Evaluation: Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Recently new technologies are developing creating a new wave of media, for example; multimedia mobile phones; Blackberries, IPhone, as well as this the new camera technologies, HD Cameras, also the new range of editing programmes for example; Premiere Pro and Adobe Photoshop. Allowing industries to incorporate more creativity from these new technologies into their own marketing packages.

Question Four

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By being surrounded by methods of new media, this pushed my creativity as i found that i could do a variety of this with the programmes and equipment that i had.
- By using Adobe Photoshop and experimenting with that programme i found out a lot of different effects which i thought would go well with the theme that i was trying to get to begin with, for example; the silhouetting for example; the lasso tool was extremely helpful when i began to cut out the areas of the images that i didn't want.
- I found several tutorials on YouTube, which were based around the programme Adobe Photoshop, this gave me inspiration and the guidance to be able to do this, as i thought it would again go well with the theme that i was creating.
- As well as this i found Premiere Pro useful as it allowed me to recreate a split screen effect, it also allowed us to extend the length, shorten the length and also re size the clips, which was really effective for us as otherwise a majority of the clips wouldn't work as well together as they possibly did.

The theory of technical determinism suggests that society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values, which i think had a great effect on my marketing package, this is due to the fact that some of the inspiration for that package came from technology and the effects of that technology, though it didnt't determine all of my work, it certainly benefited it to an extent that i was able to recreate some of these technological effects. If i were to be completely influenced by this theory, my marketing package would have lacked original creativity which would leave my package boring and uninteresting, however because I only allowed it to spur creativitiy in myself and inspirtation, as well as having other methods of inspiration as well as imagination, this allowed me to develop my imaginative ideas to become more professional and more interesting as they featured elements of previous and existing effects.

Evaluation: Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Having appropriate and viable research methods at A2 level, are extremely important at this stage and are always going to be qualitative rather than quantitative. If the research and feedback were to be quantitative, it would need vast amounts of money as well as time, however it would not be as revealing or useful as qualitative research and feedback.

Due to media 2.0, there is a vast range of ways in which i can gather feedback for my music video; Facebook, Questionnaires, Focus Groups, face to face discussions. However before i do so, I need to think of several questions to ask them in order to get the most of their feedback, as this would convince them to give more detailed answers.

Class Feedback

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Social Networking
Facebook has now become a huge media platform, and almost everybody, no matter who they are or what they like, tend to use it. This would mean that by posting the music video on there, I would be able to get a huge range of responses from a huge range of people. As well as this it also allows me to connect directly with potential audiences.

After posting my music video onto YouTube, I then shared that as a link onto Facebook and asked my potential audience for feedback, to get a more helpful and reliable response i asked them to answer four questions;
1. Do you like the music video overall?
2. Do you think there is anything that can be done better?
3. Do you think the chins are related to the song itself?
4. Do you think the music video fits with the genre of music?



Negative Comments
- The stop-motion could have run a bit smoother
- Some of the playing the instruments shots were a bit out of sync
- The colouring could have been a bit richer, same with the lighting
- The female chav doesn't fit in with the video
- Could have put in a few more cuts

From this i found aspects in my music video that i had not noticed before, for example; after being told that the sync was slightly out i started to notice that more, whereas before i didn't. Overall i completely agree with the negative comments that have been made about my video, however, I think that a majority of the audience misread the portrayal about the female chav, as they said it doesn't fit in and that it has no relevance to the music video at all, this could be linked to their cultural capital. However, the song title and some of the lyrics link in well with it i think. If i were to alter my work hypothetically, i would make sure that i featured as many cuts as i could to the beat of the music to create an amplified effect, as well as this I would try and make the portrayal of the female chav a lot more obvious for audiences to understand. I would also make sure that the movements are well synced, i think this would improve the viewing pleasure for the audience, as well as creating a much more professional style to the music video.

Positive Comments
- They like the video overall
- Love the chins
- Relate to the lyrics
- There is a sense of humour in it
- You can tell the genre of the band through the music and video
- Works well together
- Nice shots and costume choices, they fit well with the genre of the song
- It's original

Again, i agree with what has been said here, I think that my audience had the preferred reading in order to understand the usage of the chins and also the effect of that; a lot of my potential audience said that it added a sense of humour to the video, which is what we wanted to do. The fact that my audience said that it fits well together and that it was original is extremely important to me as we did worry that by having a lot of different media conventions in the video, (for example; stop motion, talking chins, a narrative, and the performance), that our audience could get confused and not understand the reading of the text at all.

Filmed Audience Feedback
I recently filmed a response from a friend of mine called; Kiall Gormley, who i personally think fits in with the target audience of my music video. This will help me to find out what the target audience would think of my video, what they like about it, how they think it works together and also if there is anything that they don't like about my video. I found this extremely useful and i got a detailed response which will help me to identify what was successful and what wasn't about my music video. As well as asking about the music video, i have also asked him what he thinks of the Digipak and Magazine Advert which goes with it to create a marketing package.


Kiall is an 18 year old male, who is studying hairdressing at Worcester Technology College, he has a full time job at a local hair salon, and is interested in the latest fashion and music trends, at the moment he is interested in indie and pop/rock music.





What I Have Learnt From My Feedback
When planning for my music video, i intended to create several effects within it, i wanted to create a typical and generic indie atmosphere within it as well as create a slight entropic idea within it, i also wanted to create a slightly humorous effect to the video which would keep audiences interested. This would be a way of attracting a wider range of audiences, by adding the entropic side to the video would attract a niche audience, however adding the generic conventions of a indie genre to the video would attract a typical and mainstream audience. As well as this i wanted my music video to have a simplistic and realistic feel to it in order to stick along the themes of a generic indie style music video.

Overall i think my video wasn't as successful as I'd hoped as a lot of people took an aberrant reading towards the female "chav" in the video, whilst planning the music video, we wanted her to be the main aspect of the video, co-incising with the band and performance shots. However as said before, this could be linked to the audiences cultural capital which would limit their understanding of certain media knowledge as theorist Pierre Bourdieu argued. However i think that the other comments about the video were fair as after being notified about them i did start to notice them a lot more. I think the idea of using a variety of different media conventions added an entropic effect to the video which i think a lot of recent and existing music videos lack. According to my audience, the range of conventions kept them interested in the music video as a whole. However, overall i think i achieved the simplistic and realistic effects that i intended to create throughout.

Readings of My Texts
Different media texts have a direct effect on behaviour on a passive audience, this is called the hypodermic needle theory. For example; seeing adverts convince people to buy things. However audiences aren't predictable so the preferred readings of the text might not be recognised.
The preferred reading of my music video would be;
- portraying the generic and typical lifestyle of the indie/rock genre
- showing that the female stereotype is changing
- showing that the representation of "chavs" are giving them a bad stereotype within the media, causing people to think of them as violent.
- a humorous aspect to it

From the feedback that i got, a majority of the audience had an abbe rant reading of how the female "chav" was represented, they noted that it didn't fit in with the idea of the song, and that it was a bit cliche, however, this was the effect that i wanted. I wanted the character to appear cliche, so people would notice that the media is giving them a bad press about the way they are, dress and act. This could be argued if i was successful in doing so or not, as they might not have the cultural capital to notice the social representations. I wanted to change the attitude towards "chavs" by trying to get the audience to recognise that this is just a stereotypical view which has become redundant. However the fact that people picked up on the idea of it being cliche could suggest that i was successful in doing so as people found it to be surreal.

What uses do they appear to be making from the texts?
Audiences are no longer passive, they are now classed as individuals, their needs Will lead to individual interpretations of media texts. Therefore i had to make sure that my work satisfied the needs of my target audience.

My video was intended to stick with generic ideas of the indie lifestyle as well as to include new and inventive ways of portraying and challenging other stereotypical lifestyles, this was to allow my audience to recognise and identify with the characters that are in my music video, bringing them recognition and comfortablilty within the way that the music video is presented.

From my feedback, i have learnt that my audience have been using my texts for recognition, from the characters and stereotypes that have been portrayed in the video, as well as this they also found a majority of the video humorous, in which they would get pleasure and enjoyment from.

What sort of pleasures are being offered by your text?
Whilst hoping to create a successful marketing package, i wanted to establish my own house style for the package, to do so i wanted to stick to the colour scheme of mainly using black and yellow. The idea of repetition and difference would give my audience a sense of pleasure as they would be able to relate to the repetition and the difference of the video would surprise them and keep them interested.

As well as this i wanted to create some inter textual references to similar generic indie/rock bands such as "The Kooks" in which they tend to show their performers/band members having a laugh with each other making them seem to be careless, by adding this feature into our music video, audiences would have recognised their behaviour and would have enjoyed noticing the link between the two.

Also the stereotyping of the "chav" character would also please the audience as a majority of them would be able to recognise the actions that the "chav" takes. This is due to the fact that "chavs" are commonly found nowadays and this could be seen as a accurate portrayal of their behaviour. Again there is an inter textual reference between my music video and the highly popular television programme called "Shameless", which shows common and everyday people in their everyday life. Within the opening title sequence of the show the main character "Frank Gallagher" abuses the camera with deviant behaviour, which is where we got some of the inspiration from for the behaviour of the "female chav", again when audiences would enjoy noticing these references.

Evaluation: Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

This is my music video;


This is my album cover;


And this is my magazine advertisement for my album;


The original brief for my coursework was worded carefully,;
- A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with;- A cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
- A magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package)

This meant to produce a coherent package which had a particular house style which worked together to attract audiences to the product itself; the album, meaning that I was creating a marketing package. To do so, i needed to think about the 4P's, price, product, promotion and place.

Coherency of My Package
It was important for me to see how coherent my package was overall, I took the opportunity of doing target audience in order to find out how successful I was in making it so, allowing me to know what they thought of my work as a package.

From my audience research, i found that two aspects of the package worked really well together, however the other part wasn't clear as it perhaps could have been.
Within both the album cover and the magazine advertisement it is clear that there is a consistent house style which is featured throughout;
- the colour scheme is consistent of black and yellow
- the use of imagery and silhouetting are consistent
- the font type, style and colouring are consistent, they are both shown with a sans font, which are of the same colouring and lettering.
This made it easy for my audience to identify similarities within the two products. I was told that the consistent use of black and yellow especially made the two texts similar as this created a brand style. As well as this, the audience picked up on the fact that i had used the album cover in the magazine advert, which is commonly found throughout the music industry, they said that this would allow them to be able to find the actual CD easily if they were actually buy it from a store.
However, whereas my music video didn't fit together with the two ancillary tasks as well as i had hoped. My audience feedback suggested that I could have used the two colours; Black and Yellow consistently throughout to make it a bit more obvious to the audience that the texts are involved in the same marketing package. They did mention that due to the fact that I used black silhouetting on my ancillary tasks and that i featured the band playing the instruments that were shown, they said that this made a slight link between the two, which creates a sense of branding.
Overall I completely agree with what my audience thought, I think i made a coherent style between the two ancillary tasks, however I didn't do so with my main task - the music video, as well as i could have.

Before beginning to produce my tasks, in the stage of research and planning, I had planned for the coherency of my marketing package to be obvious throughout. I knew the importance of coherency and I did plan to feature a lot of aspects to my music video which would have clearly linked in with my ancillary tasks. However, i believe that i had planned unrealistic things such as huge block coloured back drops and instruments with logo's on, which, thinking back now seems unachievable. I think to improve the music video and to make it similar to the ancillary tasks, I could have thought of more realistic ways of featuring the colour scheme and the house style that they maintain, as I didn't really think about what could be done, nor did I think about how important making the video coherent with the other tasks would be.
Overall I am pleased with what i achieved with both the digipak and the magazine advert, as I am too with the music video as an individual, however I think i could have improved it if there were more signs of a house style within all three.

Evaluation: Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In order to produce our music video, we had to do a lot of research based around other music videos, in the process of doing so, we had a lot of inspiration from them as well as other ideas from similar texts. As a A2 media student i have learnt to analyse the different types of media texts in a more intelligent way as to what i would have before.

A lot of our ideas came from media texts that we came across in during research and ones that we had previously seen, by using these influences, we are creating an inter textual link between our music video and existing ones;

Existing Music Videos -
Overall there were two songs which influenced our ideas the most.
The Kooks - Always Where I Need To Be

After listening to our track "ASBO Green - The Filthy Habits" we instantly thought that the style of the music reminded us of the band "The Kooks", which then caused us to watch several of their videos and we found that this was our favourite. We liked the way that the video seemed home video style, and we thought that there were a lot of redundant ideas which were necessary in a pop/rock genre music video, for example; the close-up shots of the band members playing the instruments to the song creating an amplified effect. We also liked the way that the music video portrayed the relationship between the band members; showing them messing around and showing them having a laugh with each other, filmed with a hand held camera, which we thought would make the video seem authentic and homemade.

In the image above, you can see how we used this video as in influence on our shot types.

Another music video which had a huge impact on our ideas was Jamie T - Sticks and Stones.

After listening to the track, me and my partner were trying to find similar artists to gather inspiration from, then we found this music video. We thought their costume and the way that they reacted to the camera would be perfect for our initial idea of "chavs", there are also a variety of point of view shots which we thuought were interesting, so we thought that we should do something similar to this. Again we thought the video looked slightly homemade and simplistic which was the effect that we wanted to get.

Again above i have shown how this video influenced our music video.

YouTube -
When we listened to the track and found out what the lyrics were, we noticed that the phrase; "take it on the chin, bury it within" occurred frequently, and we instantly thought of a video which I had seen previously, we then searched for examples of this on YouTube and though that it would be a good example of using Goodwin's theory of visuals linking in with the lyrics.



As well as this, we knew that we wanted to feature stop motion in our music video, regardless of how long it would take, we started off by looking it up on YouTube in order to find some examples of how to do it;



For my ancillary tasks, again i was looking at existing media products similar to the genre of music that i had been using. I found the digipak and magazine advert of Paolo Nutini - These Streets, which i found eye catching and relevant to the genre of music. I particularly liked the way that the silhouetting was used to create an entropic effect, and i also thought the way that the artist was posed showing instruments was very effective.



As well as this, the band gave us permission to use their logo and band colours as a part of our coursework, which the colours were black and yellow, which gave me the inspiration to use the colours black and yellow as a particular house style.


Originality
I think that our media texts are quite different to real media products as instead of sticking to one theme and one style consistently, which i think you tend to find in generic media texts, for example; the colours black and yellow which are featured in the ancillary tasks, are not shown in my music video, and there is no clear link between the two. Also i think the fact that we featured a lot of different conventions such as; screen play, narrative and stop motion made it a lot more exciting and entropic compared to generic music videos, which tend to use either one or the other. I think as my music video was mostly inspired by existing texts, it is limited in its originality, however the way that the inspiration has been translated into our styles and differentiations of the existing texts, I think gives our video an original feel to it, for example, using the house colours as the main layout and theme of the ancillary tasks. With our video, I think we relied on inspiration as ideas a lot more than we should have, which has made our video seem slightly unoriginal in places, though I think the shots of the female "chav" are effective as some audiences might not expect her to be as violent as she is, they might not expect to see that much attitude to come from it either which I think creates an entropic and original effect to the video.


Entropy and Redundancy
With my music video, I wanted to keep both the levels of entropy and redundancy Incorporated into it, this way my audience wouldn't be completely confused, they would roughly know what's going on, but they would still be interested in watching the video on not get bored due to the entropic side of the video itself, this can be found in most generic music videos.
Theorist Steve Neale said; "genre consists of instances of repetition and difference", this would mean that music videos that fit into a particular genre for example; rock/indie, are generically similar for example; showing the band members playing their instruments, however some have different aspects to it, in the example of our music video; the talking chins and stop motion. This could also fit in with Andrew Goodwin's Theory of close-ups of the stars. Similar to this Goodwin also said that a majority of music videos fit under a certain criteria; "Visuals linking with the lyrics" and "visuals linking in with the music", this would create an amplifying effect, which can again be found throughout a majority of music videos. A good example of Neale and Goodwin's theory about genre of music videos is Queens Of The Stone Age - No one Knows;


As you can see in the image below, a lot of the theory from Neale and Goodwin that is featured in the real media video, can be seen through my music video.

Aswell as gaining inspiration through existing music videos and how they use redundancy and entropy, me and my partner wanted to differ from regular music videos and wanted to expand with the entropy by using different media forms and conventions; however by continuing to use some of the generic forms and conventions, we were able to interpret that our music video wouldn't be too different to the original expectation of other music videos in that genre.

Another way in which we used redundancy and entropy, was by challenging and reinforcing certain stereotypical views of certain groups of people, in the case of our music video this would be;
- Indie/Rock groups - we wanted to represent this particular group within the band members. I felt that we reinforced the stereotype by showing the band members to have attitude and a slight quirkiness about them. As well as this they are usually thought to be involved with music and instruments, which is one of the reasons in which we made sure that during a majority of our video, the band members would be carrying or playing around with these things.

- "chav" youths - this was represented within the character of the "chav", typical audiences would expect "chavs" to dress a specific way; hoodies, tracksuits and accessive jewellery, and they would expect them to cause trouble and terrorize other people, this is due to the way that they are shown in the media. Which is why we wanted to follow on with this stereotype as we thought that people might seem a bit more comfortable seeing them in the way that they are used to, we did this by making the "chav" aggressive towards the camera, which was acting as a person, and also by causing trouble, for example; throwing bricks and shouting abuse, creating a redundant effect.

- Women - this was again represented within the character of the female "chav", where we are re-inforcing the stereotype of the "chav" we wanted to create a sense of entropy within our video to make it more appealing and interesting to the audience. A typical audience would expect women to be a bit more charming, and passive aggressive, which is why we wanted the character to appear contraversial and aggressive, which created an entropic effect.

I think challenging stereotpyes creates a sense of entropy as it would not be what the audience was expecting, and reinforcing current stereotypes would be creating a sense of redundancy as it would be what people are expecting from the media.

Audiences and Pleasure
Typical audiences would have specialist and individual interests and different consumption patterns, for example; they could be interested in hip hop music and style, rock music and style, and indie music and style, each of these specialised groups would recognise different features of a text which other audiences might not see. In order to be able to do so, in our music video we used a lot of ideas and different shot types for example; close-ups, handheld camera, point of view shots, in order to relate to these different groups, for example; we used some of the shots types and ideas from the music video of "The Kooks - Always Where I Need To Be" which was mentioned previously, audiences would be able to watch this and would take pleasure in identifying some of the aspects of our video which would relate to the original shots in their music video, creating a intertextual reference between the two.

Final Video

This is our final music video.

Filming Time Plan

As we will be filming different scenes both Tuesday and Wednesday, we thought it would be easier to make a plan on what we are filming and when we are filming.

Monday:
- We are going to meet Dan Peakman, Josh Watkins, and James MacBryde, who are going to pose as the band for us, at 1.30/2pm
- We plan to film them walking around town and messing around.
- We are also going to film them in a professional studio
- We are going to film the talking chins scene after we have sorted out all of the shots of the band.

Tuesday:
- We are going to record Sophie Griffiths and Harley Kester acting as a couple, both in a park and in a local pub at 3.10pm onwards
- We are going record Harley's dog dressed in a security outfit
- We are also to film the "mob" of people which will be dressed smartly
- We want to record them kicking over the couples drinks
- Running around the corners in a gang with us running with them as the shot to make it look hand-held.
- We also want to record one of them holding a lead for the dog as it can look aggressive.

Progression - New Actors and Ideas

As we are now going to focus our video on a couple; Sophie has agreed to be the female partner in the video, and has asked her friend; Harley if he will play the main role. This has been confirmed and we plan to record these shots on Tuesday.

As for the band, I have asked a friend of mine if he will gather some friends and pretend to be the band for us, as they look like they belong in one. Here are some photographs of them;



They are the type of people to act like they're in a band, they are really good friends and they act immaturely at times, and I think that this would be perfect for the type of music video that we are making.

We are sticking to the idea of a couple, but we also want to feature some shots of the "band" in the video to stick to Goodwin's theory, so we plan to film them in a studio and also roaming through town, similar to videos from The Kooks - Always Where I Need To Be;

Progression

On Tuesday 18th January, we started to film two of the scenes from our music video. As we had to change our original idea, quite a lot, and we had some troubles with the performers, as the original band that were going to feature in our video let us down and said that they didn't play the song that we were going to use and that they couldn't make it down on that day like we arranged, we had to improvise with the shots that we were going to take.
We filmed in a local pub and also in a local park in St Johns called Cripple Gate Park, and we experimented with the kinds of shots that we could get; we filmed from different angles, for example; behind the bar, and we also filmed some unusual shots.
However, we found that filming when the sun was setting is difficult as in some of the shots we got were a lot darker than the other, we have also found that finding a time when the both the new actors and us are available is difficult as we all have part time jobs and college commitments, so once again we have had to re-shoot and change our actors.