Introduction
For our project we created a music video, a CD album booklet and a CD album magazine advert for an independent band called the ‘Torrents’. I worked with two other pupils; Beckie Livesey and Luke Shufflebottom. As a group we all contributed to the coursework and helped to capture footage and photographs for our ancillary tasks, edit photos on Photoshop and In Design to create a CD album booklet and edit the film on Final Cut Express. We also contributed to posting blogs on Blogger.com to update our progression with our coursework. However, I particularly contributed to capturing and editing our music video and posting blogs on our website.
Using demographic profiling, we targeted the audience of 16-25 year olds both female and males. This was because the band the 'Torrents' are a young and rebellious indie band. They would mostly appeal to the British public as their songs contain lyrics about the current state of the country and also their band logo features the Union Jack appealing to the British public. The audiences socio-economic group is more likely to be group E as they appeal to younger people, who are usually students. However, they would also appeal to group D as this reflects the working class.
Using psychographic profiling and Young and Rubican's consumer characteristics, the band appeals mostly to the group; 'Individuals', as their brand image is quirky and unique. This means the bands audience also follow this image as young people are striving to be unique individuals. The 'Torrents' fulfill the 'Safety and belonging needs' when looking at Maslow's 'Hierarchy Of Needs', as their songs include issues such as employment, friendship, sexual intimacy and morality. The band also include all four major categories of the 'Uses and Gratifications theory' through their brand image, songs and advertising. For example, they offer escapism from everyday pressures by singing about current issues that the public are currently involved with. Our video appeals to the bands audience as it is quirky and different by challenging the conventions of both the Music video genre and the Indie genre creating its individuality.
In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre of our music video is of the Indie Genre which connotates rebellion and individuality. We were inspired by various artists and music videos that helped us to develop our own unique music video. Artists such as the Black Eyed Peas and The Prodigy influenced our Indie music video. As Andrew Goodwin suggested in "Dancing to Distraction (2003)" there are several conventions which make a Music Video typical. These are; Genre characteristics, Visuals/Lyrics, Visuals/Music, the need to sell the Artist, Intertexutality and Voyeruism. We tried to fit these conventions however we did infact reject some of the conventions intentionally within our video.
Picture 1: Demonstrates how the Black Eyed Peas have moved away from the normal conventions of Music Videos in song"Ive gotta Feeling" by making it controversial by introducing partying and the care free ideology of "Live life to the full". This inspired us to base our music video on a party setting where our actors and actresses go on a night out.
Picture 2: Presents the women in the Video as provocative going against the normal conventions of a music video. It stereotypes woman as suggestive and irrestible which influenced us to create the story of a 'good and bad girl' perspective within our own Indie Music Video.
Picture 3: Shows how props can be used to illustrate youth and rebellion. In the Black Eyed Peas video the UV paint is painted on their bodies at the party which resulted in us making our video as controversial as possible.
Picture 4: Illustrates the 'Point of View' perspective which we incorporated into our Music Video. The Prodigy's video 'Smack My Bitch Up' influenced us greatly and therefore we established the first person perspective from both the 'Bad Girl' and 'Good girl' of their night out.
Picture 5: Demonstrates the dark lighting used to create a grungy look to the Prodigy's music video to furthermore illustrate their rough and ready perspective of life which challenged us to incorporate the same ideology into our music video.
Picture 6: The party scene from "Smack My Bitch Up" exemplifies the rejection of the normal conventions of Music Video by showing girls in little and outrageous clothing and extreme partying which we tried to use in our Music Video too.
We intentionally made our Indie Music Video to go against the normal conventions of the typical Music Video however, we did challenge some of the conventions by not including a live preformance of the band who are usually male dominated which is typical of a Indie Music Video. Here are some screen shots of our final media project:
Picture 1: Demonstrates how we developed freeze frames of our film clips to create the effect of the two girls taking pictures of themselves before they went out. To highlight this further we used the greyscale, postersize and sepia effect in Imovie to make the free frames look more like pictures being captured. This could be seen as challenging the conventions of the Music Video Genre as the videos are usually moving and feature no still frames.Picture 2: Shows the Point of View perspective which was used throughout. This was inspired by the Prodigy's music video "Smack my Bitch Up" which challenges the conventions of a Music Video as the camera usuall looks on the actual band who sings the song. This made our Music Video quirky and individual.
Picture 3: Emphasises the ideology of rebellion and controversy by incorporating alcohol into our Music Video. This rejects the typical conventions and promotes Andrew Goodwins ideology of 'Voyeurism' by introducing controversial mise en scene.
Picture 4: Once again promotes the idea of 'Voyeurism' and highlights how the 'Bad girl' is dressed provocatively and her make up has also been applied suggestively. This was done on purpose to establish the clear seperation between the 'Good and Bad girl' storylines.
Picture 5: Illustrates how we further pushed to go against the conventions of a typical Music Video by showing a scene of the 'Bad girl' being sick.
Picture 6: However is still in first person perspective but shows the chronological order of the night out within the Music Video which is typical of the conventions of a Music Video. The clip was quickened to show how the night was developing quickly.
Picture 7: Exemplifies the 'Bad girl' being provocative and inappropriate yet again higlighting the issue of Voyeurism.
Picture 8: This is the main feature of our Music Video which made it unique and individual. The use of split screen was to show the 'Good girl and Bad girl' perspective at the same time. This goes against the usual conventions of a music video as there is only usually one narrative.
Picture 9: Shows the characters out having a good time. The clip of the drunk youth was used here to illustrate the widely known stereotype that youths who drink are out to have a good time but usually cause trouble.
Picture 10: Again shows the use of the split screen at the beginning of the Music Video. The use of high tech technology is often used within Music Videos to advertise the latest gadgets. We used the mobile phones in this clip to establish the two young girls characters.
Picture 11: Illustrates the 'Good girls' perspective of the night out. When offered a cigarette she coughs demonstrating her angelic personality. This goes against the typical stereotype of youths today who are labelled to be drug users and binge drinkers.
Picture 12: The 'Dazzle Effect' was used here to clearly show the end of the Music Video by showing the night had become a blur and was at an end as the characters were walking down the street.
For our Ancillary Task we created a diggi pack for a CD. We adopted the ideas of rebellion, patrotism and youth to best illustrate our band the 'Torrents'.
Picture 1: Demonstrates the uniqueness of Hadouken's album cover. The font is unique to the band which influenced us to choose a font for our logo to put on our album cover which would be quirky and individual to the 'Torrents'.Picture 2: Illustrates the Libertines patriotic imagery to Britain which the Torrents also express through their songs which was then incorporated into our design for the Cd Album.
Picture 3: Exemplifies how a picture of the band usually feature somewhere within the Album Digi Pack which is a convention of the genre of Cd Albums. Therefore we followed this and used a picture of the band within our booklet.
Picture 4: Illustrates Pendulums individuality and creativity that they used to create their Album cover which represents the genre of Indie Music as they focus on their raw talent. In addition, we developed a Cd Album Pack which was creative and individual.
Here is a collage of our CD Album Booklet we created:
Picture 1: Shows the Front Cover in which we incorporated the patriotic ideology by using our band logo and a Union jack placemat. In order to highlight this further we added a grey scale layer over the top of our existing colour layer and used the brush tool to make the red colour of the tomato sauce and tomatos etc. stand out representing the patriotic colours.
Picture 2: We used this picture inside the album cover to go against the normal conventions of Cd Album covers. The use of the cigarette shows rebellion which is the image the 'Torrents' like to illustrate. We used a Smoke Brush Effect in Photoshop to create smoke from the cigarette. Once again we created a greyacale layer over our existing image to highlight the blue colour of the ash tray.
Picture 3: Features the lyrics of our song which we used in our Music Video. The use of the chrome effect makes this picture quirky and like a scrp piece of paper. We designed this picture in order to demonstrate the bands image by being playful and individual.
Picture 4: Is the last page of our Album Digi Pack which incorporates a song list in the Union jack colour scheme. The use of the Beer bottle within the picture demonstrates the typical stereotype of youth today and rebellion which we used relligiously throughout our products in our coursework.
When our peers were asked to fill a Questionnaire out about our product the feedback was generally positive. Here are some questions and answers:
Has there been any effects used that are different to other music videos?
- "The split screen can't be seen in many Music Videos, and also the POV perspective"
- "I liked the first person POV shots which made you feel as if you were there"
- "I really liked the end effects when the camera shot blurred to a redish colour"
- "Photos at the beginning worked really well!"
- "Yes - Indie Music - Low Budget"
- "Yes, idea of being young, going out to parties and having a good time, idea of being "Still 21" - old enough to drink but too young to have experienced life to the full"
- "Yes its in first person, Indie music is individual which works well!"
- "Yes, I think it worked well. The youth aspect went well with the Music track"
To produce our products we used demographic profiling to determine who our target audience would be. We decided our audience would be a mix of males and females around the ages of 16-25 years old as the Torrents are a young and rebellious indie band; appealing to this age group however, with extremely meaningful lyrics about politics and patriotism rather than just controversial lyrics about sex and drugs. They would mostly appeal to the British youths as their songs are grungy and unique sometimes containing lyrics about the state of the country being unstable and this therefore influenced us to design the Union Jack logo for the Torrents again appealing to the British public. The audiences 'socio-economic group' was that of group E as they are generally younger people, who are mostly students. However, the Torrents also appealed to group D; those of the working class similar to the band members who are also contained in this 'socio-economic group', their lyrics and image would appeal to their interests and ideologies of escapism and rebellion.
By researching into the psychographic profiling and Young and Rubican's consumer characteristics, the band appealed mostly to the 'Individuals', as their brand image is quirky and individual. The bands target audience also follow this image and by aiming to be different and unique.
The 'Torrents' fulfill the 'Safety and Belonging needs' when we looked at Maslow's 'Hierarchy Of Needs'. Their songs included issues such as employment, friendship, sexual intimacy and morality. The band also offered all the four major categories of the 'Uses and Gratifications' theory through their brand image, songs and advertising. For example, they offered escapism from everyday pressures by singing about subjects that the public are currently involved with, they involve personal relationships and personal identity as all of their songs are about real life, and also surveillance as they sing about current situations to help clarify what the British public agree with.
This was a good audience to target even though they are not as finacially stable as Middle Class people. The audience is a large group who would be loyal to our products and products like it by downloading it and sharing it with their friends through Facebook and MySpace for example where most of these 'individuals' spend their free time on the internet listening to music. We used various websites to research the Indie Music Video Genre such as Youtube, Indie Record Lables such as Rough Trade, Facebook, Google and UK Tribes. This was the summary of the Indie Kid which we used alongside other opinions of the Indie Genre to create our products:
Therefore, we did not have a Secondary Audience as our current audience proves loyal to the Indie Genre. During our project's creation we have used various audience feedback questionnaires to create the perfect product for our target audience. Before we began the project we created a questionnaire asking peers what was their favourite genre of music, when they listened to it, how they listened to it either on the TV or the internet and if a music video had ever influenced them to go and download the song. From this we saw that the Indie Genre a niche audience of youths who genrally watched music videos via the internet. We also created audience feedback questionnaires when we had finished our products to see whether our efforts were succesfull and what needed to be improved next time.
In order to please our audience we used all the following above to create the perfect Indie Music Video and other products. By using young and rebellious characters within our video and religiously following the patriotic and individuality ideologies we were able to fulfill these conventions and we were pleased with the outcomes.
Here we recorded Audience Feedback which we gained from some of our peers;
In conclusion our product was a success!
We stuck to our plans of creating a Indie Music Video with the target audience of young adults. We wanted something unique and individual and created this through our split screen of the two girls perspective. We filmed in a young club which also added to the authenticity of the Music Video and gave it a professional yet gritty edge. Our Brand image was maintained through all our products with the repitition of our ideologies of rebellion, patriotism, controversy and youth by using the logo of the Union Jack and young rebellious actors. The Ancillary Tasks also proved authentic and parallelld the personality of the band by being creative and constantly pushing our ideology of youth, rebellion and patriotism. Our audience feedback showed that our products were also a success by recieving very positive feedback from our peers which can be seen in the Audience Feedback video. Some things that they suggested we could do to improve would to try and make the Music Video even more fast paced and include more storylines for the 'Good girl' in the Music Video.
Overall i have enjoyed working on this project with the members of our group. We all had similar ideas and worked well together to produce a professional Music Video. I have enhanced my skills on Final Cut Express, Photoshop and Blogger and now appreciate the hard work that has to be put into just one Music Video. However, i enjoyed acting within the Video and being able to be so creative.
Amy Grogan.
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