Tuesday, 3 May 2011

BLOG IS NOW CLOSED

au revoir! That's French for good bye.

Evaluation: Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?

I feel the location we filmed in (see pics below) had an effect on challenging the conventions of a typical music video.


We picked a run down, derelict location for the characters to go crazy and vent their fustration and pent up energy (It should be noted that we gained permission to destroy certain parts of the run down area, we took precaution and provided our old broken items to destroy as well as the junk we could find).
In a typical indie video you wouldn't usualy see this type of setting and location, I personally feel that the location suits the grunge/rock genre more then indie due to the run down, rebelious look. This does not mean that it does not suit our production as I feel we did an excellent job on picking the area.
The angry and fustrated emotions shown in the video are similar to that of "The Pigeon Detectives" who have a similar fustrated theme which shows we have stuck to some codes and conventions while challenging them with the location.

Our characters were kept in costume throughout the production, this created a sense of lost identity and anonymous persons.
Like many music videos we used a "protagonist" or the leader of the band who was shown in the majority of the clips either solo or within a group, this ment that the video had a "recognizable face" that would give a sense of familarity to the viewers and provided a direct association.

The mask above is seen throughout all of our work including our ancillary tasks.

The title we used was basic but gave the song an identity and gave the viewer the infomation they needed.
Here is a comparison with our title being in the bottom left hand corner:


As you can see we have followed the convention that all music videos follow regardeless of genre, keeping in the general lines that seems to add authenticity to our media production.

The editing including speedy transisitions and kept the pace of the song, keeping the clips and music in sync and making them appear parrell was key in sticking to a convention. We needed the video to have purpose and reason, having mis-matched audio and images was not our aim and would of broken a convention that only seems ok to break if the actual video has a purpose in the first place.
The idea of Fraud was carried out through the speed and energy depicting fustration thanks to loss of identity. Youth today seem to merged as one, and seem to have lost their individuality in the eyes of the media, indie music can depict this along with our video showcasing that the cast have no identity relating to youth culture. The masks keep identity sealed and the cast vented out their emotions by "trashing the place" and running around, the camera had to capture the energy in order send this message across. If we edited the video at a slow, uneven pace then the production would have failed.
Striaght away the listener will know the genre is indie, and as the protagonist moves on he gatheres followers which matches the lyrics. Matching the lyrics is also another convention I feel we have achieved. It should be noted that the lyrics show some form of 'angst' which is most typically paired with teenagers, which agian indie can relate to the youth crowd in todays society.
To conclude the answer, I would like to say I feel we have kept in the conventions of a typical indie music video while slightly challenging them, with a different outlook on the scenario and a unusal location that is not commonly used for indie videos.

Evaluation: Question 2

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

Considering we kept the same theme and idea in both the main product and ancillary texts, I would say that they both combined reasonably well. Considering the fact that some things we did stuck to the code and conventions of what you would expect in a typical teenage, indie music video in some ways, we also challenged the codes and conventions by making our work original and new. Such as the packaging for the Digipack, although it was original it gave the impression of the indie genre as opposed to a hip-hop themed Digipack which could have contained the typical sterotypical conventions you would expect, for example money, expensive cars and items along with attractive women. The actors on the Digipack were very "indie looking" and the animal and paper theme hinted at an original feel.
In order to continue this original style and prevent a simple copy, we used photoshop to change the "Scarlot Harlot" title.
Here is the original title:

And here is our version:

Our version fits in well with our rustic and messy design and represents the main product as well as the Digipack and website. Our main aim was to become consistent throughout our entire coursework not just our main production, this would been that our work would be instantly recognizable if it was a real media production and our fanbase could easily see the difference between our work and somebody else's, which is important.



The masks became a symbol in which the band would be represented and keep our content consistent which was one of our ideal aims and I feel we carried it our well in both our ancillary tasks and main production.

Evaluation: Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?


Above you can see the questionnaire we used to gather feedback in order to help us gain some perspective in where our production was heading and who it was aimed at and what we needed to do to achieve our aims.
In order to match the codes and conventions we used various methods to gather audience feedback besides using the questionnaire.
Facebook was used to collect opinions and help us view constructive criticism as well as praise, we also used one of the most basic ways of gathering feedback and that was to simply approach our friends, family and fellow students then show them our ideas and current work.
I have learned that feedback is a crucial guide in making a decent production as it helps stick to codes and conventions and of course roots out your target audience.
Using the feedback we decided to go ahead and attempt to appeal to the younger audience, and retain the same flavour that similar music videos contain.

Evalution: Question 4

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

First off, we used the typical type of equipment that would be essential for any media production. That being the camera for the clips and photos, a tripod for clean balanced clips and of course a computer to edit and construct our production.

Here is a picture of us in the middle of filming:


And here is a picture of us using the computer to build our production:


We also used the camera to take pictures of the location and ongoing events, evidence of this is seen throughout my blog.
Premiere Pro was used to aid us in our task in creating the production and it was a fairly easy and enjoyable program to use once we got to grips with it and remembered some of the skills we learnt from last year. The internet was used for advice and research, as well as using facebook for feedback and using youtube to host our videos. Weebly was used to construct our website and of course photoshop came in handy.
Mobile phones were used to take quick snapshots and to keep in contact with the group. A lot of technology has been used to create our work and it's safe to say that media practically runs in technology. No technology means no media in today's world.

The videos (Rough cut and finished product)

Due to technical difficulties with the school's servers letting me upload our work. I have provided links to our videos instead. Enjoy.

Here is the rough cut: http://youtu.be/MrSsd0JxGbc

Here is the finished Product: http://youtu.be/4XoaJgXCWBo

Location and pictures showing the last of our filming

Here are some snapshots of the location we filmed in.







On the last day of our filming we gathered the clips we needed to construct the chorus and complete our product, thus ending the filming period which opened us up to editing. Here are some pictures of our final filming session.