Thursday, 7 May 2015
Evaluation 3
I created a survey of seven questions based on my final music video and ancillary tasks that include the digipack and poster. I did this to find out if my music video matched my purposes and if I achieved what I set out to do so. For example for the music video to be relative to the genre of rock and indie. I however only asked those who are fans of that genre because they will have the best knowledge to understand the conventions of the genre indie and rock. Plus it does make my feedback data more reliable as I asked those who I am targeting with the gender being mutual and not important. As well as that all that were asked were between the ages of 16-18 (who 100 percent said they felt my digipack was of a rock indie genre) an age group I aimed to achieve because it would test the audiences reception of my piece as opposed by Stuart Hall I wanted the audience to accept the verge of adulthood and he change between youth and the responsibility of adulthood just like my main actor. In order to relate to him the people I asked had to be around the same age and are going through the same spiralling emotions.I did get a great bunch of results. The most positive of those was a 100 percent yes on the questions if they enjoyed it and would they watch it again. Therefore that for me is a success I wanted to create a music video that was appealing visually for audiences this would compliment the good audio. The fact that the audience are gaining uses and gratifications from my video means they will have an extra need to listen to the song so they can watch the video. This links well with question 7 in which I asked if video made the music more appealing and 66 percent said it did. That means the video is as important to the audience as the music is. The best response was the audiences decoding my codes of symbolism in which was comment said the sense of coming of age and another comment saying life (Barthes enigma codes) the ability of my target audience answering and finding semics in my video and ancillary tasks shows that I have marketed and produced my media products to target the genre of the music.
Evaluation 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I created my video before my ancillary task, so the both can have the same running themes, meanings and purposes for the shared audience to decode. Encoding and Decoding theory created by Stuart Hall allows me to place messages within all of my media products for the audience and public to ever encode or decode. As the band have a fan base, all their products should symbolise the bands identity so fans and the public can distinguish certain signifiers within either the video or the look of the EP so it will separate the products from any other band. The effectiveness of this is it allows the two products to correlate therefore if one product gets exposure the other will to because their similar in style, this is only effective if the audience decode applied meanings and themes. It is also effective because as many of us judge a book by cover media texts get judged based on the look of it as well therefore choosing the right (dark) colours I was able to showcase that the product is indie, this was further expressed by the use of Holoart effect (via BeFunky.com) on the cover. Identifying the genre allows people who like that genre to give the product a chance because will be of that genre, a genre they feel comfortable in. But in order to great the effect of being an indie representative band I had to make my two pieces correlate in style, which was mostly vintage. In the EP I used only a type writer text so it became the bands identity as a chosen font to represent the band but also because typewriters are vintage for being appealing due to their unconventional method of typing out words, they’re outdated and this relates to my video in which I used old footage, to show the change between modern and old. In which a simpler life is what we seek. Another theme that links my media products and ancillary tasks together is ‘coming of age’ the fact we see a boy grow from a young boy in the old footage to a fully grown man retracting his steps and now finding himself from hopeful when he was younger to a lonely man now he is older. I translated that meaning into my ancillary tasks by having a boy with a dog (some company) on the EP cover and cloning the boy three times to show the hope society has for the young boy he could become any person or go into several jobs, it is up to the boy however what is not up to the boy is the things happening around him and other people and when the audience open up the digi pack they will see a man doing his job of throwing rubbish out with no dog or person near him on a similar background to the one of the boy. I did this to show what became of the boy and how, just like the video, he is left lonely and hasn’t become all that he could have. Likewise to the front cover the inside uses the same font and effect this happens on the back cover too. The back cover again uses holoart and the same font. However this time the picture has a different meaning, it only shows several pair of legs acting like drones and being the same as no matter what venture you go into, what job you gain or how many people are you, you have, it doesn’t truly matter because we are all the same with the only differences being our decisions and faces, that is why I excluded faces or a body. This is different to the video because the video concentrates on one males actors face, because it is important the music has a face so people can relate to the feelings shown on the face of a man that knows how much the lyrics mean. This was to add further effect as although the ancillary tasks hide the faces I believe it would steer audiences of that ancillary tasks and the music to search for the video to finally have a face to match the voice.
Moving on to the poster, the poster is very different, it uses a different colour scheme (black and white to stick with the indie and rock connotations) and layout it emerges the font cover image of the EP into a distorted puzzle of an image because I believe people should be questioned by the poster instead of your average advertisement in which just states what it is, I want there to be a mysterious appeal of an advert for those who appreciate more complex music. It gives them an added incentive to the music a mysterious appeal that they have yet to hear before, something new for them to enjoy. It does however stick with a typewriter font and does keep the images used on the EP front cover so it can relate to all my media texts as it is advertising the EP and gives valuable information of where to buy it and its name and the EP cover image so audiences would be able to find it in a shop.
The audience will be able to find the music video because of how similar it is to its EP and poster, no matter where they are in the country they will be able to find the EP in a store because they have either seen the poster or the video. Referring to uses and gratifications theory I believe the audience of the band will be motivated to seek the album because of the music video finally displaying the face to the voice but they will always have an incentive to buy the album in a shop or by poster as both represent a specific genre in music and will only appeal to listeners of that certain genre. The audience do not have to be a fan of the band but if they are a fan of the genre the marketing of all the media products will make sure they have the desire to try something they know they will like.
I have placed a lot of stereotype conventions within my music video in which it is for an indie rock band therefore the male actor has long hair, wears clothes such as skinny jeans to signify the genre. But also there is a smoking scene in which over many years smoking has been a constant stereotype of rock music, because rock stands for a rebellious attitude therefore smoking and alcohol fits into that stereotype.
My music video does however follow Todorov’s narrative theory of Equilibrium, disequilibrium and then back to the original equilibrium. My music video opens to old footage and is disturbed by modern footage until the footage rewinds to its natural state towards the end in which the video ends where it begins in the equilibrium. The disequilibrium was in fact the modern days in which is gloomy and we seek for the good old days of the past where happiness was a given. The music video somewhat creates a musical culture in which sometimes rock music is symbolic of rebellion but also loneliness through the use of either drugs, smoke and alcohol that are all bad for are system but the dark colours are codes of symbolism to show like the present is bad for us and the symbolism of good is the past. In which time flies by as shown by the end of the music video symbolising in a speed up time lap of old footage that life can pasty you by as quickly as the quicker video. Barthe showed that it is up to the audience to find all the codes and the semic codes which are the most important to understand the symbolisms of applied meanings of scenes and ancillary tasks.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I created my video before my ancillary task, so the both can have the same running themes, meanings and purposes for the shared audience to decode. Encoding and Decoding theory created by Stuart Hall allows me to place messages within all of my media products for the audience and public to ever encode or decode. As the band have a fan base, all their products should symbolise the bands identity so fans and the public can distinguish certain signifiers within either the video or the look of the EP so it will separate the products from any other band. The effectiveness of this is it allows the two products to correlate therefore if one product gets exposure the other will to because their similar in style, this is only effective if the audience decode applied meanings and themes. It is also effective because as many of us judge a book by cover media texts get judged based on the look of it as well therefore choosing the right (dark) colours I was able to showcase that the product is indie, this was further expressed by the use of Holoart effect (via BeFunky.com) on the cover. Identifying the genre allows people who like that genre to give the product a chance because will be of that genre, a genre they feel comfortable in. But in order to great the effect of being an indie representative band I had to make my two pieces correlate in style, which was mostly vintage. In the EP I used only a type writer text so it became the bands identity as a chosen font to represent the band but also because typewriters are vintage for being appealing due to their unconventional method of typing out words, they’re outdated and this relates to my video in which I used old footage, to show the change between modern and old. In which a simpler life is what we seek. Another theme that links my media products and ancillary tasks together is ‘coming of age’ the fact we see a boy grow from a young boy in the old footage to a fully grown man retracting his steps and now finding himself from hopeful when he was younger to a lonely man now he is older. I translated that meaning into my ancillary tasks by having a boy with a dog (some company) on the EP cover and cloning the boy three times to show the hope society has for the young boy he could become any person or go into several jobs, it is up to the boy however what is not up to the boy is the things happening around him and other people and when the audience open up the digi pack they will see a man doing his job of throwing rubbish out with no dog or person near him on a similar background to the one of the boy. I did this to show what became of the boy and how, just like the video, he is left lonely and hasn’t become all that he could have. Likewise to the front cover the inside uses the same font and effect this happens on the back cover too. The back cover again uses holoart and the same font. However this time the picture has a different meaning, it only shows several pair of legs acting like drones and being the same as no matter what venture you go into, what job you gain or how many people are you, you have, it doesn’t truly matter because we are all the same with the only differences being our decisions and faces, that is why I excluded faces or a body. This is different to the video because the video concentrates on one males actors face, because it is important the music has a face so people can relate to the feelings shown on the face of a man that knows how much the lyrics mean. This was to add further effect as although the ancillary tasks hide the faces I believe it would steer audiences of that ancillary tasks and the music to search for the video to finally have a face to match the voice.
Moving on to the poster, the poster is very different, it uses a different colour scheme (black and white to stick with the indie and rock connotations) and layout it emerges the font cover image of the EP into a distorted puzzle of an image because I believe people should be questioned by the poster instead of your average advertisement in which just states what it is, I want there to be a mysterious appeal of an advert for those who appreciate more complex music. It gives them an added incentive to the music a mysterious appeal that they have yet to hear before, something new for them to enjoy. It does however stick with a typewriter font and does keep the images used on the EP front cover so it can relate to all my media texts as it is advertising the EP and gives valuable information of where to buy it and its name and the EP cover image so audiences would be able to find it in a shop.
The audience will be able to find the music video because of how similar it is to its EP and poster, no matter where they are in the country they will be able to find the EP in a store because they have either seen the poster or the video. Referring to uses and gratifications theory I believe the audience of the band will be motivated to seek the album because of the music video finally displaying the face to the voice but they will always have an incentive to buy the album in a shop or by poster as both represent a specific genre in music and will only appeal to listeners of that certain genre. The audience do not have to be a fan of the band but if they are a fan of the genre the marketing of all the media products will make sure they have the desire to try something they know they will like.
I have placed a lot of stereotype conventions within my music video in which it is for an indie rock band therefore the male actor has long hair, wears clothes such as skinny jeans to signify the genre. But also there is a smoking scene in which over many years smoking has been a constant stereotype of rock music, because rock stands for a rebellious attitude therefore smoking and alcohol fits into that stereotype.
My music video does however follow Todorov’s narrative theory of Equilibrium, disequilibrium and then back to the original equilibrium. My music video opens to old footage and is disturbed by modern footage until the footage rewinds to its natural state towards the end in which the video ends where it begins in the equilibrium. The disequilibrium was in fact the modern days in which is gloomy and we seek for the good old days of the past where happiness was a given. The music video somewhat creates a musical culture in which sometimes rock music is symbolic of rebellion but also loneliness through the use of either drugs, smoke and alcohol that are all bad for are system but the dark colours are codes of symbolism to show like the present is bad for us and the symbolism of good is the past. In which time flies by as shown by the end of the music video symbolising in a speed up time lap of old footage that life can pasty you by as quickly as the quicker video. Barthe showed that it is up to the audience to find all the codes and the semic codes which are the most important to understand the symbolisms of applied meanings of scenes and ancillary tasks.
Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Evaluation 1
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My media product is a music video for a song called 'Movies' by a band called Veldt was released on YouTube to public viewing. I have chosen YouTube as it is the biggest internet platform for videos, especially music videos it is a way for fans of a band or artist to relate to a put a face to their music and to gain a visual representation of the music which the mise en scene will stick in to their mind and whenever the audience see the certain mise en scene they will instantly think of the music, and vice versa. So it is important for me that the music has a visual video that people will be able to relate to the music. My music video does confined in many conventions but does oppose a lot of others however the biggest to see is the mise en scene. With it the audience can establish certain codes I have placed within my music video to distinguish the genre of the music. Decoding of the mise en scene codes such as the footage of old clips with an effect filter upon it to make it more cinematic captures the meaning of the lyrics. For example the lyrics 'nothing feels like it does in the movies' tells the audience that things do not live up to expectation and within my open narrative I display old footage of a child walking through a park in which new footage thirty years on shows a grown up man walk through the same gates, the scenery hasn’t changed but the boy who is now a man has. When he was younger he had companionship and now he is in an isolated world. The coming of age factor is the message I wanted the audience to take away from the music video. I also used my digipack to further showcase the coming of age theme, the front cover shows a young boy with a dog, but the inside shows a man grown up throwing rubbish away with no one or no animal with him. The loneliness does drive alongside the music video too. We never see the frontman with a band although the song was recorded with the band, we do not see obvious conventions of a music video for a rock band such as instruments including guitars we do not see a performance, and in away it is not needed. I am with this video trying keep to old movie like element, therefore I did stick to objects within the mise en scene that would showcase this, for example handwriting instead of on an electrical screen, also the use of a record player and the visual image of a moving record instead of a streaming site or a cd player. This is because I wanted to keep a natural look to my video.
I have stuck with a lot of conventions within the production of my music video using software such as Photoshop and premier publisher to do so. But in filming I stuck to conventional camera movements and angles, in most music videos there is a big use of close up shots and medium shots so the expression of the singer can be seen when miming lyrics this is seen in Darlia's music video for the song 'Napalm'. It also allows a dark background (a conventional colour for rock music) in each scene to steer the importance the male singer. Therefore I gave my male protagonist a portable camera to film himself from a close up angle because I wanted to show that the singer is so used to being alone that he has to film himself like a home footage video. I also used long shots to display the males body as clothing is a factor within music that is relative to a certain genre, it allows audience know what type of music the band play. The male actor was dressed in black skinny jeans and was smoking a cigarette these two clothing and props are what society decodes in music to be rock. And that was important for me to capture the identity of the music through the video and clothing. This has been shown by a lot of rock stars such as Kurt Cobain and the band Rolling Stones who have numerously have worn dark clothes and used props such as drink and alcohol. In a way a convention of a rock music video is to steer away from conformity.
Editing wise I adopted for a simple output with just using jump cuts so the narrative was easy to follow until the last minute in which I then made the clips move quicker, three times quicker' whilst using a close up footage of my male actor singing very quickly to show some what of a an emotional break down as he has with the audience reflected on his past, being young, surrounded by family and friends. In a world where he had so much hope but as the narrative progresses as does his mood but negatively until we see a minute worth of clips be made into a fifteen second reel of quick clips. This then cuts to the duplicated begging scene being flipped and rewound at a greater speed to show that no matter how hard he tried nothing is like the movies and in fact the idolisation of a greater culture when you do in fact come from (as the old footage shows) a working class background can be a burden, as there more or less is never a true escape. You may just find yourself, like the protagonist, the exact place where you started but as a grown up unhappy. And just like my music video which very much endorses British Indie music scene that included The Libertines by nothing being edited nicely or the rooms looking clean, but the Libertines also have a song called 'Time Like Heroes' in which the lyrics are relevant to my theme of coming of age 'we'll die in the class we were born'. This to me shows like my video you cannot escape your past. Similarly to The Libertines videos for songs like 'Can't Stand Me Now' i have went for quick cuts in between scenes in which contain miming to reflect the quick pace of the music as rock has a lot of time signatures and conventions in rock music video is that editing scenes must be quick to compensate for the rhythm of the music. This also works in other genres i.e. Love songs will have slow transitions between one scene to the other.
Camera movements wise i stuck to all of the conventions this included panning, zoom in and tracking because in order for me to be as professional as i can i must create the idea of my music video being as serious as possible in order for people to get a meaning from the video as well as listening to the song and not be distracted by unconventional codes they have yet scene in any other video because that would be wrong. To place in many unconventional codes would steer away from the music video real purpose and that is to compliment the song and not overshadow the song. In one scene i zoom in to the male actors face in anticipation for the male to start singing this was to create suspense something that was needed in order to keep the audience interested because the song does not actually have any vocals until nearly one minute into the song. To continue, my media texts are not completely being conventional in the way I was able to display text within my music video to the point in which I was displaying the dictionary definition of movies both verb and noun. I put these in because it is something that does not really occur in music videos but however I used it in a ironic and humorous way in which i hope the audience are able to sense because what it is saying is not truly what it is saying this is unfamiliar in music videos. Although the video is defining a film, a strip or reel, it is actually trying to tell the audience to realise that we shouldn't accept something for face value if we look deeper into it we get to find out much more about both the music and the meanings. A film can be anything, it can mean anything and it is up to the audience for them to define their own conventions. This to me is successful because it gives an audience some sort of power, the power to choose and extend the metaphors displayed in my media text. For example in my ancillary tasks i use conventions such as song titles, barcode and stayed within the lines of my own conventions and for all my images i used an effect called holoart which extends bright images and darkens dark images to create the illusion the image is hollow in order for me to keep my piece in its own conventions i kept the same font i used for my poster for my album. These are important as the colours and fonts are what remind audiences of the bands image it creates an identity. In order to do this i used both Photoshop and a website called Be Funky.
I have stuck with a lot of conventions within the production of my music video using software such as Photoshop and premier publisher to do so. But in filming I stuck to conventional camera movements and angles, in most music videos there is a big use of close up shots and medium shots so the expression of the singer can be seen when miming lyrics this is seen in Darlia's music video for the song 'Napalm'. It also allows a dark background (a conventional colour for rock music) in each scene to steer the importance the male singer. Therefore I gave my male protagonist a portable camera to film himself from a close up angle because I wanted to show that the singer is so used to being alone that he has to film himself like a home footage video. I also used long shots to display the males body as clothing is a factor within music that is relative to a certain genre, it allows audience know what type of music the band play. The male actor was dressed in black skinny jeans and was smoking a cigarette these two clothing and props are what society decodes in music to be rock. And that was important for me to capture the identity of the music through the video and clothing. This has been shown by a lot of rock stars such as Kurt Cobain and the band Rolling Stones who have numerously have worn dark clothes and used props such as drink and alcohol. In a way a convention of a rock music video is to steer away from conformity.
Editing wise I adopted for a simple output with just using jump cuts so the narrative was easy to follow until the last minute in which I then made the clips move quicker, three times quicker' whilst using a close up footage of my male actor singing very quickly to show some what of a an emotional break down as he has with the audience reflected on his past, being young, surrounded by family and friends. In a world where he had so much hope but as the narrative progresses as does his mood but negatively until we see a minute worth of clips be made into a fifteen second reel of quick clips. This then cuts to the duplicated begging scene being flipped and rewound at a greater speed to show that no matter how hard he tried nothing is like the movies and in fact the idolisation of a greater culture when you do in fact come from (as the old footage shows) a working class background can be a burden, as there more or less is never a true escape. You may just find yourself, like the protagonist, the exact place where you started but as a grown up unhappy. And just like my music video which very much endorses British Indie music scene that included The Libertines by nothing being edited nicely or the rooms looking clean, but the Libertines also have a song called 'Time Like Heroes' in which the lyrics are relevant to my theme of coming of age 'we'll die in the class we were born'. This to me shows like my video you cannot escape your past. Similarly to The Libertines videos for songs like 'Can't Stand Me Now' i have went for quick cuts in between scenes in which contain miming to reflect the quick pace of the music as rock has a lot of time signatures and conventions in rock music video is that editing scenes must be quick to compensate for the rhythm of the music. This also works in other genres i.e. Love songs will have slow transitions between one scene to the other.
Camera movements wise i stuck to all of the conventions this included panning, zoom in and tracking because in order for me to be as professional as i can i must create the idea of my music video being as serious as possible in order for people to get a meaning from the video as well as listening to the song and not be distracted by unconventional codes they have yet scene in any other video because that would be wrong. To place in many unconventional codes would steer away from the music video real purpose and that is to compliment the song and not overshadow the song. In one scene i zoom in to the male actors face in anticipation for the male to start singing this was to create suspense something that was needed in order to keep the audience interested because the song does not actually have any vocals until nearly one minute into the song. To continue, my media texts are not completely being conventional in the way I was able to display text within my music video to the point in which I was displaying the dictionary definition of movies both verb and noun. I put these in because it is something that does not really occur in music videos but however I used it in a ironic and humorous way in which i hope the audience are able to sense because what it is saying is not truly what it is saying this is unfamiliar in music videos. Although the video is defining a film, a strip or reel, it is actually trying to tell the audience to realise that we shouldn't accept something for face value if we look deeper into it we get to find out much more about both the music and the meanings. A film can be anything, it can mean anything and it is up to the audience for them to define their own conventions. This to me is successful because it gives an audience some sort of power, the power to choose and extend the metaphors displayed in my media text. For example in my ancillary tasks i use conventions such as song titles, barcode and stayed within the lines of my own conventions and for all my images i used an effect called holoart which extends bright images and darkens dark images to create the illusion the image is hollow in order for me to keep my piece in its own conventions i kept the same font i used for my poster for my album. These are important as the colours and fonts are what remind audiences of the bands image it creates an identity. In order to do this i used both Photoshop and a website called Be Funky.
Thursday, 30 April 2015
Tuesday, 28 April 2015
Thursday, 5 February 2015
Song Permission and use of his acting
As I changed my song to a more fitting one called 'Movies' because the lyrics illustrated the narrative I was trying to capture I then gained permission from the writer of the song, as he is also my actor he gave me both premising for the song to use in my film as well as any footage of him in the video.
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