Lukes media evaluation

For our project we had to create a music video, a CD album booklet and a CD album magazine advert for the independent signed ban we choose to work with, "Torrents". I worked alongside two of my class mates Becky Livesey and Amy Grogan. Together we all contributed to the project by shooting the footage of the video and taking photographs for the ancillary tasks. We uses Photoshop and In Design to create a CD album and used Final Cut Express to edit our footage. We also researched our chosen genre and updated our coursework progression which we all contributed on to our blog. I contributed mostly with capturing and editing the images we used for out CD album and updating this departments progressive on the blog. By using demographic profiling we targeted the audience of 16-25 year olds both male and female. This is due to the fact that "Torrents" being an indie band give connotations of being young, rebellious and care free. The band itself appeal widely to a British audience, especially young people, as the song talks about a night out and wanting to always be young. Also the bands logo consists of the Union Jack which shows the bands nationalism. As mentioned the bands social economic group is likely to be E meaning it appeals to students who can relate to the song as well as group D as it appeals to the working class.

For our music video we decided to follow the conventions of the popular, alternative genre, indie. The indie genre itself is becoming more and more popular despite the fact that indie does not follow the conventions of the mainstream genre. The genre promotes the need of all teenagers, to be able to go out, drinking, smoking etc. and enjoy themselves and their music. The general view of the indie stereotype is of one of fashion such as jeans, trainers and shirt and represent being young and rebellious. As seen below.

Music videos are generally aimed at a teenage audience, so the narrative of the videos tend to tell a story which usually involves controversy so to appeal to a wider audience, especially when it comes to indie genre videos. We decided to make out video similar to this and offered alternative taboo subject matters so to more widely appeal to our teenage audience.

The two most influential videos we watched were that of Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” and The Prodigy “Smack My Bitch Up”. Both videos were about a night out offering alternative conventions and taboo subject matters and we decided to use the night out idea in our video. The point of view shot used in the video Smack My Bitch Up was very interesting offering alternative conventions to the typical music video genre. We decided to use this in our video.

Picture 1: This picture represents the alternative connotations achieved by Black Eyed Peas video “I Gotta Feeling” the use of different colours and the setting of a night out, shows how Black Eyed Peas used alternative, taboo subject matters to appeal to their audience. We also used this idea to achieve the same purpose.

Picture 2: This picture of the main character in the Arctic Monkeys video “When The Sun Goes Down” shows how props and location are used to stereotype a character as much as possible so the audience are informed clearly of the storyline. In this case a homeless girl who is treated badly by a successful man. We used the same idea in our video when trying to demonstrate the “bad girl, good girl”” stereotype with our usage of props and costume. We also choose a controversial setting, a night out, in order to portray the bands rebellious image.

Picture 3: Is an image of the point of view shot used in the Smack My Bitch Up music video which we used in our video. We decided to take the perspectives of the bad girl and the good girl when filming out night out storyline.

Picture 4: This screen shot of an image from the music video Smack My Bitch Up shows how the usage of dark/dull lighting helps add to the representation of the indie genre as being original and individual. Which we also incorporated into our music video.

 

Picture 5: This is also an image of a character taking drugs in the video Smack My Bitch Up which shows the alternative conventions used in the video, in this case taboo subject matters. We also used taboo props in our video such as smoking and drinking showing our videos alternative conventions. These kinds of scenes are used to attract the audience the video is aimed at.

Picture 1: Shows how we developed freeze frames of our clip to create the effect of the two girls taking pictures before their night out. Furthermore we used the greyscale, posterize and sepia effect in Imovie to make it look as the pictures were being taken on an actual camera. This could be seen as challenging the typical conventions of the music video as still images are rarely used in music videos.

Picture 2: Shows our use of split screen in our music video to show the perspectives of the good and bad girl. This could also be seen as challenging the conventions of a typical music video as two different stories happening at the same time is rarely used as it can be difficult to understand, however we made this as clear as possible and did not use this method throughout so not to confuse the audience.

Picture 3: Shows out first person point of view shot which we used throughout our video. This was mainly inspired from the video “Smack My Bitch Up” which challenges the conventions of typical music videos as they are usually concentrated on the band singing, whereas by using this method it showed out band to individual and different.

Picture 4: Highlights out use of taboo subject matters, in this case smoking, cohering with Andrew Goodwins ideology of “Voyeurism”, introducing controversial mise en scene.

Picture 5: Shows the stereotype of the “bad girl” dancing, causing a scene and trying to capture the attention of everyone in the club.

Picture 6: Shows the stereotype of young people getting drunk, having a good time but generally causing trouble and inconvenience to others.

Picture 7: Shows the perspective of the “good girl” when offered a cigarette coughs, also offering alternative conventions as teenagers are generally seen as rebels who are into drugs and smoking etc.

Picture 8: the “dazzle effect” at the end of our music video is used to show how the teenagers night had come to an end in a blur of drunkenness. Also helping to cohere with the stereotype of young teenagers getting so drunk they can’t remember their night out.

For our ancillary tasks we created a diggi pack for a CD album. We decided to concentrate on the brand image of our band as being young and rebellious.

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Picture 1: This picture illustrates how the Libertines incorporated their patriotic brand image into their CD album along with the help of typical indie clothing. We also decided to use our patriotic brand image within out album cover.

Picture 2: Oasis shows how they followed the typical conventions of a CD album by showing a picture of the band. We also decided to use an image of our band which also follows the conventions of our chosen genre.

Picture 3: Illustrated how Arctic Monkeys have incorporated taboo subject matters in their CD album in this case cigarettes. We also used a similar idea as these taboo subject matters appeal to our genres target audience.

Picture 4: Shows how Hadouken have used a unique and unusual font to represent the individuality of their band. This influenced in choosing the font for our album cover which would also be different and unique in order to represent our bands uniqueness.

Above are the final covers for our Album.

Picture 1: This is the Front cover of our album, as you can see we have incorporated our bands logo, the Union Jack, which helps our band be recognised by its audience. “repetition and recognition leads to expectation and anticipation” (G.Burton 2000), meaning that the band are able to relate with our band through the image that they portray. In order to highlight our patriotic image further we grey scaled the image and used the brush tool to fill in the reds of the Union Jack, bacon etc, In order to highlight these patriotic colours.

Picture 2: Shows how we used taboo subject matters to appeal to our target audience, which went against the typical conventions of CD album covers. The use of the cigarette shows the bands brand image of rebellion and controversy. We also grey scaled this image leaving only the patriotic colour of blue once again. By using the smoke brush tool we were able to amplify the smoke from the cigarette. By sticking to this brand image of being rebellious we were able to entice our audience further, as Naomi Klein said “no logo states, corporations may manufacture the products, but what consumers buy are brands”.

Picture 3: Is a picture of the lyrics of our song. By using the posterize effect along with the chrome effect we were able to create an image which looked like the lyrics had been jotted down in note form, which added to the unique, quirky look of our band.

Picture 4: On the back page of our album we used an image to incorporate our bands songs. We used the colours red and blue alternatively to illustrate our patriotic brand image along with the image of the beer bottle to demonstrate the typical stereotype of young teenagers being rebellious which we used throughout out product.

However our music video does follow some of the characteristics of typical music video, suggested by Andrew Goodwin in “Dancing To Distraction” (2003) There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the lyrics, which are about being young and having fun and being illustrated in our video which is about a night out. The lyrics of the song talk about being 21 and still feeling like they are 16. Our music video portrays this feeling throughout as a group of teenagers are out on a night out, drinking and smoking. It was vital to use typical conventions in our video so that the audience are able to relate to the video, particularly young people, which our video was mainly aimed at.




What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Target Audience: By using demographic profiling we found our genre would appeal to both male and females between the age of 16 and 25 meaning it appeals to the scio-economic groups D and E meaning young people and the working class. The band is able to relate to this age group as the band members themselves are young and rebellious and are able to relate with the audience through their lyrics. Also by using psychographic profiling along with Young and Rubican’s characteristics, the band appeals to this young ”individual” socio-economic group as the “Torrents” brand image is different and individual.

I believe the target audience we choose is perfect as it is a large niche consuming audience which is growing in popularity and is the largest consumer of music. The indie genre is very popular with various types of sub genres such as electro indie. This audience, being the larger consumer of music, is most likely to relate to our video as the music appeals to them particularly. We maintained a brand image throughout in order to maintain out appeal to this audience particularly. They are the right audience for our music financially as independent labels run on small budgets so are able to gain maximum profit from their sales.

In order to gather audience feedback the whole class made questionnaires and we watched each groups final product, filling in their questionnaire. The class was then recorded as they answered the questions giving compliments on the videos and constructive criticism. On receiving our questionnaires from the class we were able to identify the positive and negatives of out video. To our success our alternative use of the “split screen” proved 100% popular with the audience, who all agreed the technique worked well and was a interesting narrative.

We did have some constructive criticism about our video, commenting and the dark use of lighting at the start of the sequence, which could have been improved on.

To attract our target audience we edited our footage, so that we used short fast paced clips in order to keep the attention of our audience, but made them long enough so that the audience could establish their understand of the sequence. We used the bar/gig setting well in order to relate to our audience and therefore create a relationship with their values and the video.

I believe that upon reading our audience feedback, that we gained a very positive response from them. I learnt that in order to relate to a target audience you have to follow the conventions of that genre, in our case indie, as much as possible if you want their attention. By choosing a relatable scenario, with a night out, we were able to appeal to a young person’s values and hobbies etc. However if the sequence was slow and for example, about a game of hockey, this target audience would not watch it as it would have no appeal to them.

Media Presentation

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4. Use of creative technologies.

Final Cut Express

This software was new to us at the beginning of the year and in order to learn how to use it we did a small tutorial, i believe that without we would not have been able to create i final product. I believe it has allowed me to develop skills in which we could use in developing our video, with many different tools which we were able to use in our final product, giving us plenty of ideas when it came to making our video. Although on first appearance, this software appeared to be complex, but after a bit of playing and experimenting, it proved much more simple than first thought. It was straight forward when uploading our music and our footage on to this software, with all the tools clearly labelled. We did encounter some problems when using this software, for example when completing the draft of our video we were unable to re-arrange our shots to where we wanted them, but soon discovered that we had not used the ripple delete. Also when creating the split screen effect, after using the scale tool and saving our work, in our next lesson the size of our original images had altered so we had to delete these edited shots and re do them on to the timeline. Apart from these minor problems, the split screen worked well and was successful in achieving our original idea.

For our ancillary tasks we used Photoshop and InDesign and although i had used this software last year my skills with these two programmes were not great. Being able to use this software this year has allowed me to enhance my skills when it comes to editing photos and inserting text on to them. These two programmes allowed us to make our ancillary tasks as authentic as possible and offered a variety of different tools which contributed to our ancillary tasks. When editing out photos i used a mac laptop, which was a new piece of technology to me, however without it we would not have been able to develop our CD album and magazine advert. The laptop itself was fairly straight forward to use but at times frustrating as i found it difficult to get to grips with the mouse pad, which i eventually replaced with a standard mouse. When capturing our images we used samsung cameras which were available to use in the department as well as DV cameras which we used to capture our footage, which was also available to us in the media department. These two pieces of equipment were very straight forward to use and we encountered no problems with this equipment.

We also used the website, dafont.com when finding a font to use in our ancillary tasks, this website was great, clearly laid out and easy to use. The website offered a variety of different fonts instead of using the ones available on the computer, we eventually found the perfect font four our ancillary tasks on this website.

In order to keep track of our progress we uploaded posts on to our blog on blogger.com, this was a great way in updating the progress of our task. It allowed the members of our group to express their opinions and show our research towards our tasks. We uploaded pictures and videos to show our planning and research. The site itself was straightforward to use, however at times uploading images and videos to our blog could take a long time which was frustrating at times. However apart from that, blogger was easy and straightforward to use.

On completion of our final video, we uploaded it to the website, youtube, in order to gain feedback on our final product. This process was simple and all we had to do was save the video and upload it straight to the site. We did encounter a few problems in uploading the video, which failed on a number of occasions, but eventually it worked.

I believe that all the software we used played a key part in making our product unique and individual. I discovered that i had learned much more of how to use this software and i feel my skills have dramatically developed from last year.









CONCLUSION



Overall i think our final product proved a huge success, we stuck to our plans in creating an indie genre music video, which appealed to a young audience. We used the split screen well in creating the “bad girl” “good girl” storyline and by choosing a real club for our setting created the authentic indie look to our video. We used our brand image of being young and rebellious throughout our ancillary tasks and music video. Our audience feedback showed that the video itself was a success to our target audience. There are some things we could have improved on such as making the sequence even more fast paced and making the “good girl” “bad girl” stereotype more clear, however most of the audience understood what our video was about. I really enjoyed creating the music video and couldn’t have choose a better group of people to do it with, we all worked together and contributed ideas which were used in the video and most of all we worked as a team. I feel i contributed well to the product and have enhance my skills well from last year. Upon watching the video i am proud in knowing a lot of hard work and effort paid off well.