Sunday, 21 April 2013

Evaluation


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

Hard rock can be defined as a sub genre of rock music whose origins lie in both the United States and the United Kingdom and started in around the 1960’s with stylistic origins closely linked to garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock. The typical choice of instruments within hard rock music is a heavy use of electric guitars, bass guitars, drums and can be accompanied with pianos and keyboards. This genre developed into a form of popular music in the 1970’s with the fame of bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, AC/DC and Van Halen, Hard Rock reached its commercial peak in the mid 1980’s. The Hard Rock genre has since started a comeback with the revival of bands such as Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Aerosmith and Van Halen and with the recent fame of bands such as Shinedown, Creed, Staind, Andrew WK, Buck Cherry and Nickelback which has brought Hard Rock back to light in terms as one of the most popular sub genre within the Rock genre.

When looking at the conventions that occurred within each of the music videos from the bands within this genre, I noticed that there is usually some kind of narrative, even if it is only briefly shown, which I have gone against due to me wanting to make my music video more individual to me and not like a normal hard rock music video. I feel that me going against the norm of a stereotypical rock video has actually helped me because it has enabled me to do my initial idea which I had thought about more during the summer break. By doing this, I had imagined how it would look and who was going to be my actors and where I was going to shoot the majority of the footage. This had to change due to the person who I had initially asked to be Alice had too many prior commitments which were hard to manoeuvre around. But I feel that this was for the best as I had chosen two people who I spent the majority of my time with and knew their commitments which meant that I was able to arrange filming times around their timetables. However, it has also helped me become different from others that are doing their projects on my type of music, which has made my work stand out of the crowd which is what I intended to do.

I did get some footage of a band, Pastel Jack, performing the song live especially for my video which is a major convention that is apparent throughout the music videos that I looked at. This went against conventions because it was inside their practise studio, whereas in other music videos, their performances were either while they are on tour, on a stage which they have hired out or on location. However, because they aren’t a well-known band I thought it would have been more authentic if they were within a setting where it was all chaotic, unprofessional and mad, because the theme behind my ancillary texts and the video is madness and defying the stereotype which is what seeing the music notations and the poster on the board behind the singer shows. When I looked at Shinedown’s music video for ‘Second Chance’, I noticed that they had chosen to put the lead singer, Brent Smith, in the background of the narrative or even just at the location which my lead singer, Neil Bailey, had suggested, but he suggested me put the band either at the location or in the background of the narrative. I had thought that it would have been a good idea, however, due to the band unexpectedly splitting up we were unable to do this so this was an aspect that I unfortunately missed out on which I would have thought would make the video better. Also, I hadn’t finished filming the band performing, so due to the band splitting up I had to get the next piece of footage of Neil on his own, which was a major problem when it came to editing it together because there were some parts where the footage of the performance should have been longer and I didn’t have the footage which went after the previous section due to the way I had shot the footage. Therefore, me having access to a limited amount of band members caused a problem and I had to rearrange my footage so that it wouldn't cause that much of a problem.

While I was looking at other Hard rock music videos, I noticed that they use a lot of dark colours and shadows which is a stereotypical convention which means that when a person puts these videos on they will automatically know what genre of music they are listening too. My music video both conforms to and defies not just this stereotype but also the stereotype of an Alice in Wonderland storyline. This occurs because the shots with Pastel Jack use dark colours and low lighting which creates more shadows which conforms to the stereotype, whereas the narrative is outside and uses bright vivid colours
which defies the conventions of a normal rock music video. I decided to do this because the narrative I chose was Alice in Wonderland, which needed it to be all crazy and awe-inspiring which would need to consist of bright colours, which defies the stereotype of a rock music video. I also put a twist on the story of Alice in Wonderland because in my version the Red Queen actually got her way and defeated Alice which means that evil prevailed which defies the conventions of an Alice in Wonderland story. However, my music video coincides with the stereotype of the Alice in Wonderland storyline because it has the same characters and, arguably, the most iconic scene within the Alice in Wonderland narrative, the Mad Hatter’s tea party. My music video conforms within the stereotype of a normal rock music video by having the performance of a rock band, and having the footage of them consist of dark colours and the use of the lighting created a lot of shadow around the room. The creation of shadow using the stage lighting also gave a creepy feel to Neil in the footage that shows him singing on his own.

I chose the Mise-en-scene very carefully when it came to my narrative, I wanted to portray the reasons why I had chosen not to recast Alice so I still had 3 actors and kept it at two. The reason behind this was I thought that it would be better if the underlining storyline was Alice's struggle to grow up and accept that the guy that she thought loved her and was funny, like the Mad Hatter, was actually cruel and dark like the Black Knight. Therefore, the Alice in Wonderland character is Alice in her child form, being curious and the Alice that thought that her boyfriend wouldn't hurt her. Whereas the Red Queen is her more mature, grown-up side that accepts that the boyfriend isn't who she thought he was. During the shots in Alice's bedroom, there was a dead rose in the background, I chose this because it shows that Alice is still in the sentimental stage within her relationship to her boyfriend because she has kept it so long, however, it also symbolises their relationship in general because we can assume that their relationship with beautiful and easy to look at, like the rose when the boyfriend first gave it to her, however, how we see it now is in its final days when it turns sour and is ready to die.

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

Within my media products, I have chosen to keep it narrative based, this is due to the fact that I feel that rock music focuses too much on the music and the band and not enough on telling the story that the lyrics represent or the story that the person who wrote the lyrics is trying to tell. Therefore, by telling the story that I interpreted from the lyrics, I feel that the impact I have made on the audience is that there is more to rock music than just the instruments or the good-looking members. If the lyrics are listened to, or even read, then they will appreciate them and the music is just an added bonus to a possibly perfect song. 

By keeping all my images, in both the music video and the ancillary texts, in colour I feel that I have created a change because I made sure not to create any emphasis on anything that really stood out in relevance to the lyrics. This is because all the shots did in some way, it may not have been the lyric that was playing at that particular time, but it was relevant. This is a change because some artists decide to keep the images in colour, or make it all in black an white, but make specific emphasis to the shot or prop that has some significance to the lyrics, or they even decide to put the video in black and white and colour in the prop, to emphasise the idea that those specific props were significant to the story somehow. Whereas, I left it up to the audience’s interpretation in the video and then emphasised the parts that I thought were particularly effective for the digipak images, but touched them up to make them extra visible when it on display in a shop, so people will get intrigued and pick it up and look at it. When it came to the advertisement, I thought of the tag line before I had picked the image. I had initially planned to have my friend draw the pictures for the poster, but when I started to use Photo shop to put it together, I found that I wouldn’t be able to get the same effect that I could get with using photographs.

When creating my digipak, I decided that I wanted to use images from my music video in order to create a sense of familiarity and make sure that the audience was more likely to buy it if they liked the music video. By using some of the more iconic moments within my video, I feel that I am able to grab the audience’s attention if it is on display in shops or on online stores, They will want to pick it up and see what it is called since it is brand new. I chose to put the Queen on the front and to make her dress look redder because she would look distinguishable among other albums if people were looking at her in a shop. For the section with the song titles on, I decided that just an image of the trees would look the best because it would show how lost Alice was. I feel that it made an impact on the audience by creating a subliminal message when they see the picture on the actual CD cover because the image will be placed in their brain. In order to get these photos I had to retake them with a still camera, due to the fact that the quality of the pictures that I had originally gotten from the music video itself wasn’t very good.

My first idea for the advertisement was for my friend to draw the different aspects of it and I would manipulate it how I felt to make it more appealing for the audience. I got her to draw me Alice standing on a Mad Hatters hat looking at a bridge overlooking a cavern and over the bridge is a forest and the Red Queen and Black Knight’s heads are in the corners looming over Alice. She did this in paint and in her pro-markers. However, this didn’t really work due to the fact that the different variations didn’t look the same, therefore, there were aspects of the painted version that looked better than the pro-marker version. For example, the background on the paint looks better than the one in pro-markers but the Alice and Mad Hatters hat looks better in pro-markers than in the paint. I tried to merge them together, but it wouldn’t work properly. Therefore, I had to re-take the image that I had decided to use as the advertisement photo. I feel that this picture has a strong message for the audience which is assisted with the tag line and the colour scheme that I used. The colour scheme flowed throughout my final project because black is a neutral colour which is used in the parts with Pastel Jack performing and which can represent the Black Knight, which would mean that she is trapped by the different sides of her boyfriend. The red was taken on Photo shop from the Queen’s dress and was used throughout my work because it can show that she is everywhere that Alice goes, because it is Alice, and also that it is everywhere that we go because we have more than one side to us. The purple was taken on Photo shop from the Mad Hatters hat which gives off the message that we all have a bit of crazy inside us and that the different sides of her boyfriend are all around her. The colours mixed all together could represent some of the different sides to every person’s personality not just the characters in my project.

Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From my feedback that I obtained from 10 people, I found that seven of them understood the narrative of my music video, 1 thought the narrative didn’t go with the song and the other two thought that the narrative was too random to go with the rock genre. When asked whether they thought any of the shots should have been in black and white nine of my sample said no but one said that she thought that the parts outside wonderland should have been in black and white in order to make the time in wonderland a little bit more special. When they were asked if they thought whether I had made the right decision when choosing my narrative, 9 of them said yes and one said that they didn’t think my narrative went with my music choice. When they were asked if there was anything I could have done to improve my music video, 8 of them said to add more performance and the other two said that I needed to rethink my casting. When asked if they thought my ancillary texts went well with my music video all of them said yes. I got a mixed response when I asked them whether there could have been more detail added to my ancillary texts. Six of them said that it was fine; two of them said that there needed to be more detail on the advertisement to explain where the audience could get more information about the band whereas the other two thought that there could have been more detail added to the digipak. One of those said that I should have thought to rename the band. When asked if they would purchase my digipak, seven of them said that they would however, the other three said that they wouldn’t purely because it wasn’t their style of music. Lastly, when asked if they thought the advertisement promoted the digipak successfully all of them said yes.

My online poll showed that 71% of the people that voted were female, that 45% of the people who voted were 16-18 years old and 35% were 19-23 years old, that my audience listen to a mixture of rock and pop music and that 85% of them prefer narrative music videos. By considering these results, I have found that the online poll and audience feedback that I managed to obtain matches what I wanted my target audience to be. I wanted to aim my music video specifically to people that prefer watching narrative music videos, as I do. This music video was supposed to be aimed at an age group similar to my own so the majority of my online poll being between 16 and 23 fit my criteria perfectly. Also, due to my choice of music genre, I was aiming for my audience to be rock music lovers or at least listen to a little bit now and again, which is what occurs.



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


Before starting this project, I created a blog on Blogger.com on which I would post and display my work for everyone to see. I used Blogger because it is an easy site to use and it is easily accessible for others to look at my work if they would like to see what I have achieved. This website organises my work in chronological order, so if I need to look for a piece of work that I did a while ago, I can easily locate it by clicking on the tabs on the side. When searching for my song and researching the codes and conventions of a stereotypical rock music video, I used a website called Youtube, which would also be the website that I would upload my drafts and my finished product to. I used Youtube because it is the most used video website in the world and it has millions of videos so I was bound to find one that would help me. This was the first time I had used Youtube for something other than watching videos so it was a brand new experience to me. I found it difficult to get my head around at first because when I attempted to upload a video I could not find it for a few hours afterwards, but then I got used to it and now it has become really easy to use and I think I will be attempting to use it more after the project has finished.

When I planned what my music video was going to look like, I used Microsoft Word to create a storyboard sheet for me to jot my plans down on. I made sure that I could make it as detailed as I wanted to used the box tools to make the boxes bigger so I could explain myself more. Once I had planned my video on my pages, I scanned them into the computer and took all the pictures that I had drawn and used Windows Movie Maker to put the pictures to my music and create an animatic of my music video. This was quite easy to do as I have used this software before. The reason I used Windows Movie Maker was that I am able to put the music on it and make sure that I am able to cut the images to the music and I can move them around and change the timings to make it more accurate. I used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 to put all my raw footage on and edit it together. I found this simple to use and soon got the grasp of how to put my footage together and to cut it to the beat of the music. I used Premier because it is a professional program that has a real time playback function, which means that I was able to go back to any point in the song and not have to go back to the beginning and watch up to the part that I originally wanted to see. Also, Premier gave me a range of options that I might not have gotten with any other software such as adding transitions before, after and during a piece of footage. I found that this made a massive different when it came to the flashback part of my music video because I was able to help the audience distinguish between what it reality and what is Alice’s life flashing back as she realises she is going to die. Otherwise, the footage would just be randomly going backwards which could confuse the audience into thinking that it was a mistake.

In order to create my ancillary texts, I used Adobe Photoshop CS5. I was fully aware about how to use this software because I had previously used it to put together my AS coursework. I used Photoshop to create my ancillary texts because I was able to make the images the right size to fit the sections that I wanted them to and manipulate them without having to move them or copying and pasting them into another program. In order to re-take the images that I needed for my ancillary texts I used an OLYMPUS SP-600 UZ still camera. I used this camera because it produced clear and defined pictures where a normal digital camera would fail and that it gave me images that were better graphics than the pictures that I took from the video itself. In addition, because I re-shot the images that I wanted, I was able to add little bits of detail that I missed while I was shooting the original footage, such as the lipstick on the Queen. The main problem that I found with re-shooting the images was that I was not able to recreate the actual images that I wanted because I was not able to see the originals so the images for my ancillary texts are a little different from those in the actual video.