1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The song we chose was called “The B.P.C.” by a punk-ska band called The Filaments. When researching into the song and artist it was clear to understand that their genre features heavily on the idea of rebellion, the lyrics of the song were based upon the band’s lives growing up in a gang called “The B.P.C.” where the lyrics talk about partying hard, drinking and getting into fights. The rebellious attitude of the song helped inspire us with different ideas about how the video should look, one side of our ideas was to stick with the punk attitude and style that the band had already created, the other side was to challenge the convention by adding a humorous side to the video, this humorous side was not intended to be completely removed from the punk genre but to show rebellion in a more fun way that could help establish the video into a larger audience. By thinking up ideas such as running through the town wearing man thongs we were indirectly proving a point of rebellion that the band also make with these lyrics from the song “have a laugh that’s what it’s all about.” We wanted to show in our video that we could have fun without caring what anyone else thought, a lot like the band.
Our video carried many characteristics of a conventional music video used in Goodwin’s theory. Attaching music to visuals came about when first listening through the song, we found a large part of the song was instrumental, we noticed for this part we would have to create video that amplified the instrumental, we did this by using visuals such as smashing windows for beats in the trumpet breakdown of the song. The fast pace and energy of the song also meant our video had to match that by making lots of different shots that lasted for a small amount of time.
The lyrics and genre of the song inspired us with many ideas that we embedded into our video, many quotes such as “Nothing could be better than when I'm drinking with my friends.” Can be visualized were some of members in the video carry beers whilst performing, other ideas for our location came from lyrics such as “Hanging out on street corners” this helped us choose our locations for shots, which were very urban run down areas found on the council estates. We chose these as we thought they fitted in with “the B.P.C.” gang and they were the sort of places where they might hang out.
When “selling the artist” from Goodwin’s analysis, I believe our video did this very well. There are many close up shots of the performers individually and as a group. As the song was based upon the band in a gang it was easy to recreate this sense of brotherhood and friendship in many of our shots where we’re having fun, this type of perception for the audience can be seen in many artist groups such as “Blink 182” where they are seen laughing and having fun as friends.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When producing ideas for the ancillary texts we wanted them to reflect the genre characteristics from our music video, continuing our main themes of humor and punk rebellion. We decided to do photography based products that could easily convert our existing genre onto the ancillary texts.
Our main idea for the magazine advert was to create an intertextual reference to the famous “rolling stone” magazine cover that featured John Lennon curled up in the nude against his girlfriend Yoko Ono, making reference to our video by using the distinctive man thong and gold mask props. By doing this imitation we wanted to create the same unconventional, shock factor that made the original so famous. The way we are exposed in the magazine cover shows a way of rebellion by the fact that we don’t really care what people think, following the idea from the song.
Our DVD digipak cover followed a grittier punk feel. The front cover features a picture of hands holding up a camera phone and taking a photo of the two band members in the gold mask and thong outfits who are posing. We got this idea from the people we saw when we were filming who got out their phones and took photos to memorize the unique occasion, for me this shows our product is interesting and entertains. On the back of the DVD there is a fair amount of screens from our video, made into Polaroid type photos and scattered onto a dirty cement floor, the floor was to show the raw grittiness of the streets and the feel that we were trying to convey for the digipak.
Overall the DVD digipak shows a street, punk side that represents the song and band, the magazine cover shows a humorous individual side that represents our own input on challenging the convention and when combining these two sides it fits in with the of our final music video characteristics.
3.What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our first audience feedback came from our rough cut, originally we had many good shots but not enough to keep up with the tempo of the music, this issue came across strongly from the audience and we were already thinking of new ideas and locations to help create a faster pace to match the energy of the song. After this feedback we identified the weaker points of our video and made plans to change them with something more exciting and effective to what our genre is. The performance side of our video was mainly in need of re-shooting as some parts that had bad lip-syncing degraded the feel of the video by making it look like we weren’t the actual artists. We used a wider variety of locations afterwards to help keep the video interesting throughout. What people liked about our rough-cut was the amount of funny, random shots we had, a problem with this though is while some shots worked well, others where seen as too random and didn’t embed well with the rest of the video. We gathered more unplanned footage by filming in between intentional shots, from this we could use small clips from the unplanned footage to cover gaps in the video, we also used them to work with the loud beats in the instrumental and parts of the chorus. The random footage that we got worked extremely well with the image of the band we tried to create, as it shows them in a genuine form of messing around and having fun.
Positive feedback from the audience also helped us re create more of what people liked about it, people liked the fact that we dared to do some of the things they wouldn’t such as running through town in man thongs using this feedback it helped us create our ancillary texts, which in both feature the man thong outfits. The feedback that was given helped us to look at the weaker sides and positive sides and overall improve the video by a large amount for the final product.
4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We relied on many media technologies throughout the creation our music video.
During the planning we used a variety of different web pages to learn about the genre of ska punk and the band we had chosen, the learning of the genre was the primary stage in which we built our ideas and themes on. Our ideas proceeded with humour and rebellion in which we used YouTube.com to draw inspiration from home made jack ass stunts and the character MC Devvo along with other funny things that we could re create within our music video. Using YouTube.com we could also analyse other punk bands music videos, this is where we found the Blink 182 video “What’s my age again?” which features them running through town naked causing havoc, the image the band portrayed themselves as was a key point in our inspiration and the feel we tried to give to our video.
When researching for our ancillary texts we first started by using web pages and like amazon.com to look at professional level media products, which is how we came across key aspects of our inspiration such as the John Lennon and Yoko Ono photo, we also looked at various other artist’s music DVD’s to learn what kind of promotions and special features that are put to use on the DVD covers, when doing so we were able to create a convincing expert level cover. Another use for the internet was our planning blog that we kept to record all sorts of information that was relevant to our video through the planning stages, this helped us kept track of our ideas and control all our focus into one area. The Internet played a key role in the inspiration and planning throughout our objective, which I believe had the biggest effect out of all new media technologies on our music video.
For editing our footage we used the software Final Cut Express, this program offers the usability and depth that was perfect for creating our music video all the way from the raw footage to the final product, for this reason I can see why Final Cut Express is used at a professional industry level. The organisation method of the software is my favourite aspect; with the two video displays and timeline we found it an extremely efficient way of editing.
Our ancillary products were created using Adobe Photoshop, although a deep and time consuming product to master we found it was worth the effort to create our professional looking products, particularly the range of fonts and texts helped us to create a great looking format that really reflected the unique look we were going for. By using these technologies I believe we have accomplished what we set out to do and I am pleased with the final products.
Gareth - Evaluation
Media Evaluation
Our chosen song by the filaments falls into ‘Ska Punk’, which is a genre of music which generally uses music video that challenges many conventions. Seeing as this would be hard to create a different feel for this kind of song, we decided to stick to the ‘Ska Punk’ conventions throughout our video, which portrayed rebellious teens, which have a strong bond together, but no care for others. But in doing this, we clearly have made our music video go against conventional videos, and how most products attempt to be seen, which means are target audience will be niche.
You can see from our video just our actions aren’t conventional for normal music videos, but i feel it fits perfectly with the characteristics of ‘Ska Punk’. We tried to stick to this firstly in image, and secondly in persona, which I feel again we have manage to successfully portray. In addition to breaking and following these conventions, we also tried to develop them when inputting our own touch of humour into the video, generally Ska Punk is controversial, but taken seriously by the artists, which is where we thought we could add our own twist and work on the rebellious group theme. We thought portraying the group as inseparable would be better for the viewer as this would be easier to relate to, and bring a more humorous side to the group, and again i feel we have done this well, without fading too far off the original set characteristics of Ska Punk.
Other than the video, we thought it would work best in trying to stick to Conventions when coming to the layout of the Magazine and DVD Covers. But the images used are anything but conventional, we’ve managed again to put out own feel the them, which I believe that you can relate to and feel throughout all 3 of the ancillary products, continuing our humour/group bond throughout. You can see this when it comes to the magazine cover, we decided to rein act the famous photo of ‘Yoko Ono + John Lennon’, which we have done without mocking the photo, but bringing our feel of humour to the product.
I feel the combination works great. We’ve managed to successfully portray the Ska Punk conventions, with our own twist of developing this with humour, throughout the video, and the continued onto the magazine and DVD with our own touches, like the copy of ‘John Lennon + Yoko Ono’ which brings a real effect when looking at our pieces, along with continuity. I really like our design on the DVD we have created, we had many ideas at first, but eventually fell upon an idea of using a photo within a photo. You can see from the product, we firstly took a shot of Rojiar holding a camera phone, with our two figures in the background, we then removed the phone, and took the exact same shot. This ment when we came to editing, using photoshop we could apply the second image, onto the first image, which we did in place of the Camera Phones screen. The bonus of doing it this way is it brings better clarity to the picture, along with the wanted fading effects in the background, which we all think works really well. Ontop of this we thought it would be nice to get snaphots of out-takes, or unseen footage we had we came from either footage we planned to use, or luckily stumbled upon. I think this is a great back for our DVD, seeing as most of the photos are from extra un-used footage, it shows how much we really put in this, and again enforces the bond we have as a group.
Gladly we’ve had very little negative feedback, most people seemed to appreciate the work we have put into the three products and feel the bond throughout. The main correlation with our feedback was to do with our editing to the beat, and how it brings our video together, if you look throughout, using final cut we have manage to cut scene on specific beats, or use the footage and actions in it to flow with the song. In addition most agreed that we have followed the Ska Punk conventions successfully, for example we show the rebellious side when spray painting, or breaking the window (we had permission to do), not only this but our strong bond and image that we’re in it together, we can be brought out in the group scenes when lip syncing to ‘the BPC’. Others seemed to feel we have input this into our products well.
The main negative comment to our video was to do with the lip syncing. As you can see ‘B.P.C’ is an upbeat song, which from our perspective made it hard to follow, you can see from the rough cut that we have edited many scenes of our lip syncing, to try to keep the pace to our video which i feel we have transformed well, but in addition to this we’ve pulled some attention away from this by creating so many short other shots that stop you waiting for the next, and keep the viewer watching and waiting for the humorous side of the group, which again pulls the attention away from the lip syncing.
Our main use would have been the Apple Computers and the multiple useful applications that come with them, like Photoshop and Final Cut. Both of these have proved useful when coming to the editing side of out Magazine and DVD. We came across many problems during these processes, which both Final Cut and Photoshop combined were used to sort, like the layering effects for both products, you can easily select and move specific things around the two with no hassle. Again with Final Cut, the ability to cut and choose footage helped significantly, for example we would have bulk scenes of 5-15minutes, and this allowed us to use a tool to cut and drag the wanted footage down onto the sequence. Secondly there’s the internet, where we gained access to our blog, which in turn helped us manage to keep on top of deadline set, and stick to our main targets without fading off course.
In conclusion, I am overall really happy with our 3 products and wouldn’t change a thing about them, we have managed to successfully portray the image wanted throughout, which I personally didn’t think would have been possible at the beginning, due to our resources. Along with this I didn’t think we could perform the multiple stunts, for example the naked run, which was just a fantasy in my eyes. I feel we have also stuck well to our original plans, only adding ideas, rather than swaying off from our ultimate goal, which I believe to have had an impact on the final result showing are persistence and belief in what we wanted from our final product. Moreover we have really shown with our commitment and dedication to our products, mainly our Music Video, obviously by some of the stunts we performed like jumping into the river, or running half naked through the high street, we have gone to large lengths to get our footage, and ultimately, it’s paid off.
Our chosen song by the filaments falls into ‘Ska Punk’, which is a genre of music which generally uses music video that challenges many conventions. Seeing as this would be hard to create a different feel for this kind of song, we decided to stick to the ‘Ska Punk’ conventions throughout our video, which portrayed rebellious teens, which have a strong bond together, but no care for others. But in doing this, we clearly have made our music video go against conventional videos, and how most products attempt to be seen, which means are target audience will be niche.
You can see from our video just our actions aren’t conventional for normal music videos, but i feel it fits perfectly with the characteristics of ‘Ska Punk’. We tried to stick to this firstly in image, and secondly in persona, which I feel again we have manage to successfully portray. In addition to breaking and following these conventions, we also tried to develop them when inputting our own touch of humour into the video, generally Ska Punk is controversial, but taken seriously by the artists, which is where we thought we could add our own twist and work on the rebellious group theme. We thought portraying the group as inseparable would be better for the viewer as this would be easier to relate to, and bring a more humorous side to the group, and again i feel we have done this well, without fading too far off the original set characteristics of Ska Punk.
Other than the video, we thought it would work best in trying to stick to Conventions when coming to the layout of the Magazine and DVD Covers. But the images used are anything but conventional, we’ve managed again to put out own feel the them, which I believe that you can relate to and feel throughout all 3 of the ancillary products, continuing our humour/group bond throughout. You can see this when it comes to the magazine cover, we decided to rein act the famous photo of ‘Yoko Ono + John Lennon’, which we have done without mocking the photo, but bringing our feel of humour to the product.
I feel the combination works great. We’ve managed to successfully portray the Ska Punk conventions, with our own twist of developing this with humour, throughout the video, and the continued onto the magazine and DVD with our own touches, like the copy of ‘John Lennon + Yoko Ono’ which brings a real effect when looking at our pieces, along with continuity. I really like our design on the DVD we have created, we had many ideas at first, but eventually fell upon an idea of using a photo within a photo. You can see from the product, we firstly took a shot of Rojiar holding a camera phone, with our two figures in the background, we then removed the phone, and took the exact same shot. This ment when we came to editing, using photoshop we could apply the second image, onto the first image, which we did in place of the Camera Phones screen. The bonus of doing it this way is it brings better clarity to the picture, along with the wanted fading effects in the background, which we all think works really well. Ontop of this we thought it would be nice to get snaphots of out-takes, or unseen footage we had we came from either footage we planned to use, or luckily stumbled upon. I think this is a great back for our DVD, seeing as most of the photos are from extra un-used footage, it shows how much we really put in this, and again enforces the bond we have as a group.
Gladly we’ve had very little negative feedback, most people seemed to appreciate the work we have put into the three products and feel the bond throughout. The main correlation with our feedback was to do with our editing to the beat, and how it brings our video together, if you look throughout, using final cut we have manage to cut scene on specific beats, or use the footage and actions in it to flow with the song. In addition most agreed that we have followed the Ska Punk conventions successfully, for example we show the rebellious side when spray painting, or breaking the window (we had permission to do), not only this but our strong bond and image that we’re in it together, we can be brought out in the group scenes when lip syncing to ‘the BPC’. Others seemed to feel we have input this into our products well.
The main negative comment to our video was to do with the lip syncing. As you can see ‘B.P.C’ is an upbeat song, which from our perspective made it hard to follow, you can see from the rough cut that we have edited many scenes of our lip syncing, to try to keep the pace to our video which i feel we have transformed well, but in addition to this we’ve pulled some attention away from this by creating so many short other shots that stop you waiting for the next, and keep the viewer watching and waiting for the humorous side of the group, which again pulls the attention away from the lip syncing.
Our main use would have been the Apple Computers and the multiple useful applications that come with them, like Photoshop and Final Cut. Both of these have proved useful when coming to the editing side of out Magazine and DVD. We came across many problems during these processes, which both Final Cut and Photoshop combined were used to sort, like the layering effects for both products, you can easily select and move specific things around the two with no hassle. Again with Final Cut, the ability to cut and choose footage helped significantly, for example we would have bulk scenes of 5-15minutes, and this allowed us to use a tool to cut and drag the wanted footage down onto the sequence. Secondly there’s the internet, where we gained access to our blog, which in turn helped us manage to keep on top of deadline set, and stick to our main targets without fading off course.
In conclusion, I am overall really happy with our 3 products and wouldn’t change a thing about them, we have managed to successfully portray the image wanted throughout, which I personally didn’t think would have been possible at the beginning, due to our resources. Along with this I didn’t think we could perform the multiple stunts, for example the naked run, which was just a fantasy in my eyes. I feel we have also stuck well to our original plans, only adding ideas, rather than swaying off from our ultimate goal, which I believe to have had an impact on the final result showing are persistence and belief in what we wanted from our final product. Moreover we have really shown with our commitment and dedication to our products, mainly our Music Video, obviously by some of the stunts we performed like jumping into the river, or running half naked through the high street, we have gone to large lengths to get our footage, and ultimately, it’s paid off.
Liam Croft-Evaluation
1. Our song for Media was what is classed at typical Punk-Ska music which drew us to the song in the first place. The song is a fast paced, bouncy fun song that reflects on the childhood of the band and the crew they used to be a part of, the B.P.C. With this in mind we knew our video had to match the songs style and therefore used a lot of fast paced shots with visuals that corresponded to the lyrics of the song to help the video and the track compliment each other and really show we’ve thought about way they connect with each other. We wanted to make our video unique and challenge the conventions of what you’d normally find in a video. The typical punk attitude is care-free, have a good time, do what you feel like doing state of mind, and with the song demonstrating this our visuals had to also show that we didn’t care we people thought of us, we wanted to go out with our mates, have a good time, and as long as we were having fun, didn’t care what people thought of us. Our main inspiration was the video ‘What’s my age again’ by Blink 182 where they run down the street naked in a casual, careless manner as well as searching for old punk bands videos and The Filaments current videos and other tracks by them, this way we could get a feel for what kind of work they produce and we could learn more about the band. However this song was quite a medium paced and slow video compared to our song by the Filaments. So we again started searching YouTube for more inspiration, and started to come across home made jackass and pranks. These kind of videos mixed with the naked run of Blink 182 would give us enough footage to match the pace of the song and help show what the song was talking about. The lyrics to the song mentioned all the stupid stuff they did when they were younger and the activities they got up too to pass time, so with inspiration such as pranks and jackass we could relate to these lyrics.. We planned locations and costumes based on the online hit ‘Devvo’ who is seen as a grubby, chavy, council estate prowling yob, so we search for places that bands wouldn’t normally shoot in. Bands often want to show the glamorous style of their lives where as we wanted to show that this band was different, that we could have fun making due with what we had, therefore all of our locations were places we came across with people carrying on with their normal lives and leaving everything as natural as we found it. This again would help relate lyrics to visuals. Conventions of punk are usually a lot more grown up and wild than our video portrays, but this was our intentions to do childish things and just record us genuinely being us because we knew that the more natural the footage looked, the more people could relate to the song. We didn’t just match lyrics to visuals however. We also have a number of shots where music matches the visuals, for example in the instrumental breakdown there are a number of obvious, louder beats where we put footage that has something happening on the same point of the loud beat as well as using other beats and lyrics to switch to another shot that help carry the pace of the song. Finally our performance wasn’t similar to other music videos with performance in it as we did all of our lip syncing directly into the camera at a variety of locations that we shot other footage at. The way we switched between performance and our footage of general happenings helped so that footage didn’t drag on. The naked run carries on for the entire video however all together there is about 30 seconds of it on screen because of the way we wanted to keep the pace up and not bore our audience. We also looked at The Filaments current album covers for our research to look at how they attracted their audience as well as what kind of image they liked to show themselves as and how much what was on the cover related to their tracks and videos.
2. We began making our digipak and magazine advert with the intention of putting something in it that relates to our video and shows something that makes the audience notice just from that that we had a different, unique sounding song with a video to match. Our video and track showed the main conventions of punk but mixed in with a lot of fun, childish behavior, so we thought that with these two products to make we should extract one side to each one. The magazine advert showing our fun side of the video and the digipak cover showing the punk side of it, which then come together to create our music video with feel we wanted it to have. Our magazine cover was based on Annie Lebovitz’s famous Rolling Stone cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono which was taken to show the relationship of the couple, with John Lennon naked clinging on to Yoko. When people see this image the get a lot of emotion come over them as it was taken just 5 hour before John was murdered, however if you switch the role of John and Yoko to us in man thongs and golden masks, you get the same intriguing feels across you but in a much more enjoyable way. It shows that we’re the band that dare to do, that want to make people smile. Our digipak was then focused on showing the punk side of the video. We took an original photo of us in the thongs and hockey masks out on the street however blurred it and put a more focused image on to the screen of a camera phone that was in front of us and the camera. This way it showed that people thought we might be interesting, that people want to see us again by the fact they’re taking photographs. On the back of the cover was a variety of screen shots that we thought weren’t worthy of putting in the video however did show the amount of different locations, costumes and ideas we had to represent to video we intended to make. The images are put into Polaroid form then scattered across a screen shot of a dirty cement floor to show the griminess and low-life feel we wanted the audience to have come across them. We wanted to use shock factor mainly so that the image we produced stuck in the head of the audience and so that when they saw that image, they’d remember our unique video and remember what we were all about. With these two products advertising the video they catch the eye of the viewer and make them want to see more of it, which the actual video gives plenty of.
3. From our rough cut audience feedback we found that our product didn’t actually match the intensions we had for our video. We managed to get good shots however a lot of people said that the pace of the song was much higher than pace of the video. We knew a lot of our shots dragged on and towards the rough cut deadline we began filming in locations not suited to the punk genre and shots that didn’t follow suit of any of our other footage. So from this feedback we gathered discussed together the shots we knew were too long and the shots that didn’t match our intended genre and replace them with something that was a lot better than what we had. Our main problem was the performance side of our video. The song itself is more rapping than singing so it was fairly difficult to get lip syncing in time with the track and the way we shot it with angles and backgrounds was poor compared to what we knew we could do. So we went back out and carefully chose the location and outfit for the 3 sections of performance we needed to improve. We also changed the angle a lot and tried to keep it varied throughout the entire video, so after receiving the feedback we began using low shots, mid shots, panning shots and close ups for the performance which ended up looking really good and the fact there was variety helped to keep the same interesting feel throughout the song. Another negative comment we received was that some of the video was good, random, feel-good footage that we wanted, however that dies out in parts bringing the pace and feeling down. So we thought that if they wanted random footage, instead of planning and filming shots, we would plan shots, but keep recording footage during the time we weren’t shooting an intentional shot. This way we had a lot of footage that wasn’t intended and that was just us genuinely doing stuff when looking for a new location or moving to the next shot. We had a lot of footage that we knew we couldn’t use however we did have a lot that was naturally us messing around as well as shots that could be used during the instrumental to fit with beats or to fit with shouts and lyrics. However we also received plenty of positive feedback from our group, a lot of it complementing the video in ways we intended it to be complimented. People said they’d never have the guts to do what we did, or never $thought they video could work as well as we’ve made it. Another compliment we received was the way people noticed the music fitting the visuals throughout the song. This kind of feedback helped us a lot because we knew what people liked and what people didn’t like, therefore we could go back out onto the streets and film more and more to please our audience as well as create something that we were happy with.
4. When making our products we relied a lot of new media technologies to help us through it. Our main source of inspiration was the internet and particularly YouTube. With a website made for posting videos about anything and everything there was no end really to finding inspiration for our video. We could use this to search music videos, to see how general and more famous punk bands like to portray their image with their video. We could also search for the pranks and stunts that we wanted to combine into our video and look at what worked well on camera and what didn’t. We also used Google and Amazon a lot when researching our digipak and magazine advert. We wanted to create the same unique feeling that our video did therefore we had to look at existing products and saw how they much they related to the video and how much they promoted the band and what the band represents. We mainly looked at albums and DVD covers by the likes of The Clash, The Ramones, The Madness and The Sex Pistols to get the idea of what we wanted on ours, as well as looking at more famous and modern covers to take the best bits and cram them all onto our digipak cover. For our magazine advert we came across a website with all of the most controversial covers of all time and the John and Yoko image really stuck out to us. If it wasn’t for the internet we’d never of had anything to inspire us to create the video. We also used the internet to blog our work and keep a diary of what’s happening and what needs to happen. With this at our hands we could really plan and develop ideas without forgetting any important information. We also used Final Cut Express to edit our entire video. This program helped a lot by the fact it was easy to find what you were looking for, the controls weren’t too complex, you could manage your clips and audio really well and pin point it down to exactly how we wanted it to be inch by inch. We filmed across 3 days and by the end of it our footage was all over the place, with no structure and different clips having tiny fragments of clips that we needed to use in our video, but with the easily manageable way FCE is set out we could locate clips and structure our footage in order too cut down the time we waste looking for the clips. The final main technology we used was Adobe Photoshop to create our digipak and magazine advert. Photoshop is a bit more complex and cramped up than any other media technologies we used however it was worth the effort because we could manipulate images a lot and change what would be an ordinary photo into Polaroid form which is what we did with our. Without these kinds of tools our final products wouldn’t have had the effect we intended them too have and we were lucky that we were given such technologies to create our final products with.
2. We began making our digipak and magazine advert with the intention of putting something in it that relates to our video and shows something that makes the audience notice just from that that we had a different, unique sounding song with a video to match. Our video and track showed the main conventions of punk but mixed in with a lot of fun, childish behavior, so we thought that with these two products to make we should extract one side to each one. The magazine advert showing our fun side of the video and the digipak cover showing the punk side of it, which then come together to create our music video with feel we wanted it to have. Our magazine cover was based on Annie Lebovitz’s famous Rolling Stone cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono which was taken to show the relationship of the couple, with John Lennon naked clinging on to Yoko. When people see this image the get a lot of emotion come over them as it was taken just 5 hour before John was murdered, however if you switch the role of John and Yoko to us in man thongs and golden masks, you get the same intriguing feels across you but in a much more enjoyable way. It shows that we’re the band that dare to do, that want to make people smile. Our digipak was then focused on showing the punk side of the video. We took an original photo of us in the thongs and hockey masks out on the street however blurred it and put a more focused image on to the screen of a camera phone that was in front of us and the camera. This way it showed that people thought we might be interesting, that people want to see us again by the fact they’re taking photographs. On the back of the cover was a variety of screen shots that we thought weren’t worthy of putting in the video however did show the amount of different locations, costumes and ideas we had to represent to video we intended to make. The images are put into Polaroid form then scattered across a screen shot of a dirty cement floor to show the griminess and low-life feel we wanted the audience to have come across them. We wanted to use shock factor mainly so that the image we produced stuck in the head of the audience and so that when they saw that image, they’d remember our unique video and remember what we were all about. With these two products advertising the video they catch the eye of the viewer and make them want to see more of it, which the actual video gives plenty of.
3. From our rough cut audience feedback we found that our product didn’t actually match the intensions we had for our video. We managed to get good shots however a lot of people said that the pace of the song was much higher than pace of the video. We knew a lot of our shots dragged on and towards the rough cut deadline we began filming in locations not suited to the punk genre and shots that didn’t follow suit of any of our other footage. So from this feedback we gathered discussed together the shots we knew were too long and the shots that didn’t match our intended genre and replace them with something that was a lot better than what we had. Our main problem was the performance side of our video. The song itself is more rapping than singing so it was fairly difficult to get lip syncing in time with the track and the way we shot it with angles and backgrounds was poor compared to what we knew we could do. So we went back out and carefully chose the location and outfit for the 3 sections of performance we needed to improve. We also changed the angle a lot and tried to keep it varied throughout the entire video, so after receiving the feedback we began using low shots, mid shots, panning shots and close ups for the performance which ended up looking really good and the fact there was variety helped to keep the same interesting feel throughout the song. Another negative comment we received was that some of the video was good, random, feel-good footage that we wanted, however that dies out in parts bringing the pace and feeling down. So we thought that if they wanted random footage, instead of planning and filming shots, we would plan shots, but keep recording footage during the time we weren’t shooting an intentional shot. This way we had a lot of footage that wasn’t intended and that was just us genuinely doing stuff when looking for a new location or moving to the next shot. We had a lot of footage that we knew we couldn’t use however we did have a lot that was naturally us messing around as well as shots that could be used during the instrumental to fit with beats or to fit with shouts and lyrics. However we also received plenty of positive feedback from our group, a lot of it complementing the video in ways we intended it to be complimented. People said they’d never have the guts to do what we did, or never $thought they video could work as well as we’ve made it. Another compliment we received was the way people noticed the music fitting the visuals throughout the song. This kind of feedback helped us a lot because we knew what people liked and what people didn’t like, therefore we could go back out onto the streets and film more and more to please our audience as well as create something that we were happy with.
4. When making our products we relied a lot of new media technologies to help us through it. Our main source of inspiration was the internet and particularly YouTube. With a website made for posting videos about anything and everything there was no end really to finding inspiration for our video. We could use this to search music videos, to see how general and more famous punk bands like to portray their image with their video. We could also search for the pranks and stunts that we wanted to combine into our video and look at what worked well on camera and what didn’t. We also used Google and Amazon a lot when researching our digipak and magazine advert. We wanted to create the same unique feeling that our video did therefore we had to look at existing products and saw how they much they related to the video and how much they promoted the band and what the band represents. We mainly looked at albums and DVD covers by the likes of The Clash, The Ramones, The Madness and The Sex Pistols to get the idea of what we wanted on ours, as well as looking at more famous and modern covers to take the best bits and cram them all onto our digipak cover. For our magazine advert we came across a website with all of the most controversial covers of all time and the John and Yoko image really stuck out to us. If it wasn’t for the internet we’d never of had anything to inspire us to create the video. We also used the internet to blog our work and keep a diary of what’s happening and what needs to happen. With this at our hands we could really plan and develop ideas without forgetting any important information. We also used Final Cut Express to edit our entire video. This program helped a lot by the fact it was easy to find what you were looking for, the controls weren’t too complex, you could manage your clips and audio really well and pin point it down to exactly how we wanted it to be inch by inch. We filmed across 3 days and by the end of it our footage was all over the place, with no structure and different clips having tiny fragments of clips that we needed to use in our video, but with the easily manageable way FCE is set out we could locate clips and structure our footage in order too cut down the time we waste looking for the clips. The final main technology we used was Adobe Photoshop to create our digipak and magazine advert. Photoshop is a bit more complex and cramped up than any other media technologies we used however it was worth the effort because we could manipulate images a lot and change what would be an ordinary photo into Polaroid form which is what we did with our. Without these kinds of tools our final products wouldn’t have had the effect we intended them too have and we were lucky that we were given such technologies to create our final products with.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Evaluation
When making our music video we felt a need to be original but also conform to the conventions of real media products. Our idea was to present a ska/punk band of three boys causing trouble and having an enjoyable time on the way. They got up to many activities in the music video, this followed Goodwin's point of following the genre characteristics; ska/punk bands are often rebellious people, so we tried to portray the actors in this way as much as we could. The actors did this by giving out a strong energy to live up to the standards of the upbeat music. Dancing, pranking people and acting immature. For example there is a scene of two of the actors playing in a children's park. More ways we followed the genre characteristics was by filming in appropriate locations; jumping into the river cam, garages surrounded by graffiti and green areas for the ball activities. All the filming locations proved to be successful as they were easy to assess and related to our theme. Further following Goodwin's points we included close up's of the artists to meet the needs to the record label. The lyrics and the visuals linked when the artist's are shown in a split screen with 'B.P.C' written on their stomachs. A relationship with the music and the visuals is also present when hitting the fruit with the bat; the fruit was hit on a beat.
We were inspired by popular internet personality, 'MC Devvo' - a satirical fictional character. He frequently uses profanity and is generally unpleasant and confrontational to people. We touched on this idea and found his work to be a good starting point, based on the humour content. We also followed the use of real media products by watching Blink 182's video 'What's my age again'. Using the three male characters was present in both our music videos.
As well as following some conventions we also developed our ideas by pushing the boundaries; the running scene was hard to film as we didn't want to attract too much attention from the public, just enough for the audience to notice that the characters are shocking the public, not to get into trouble. We raised the rating to an '18' certificate as some of the language and acting would not be suitable for younger audiences. After all the target audience we were aiming at was males in their early 20's, we wanted to appeal to an audience that would find this sort of humour amusing.
A combination of three products were used to create our final media coursework; the Digipak, the magazine cover and the music video. They all had to be combined together. To do this we made sure the humorous theme from our music video, e.g. running in public in man thongs, running into each other with inflatable balls and dancing with a popular Cambridge milk shake character was included. The humour we used to for the magazine advert was a twist on the popular image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. We developed the idea by using Liam and Callum as replacements, they wore their gold mask and man thongs also. We made an effort to use the gold bed cover as it complimented the gold mask appropriately. For the Digipak we decided to use an image of someone taking a photo of the two 'runners' as the front cover. The back of the cover features parts from the music video that sum up the product as a whole. Humorous parts like the boxing scene, jumping into the river and the trolley scene are pictured. The font we used is also continued, the font isn't conventional, it is similar to a graffiti style of font which connotes rebellion; a theme that is persistent with our products. The artists are represented in the same way throughout our products, they're also represented as mischievous boys; they have careless attitudes and enjoy having fun. From the amusing antics in the music video, to the courageous posing for the magazine advert and all the ideas drawn in the for Digipak, we have deliberately made sure they're shown in this way. The combination of the products are effective as we have a continuous theme throughout.
Receiving audience feedback always helps with developing ideas for a media product. Teachers and peers have commented on our music video, as well as giving us ideas for our magazine cover and Digi pak. The students in our class found the ideas impressive, they felt our blog looks well visually as we've included all our inspiration. Other positive comments that were made mentioned how we have stuck to our original ideas that we planned for, and have a lot of footage to work with. The various scenes we seem to have so much of helped when teachers mentioned the video would look better the shots were faster to make the video more exciting. We went on to do this, and were able to from the large amount of different footage we had. It worked out positively in the end as our video now shows how we wanted to present it; in the most captivating way. Suggestions were made to include something comical for our magazine advert and the Digipak, so it follows the humorous theme of our video. We listened to all of the feedback (that was told verbally and also commented on our blog) and made sure to incorporate it as much as possible; after all the audience needs needs to be most impressed by the work as they're going to be the ones investing in the products.
We decided to do extra filming in the half term to make sure we had enough footage to work with. The difference that was made from the draft video to the final were: changes of characters (Gareth replacing Rojiar) as we felt having an all male group made more sense to our idea; as we used blink 182 as our inspiration, using three boys followed this. Gareth went on to recording one more verse. We also re-filmed Liams verse as the lip syking was slightly out of time when we first filmed. Other random footage was also filmed, e.g. fruit throwing, 'vandalising' scenes and dancing. The re filming did take up a majority of our time, but it was definitely worth it now that we've finished the final product.
To produce the media products for our music video task we needed to use media technologies. When researching, using the internet for ideas was incredibly useful; sites like 'youtube'
and 'google' helped us search for music videos, pranking ideas and products we could buy as props. This was helpful because it kept us organised and on top of our planning.
When constructing our products; we used different technologies than the planning. To make the music video 'Final Cut' was the programme we used to edit the different clips of our video together. It was a suitable software as it's easy to use and enabled us to make the video appear more interesting than just putting the clips in un-edited; we shortened clips to make them more snappy, made the lip syncing in time, inserted titles and were able to cut down the music to fit with our visuals.
When making our digi pak and magazine covers we used 'Photoshop' as photo editing software to make the images. Photoshop helped us create developed and professional products that could be used for advertising. 'Myspace' was another internet site we used to contact 'The Filaments' when informing them about us using their song. We also used Myspace to listen to their song at home so we could learn the lyrics for filming, viewing their picture to get a feel of their 'punk image' also helped us live up to that.
To evaluate our work we published our findings on 'Blogger', a blogging site to upload our inspirational photos and videos. We also put up ideas that we had for our products, such as possible magazine cover ideas. Our most inspiring video - Blink 182's 'What's my age again' was also analysed and put on the blog. Blogger also helped to develop our ideas as our class members were able to view our uploads and comment on them.
To conclude, I feel we have achieved what we set out to produce. We've all enjoyed making our products, from the filming of the running scenes to photographing the images for the magazine
cover. Our music video is a great improvement from our work last year.
We were inspired by popular internet personality, 'MC Devvo' - a satirical fictional character. He frequently uses profanity and is generally unpleasant and confrontational to people. We touched on this idea and found his work to be a good starting point, based on the humour content. We also followed the use of real media products by watching Blink 182's video 'What's my age again'. Using the three male characters was present in both our music videos.
As well as following some conventions we also developed our ideas by pushing the boundaries; the running scene was hard to film as we didn't want to attract too much attention from the public, just enough for the audience to notice that the characters are shocking the public, not to get into trouble. We raised the rating to an '18' certificate as some of the language and acting would not be suitable for younger audiences. After all the target audience we were aiming at was males in their early 20's, we wanted to appeal to an audience that would find this sort of humour amusing.
A combination of three products were used to create our final media coursework; the Digipak, the magazine cover and the music video. They all had to be combined together. To do this we made sure the humorous theme from our music video, e.g. running in public in man thongs, running into each other with inflatable balls and dancing with a popular Cambridge milk shake character was included. The humour we used to for the magazine advert was a twist on the popular image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. We developed the idea by using Liam and Callum as replacements, they wore their gold mask and man thongs also. We made an effort to use the gold bed cover as it complimented the gold mask appropriately. For the Digipak we decided to use an image of someone taking a photo of the two 'runners' as the front cover. The back of the cover features parts from the music video that sum up the product as a whole. Humorous parts like the boxing scene, jumping into the river and the trolley scene are pictured. The font we used is also continued, the font isn't conventional, it is similar to a graffiti style of font which connotes rebellion; a theme that is persistent with our products. The artists are represented in the same way throughout our products, they're also represented as mischievous boys; they have careless attitudes and enjoy having fun. From the amusing antics in the music video, to the courageous posing for the magazine advert and all the ideas drawn in the for Digipak, we have deliberately made sure they're shown in this way. The combination of the products are effective as we have a continuous theme throughout.
Receiving audience feedback always helps with developing ideas for a media product. Teachers and peers have commented on our music video, as well as giving us ideas for our magazine cover and Digi pak. The students in our class found the ideas impressive, they felt our blog looks well visually as we've included all our inspiration. Other positive comments that were made mentioned how we have stuck to our original ideas that we planned for, and have a lot of footage to work with. The various scenes we seem to have so much of helped when teachers mentioned the video would look better the shots were faster to make the video more exciting. We went on to do this, and were able to from the large amount of different footage we had. It worked out positively in the end as our video now shows how we wanted to present it; in the most captivating way. Suggestions were made to include something comical for our magazine advert and the Digipak, so it follows the humorous theme of our video. We listened to all of the feedback (that was told verbally and also commented on our blog) and made sure to incorporate it as much as possible; after all the audience needs needs to be most impressed by the work as they're going to be the ones investing in the products.
We decided to do extra filming in the half term to make sure we had enough footage to work with. The difference that was made from the draft video to the final were: changes of characters (Gareth replacing Rojiar) as we felt having an all male group made more sense to our idea; as we used blink 182 as our inspiration, using three boys followed this. Gareth went on to recording one more verse. We also re-filmed Liams verse as the lip syking was slightly out of time when we first filmed. Other random footage was also filmed, e.g. fruit throwing, 'vandalising' scenes and dancing. The re filming did take up a majority of our time, but it was definitely worth it now that we've finished the final product.
To produce the media products for our music video task we needed to use media technologies. When researching, using the internet for ideas was incredibly useful; sites like 'youtube'
and 'google' helped us search for music videos, pranking ideas and products we could buy as props. This was helpful because it kept us organised and on top of our planning.
When constructing our products; we used different technologies than the planning. To make the music video 'Final Cut' was the programme we used to edit the different clips of our video together. It was a suitable software as it's easy to use and enabled us to make the video appear more interesting than just putting the clips in un-edited; we shortened clips to make them more snappy, made the lip syncing in time, inserted titles and were able to cut down the music to fit with our visuals.
When making our digi pak and magazine covers we used 'Photoshop' as photo editing software to make the images. Photoshop helped us create developed and professional products that could be used for advertising. 'Myspace' was another internet site we used to contact 'The Filaments' when informing them about us using their song. We also used Myspace to listen to their song at home so we could learn the lyrics for filming, viewing their picture to get a feel of their 'punk image' also helped us live up to that.
To evaluate our work we published our findings on 'Blogger', a blogging site to upload our inspirational photos and videos. We also put up ideas that we had for our products, such as possible magazine cover ideas. Our most inspiring video - Blink 182's 'What's my age again' was also analysed and put on the blog. Blogger also helped to develop our ideas as our class members were able to view our uploads and comment on them.
To conclude, I feel we have achieved what we set out to produce. We've all enjoyed making our products, from the filming of the running scenes to photographing the images for the magazine
cover. Our music video is a great improvement from our work last year.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Magazine advert ideas.
When planning the image for our magazine advert, choosing an image that reflected the artist's was the most important thing to consider. The image I have chosen from our music video is about half way through, and shows the main 'artist's'/actor's in the music video. The artist's are represented as youthful, rebellious boys; they have careless attitudes and enjoy having fun. The image I have chosen shows the artist's in that way. Firstly the setting compliments the image; broken windows, the B.P.C logo in graffiti and generally the area of the image is not a typical area to be in, if they were law abiding youths. They're doing a dance/pose, this reflects their humorous selves.
It links to our video because it is following the theme of 'messing around' and having an enjoyable time with your friends. The artist's continue this sort of attitude throughout the music video, but I think this image reflects them in the most boisterous way.
The genre of music by The Filaments is ska/punk. The characteristics of ska punk often features fast tempos, guitar distortion, on beat punk-style interludes and shouted vocals. The fast beat tempo is reflected in our music video by the shots being very quick. The image I have chosen was from one of the many fast shots. The way ska/punk artist's usually present themselves is in the attitude reflected by the artist's in the music video. "Punk rock is meant to be our freedom. We're meant to be able to do what we want to do." - quotation describing punk beliefs.
The audience we have aimed our music video at is adults that enjoy this genre of music, mainly men. The track contains explicit language and behavior that isn't positively looked at for younger audiences to view. This image will appeal to the target audience because listeners of ska/punk embrace the amusing culture.
