Saturday, 23 January 2010
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Evaluation: How did you use new media technologies in the construction of research, planning and evaluation?
New Media technology was vital during all stages of production. Without it the task would have been near impossible.
Due to our group’s interest in the indie music, we decided to use a song with that genre in mind. We eventually decided to use a Maccabees track but with problems relating to copyright we needed to get permission. This is where new media technology was useful. We researched online whom we would need to contact (the head of technology for the band) and then emailed them. This was an easy method and we received a fast response. Whereas if we couldn’t email we would have had to write to them, and we wouldn’t have known who would be best to contact and so no response would have been guaranteed.
All of our work is documented via blog, which is more efficient as there is a great deal of increased storage. As proof of permission from the Maccabees I printscreeened the email, saved it as a picture and uploaded it onto my blog.
Now that that the permission was sorted we needed to research other Indie music videos to find out the common conventions of this genre. As Indie music has a niche market it was near impossible to conduct this research via television music channels. This is because due to it not being a common genre, music videos from the likes of Arctic Monkeys and The Mystery Jets are rarely if ever seen on music channels other than that of the NME music channel which is not a terrestrial channel. And so I researched them online on YouTube. This was better than television as it allowed a degree of audience control. I was able to choose when and what videos I wanted to watch. It allowed me to access old as well as new songs under the indie genre such as ‘Leave Before the Lights Come On’ which is several years old and so would not have been on television channels such as NME.
We also used itunes to find The Maccabees archive of music to listen to brief snippets of all their tracks to find out which was we should use for our music video. We decided not to use YouTube for this so as not to be influenced by the music video itself, just the music. We eventually decided on the track 'One Hand Holding', which wasn't released by the band as a single. And so after this we watched several music videos by the Maccabees such as 'Can Give It' and 'No Kind Words' just to get a general feel of the way in which there videos are presented. From watching their videos we learnt that many of their videos are narrative based, and so as this was already something we were considering it encouraged us further to use this format.
One member of our team uploaded the song onto her 3G phone and set it to all members of our team via bluetooth so that we could listen t the lyrics and brainstorm ideas we could incorporate in our narrative music video.
I wrote up my findings and used screen grabs from the video making my analysis more understandable. I then uploaded to slideshare and posted onto my blog. Using Slideshare was better than copying and pasting onto my blog as the document remained the same and I didn’t have to re-adjust the images. Uploading it onto my blog allowed me to share my findings with members of my group.
But new media technology was also important in the construction of our video. We needed photos as props/mis-en-scene in the video. We took photos on a 3G mobile phone and bluetoothed them to a computer to print them off. This method was quick, easy and meant that we could take photos as soon as we had finished other tasks. If we had not been able to do this then we would have had to make sure we brought all the correct cables to connect to the computer.
When we finished our video we decided to put it on YouTube. First we converted it to quicktime and then embedded it onto YouTube. This allowed globalisation as we could receive feedback from anyone, and so gained a wider audience than if we had held a screening for it. One girl commented that she’d love “British boys in her cupboard”. We also posted it as a response to a popular Maccabees track called 'Toothpaste Kisses' which enabled us to reach our target audience, that being young adults and Maccabees fans. By putting it onto YouTube we were able to receive constructive criticism to help us improve our music video. For example, some commented on the quality of the video, so we decided to convert it again onto quicktime but at full quality, this was a longer process but improved the quality of the video. Online feedback was more effective as only people who wanted to give feedback did, and so it was a better quality of feedback rather than if for example we had held a screening and handed out questionnaires, as from previous experience it shows that occasionally people are inclined to response somewhat halfheartedly to speed up the questioning process.
Our magazine advert was made through a website called Pinik, which helps to edit photographs. This was more efficient than using other software as we wanted a polaroid image effect on some of the images within the advert. The digipak was created through a piece of software Paintware Pro 8, this was useful as we wanted to use a 'sticky tape' effect which gave the impression of images being stuck on which related to parts of the music video. This may have been possible using other software but we considered this piece of software to be more effective.
Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media text products?
Music Video
Music videos under the indie genre generally fall under three categories: performance based, narrative with elements of performance, and narrative based. As our music video is narrative based it could be considered to conform to conventions associated with indie music. Bands such as Arctic Monkeys, in present times are most commonly known for having narrative based videos. One that we researched before making our music video was 'Leave Before the Lights Come On'. The Arctic Monkeys do not feature in this video. This is similar to our video as The Maccabees do not appear in any form within our video, other than through a poster on the wall. Narrative based videos are least common of the three categories and so we are in a sense developing the convention. Michael Gondry's music video 'Fell in Love With A Girl' by the indie-rock band The White Stripes is also a purely narrative/concept based video, not featuring a band, and so although i did not analyse this video in depth, by watching it i was (to an extent)
inspired by it.
inspired by it.
The narrative to our video initially appears to be a typical boy-girl love story. This conforms to ideas and themes within indie music as commonly the story-line is based on a love story with a problem and a happy resolution at the end. They generally incorporate Todorov's theory of there being five stages of a narrative. However, our music video develops this idea as we corrupt it by having the five stages being beneficial to the girl, but not an ordinary or even moral outcome. We also challenged the idea of a perfect love story to reveal themes of obsession and trying to capture ideal 'perfection'. We incorporated the post modernist view of challenging stereotypes. But, even with this we were 'inspired' to an extent by The Mystery Jets challenging the convention of a love story with their music video 'Half In Love With Elizabeth'. In their music video the male protagonist has a secret desire to be with the Queen Elizabeth, but still cares for his girlfriend. In our music video the girl challenges stereotypes by her child-like and obsessive nature as well as her actions, such as locking the boys in her wardrobe.
We challenged conventions with our cutting rhythm in relation to indie music but not music videos in general. Narrative indie music videos often appear almost film-like and so the cutting pace does not normally relate to the music. 'Leave Before the Lights Come On' by Arctic Monkeys is an example of this. However our music video cuts in relation to the music and so we challenge conventions of narrative indie music videos, but in the wider context narrative videos of other genres often do relate to the pace of the music such as pop artist Gwen Stefani's 'Cool'.
We also challenged conventions through the use of costume. Males' attire in indie music videos stereotypically appear somewhat disheveled and unkept, with examples being bands such as Kings of Leon, and The Kaiser Chiefs. However we decided to dress our male protagonist in shirts and scarfs to appear more grown up to highlight the great contrast between his mature state and her childish nature. But we also did it to further stress his changing appearance as the relationship progresses.
We decided to incorporate aspects of Goodwin's theory by having a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. During the music video the dolls eyes are shown in a close up whilst the music goes "the eyes, the eyes".
Magazine Advert
Our magazine advert generally conformed to conventions associated with indie advertisements. The font used for the band name was easy to read and situated at the top of the advert. This is common in not only adverts promoting Indie music but all types, The Killers advert for there live greatest hits album also does this as well as Jamie Cullum's 'The Pursuit' album. The album title being situated under the band name is also common, as shown in The Killers live greatest hits album. The idea of 'selling the artist' can be quite common within the indie genre with bands such as Razorlight doing so in the past, but this appears to be more bands under the sub-genre pop-rock. Many Indie bands do not have images of themselves on their adverts and so by us having two, small images on our advert of the band, but not being the main images we are in a sense developing the convention.
Digipak
Again, similarly to magazine adverts, digipaks either 'sell' the artist/band or don't by having obscure images sometimes relating to the album, but often not. Bands such as Twisted Wheel and the Verve's 'Urban Hymns' have images of themselves on their album. Our digipak does not 'sell' the artist as there are no images of the band on it. The back panel consists of just the track list. This highlights the importance of the music as there are no distractions just the name of the tracks. This is similar to Jack Penate's album 'Matinee' which although he appears on the digipak, he does not appear on the back where the track list is, there is no other distracting information on the back, showing that it is just about the music. Many bands under the indie genre don't have images of themselves on their digipaks/CD covers and so we are conforming to conventions of indie music. Bands such as Friendly Fires with there album of the same name and Foal's 'Antidotes'.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Final Digipak (6 sides)
After the first draft of our digipak we decided to use a 6 sided format instead of a 4 sided one.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Digipak front, back and inside images
We decided to use a panoramic image for our front and back of our digipak. The right hand side (of the bottom image) will be the front and will include the name of the band 'The Maccabees' as well as the album name 'Wall of Arms' in red. The back will include a white poster that appears to be stuck on the wall with the titles of the tracks included on the album.
The first image will be the inside of the digipak. The left hand side will consist of the lyrics of the chorus of a Maccabees song, whilst the right of the image is where the cd would be positioned.
The first image will be the inside of the digipak. The left hand side will consist of the lyrics of the chorus of a Maccabees song, whilst the right of the image is where the cd would be positioned.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Florence and the Machine Digipak Analysis
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Final Magazine Advert
We decided to change the poster in the background from the original because we felt that it previously didn't look as professional as we had desired. As this poster is for the album, we didn't want it to appear to just be promoting the single and so we including two images of the band perfoming that a member of our team had personally taken. But, we wanted a degree of intertexuality within our auxillary pieces so audiences could recognise all three pieces relating to one another and so realise that they are all in designed to promote The Maccabees. And so we decided to incorporate our motif from the music video, (that being the doll) onto the poster as well as including the same actress, a member of our team.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Saturday, 2 January 2010
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