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8/3/2019 A2 Media Studies Evaluation Q1+2+3+4nf
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Samuel Ewen
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The purpose of any music video is not just to promote the band but also to
reveal an attitude that the band convey. As music is a auditory medium,
a music video and other promotional material will be a media
institution¶s main way of putting forward this attitude. For t
his reason mygroup and I made sure we put a lot of thought into what conventions we
used, developed and challenged when making our media product.
my research into conventions concerning the Ska Punk genre through
survey monkey and through interviews returned a varied response, we
used these responses to gauge a structure for our media products. This
was the first stage of designing and planning what we were going tocreate.
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Our music video uses conventional techniques in that most videos have an anchor clip thatthey flick back to in order to keep a sense of solidity and structure in the video. Our videoalso uses this technique. We have shots in which the whole band are present, which wecontinually return to throughout the video. Also, we have an aspect of narrative in our video,which is also frequently seen in real media products. These techniques ensure that our video does not just randomly and sporadically flick between shots that have no relation toeach other and instead progresses through an intuitive theme that is not too abstract for one to guess.
Characteristic of many music videos, we have also included a performance factor into our production,
the main character sings into the camera. In short, our video follows conventions of music videos in
general, in accordance with Andrew Goodwin¶s conventions of a music video.
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By looking at existing examples of digipaks and of adverts, we found there to be conventionsthat we must adhere to make them look professional and to give the necessaryinformation.We found that frequently there was consistency between the album and the advertdesigned to sell it. We made sure this was apparent in our texts.We used the conventional ideas of putting a record label and a song list on the back of thedigipak.This was necessary information and also made sure there was song information,magazines¶ ratings and a release date on the advertisement. It was also apparent that it is
usually advisable to keep adverts and CD covers fairly simple.
Another important point with using conventions is
the conventional idea of using the same fonts
across both the advert and the digipak.
Presumably to promote brand awareness.
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Our video and corresponding Digipak andmagazine attempts to largely conform to the Ska -
Punk Genre. As found by our interviews and
surveys, the standard attitude tends to rebel
against the monotonous day to day drudgery of
the 9 to 5 job.
We aimed to show that the character in the video
makes this journey on a daily basis and is
extremely bored of the whole thing, the beginningof the video establishes the middle England
lifestyle from which we stray later in the video.
It initially tries to challenge
conventions but it soon becomes
obvious that the main character
would rather do his own thing which
ultimately conforms to punk
conventions.
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The particular aspects of mise-en-scenethat we used to create the tediouslifestyle of our businessman was hiscostume (the suit and tie) his posture
whilst dressing and walking to workand his general expression. His facehere suggests that he is notparticularly happy about having towake up and go to work. The topimage is a frame from our videoshowing the mundanity of his morning just through his expression.
The bottom image is the costume wechose in order to more successfullycontrast the brighter clothes the maincharacter wears later in the video. Hiscostume matches the convention of abussiness man but not necessarily of a Ska- Punk music video. This is an
example of where we strayed fromand ultimately challengedconventions.
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In the answers to the survey I posted on Facebook, we found that a
perceived convention of punk rock music is the notion of red and black
clothing, leather and ripped jeans. The main character is dressed in red
and black as shown on the top image. This is the kind of contrast
between the suited businessman and the casual punk style dress sense
that we aimed for in order to follow ska/punk style conventions in our
video.
The image on the left supports the
idea of punk style leather clothing.
This is a clear example of how wemainly used, but also slightly
developed conventions in our media
product.
Also, when those who did my survey were
asked to suggest activities that a ska/punk
rocker would engage in, we got a common
response of drinking alcohol on the street.
This was further backed up by the content of
the video interview earlier in the blog. The
pictures to the left and right demonstrate our
use of this stereotype.
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In the video, we tried to show a noticeable contrast between the morning when he is waking upand later when he decides to let loose and have a good time when the first chorus sets in.
One of the ways in which we did this was by adding a desaturation filter. It is evident below that the
desaturated picture on the left implies a slow and dull start to any day, contrasted with the brighter
colours in the image on the right, which suggests a much happier and care-free individual. It can
be pointed out here that this care-free attitude is closely entwined in the culture of our chosen
genre. We also used this effect because along with red and black, interestingly, bright colours were
said to be Ska/Punk, according to those who took the research survey.
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We havemimicked the font
that the actual
band use on their
promotional
material.
We aimed to keep
the advert as simple
as we could to fit
with the themes of
existing products.
We used ratings
from well known
magazines, very
common.
Naming tracks on
the album, including
the most popular
track.
µALBUM OUT NOW¶
very conventional
language, simple, to
the point.
Used the same
picture as on the
album, almost
always the case.
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Picture of band
together on
inside of digipak,conventional
style.Simple tracklisting, record label and copyright
information, keeping with the same style font,
very conventional, the back of an album is
commonly very simple.
Front cover
almost
synonymous with
advert.
Picture of garage
door, contrasting
with front cover as
soon as the digipak
is opened. Further
supports the theme
of contrast that we
have been
conveying
throughout thewhole promotional
pack.
Morecontrast,
outlining
again the
line
between
work and
fun.
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This question deals with how well all of our texts work together. On a
superficial level our texts do have commonalities such as colour
scheme and location but there are smaller and more subtle qualities
that contribute to the promotional package being a combined and
tailored effort rather than a set of unlinked final pieces.
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From the beginning, our group decided it was important that there was consistency between
our music video and our advert and Digipak. This consistency is referred to as Synergy.
Examples of synergy in our pieces are focused largely on the location, an aspect of
mise-en-scene in the beginning of the video.
The picture on the left is our final version of our album cover, which is strikingly
similar to our magazine advert on the right hand side. This is a direct example of
synergy. As is obvious, the
font is the same onboth texts.
Also, a slightly
different sized
version of the
picture was used in
each. But seeing
the two piecestogether shows how
effectively both
pieces work
together to combine
with our main
product.
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The idea of choosing a consistent picture for both the CD cover and for the album
advertisement is commonly used, its tends overtly toward a holistic promotional
package, creating a strong brand awareness. If an individual sees the magazine advert
and memorises the theme present then they will be better able to recognise the CD or
Digipak when either browsing for it or if it catches their eye in a music outlet such as
HMV.
This was the general motive behind us choosing to do this in our products.
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So both of our ancillary texts convey synergy between each other and also fit very
nicely together with our main product, the video. This results in a well integrated
promotional package. Here are some examples of how the two ancillary products
support the general t
heme of t
he music video; contrast and wanting to leave themundane behind.
The digipak, one of the ancillary texts, works directly at effectively combining with the main
product (the music video). Above you can see that the digipak has on it two costumes, one
casual (right) and one mundane and characteristic of the work environment (left). The fact
that these two outfits have been chosen by our group to go behind the CD and DVD is adirect reference to the video. It definitely contributes to the theme of contrast as shown by
the video itself. It is as if you open the digipack and are faced with the choice of either outfit,
one on your left and one on your right. This is somewhat reminiscent of the choice the main
character makes about 50 seconds into the video.
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The methods we used to gather audience feedback
were through survey monkey and through the use of
video and written interviews.
We were aware that we needed to design these
interviews and surveys in such a way that they
would give us useful information. the answers to
these questions would give the group an insight into
an audience profile, which ultimately helped us to
design a
promotional pack that will
specifically appeal to acertain demographic.
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Firstly, survey monkey was a very helpful tool touse. The members of the group and I each created a survey and posted them on our Facebook walls. What I learnt from my 5question survey was varied but along a centraltheme. The questions I asked are in the imageon the right.
The image on the left is a screen shot from
surveymonkey.com that details what people
believed to be the clothing worn by
individuals who consider themselves part of the punk movement. The answers I got from
this particular part of my audience research
were:
Leather jackets
Torn up jeans (and denim in general)
Jeans and torn t-shirt
A loose tie
We clearly learned from the audienceresearch as our video and digipak have
these elements in it.
The main character is seen wearing most of
these items. As can be seen on the next
slide...
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The left image shows the main character wearing red and black, accompanied by aloose tie. The image on the right has the characteristic spiky hair and leather jacket. We learnt that these choices would be a good combination through the useof audience research.
What the whole group learnt is that in order to have successful audience feedback you need to
have the largest sample or the most applicable sample to what it is you want to find out. This is
why all three members of our group each carried out our own survey in an attempt to attain as
many answers to our questions as possible. In the video we used what we had learnt fromaudience feedback to create the best video. In the case of reaching the right sort of people, I
made sure I interviewed a girl who I knew liked the genre of music we were interested in creatinga video for. Therefore we would almost certainly get answers we could use.
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To gauge what standard our texts were I hada colleague look at our texts and recordedwhat he said on video. He mentioned that
the advert (shown on the left) did not havea professional look to it and could do with reworking, he mentioned that he liked thefont and that we should keep that aspectof it. He also mentioned that the text onthe right hand side underneath ³work hardplay harder´ was too compact andwouldn¶t catch the eye of whoever read
th
e advert.So as a response to what we learnt fromour audience feed back, we changed thepicture into a city, to make it look moreprofessional and made it as minimal aspossible whilst still keeping the originalfont. Audience feedback proved to be veryh
elpful as th
e group agree th
at th
e newversion shown on the right tackles theissues raised by the interview.
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Firstly, in the research stages,upon planning what I wantedto find out, I used what I learntlast year in Media Studies andcreated a research survey onsurveymonkey.com. Thismedia technology was notonly easy to use but also hada huge variety of differentlayouts and styles for questions, allowing me to getexactly the right style of question, in order to obtainthe qualitative structure Ineeded to holistically appealto a set demographic. Thisparticular website was pivotalsoftware in the research
section of this project, whichis evidently true because mygroup and I used much of what we gathered from thistechnology from Facebook, asocial networking site, todecide how to create our video.
Also involved in research was
the video interview, used to findout the views of an individual
who is an actual fan of the punk
genre. A prerequisite of this
video was a camera, which I
provided through use of my
mobile phone. I also needed toconvert the file from a 3GPP file
into an MP4 in order to uploadit to my blog. This was another
stage of technology I used in
the planning stages of my
media texts.
Brothersoft.com was the website I
used to convert the video .
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Also, a large part of our research
included browsing and
analysing existing products.
For videos, this was very
easy as the group just spent
time on Youtube.com.
YouTube was extremelyhelpful for this and is
arguably the most efficient
technology for finding videos
for existing material analysis.
I then typed up my
analysis on Microsoft
word to ensure there
were no spelling mistakes
and then copied and
pasted this passage intomy blog. It was also a use
of technology to capture a
screen shot of the video
in order to back up my
evaluation.
Existing music videos were not the only media that we needed to research and analyse, we also needed tosee existing digipaks and adverts to get a feel for the conventions were looking for. For this we used Google
search. Whilst doing this we found it quite hard to find images of these texts, especially relevant examples.
To evaluate this use of technology, there per haps may have been an easier and more effective way to find
adverts and digipaks such as searching magazines. But despite the difficulty of finding these images, Google
did prove very helpful overall. This may be an appropriate time to say that a computer was necessary for
these kinds of tasks, through research, planning, construction and evaluation of our promotional pack.
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At the planning stage, we didn¶t actually much
technology beyond our pens, pencils and imagination when actually
creating the ideas for the music video itself.
This was the case until we needed to put the storyboard on blogger.com. For us to do this we had to use a scanner and scan the images into vuescan
scanning software, before uploading them onto slideshare.com, in order to
embed the storyboard into our blogs.
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Later in the planning stage, we needed to plan the locations where we would be filming
our video. To do this we used Google maps, searched for relevant areas and captured
a screen shot and uploaded these screen shots to Blogger.
The planning stage did not require as much technology as the other
stages as it was mainly a discussion. However, the technology we did use,
I believe we used to a high level and realised how helpful it is to have
technologies such as a computer and software like Google maps in the
research stage of the promotional package.
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In the construction stage, we used a variety of technologies. Firstly the maincomponent of filming is obviously, the camera. We used a very advancedCannon 600D that made filming very easy, the manual focus on thecamera was especially helpful as we could pick out the exact area of focus we wanted and it also allowed us to do a focus pull that featureslate in the video. The camera proved easy to use and the technology wasnecessary in the completing of our coursework. This clear cut highlydefined level of photography was what the group was looking for in order to give our texts a conventionally professional look.
If it can be considered technology in its own
right, we used a tripod in order to keep the
framing of the video consistent, for
example, in the morning sequence we hadtwo shots that required the same framing.
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For storage of data, the camera had an SD card which extended the internal memory of thecamera and also made transferring the files to the macbook very easy as it has anintegrated memory card slot. The macbook is a very advanced and capable laptop thatmade the whole process of producing the texts very easy. Of course, I was not very fluent
on it to begin with
on theM
ac as Ihad never before used one for any great lengt
hof time,but after an hour or two, the group and I were able to use the technology quite effectively.
After transferring the data, we imported the files into an editing programme called Final cut pro. Finalcut pro was an excellent piece of software that we used to actually order, cut in/out and composethe separate clips we took with the camera. Other groups used adobe premier but this software
was practically the same.
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We used the left screen tochoose the clip we wanted to
use and the right screen to see
what the fully composed video
looks like.
The timeline along thebottom allows you to place
the clip where you would like
it relative to the other clips
you have.
On the far left is
where we importedthe clips that we
captured with the
camera.
Also on the time line is
the music, allowing usto match the words of
the song with the
miming of the main
character.
The software became easy touse and we would have found
it very hard to achieve the
same effect if we had to edit
on the camera. Final cut pro is
one of the most important
pieces of technology we used
in the construction stage.
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Upon finishing the video weuploaded to YouTube in the hopeof getting feedback, however,what comments we did get werequite unhelpful. Perhaps adifferent method would be moreappropriate.
As well as the video, we created the digipak and advert by taking images
with the same camera and imported them into Photoshop, which isadvanced photo editing software.We used Photoshop to put the images
together in a digipak form and to
overlay the text on them. The
software was easy enough to use as
we learnt to use it last year whilst
making our music magazine. We usedthe software because it allows you to
work in layers. This is helpful as you
can move and re-move the text around
until you are happy with it, then flatten
the image.
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The evaluation stage is
extremely brief as it is self
evident that I used Microsoft
PowerPoint to create this
Presentation, which implies
that I used a computer on
which to make it.
Other than that, I only used
Google search and printscreen to select the images
for this evaluation. I thought
it would make sense to keep
it simple, because the text
content of the evaluation is
in my opinion, mostimportant.