Saturday 22 February 2014

Evaluation: Question One



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









Typical Conventions of a music video:

  • Camera shots; tend to include long shots, mid shots  and close ups to create emphasis on the artist location and emotions.
  • Lighting: uses artificial lighting to enhance the artist.
  • Props: vital aiding to set the scene and significant to people and objects
  • Colours: brightly coloured to set he mood, loud and bold
  • Costume: reflects the genre and influences the audience.
  • Fast pace editing


Firstly before ever producing a music video or any product of media we have to have knowledge. Theorist Steve Neale says  genre= 'instances of repetition and difference' and what he means by this is that whatever you're creating it has to have conventions of the genre it falls into to be recognisable to the audience but also have to be unique in some way so it sells. Nicholas Abercrombie view on media products are' television producers set out to exploit genre conventions...it... makes sound economic sense. sets, properties and costumes can be used over and over again. Team of stars, writers and directors and technicians can be built up giving economies of scale' although is  mainly applied to television what he is saying is that  is having generic knowledge saves a lot to time when you have to create or do something .


Here is the mood board which i  began when researching ideas for my music video:


looking at my mood board I can see that I have included some of my original ideas such as grease, iconic dance moves, a lot of dancing and females featuring. Although I've included few from my mood board, this was only a starting point which inspired my later thoughts and ideas.



I had many ideas at the start and my first idea was to create something that goes through time eras. However I moved on from that  idea as I felt it wouldn't be achievable, ironically I  ended up doing something similar which was iconic movies. Below shows how I explored the ideas of  different movies and how I tried to replicate them to be obvious to the audience.

 
 
 
 
Comparing my work to real media products I would say my work is entropic and has originality. Although from research and planning I learnt that having a pre introduction is quite redundant in pop  and I very common. so I wanted to include this as it's now recently a generic  convention but also keep it original so there for I decided to create a stop motion animation as I have never seen this featured in a Pop music video. When gathering feedback I learnt that taking this risk and doing something entropic was successful and no-one dis liked the idea. I was nervous when using a stop motion as an introduction as I hadn't personally seen this before and I wasn't sure about the combination of the  real life video and the animation and whether it they would compliment each other.
 
 
 Audience I a major part when creating media products as you are producing something for there pleasure . So you would have to bare in mind that what you're producing will have to be consists of the typical conventions of the genre so the target audience will know that this product is something that would appeal to them; there has to be a level of predictability of the product. However you must be careful  to what extent you use  typical conventions and how redundant your music video will be because if it's to similar and not any different from the normal media texts produced then it wont have a selling point and lose it's appeal to the audience, being labelled ' nothing new or special'. The Audience research had a massive effect on what I created as I had to produce something that would appeal to a specific market. My genre was mainly pop and pop tend to be linked with mainstream so therefore I thought that iconic and famous movies would be perfect for this type of target audience. However  The artist Tommy Sparks doesn't only fall into the genre of Pop but also Disco/Indie and this is were I took the opportunity to create something that was entropic, hence the animation.


I also looked at different artist such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga  and Ke$ha to see how they differ and whether they consist of the same generic convention. The Music Video below is Rihanna 'Who's that Chick' It also follows the trend of opening with a pre introduction setting the scene however it doesn't have a story or narrative, if consist of more a performance, editing skills and flashing images ad lights which I decided not to include in my music as my target audience aren't purely Pop fans the artist Tommy sparks also falls into the Disco/Indie  genre so therefore I would need to cater for audience that not only have an interest in pop . I also felt that creating something similar to the music video below wouldn't introduce anything entropic and would be very redundant and not interesting so therefore I decied to stray from a music video like this, However keeping basic generic conventions.

 
 

Looking at my Advert and Digi Pak they were majorly influenced by real media products however I wanted it to consists of something entropic which was adding my own hand drawn images into the advert creating this scrap book like feel which links with how the a story and narrative is the main element of the Music Video. My first ideas for the advert were based on lady Gaga's Dig Pak advert and how it was divided into three rows. Although I liked this idea I didn't want to create something that was an exact copy; as I learned that you need to create something different for it to sell. I choose not to do this and actually base it of the original Tommy sparks advert using the colour scheme but  also collaborating Katy Perry's boldness.


Friday 21 February 2014

Evaluation: Question Two

When researching artist similar to Tommy Sparks who produces music that fall into the genre of Disco/ Pop/ Indie  a band that was strongly found were The Hot Melts. I also looked as the Pop Queen Katy Perry work too and the CD covers below influenced my work.
  From these inspirations ive taken the drawing from the hot melts cd cover and added this ideas to my advert with the drink me bottle and the silhouettes . Looking at Katy Perry's digi pak we see dark backgrounds featuring one close up and bold bright contrasting colours which i have tried to included when creating my own Digi pack.



 Looking at the original Advert for Tommy Sparks Album I've followed a the same grey white and black colour scheme but have also added my own house style of brighter colours and adding a narrative to the advert as i intended narrative to be a big part of my music video.


As both the advert and the digi pak are working as a promotion package they of course have to link and appearance as a partnership.  Below show some of the similarities:

  • they both consist of the same colour scheme (red purple black, wooden)
  • Have contrasting silhouettes
  • Lips  featured on the advert and down the seam of the digipak. 
  • used the same font throughout
  •  The wooden background is found on both but not as a background in the advert.
  • The same model appears in both the digipak and the advert
  • Have a purple rim at the top of each design. 
I also wanted to included elements of the promotion package  in the music video and my ideas where the girl in the red dress pictures frame and the Alice and wonderland introduction. however when it came to the production part it did change alot. we videoed some footage and i felt that the narrative wasn't strong enough so we kept the idea of  replicating movies within the music video also reduced the ideas of frames being a focal part of the music video and  just had frames as the background of the animation.

While i organised a focus group meeting i also showed the the promotion package and asked them there thoughts on it. Many liked the Digi Pack and thought it was fun and current as the motashue are in. Alot this trend was going to be included in the music video in the end result we scrapped the idea of this as we felt nearer the end of the age range of the target audience wouldn't appreciate the trend. They also thought the colour scheme was bold and bright but with a sophistication which would appeal to the older audiences as well ( audience target age 16-21).

What i don't like about my work is that due to the change in concept of the music video the promotional package dosn't quite if the mold in all aspects. I also felt that the digi pack was alot strong than the advert. I felt the advert didn't have the professional finish. I also thing i should of added slight shadows to the models in the background making it more realistic. 

The aim of the house style and branding was to create something that combines alot of different genres of music as 'She's got me Dancing' falls into many different types. I wanted to create something that was loud, fun quirky but also have a hint of sophistication so it meets the needs for all target audience. The house style is very important as this needs to be perfect so then your audience recognize and know what would appeal to them and i felt that i was successful in doing so.

Wednesday 19 February 2014

Evaluation : Question Four


While planning I used a new technology known as facebook. I used this to create a facebook page to create a chat where people can view the ideas for the market package and comment their opinions on it. WE as host would have to spark conversation between the other users to gather information however we weren’t successful as many people invited to the page didn’t seem interested and would leave feedback such as ‘ cool idea’ ‘yeah that could work’. Many people didn’t expand when we further questioned them on their initial comments. Overall I don’t feel that it was as useful as there was much useful feedback which was a starting point for improvement. I felt that rather than using new technology such as facebook to gather audience feedback that traditional methods such as  a focus group was much more successful.


When constructing the digipak and advert I used the software Photoshop. Below I’ve annotated what tools i used while editing:





When planning i felt if i had a better phone such as an i phone i could post recent updates and ideas instantly rather than writing my ideas down and later revising them in a blog post. I also could of used an iphone to capture parts of the focus group interview and add them to my blog, introducing new technology method.

Looking at the production side of things, we could have improved on the quality to the video footage as the lighting wasn’t strong enough in parts which had an effect on the overall appearance of the music video. Lighting is one of the key aspects as it gives the professional finish without this  it doesn’t quite have the music video finish.  Although the lighting did questions the professional finish of my music video it was due to the lack of new technology (lighting kit) available, which is beyond our power. However i tried my best to solve this problem seeking other lighting kit which was available to use but not for all the shooting of the video footage.
 
 

http://prezi.com/eyse5sxp9nfs/how-have-you-used-media-20-to-influnece-your-work/#


Creativity played a major role throughout this piece of coursework. Media technology supports creativity and enables you to create something unique and fresh. While using Photoshop to create the digpak and advert i experimented with many different things such as layering, manipulating an image in various ways and even adding a drawing i composed myself to the advert.  When using Premier to edit the video footage honestly i didn’t make use of its full potential like some of the other members in my class had creating over exposed black and white footage as well as creating digital aspects on top of the original video . I used the basic editing such crop, light adjustments and spilt screens.