Evaluation text

1)      In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

The task we were set was to create a music video for an unsigned band as well as produce a digipak and either a website or a magazine ad/poster. The purpose of these being made and sold as a production package is so that it reaches out to a large audience of different age, countries and other audiences. These made together make the song and video reach a very large audience. For example, the video will advertise to audiences who use websites such as YouTube and allow them to easily access it and a digipak will advertise to people who see it on sale. A website also allows for advertising on the web as anyone can look at the bands. Compared to real product, ours fits many conventions, especially the digipak. This is because our digipak uses a very similar layout to other real life products. It also fits in with other digipaks because it has a lot of similarities to real products, for example, I front cover, band information and pictures, and this is conventional of a digipak. Our website and video also follow conventions of similar products.

There are multiple conventions required in a music promo, such as camera work, mise-en-scene, editing, performance, narrative and actors. It is important to stick to conventions so that the viewer knows what to expect from the promo but also so the promo fits in with already existing products. However, you could also say it is important to challenge a convention so your promo is different and memorable. One convention that is always relevant is the mise-en-scene needs to be relevant to the genre. For example, a rock promo would conventionally use a performance setting for their performance parts, such as a stage or studio, whereas a pop promo would possibly use an abstract environment or fantasy setting.  The editing in every promo is usually fast unless it is a song similar to a ballad. The camerawork must also be varied; this means a mix of shots such as mid, long, close ups. These need to be varied in numbers to make it look good and interesting. Performance is also very important as it shows the band or artist and their performance of the song. A narrative can also be very important too as it can tell a story behind the song, this can be very important to some artists if they want to tell their story. Amplification, illustration and disjuncture could also come into play here as you could amply the narrative to make it seem more interesting, use objects or to illustrate a narrative or come up with something completely abstract and strange, this is disjuncture. All of these are used in promos, but the one that makes the most interesting music promo is disjuncture. We decided not to use this as disjuncture could lead to confusion about a narrative and the promo in general. The editing is also important as it can change the pace of a music promo from slow to fast, this will seem to increase the speed of the song too.

 

The purpose of a music promo is to advertise and promote a song or artist. This is to help them gain further popularity across the world. This will get them noticed by the public as well as their intended target audience as well as People they may not have targeted. In my research, I looked into a few music promos of the genre pop punk, which our song is from. I found out that the editing is usually fast and has many performance shots, such as many All Time Low music videos. These have narrative too but many shots are just of performance. I also found out some basic conventions. These are that usually, the band members are all younger than 30, they wear teenage style clothing and the males usually have longer or styled hair, whereas the females usually have longer, usually dyed hair. We stuck to these basic conventions as the style of clothing we used is a teenage style as well as all band members being younger. We also stuck to the hairstyle convention apart from dyed hair as we felt that challenging this convention would give the promo a slight increase of realism.One way our media product uses conventions is through the use of mise-en-scene. In many music promos with the genre we chose (pop punk), the band members often perform on a stages well as within an alternative setting. We stick to this convention as our promo was set on a stage as well as in a house. This keeps with the conventions of a pop punk promo as we use a stage in our promo as many other video do. We also used the alternative setting of the house which also fits with the conventions as there is more than one setting. However, you could also say that using a house challenges conventions as quiet often; the alternative setting is outdoors or in an unusual area. We felt it was a good idea to challenge this convention as to make our promo seem as realistic as possible. We also stuck to conventions of pop-punk mise-en-scene by use of costume. Pop punk promos use either a smart casual look with clothing or a casual look. We chose to use both of these. We did this by having three of the band members in smart casual, but with sleeves rolled up to show casual further and the singer in casual clothes. This makes it so we stuck to the conventions of costume but also challenged it as we did not just use one type. We challenged it because we thought it would make the promo more interesting and give it more of a “DIY” (do it yourself) look that pop punk entails.

 

Another way we use conventions is through the use of editing. In many promos of the genre, the editing alternates between fast and slow, but has more fast cuts. We used this in our promo effectively. We did this by using fast cuts with many different shots in the performance part and slower cuts within the narrative. This is conventional of a pop punk promo as they are known for energetic looking promos. We did this with the use of editing. The editing being fast also made it fit to the music. We also used cutting to the beat which is also conventional of a pop punk music video to fit the beat of the track with cuts. We decided to use these conventions as they work very well with any piece of music within the genre and make it seem faster and more interesting.

 

We also used conventional techniques of cinematography and camera work with our promo. These conventional shots, such as long shots, mid shots and close up used, where all used in our promo. We used these in our promo for different effects. We used many close ups and mid shots within the performance part of our promo as they show the band members and their surrounding as well as also showing them playing their instruments. For this reason, we also used a few long shots to show most of the band members together. We also experimented with camera movement within our promo which many existing products also use.  These made our promo all together more interesting as well as fitting conventions. However, in the narrative part of the promo, we challenged some conventions. For example, we used an extreme close up at one point. We used these to show the two characters speaking and arguing. We challenged the convention for use of this to show arguments as close as we could to realism as well as showing some emotion. We also used a mirror shot. This is also unconventional as not many promos use it, if any. We did this as it gave our promo a unique part as well as also fitting the lyrics “Staring back at me in the mirror”. We also used a few angles within our promos such as high and low. These gave different views of the performers and band members as they made it more interesting and fun to watch. However, this is conventional as many promos also use high and low angles for the same reason. We also tried to use the rule of this as to keep the main part of the action with the centre third of the promo. This is the main location for the action within promos so we stuck to this convention.

 

We also used sound conventions within the promo. Even though we muted the ambience of our clips, which is conventional of pop punk and other promos so you can hear the music clearer. We used it to match the editing to the beat (cutting to the beat) and increase the pace of the editing. We also used sound to perfect lip synching within our promo. This allowed the promo to look realistic as the singer actually seemed to be singing the song we used. We also tried to do this somewhat with the instruments being played as we tried to match the guitar strums to the music as well as the drum beats, which we succeeded and also failed at different times. However, we still managed to match the majority so the promo looked very realistic. These are conventional of a music promo as they are mainly showing the band performing, exactly how it should be live, so we tried to stick to that convention.

 

In conclusion, I feel we tried to stick to conventions as much as possible whilst also maintaining realism to the promo. This all together made an interesting, realistic but conventional promo. This makes it not feel out of place with promos within the same genre of ours as well as most other types of promo.

 

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

 

I feel our promo and ancillaries work together really well as a promotional package.

This is because in the promo, we really used the idea of lyrics to on screen action, such as the “Put your high heels on” line. We used this line a lot and also made it so we could link it together with the digipak. This was done by a photoshoot of the shoes that Courtney was wearing in the promo and using that and a microphone as the front cover. This effectively links the promo to the digipak as well as them all linking together into the narrative and promo as a whole. Our website also stuck to this as we used some images from the website on the digipak too, as well as taking the idea of shoes and inserting a picture of the front cover of the digipak onto the website as well.

This links all of the tasks together synergistically. Split apart, these tasks would not be very effective or link together, but as we have them all linked together by use of image.

 

Altogether, our product comes together well and we can see a synergetic link between all parts of the product, ancillaries included. This synergy will make is easier for the band to get an image out there as well as get more recognition. Since they all link, if a user find one of the ancillaries, they will also find out about the album and the album will make them find out about the video and so on. This allows for more publicity for the band.

We also intended to use convergence to further the reputation of the band. The video will be available on YouTube, which will give the band more reputation on the internet. The song would also be put onto iTunes which would mean converging with Apple to distribute the album. The advantage of advertising the band like this is it leaves them open to users of the internet, which a large amount of the population are, as well as some of these people possibly belonging to a record labels. Getting Call Atlantis to sign to a record label would be even further enhance convergence as record labels offer regional, national and international distribution. This would allow their music to be bought all over the world and increase popularity as they can be listened to across the world.

There are a few pros and cons of exhibiting media in a traditional style. For example, one traditional style is on music channels on the television. This is an appropriate place to show our promo as many people in our age group watch the music channels. However, the less popular music promos are shown less than the popular ones, which Is a problem for new music promos such as ours. However, it is also a good place for advertising the band and promo as if it does get seen and the audience enjoy it, they may do more research into the band and become more interested in them. The perfect place for our music promo on these channels would be on kerrang! TV as they display a wide verity of music video of punk, rock and metal. There are many pop punk promos on this channel so our promo could fit in well and be appropriate for the channel. This will then connect to new media as if the promo is seen and enjoyed, the audience may start looking for them on the internet. Once they do this, they may start following them on Facebook or other new media technologies. There are very few cons for advertising the promo in a traditional way. Advertising it in a new media technology way, such as on Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the internet, also has very few cons. This is because with advertising on new media, the audience will more than likely stumble across the band as many people in our audience use these technologies. However, one major con is that there are much more well-known bands than Call Atlantis so the audience may only look for more popular bands instead. This is one of the few problems of advertising in this way.

These advertising techniques of traditional and new media also link with our ancillary tasks. For example, we could go with a traditional and new media approach with our digipak. This is because we could get the album into music stores, such as HMV and ask them to display it so the band gets noticed through people physically seeing the album. This would be a successful method as the digipak would be displayed near similar bands, and if they see similar bands, they may take a look at our digipak too then buy it to see what it’s like or listen to a demo track from the album, then buy it if they enjoyed it. Even if they do not buy it, they may then go looking for the band on the internet instead. Our other ancillary task, a website will be advertised through the internet, especially through social media as quite often, Facebook suggests similar pages to what the user has already has liked. This means Call Atlantis’s Facebook page may be suggested if the user likes similar pages. This will then allow them to be linked to the website from the Facebook page. Not only this, the user may also be searching for similar bands on the internet, and then if they see a band that have one of their favourites as an influence, they may go look for that band, which they will then find the website, advertising the band to them and making the band, music and promo known to them. This is an effective technique as the users of the internet have many ways to find out about the band so have a high chance of finding them.

 

We tried to create a brand image that links between the music video and the ancillary tasks. Our brand image consists of emotions and colours, for example, we try to use as much green as possible within the promo and also used a lot of green on the website. The green is also supposed to symbolise jealousy as the narrative in the story consists of a male cheating on his girlfriend. The impact of the genre had a lot of effect on our music promo. This is because we wanted to stick to the conventions of the promo, especially with editing which consist of fast cuts, and lots of them. However, the genre of pop punk also had another effect on the mise-en-scene that we used. In most pop punk music promos, the setting is in a normal, everyday place. We took inspiration directly from this convention and stuck to it. The genre also gave us influence for the costume that we decided to use. This is because pop punk bands often dress in normal, everyday clothes. We stuck to this too. This will also make the song appeal to the target audience as they may also wear similar clothing to what the band members do.

Another way the products will appeal to the target audience is through the use of social media and modern technologies as most of the product will be available on the internet or internet distribution sites such as iTunes for the digipak. The website will also appeal to the audience as the use of modern technology will modernise the band and show that they use digital technologies the same as the audience.

Our texts attract the audience as they are available in many places the audience know of (shops, the internet, etc.). This will attract them as they will see the band is modern and uses modern techniques to be noticed. Another way our three texts attract the audience is because of the styling of them. All of them use modern fashions, designs and colours. This will attract our audience, who like new and modern things, to the band as they will enjoy the texts more than older styled ones.

 

3)      What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

I have learned quite a lot from audience feedback. For example, in our focus group questions, we asked about the narrative and if the audience felt it were appropriate. All the audience thought that the narrative was appropriate for the age group. Another question we asked was what shots they feel would be used inside of a music video for pop punk, we received different responses such as long shots, close ups, mid shoots and medium close ups. This helped us create our product as it allowed us to know what shots the audience expect in a conventional video so we could stick to them.

Another thing we learned from our feedback was in the vox pops. We learnt where the audience watched their music promos so we could also use that to put our promo on. We found out that the majority of the audience watched them on YouTube, so we also used that to show our music video.

We also learnt a large amount of our audience instead of using a CD to play music from, they often download it digitally instead, and this means that the chances are, the album would be purchased more from online distribution/download services, such as iTunes, instead of going out to buy a physical copy. This means we would have to approach the target audience through download rather than CDs, but still make CD copies of the album.

We also learned from our focus group that the audience would rather have a mix between narrative and performance rather than majoring in one. They felt that a mixed music video would be more interesting.

Audience research is very useful during the production of a music promo and was very important to our promo as well. This is because it allowed us to find out what the audience wanted so we could appeal to them and interest them with our product. However, audience feedback has a very few drawbacks but there are some. For example, if your idea, which you think is good, is not liked by the audience when you ask them about it, you will have to make a completely new idea. The same also applies if they do not like the elements you have included within them. Another way that it may not be the best thing is because it may draw your promo slightly away from the genre that the song is and it would come across as strange in that genre for pure enjoyment of a select few members of the audience and not the audience as a whole. This could affect how much it is enjoyed by the main target audience. To counter this, audience feedback has much more positivity as it allows you to get a lot of opinions on your planning very fast, as well as it being directly from your audience. You also get a good idea what your audience do and do not like from this.

 

The first part of audience research we did was creating a vox pop to get ideas about different things from different people. We conducted this in the initial research stage of our production. We went out into school and got different people from different age groups to answer a few questions. One of these was their favourite music promo, to which most of them answered music from the pop genre and one answered from a heavier version of pop punk. We also asked where they watched their music promos. All of them answered that they watch them on YouTube and on music television programs. This helped us decide to create our promo specifically for these two places. This meant we also had to make it appeal to the different people who use these technologies to view their promos.

 

The second piece of audience feedback we did was gathering a focus group and pitching our idea to them. We did this during the research planning stage. We asked them a few different questions about conventions they would expect within a promo. We asked them about our narrative, which they all answered was appropriate and appealing, as well as about stuff within the promo such as camera shots and costume. The answers we got helped us decide what exactly we wanted to do. For example, the different shots we got mainly consisted of close, mid and long shots, this narrowed down the selection of shots we had and all together helped us decide on what shots to use. This was a very important piece of research as we only used people within our target audience to give us feedback, their feedback especially helped as they are directly the people we were aiming the promo at.

We also used a variety of internet technologies to research into promos of the genre we chose. From here, we could get a rough range of what conventions are expected within promos within pop punk as well as what the audience think of them in the comments. After viewing some comments, it showed that the audience seem to enjoy a narrative within a promo. This is because, judging by some comments, the audience may have been through a similar story and can connect with the narrative, thus enjoy it more and be connected with the band more.

 

 

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

 

We used a different method than unsigned.com to overcome copyright. Instead, I found the band on YouTube and did some research into them, to later find out that they are unsigned. I came across Call Atlantis by looking for music in the pop punk genre, which I enjoy. I was watching a Paramore video and Call Atlantis appeared in the suggested videos so I decided to investigate. They turned out to be very similar and unsigned. This allows us to use their music freely but is always better to get permission from the artists before its use but not needed for copyright free songs. To discover similar products to what we wanted to create, we browsed across YouTube to find other pop punk bands that are similar to Call Atlantis. One particular example we found, that we knew of before, was Paramore.

 

 We used their music videos to influence what we used in our promo as they are very, very similar. We used similar shots, such as close ups, as well as framing and camera movement. Their musical style is also very similar to Call Atlantis as both are fronted by a female singer and have very similar sounding music. This helped us get some inspiration as since they are very similar, we could use conventions from Paramore videos. Paramore also influenced our use of mise-en-scene as well as the use of shots to show it. In the Paramroe music videos, there are many different shots, most of which centre the singer and make her stick out more from the rest of the band. We also decided to use this.

 

We have learnt a few different skills from the filming of out promo. One of the few examples was how to get a very good lens flare; this made the shot stick out from the others as well as makes it look more interesting. We created one in our promo by playing around with darkness and lighting until we found a shot that looked very unique and stuck out from others in the promo.  Another thing we learnt how to do was use objects such as wheelie chairs as an assistant for camera movement as it allowed us to have a smooth moving shot.  We used this during the moving shots of our promo. We found moving, steady shots by hand very hard to do, we tried to use other compromises, such as pulling the camera smoothly to the side, but it did not work. Because of this difficulty, we found the wheelie chair and used it to get our smooth movement without any jerks or bumps.

 

We have also developed how to use editing software better, especially for lip synching. This makes the video look realistic as it is perfectly synced to the singer. We also learned a few audio editing techniques in iMovie such as removing video sound and making importing music to use within the promos as well as increasing its volume. This made the lip Synching easier as we could remove all sound from the clips and play the song over the top to make sure the synching was perfect. It also helped us cut to the beat as we could put in edits where the music changed beat.

 

During shooting, we also developed the proper technique for getting good quality footage in low lighting by focusing light on one part of the shot and then focusing the camera on that to make sure the footage had lighting but you could still see the area was dark. This created the lens flare mentioned above. This also allowed us to use very dynamic lighting in our promo that we could control which not only allowed us to get better footage, but overall, make a better looking promo.

 

There are important factors of exhibiting your product online to get the band further recognition. For example, creating a website for the band and putting the promo on YouTube for everyone to view. This allows the band to get recognition on the internet easier. Creating this product also gave us all further experience in different software. For example, some of the members of our group did not know how to use Photoshop, but during this project, they had to use it which gave them some experience on how to use it. We learnt how to use different effects and filters to make our products look better. When creating the website, it also opened the option to use some very interesting brushes which allowed me to create a more interesting and better looking website.

 

We also learnt how to do more with iMovie as all of us knew how to use it, but not completely, but the further use we made of it helped us learn how to use it more effectively. We learnt how to use different effects and saturations to increase and decrease the lighting. This also helped us stick with lighting continuity as sometimes; the shots had different lighting due to different shooting times in the day. With the saturation effects, we could make the shot seem lighter or darker which allowed us to adjust to lighting problems we encountered. Using the saturation and editing we learnt from iMovie, it allowed us to adapt our footage to fit the genre.

 

I feel we improved over our prelim with the skills we learnt during the creation of our product. For example, we used much more of a verity of shots in our actual product than our prelim; we also learnt how to use effectively because of creating the product.  The verity of shots allowed us to create a more interesting promo as they can easily be switched between and when done very fast, it creates a sense of pace as well as increasing interest for the viewer of the promo, If you switch between a verity of angles without breaking the 180 degree rule, which could easily cause confusion if broken, the promo will become more interesting. This is because a verity of shots makes for a more interesting promo to be viewed. We also learnt that the use of angles is also very important as angels also make for a more interesting promo. However, we tried to not use as many canted angles within the promo as they did not fit in well with the other shots, if we used them, the promo would have seemed to create a sense of disorientation which we did not want as it was supposed to be as realistic as possible. If you were going to create a promo that was supposed to be confusing and make you feel disorientated, an extreme use of canted angles would be useful, and to make it even further disorientation, you could constantly break the 180 degree rule.

 

During production of a promo, we also thought about the use of post-production effects. In the end, we decided not to use these. This is because they can make the video effect heavy and look non-realistic, but also make it confusing. We did however, consider using these to make the promo more interesting, but some experiments we did, did not create the desired effect so we abandoned the use of them. The only effects we decided to use where toughs of lighting to make the shot look lighter or darker depending on where in the promo it was. We learnt through this, that effects are not needed to make an interesting promo and “raw” footage can still look good and interesting.