Evaluation

Question 1

in what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In my music video I challenged the conventions of real media products such as music videos, by displaying females within a non typical way, in the video it is seen that there isn’t any over sexualisation within the video music video often tend to show intimate scenes for example Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" music video. The genre of music which I chose also helped me to challenge typical conventions used within music videos, I used a unique setting for a rock music video which was a school this is develop the non-conventional elements of my music video. I used Mise-en-scene to develop forms of media connotations within general rock music video such as isolation death aggression. But I used quiet locations dark settings and worm eye shots to develop the common narrative of suicide and death, the common death storyline is a common convention for music videos as well particularly rock music videos.

there are many conventions used within music videos such as long shots close ups and mid shots, the long shots are often used to discover the setting and at times make us as the audience empathize with the settings. The mid shots are often used to tell the story between the artist and or actors within the productions, this is often used in many music videos. The close-ups are used to show the emotions of the characters and the artists, this again is a common shot and convention used in music video to create tension and feelings.

I have learned that the conventions of a music video often vary depending on the genre and some of the conventions are similar if not the same between different genres of music for example for rap and hip hop they have the same type of conventions, so jewellery, exotic locations, sports cars these are often conventions used in both rap and hip hop, however for rock the conventions would be different they have iconic conventions like drugs, alcohol.

For digipaks the generic convention would be to use 4 pictures which often link to create a narrative of the album and songs within the album, for rock they often use unique unusual pictures for their digipak design for example linkin park “Reanimation” they used a robot with wings, and for nirvana’s never mind album you saw a sinking baby trying to grab money. However for my digipak I decided to challenge the typical conventions by using a normal image of myself, however I used low key lighting to connote the character’s feelings and emotions throughout the music video.

For adverts they often use a mid-shot or close up image of a person, adverts often use music as it is another way of expressing the personality of the company for example on TV for Cadbury’s they used music to provide a sense of humor, and now music is a convention used in adverts. My advert is different because I am using an image and it is a depressing image.  for my advert I used a close-up of me  being in complete darkness, there isn't really much conventions used in my advert. 

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

My ancillary texts links to my main product, the themes within my ancillary texts and main product are the same the theme is isolation and loneliness. I have a clear brand identity my music video has got a brand identity, it Is important to have a house style as once you have the “house style” that works for your genre you are able to apply this to all your work to show continuity and also it shows that you have a serious inclination when it comes to work that you are producing. I had the same colours used within my music video digipak and my advert. I constantly use the colour black to indicate darkness throughout the advert, music video and digipak.

The ancillary texts also link to main product in terms of images as well as you can see that I am alone in all the images that I used as well, and you can see that the facial expressions used within all the images link as well, as I am depressed, the constant feeling of numb is apparent with all the isolation, anger and pain used within the main product and ancillary texts.

I think that the digipak will sell because the music video connotes the feelings portrayed in my music video, and I think the narrative throughout the digipak is very appealing and you can get many different connotations as the pictures vary from the main character being happy to smashing a guitar on a bench, the contrast in emotions will intrigue many target audience members and as a result I think I will get a lot of consumers based on the contrast in feelings emotions and just basic picture quality, as some pictures are shown to be blurry but that is done on purpose it is trying to indicate that he is not really noticeable. and the other picture is clear and crisp however it shows the aggressive side to the main character which suggests that the happiness is unclear and he is essentially numb in the first photo, the quality of the second photo shows that his anger and isolation is clear.

this is why i think that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts are effective and why the advert would sell the digipak to the audience.

Question 3 what have you learned from your audience feedback

Some of the negative audience feedback made me realize that when I edit within the future i have to make the continuity of my production is better than the one in this music video

Question 4. How did you use technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage.

in this question I will be talking about how I used technology in research,planning,construction and evaluation.


I will start off talking about the technology used in construction, I used an apple mac computer when editing, this was one of the creative decisions regarding technology that I used, the reason why I used an apple mac computer and not a normal PC is because apple has more programmes which is an essential feature it had considering that I was doing a music video, as a result I had a lot more editing programmes to choose from  this would help me construct my music video.however I did have some trouble using a mac computer there were times where I couldn't open up my work unless specific programmes were closed and this at times delayed my task of producing a music video.


another piece of technology that I used was digital cameras, the benefit of me using a digital camera was that I didn't need any film to subsequently film my music videos, it also allowed me to take a number of pictures without having any real issues, digital cameras are also a lot easier processing information from the camera. i found out that a digital camera can store a lot more pictures and film recordings than a normal camera as well.

However I found that  even though digital cameras store a lot, when putting the images onto a normal PC I found out that it was too small or too large for specific programmes on the PC, for example a picture that was captured on a digital camera but was deemed too small for a programme called paint.


I also used digital editing in the form of final cut pro as an oppose to imovie,  Final Cut Pro has a lot of editing features in comparison to iMovie. However, this could make it more difficult for the user to use as it may be a bit to complex. For example: Effects -> Video Filters -> Border -> Basic Border,  

another reason why I choose to use final cut pro over imovie is because You could add more clips onto your timeline in comparison to iMovie. On iMovie you can only add 18 clips whereas with final cut pro there is no limit, this is better for media production because you are able to be more flexible in decisions as what to what scenes do you want to choose.

However there were times where final cut pro was corrupt and sometimes had difficulty opening up files you had previously saved, another issue was that final cut pro takes longer to fully compose a whole production compared to imovie, I know this because I have previously used imovie for a production that I had made.  


I will now talk about research, and the technology I used in research. for my research i used technology such as youtube, google, blogger, prezzi. technology wasn't really required that much however i used different sources of technology for my research,  I will talk about why I used prezi


One of my favorite aspects of Prezi (assuming it is used correctly) is the ability to have movement actually become part of the presentation. For instance, if you are talking about ‘Imagery,’ you can have Prezi zoom in (past the word Imagery) and display examples of the imagery you are discussing. The movement relates to the terms and examples, creating a visual link for the students.

however I found out that Prezi's makes your computer easy to freeze. i used internet sites such as google because i find it the best place to find information and other than the occasional internet connection issues there were no issues using google.

I find that using blogger is the easiest form of technology used for my research and planning as a result i will know how to use it and all the features added onto the site, however with the basic nature of blogger It makes the presentation of the blog very poor.


I will now talk about how i used technology in planning.

 I  didn't really use much technology in planning, I used blogger,mobile phone.

again for blogger I  found it easier to use for planning, I find it easier to structure my work on blogger however i have never experimented with any other type of technology to store my work so I  dont know whether it would be easier, harder more beneficial or less beneficial.I used my mobile phone to take pictures of my settings and storyboard, this is a quick way to take a picture, however the quality isn't always good when using a phone. 

in the evaluation stage the technology that  I used was quicktime player and I also used facetime, Facetime enabled me to capture the audience reaction to my music video, and it also allows the viewers when being questioned or when reacting to a scene from your production allows them to express themselves in a different way, they would be able to express themselves verbally which is better for some viewers as they are able to make their point in a more articulate manner, i used QuickTime player to do Director's commentary and to summerise audience feedback QuickTime player is a simple and efficient way of providing audio analysis it is also fairly easy to set up, however the negative for both of them is that I experienced playback issues at times and the song was louder than the music at times. 

 

Research and Planning

Music Video Analysis

Narrative theories: in this video we cant really use Propp's theory in this video as there is the isn't 7 base characters in this video for us to apply Propp's theory to this particular video.

Todorov's theory also doesn't apply in the video as there isn't any stages being shown throughout the video, it is a group of random people lip synching in the video, for Todorov's theory to apply there would have to be the narrative stages shown clearly throughout the video which includes a new equilibrium and this video doesn't seem to have that.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmeUuoxyt_E -


Camera Movement and camera shots- The camera movement throughout the video constantly varies, the camera would generally vary from zooming in and out, this lead to the video containing many different shots such as long shots and close ups which were used constantly throughout the video.

 Mise-en- scene -  the Mise-en scene changed throughout the whole song, there were no specific locations o characters used within the video, I think this was done to link to song title "Rock-star" and the fact that Rock-stars seem to always life a different experience in life the Mise en scene shows that by constantly using different settings such as being in a back garden of a mansion to being in the middle of a busy road, and the props varied as well.

Representations- there were different representations from the music video, different characters had different representations, some were shown to have a higher status than others, for example some characters had close ups which suggests that the audience should focus on those characters.


Sound- in terms of sound it varies to normal rock videos because you don't hear the typical aggressive sound and lyrics throughout the video instead you hear a more mellow approach to the song, so it seems like normal singing at times, this as done to show that being a "Rock-star"  is no different to being a hip hop star or a pop start or any other genre


Dominant ideologies-  the dominant ideology is that "Rock-stars" live this luxurious lifestyle, where they live in big expensive mansions, they get many women, and they are idolized by many fans. that is the dominant ideology throughout the video.

Genre- the genre of this music video is rock


music video director choice: Joe Hahn, I am choosing him because he has done a lot of music videos done by the artist who's song I'    

Linkin Park are an American rock band from California.  The band formed in 1996 and since then have seen many successes, including a multi-platinum selling debut album.  The band have sold over 50 million records worldwide and won two Grammy awards.  The band have a target audience of 15-25 year old males, interested in rock music.

Burn it Down is the first single which the band have released from their fifth and latest album, 'Living Things.' The video, as shown above was released on May 24th 2012.  The video begins with dark colours which appeal to a target audience who like rock music as dark colours have connotations of danger.  Special 'sci-fi' effects are then used when the 'sci-fi' style music begins, this creates a very modern feel to the video which immediately appeals to the young target audience and makes the video appear very impressive.  The band are wearing all black which is stereotypical of a rock band because black has connotations of danger and mystery.  A freeze frame and slow motion is later used of an image of the band on fire, fire also has connotations of danger which appeals to Linkin Park's target audience, the slow motion creates an extremely dramatic effect which works well with the song.  

The bands website was used to promote the album as shown below, which includes; photos of the band,  a link to buy the album, a track list for the album, the bands blog, a shop to buy band merchandise, videos and the album artwork.  The website is very simplistic, with a grey background and darker colours used for the menu.  This style appeals to the bands young, male target audience who are in to rock music.

Camera movement- the camera seems to move around in a circle and there is a close up of the ban the camera zooms in and out throughout the video, the camera does an extreme closeup on the band members specifically when they are singing or when they are playing an instrument and the beat is very clearly heard.


Editing-from the video i can see that as the chorus is introduced the each band member is slowly being possessed and as the chorus is played they released whatever they have possessed,, this is a editing technique which is called cutting to the beat which is used to make the lyrics relate to the song and for the lyrics to tell a story.


Sound- there is a constant pattern throughout this video regarding sound which is that there is normal singing or the sound is normal mellow and fairly quiet however as soon as the chorus is introduced there seems to be screaming and shouting throughout the chorus and the sound is generally more loud and aggressive, which is conventional for a rock video.


Mise-en-scene- throughout the video is in a room and in particular they are in a black circle, the mise en scene  there were blue and orange streaks of light and at times they ere flames which connotes that there was a fire being created from the band.


Dominant ideology- the dominant ideology from this seems to be that rock-stars produce this aggressive, passionate music which is as hot and deadly as a fire, both visually in this video and metaphorically, the basic ideology could be that rock music is hotter than other music genre's






production schedule: November 24th 2014- storyboard.
                                  November 27th  2014- discuss opening scene
        


                                  December 1st 2014- think about potential actors for my video productions






Locations List

I have decided to shoot the first part of my music video in a classroom as it is as it is a place where you focus and do work, this is what will happen before I go into a dream.

This was supposed to be a location that I used another social convention in my video, this will be used as a place to hang out, the characters will sit here and talk for a bit before going indoors, character is beside them, this is another clear that the main character feels isolated  

I am using the hallway as one of my settings, this can be seen as pathway which separates the social and the antisocial in the sense that in the hallway you will see two people talking why one person is being left out.

As characters come indoors they will sit around this table and they will engage in  a quick conversation, whilst one character will be isolated

After the quick conversation there will be a game or cards around this table, and one of the characters will continued to be left out, he gets frustrated and leaves, this is a perfect location  to indicate how someone can be isolated as the common room is a place where many people go and hang out.

Actors list : myself ( Tyrell) ,Piotrek, Kaheem, Lemar.


Shotlist-


first scene- establishing shot/midshot- in the first scene I am in the class room and we can see the classroom and everything is scene within the background, I go to sleep and I have a dream and within my dream I'm on top of a ledge.





second scene-closeup/long shot- as I'm leaving class, I see my "friends" I run to try and catch up to them I do but they fail to acknowledge me much to my annoyance.




third scene- long shot the frustration of people failing to acknowledge me had me walking through the rain depressed.




fourth scene- mid shot- I opened the door heading to the common room.






fifth scene- establishing shot- I am at the door of the common room, the establishing shot is used to capture the element and atmosphere of the common room, the different aspects in the common room is shown to show how everyone is normal but the main character isn't and is detached.




sixth scene- mid shot- this shot shows the point of view of the main character, and the shots also captured his facial expressions, which makes it clear how he feels about the situation.




seventh scene- long shot/closeup- in this scene there were two types of shots used, first of all there was a long shot used to connote that even though there is a person in the shot, he is still shown as far away and very distanced, a close up is then used to add intensity between the main character and the camera.

                                                                                               

Preliminery task

Copyright Permission Letter

Dear Copyright Holder,

We are A-Level student and we are writing to request your permission to use one of the  tracks by Linkin Park. The track I wish to use is Numb.

with your permission, this task would be in our current A-Level Media Studies project, which involves creating a music video to a popular music track, as  well as producing  an album and a magazine advert for the artist.
if we received your permission, this task would ONLY be used in an educational context and be viewed by our media class, our teacher and the OCR exam board moderator. it would not be released to a large audience.

the artist and your company would of course be fully recognised throughout pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. if this is required, please send the full details.

,