A2 Media G233

1. In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge The Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

From the research that we did before the production of the music video, we found about theories from Andrew Goodwin on how a music video should be made. There are ways in which we have applied these conventions and ways in which we have gone against them.
A way that the conventions of Andrew Goodwin were challenged is that he said "A music video should Amplify or Contradict the lyrics of the song." In ways are song Amplifies the song in the sense that the song and video revolve around how a girl and how the singer wants her. It's also amplified by the girl having a boyfriend who cheats, this idea being taken from the lyrics "Why hasn't she seen right threw his lies.". We go against the convention by the story of the video being it's own story. We decided to do this because there are many pop punk bands who have music videos that have nothing to do with the song, and we wanted to keep the video suited for a pop punk audience. Here are some examples;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYoWZgY2HAk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u38TqU5rAyk
One thing that Andrew Goodwin stated was that "Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics." Genre characteristics have been demonstrated through Mike singing and playing the guitar on his own in his bedroom. He's on his own because people who listen to punk pop are usually high school misfits because it isn't a trend followed by a lot of people. Another thing pop punk fans are known for having is a lot of passion for the music, showing Mike playing in his room shows that he has a lot of passion for music. We see that there ain't many kids in the video, showing that although they ain't "cool," that they are still quite a sociable and close group of friends. This another characteristic of pop punk fans.
Close ups in music videos are a demand from record labels. However we have gone against this because the band isn't signed to any label, and the song isn't about the artist, it's about the girl. This shows how we have challenged the conventions of music videos. Another covention that has been challenged is the notion of looking at the female body. Although we have made out that the girl in the video is atractive, we haven't focused on the body. This is due to ethical reasons that no one felt comfortable performing in such a role, also because it wouldn't be something that a pop punk audience would have gone against. Therefore we dicided to stick to trying to apeal to the target audience.
Craig is the boyfriend of Lucy in the video. We have represented him differently from the rest of the cast and represented him as a metal kind of guy, with the long hair and black jacket. A common thought amoung pop punk fans is that metal fans are stuck up and ignorant towards pop punk. As a result we decided to represent Craig as the bad guy, with him cheating on his girl friend.

2. How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillery Texts?

The Ancillery texts that were produced were a digipak cover for an album for the band, and a poster to advertise the the digipak. There are many ways in which the digipak and poster go well together, and ways that this texts go well with the music video.
One way that the digipak and the poster work effectively together is that they both feature the band on them. This helps to provide recognition between the two and make a effective connection to make it appealing to the audience. Another way in which a connection has been made between the two is that the front cover of the digipak is shown on the

poster. This is effective because it indicates to the viewer what the digipak looks like, therefore is tempting the audience to buy the cd. This is re-enforced by it saying "avalible in all good record stores," on the digipak, which shows the audience where the album is sold. Another connection between the two is that they use different designs but the same font. We used this because it would make the band seem more appealing if they use more colour and different looks. These design are also easy designs to show the audience that the band is very layed back and down to earth.
Apart from the digipak and poster, there is an effective conection between these texts and the music video. One of these conections is that the mise en sense of the characters is the same, meaning that the characters in the video and the band members on the digipak have the same style of clothing. This was done to establish the heavy pop punk influence of the band, also to make out the target audience that the band is just like them.

3. What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?

For are audience feedback, we asked some students watch the final cut of our music video and review it. There was a mixed reaction from the paticipants, some positive points with some negative points.

Student 1 - The editing and lip syncing were spot on and went almost perfectly with the beat and lyrics of the song

Student 2 - The black and white for the performance parts of the video was very usefull and helped tell the story clearer

Student 3 - The characters were believable, and I could tell there are some people out ther who these characters can relate to.

Student 4 - There wasn't a wide enough variaty of camera angles

Student 5 - The storyline was quite vage, and didn't make the video as entertaining as I would have expected it to be

Student 6 - The video gives a clear insight to what the mood of the band is like

Student 7 - The singer stood out from everyone, but in m opinion he looked too normal and didn't have any special features

A positve point that we got from the audience feedback was that the editing was very good and spot on. This shows that the editing was one of the videos strong points, and that it was done to the apropriate standard. Another positive point made from the feedback was about the lip sync, as it was described as spot on. These points were especially good because the lip syncing and editing are some of the most important aspects of the video, as there would be no solid connection between the video and song if these two. One point that was seen as good by the audience was the black and white for the performance parts of the video. It was usefull in distinguishing between the narative and performance, which shows that although audiences like to see improvements in media, they still like the older technology aswell. Another good point made was that the characters were believable. This shows that the audience likes characters that arn't over the top and charatcers that they can relate to.
There were a fair amount of negative points made about the video in the feedback. One of these points was there wasn't a wide enough range of camera angles. This was due to the fact that we were filming in a house with small spaces, therefore it was hard to find camera angles that went well together without braking the 180 degree rule. The reason it was set in a house was because it was the most popular choice of setting in the questionaire we did before filming. Another negative point that was brought up was the storyline was very vague. The reason for this was not only to keep it simple for a pop punk audience, but also with it being set in someones house we couldn't make any sense that were too rude or offensive to the owners.

4. How did You Use New Media Technology In The Construction, Research, Planning And Evaluation?

During the start of the start of the project, we needed to research what audiences wanted to see in music videos. We went by this by handing out questionaires to 30 participants. to do this we had to use Microsoft Excel to tally up the results acurately. Although it was simple technology, it was very useful in finding out what are audience is in to and was enlightening to how to go about producing the music video.

Planning didn't require much technology. In order to plan what to do and where to go, we had to fill out location sheets to indicate where it was being filmed. Also to get the infomation to the cast we had to send out emails the tell them all the details.

The next bit of technology used in the process was filming equipment. This included using a semi-professional camera and tripod, and a track. Because the camera was semi-professional, and we didn't have lights to control the lighting in the settings, it was hard to make a video to a professional standard.

For editing the music video we had to use a software called Adobe. This was used to cut down shots to make the the right lengh and to make them in time with the song. It was also used to put in the black and white effect that made the clear difference between performace and narative, also to speed up the first shot and to give it its blurry effect.

To make the digipak and poster, we had to use photoshop. This is were we applied the idieas of the questionaire results and used them to make the two products the way they were.

for evaluation we used a camera to film a participant reviewing are music video (shown in question 3). This was used to see if the final product was at a good enough standard for are audience.