuly.
