EvaluationCassie Vint.

PART 2

In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Camera angles/shots

Mid Shots The Kooks – Naive

Our Music Video

• Both of these shots include a focus on the main singer of the band, the are mid-shots showing their facial expressions. This became a convention in indie music videos as they tend to use shots with portray and show how they are feeling so the audience can relate to them.

After researching our chosen genre, Indie Rock, we looked through music videos of the same genre to see what linking codes and conventions they have. As a result we found that most videos have slow cuts and include a lot of point of view shots and close ups, the also contained a mix of performance and narrative shots. The slow shots linked in with the tempo of the music keeping a continuous look and going in time with the song.

Kings Of Leon – Back Down South

Our Music Video

• In these shots the mid shots are used to establish the members of the band and the instruments they play, the enables the audiences to recognise each individual band member. We have thought about this and made sure that in our video that all members would be captured individually playing their instruments.

Mise en scene• Another obvious convention which we have conformed

to is Mise en scene, specifically props and costume. As an indie band, props is a big deal such as instruments. All indie band have a stereotype to play the drums and guitar so including this in a shot was important.

Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man

Our Music Video

• Another convention included in the Mise en scene is the costume. Although we already had an idea of what costume was stereotypical of our genre by the questionnaire. We took it into our own hands to research what costumes bands wore in other music videos.

Arctic Monkeys – Teddy Picker

Our Music Video

Setting• Another convention is the setting, while researching through different indie/rock genre music videos we found that the setting tend

to be urban/rural. We included this type of setting in our music video during the narrative part as the performance would need to take part in a studio as this is where the musical instruments would be accessible.

• Also as the indie genre tend to be less well-known so their budgets tend to be less. Also indie bands rely more on their music getting them out there than their videos drawing attention, so having a cheaper music video tends to be the best option so more focus is on their music. This means they can’t afford high end studies and afford to go town popular places.

• So our video greatly develops the conventions of setting in an indie/rock music video because of the basic studio where they perform and the rural/urban setting during the narrative.

The Kooks – Ooh La Arctic Monkeys – Brick By Brick Bombay Bicycle Club – Always Like This

Our Music Video

Split Screening

• We wanted to make our music video different and fun. By looking through other music videos we came across a music video by Example, this song/video involved a lot of split screening and it was very fun to watch. We wanted to have this in our music video so decided to include a split screen.

• First of all it was very had to get to grips with how to do the split screening but after we had completed the split screening we found that it become very effective and was a nice part of the music video as it added fun to it.

• I felt that it was a way of connecting the members of the band without them actually being together at the same time, it was fun to create and film. However, when we first filmed with the split screening we realised that the length of each film wasn’t long enough so this needed us to go back and re film to make sure that the length was film was correct.

• Overall, it became a really fun clip to put into our music video, this is also how we wanted to present our band

Example – Kick Starts Plain White T’s – Hey There Delilah

Kings Of Leon – The Bucket Our Music Video

Combining performance and narrative• This was our main idea as from the audience questionnaire we found that people expected to see both performance and

narrative in the indie/rock genre. This made us become careful on the setting we were to choose as we had to make sure that they suited our chosen genre.

• For our performance part we chosen a dark room with little lighting, after researching through other music videos of the same genre we found that this type of setting was obvious.

Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man Kings Of Leon – Pyro Our Music Video

• It also came apparent that a lot of the narrative setting were outside and or/ in a very different place to the performance so it was easy to distinguish the setting and performances and narratives.

Mumford & Sons – Winter Winds The Kooks – Ooh La Our Music Video

Comparable products• At the start we researched music videos of the same genre to see what was consistent between different music videos, this would make it

clear to us as to what we should include in our product if it were to capture the audiences attention. In the ancillary texts we compared 5 music videos, 5 CD covers and 5 advertisements this enabled us to gain knowledge of the generic codes and conventions.

CD CoversThe Verve The Kooks

• The back cover of The Verve album shows the band messing around and having fun, not taking anything too seriously. Similarly to ours, we wanted to represent our band the same way by having them laughing. I feel this worked really well.

• The outcome of our Digi Pack was achievable by looking at other comparable products, it was helpful during the process of which we needed ideas and to see what the generic codes and conventions are of indie/rock music albums.

• The Kooks album cover is in black and white, similarly to many of their music videos. Once we had completed our music video and it was in black and white we thought that because of the research we had done on this album cover, that we would also do the same thing and make the image black and white as it is an obvious link to the band.

Our Album Cover

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

Music Video

• 15. What instruments do you expect to see?

• This question was very important because as we had chosen the Indie genre, we need to know what our audience thought about the instruments involved. As this pie chart has concluded, guitars and drums were the most popular choices for instruments which are seen in the indie music video genre. And as you can see by our final product, this is what we have included in our music video.

• 17. Do you prefer the music video to follow a narrative/story or to be more non-linear?

• Although that our research showed that our audience would preferred to see a narrative performance we thought that we would spice it up and create an edge to the music video by mixing narrative with performance. Thus challenging what the audience wanted to see with what we thought would be best for the music video as this is what most indie/rock music videos included.

• Overall I think the combination of our products has been successful. As we gathered information from our audience questionnaire it enabled us to bare in mind what our audience want, so we made sure we included this in the music video as this is who would be watching our video.

Most important questions• Which is your preferred band/artist?

• By asking this question, it helped us a lot as we could look through the most popular artist work. In this case, Kings of Leon, we were able to grab ideas from their previous music videos and album covers so that when we did our own music video and promotional products, we knew that this is what the audience would be looking for. Kings of Leon – Pyro:

• By looking through previous music videos, we knew that we needed to include band performances in our music video.

• Why do you watch music videos?People said they watch music videos for different reasons. They said they watched them for entertainment, to see band members, because they are bored, because they enjoy them and because they are also interested to see what the lyrics are portrayed as.

•In reaction to this answer, we knew that our music video needed to be entertaining and included a lot of visuals of band members. It needed to be fun and portrayed in a good light. I think we have done this successfully as there are clips in our music video where it shows the band having fun and joking around.

• What clothes/make up etc would you expect the artist to be wearing in the indie genre?There were various answers for this question, they included; dark colours, chequered shirts, heavy eye make-up, skinny jeans ear stretchers, nice stylish hair, casual but fashionable, band tees, chinos, printed t-shirts, toms and leather jackets.

•This question was very important as we knew that the answer would be stereotypical as most of our audience said the same thing. It is what the expect to see indie people wearing so this is what we dressed our band in.

Promotional package• What is most likely to persuade you to buy an album?

Why?• There was various answers for this question which

include; album reviews, the front cover, the quality of the songs, seeing the videos, likeable artist/band, the price, track listing on the back to see if there are any noticeable songs and originality.

• One of the answers from this question was very helpful; ‘Album Reviews’, quite a few people answered the question with this. So we thought that we must include this in one of our products and decided to put it on the poster as this is what would be enticing the customer to buy the album.

• 24. What colours would you associate with an indie album?

• As you can see, the majority of the audience said that they would associate black and white with an indie album. So we took on board this information and made out album cover and poster black and white as this is what the audience had preferred to see.

25. What type of font would you expect to see on an indie album?

•By asking this question we were able to see that people preferred/expected to see a simple font but it must be eye catching. This helped my group come to a conclusion that this would be our chosen font on our promotional products.

•As you can see we have used the answers from the questionnaire in our products. Although it is simple and appealing to our audience, it is quirky and eye catching.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• Since receiving the audience feedback it came clear to us what people enjoyed and what they thought could be improved on. We were able to make improvements on some of the things they said would help the video to look better.

• Also from the positive comments we felt pleased with what we had achieved. The comments which said we stuck to the generic codes and conventions was great to hear as this was our aim and we put a lot of thought into it making sure that it would be successful.

• We gained comment s after uploading our video to YouTube where people were free to leave comments and tell us what they liked and disliked about the video.

• We also gained comments from talking to people about the video so they could explain to us in full detail their thoughts o the music video so it was easy to have a conversation and discover more on how we could improve it.

Music Video

• After we had planned our posters and Digipack we created a temporary design which we allowed people to make comments on ask them for their opinion. It helped us to gain a wider perspective about what different people liked and disliked allowing us to connect to a wider audience.

• The improvement comments we received we thought about and we chose whether to take on board of the comment or to leave it so we was making a decision on what we thought the audience would want to see and what would catch their eye about it.

• As the poster was an advertisement for the CD we had to make sure that it stood out so people would think ‘yeah I want to buy that’. In this stage we created three plans and asked people to decide which one they preferred so we could make a final decision on the final product. This was also what we did for the Digipack as proved successful when we did it for the advertisement.

Promotional package