How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of your project?

The main technology that we used consistently throughout our entire project was the internet. At the very early stages of our project we used the internet constructively to research existing music videos as well as to look at what genres we thought would make the best music video. We used websites such as youtube and daily motion to watch music videos and pick out which styles we like and how people had used different storylines. On these sites we could also look at what the public had commented about the video. Most videos on these sites have over 1000 hits, meaning that a lot of people have watched and commented on them. We could then decide which artists were more common than others and what people thought of the small things in the video such as costumes and props.

Instead of hand creating our storyboards we took screen shots from the internet of existing videos to show the audience exactly which shots we intended to use. Without the internet this would not have been possible, and to rely on hand drawn images in not very accurate purely because of the lack of skill within our group.

Our blog is the main way of connecting to the public to show each step of our product. We used the blog to show our ideas, gain feedback, write diaries, show connections and links to other internet sites and many other things. This was all done using the internet making a lot of our work much easier and more efficient. We used a site called Scribd to upload and present documents on Microsoft programmes such as our audience questionnaire, feedback and storyboards. Using the blog also meant we could embed music videos that we has looked at and researched to show what our intentions were and what kind of style we were looking for.

For our productions we used Adobe Premierp Pro to edit our film shots into a finished music video. Having practise on this software meant that our editing stage went a lot faster than it could have done. We used the programme to cut small snippets from different shots, putting them together with the music and adding effects where we thought needed because of filming problems. It allowed us to fully exploit the footage we had captured. We found that rendering the edited shots was the most challenging part of this process because of how long it took. However this was only a simple task allowing us to continue with a better idea of how the finished video would look.

We use Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the creation of our ancillary tasks. We shot in an Olympus Raw format to give us full editing options and after a 2 hour photo shoot, with many different costume changes we picked the photos that we thought would work best for what we wanted to create. We had decided to go along the artistic route, challenging typical conventions, and creating something which looked surreal to the audience. We used brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and colour balance tools to edit all our original photographs to the effect we wanted and then used masking tools as well as different style and size brushes to create our album cover to the standard we wanted

Our Facebook Account

How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

Our music video and ancillary tasks do not have a lot in common. One thing they do share is that Max Black is the main focus of both and we see his emotions and expressions through both. The emotions are different in each task however. The music video focuses strongly on Max being upset and angry, which eventually leads to revenge and death. Throughout the video we can see him change from an emotional weak person to the dominant male at the end.

The poster and CD cover are very similar styles. We felt this was completely necessary in order for the package to work. It would look silly if the two did not relate or have any style in common, it would simply feel like a different product. The character at the end of the video (dominant and in control) is the same as the character reflected in the photo shoot. He is in control of his life, emotions and what the audience see. He shows attitude in a humoristic way to engage with the audience, showing a likeable character. We think the two ancillary tasks are extremely effective together as they carry on the style and attitude we want from the package. The colours and theme reflect from the music video of being dark and bitter.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The creation of our you tube and face book accounts was not only to show the different stages of our production and influences and inspiration, but also to show the audience our final product and gather any feedback possible. The main bulk of our feedback from these sites was very positive. Many comments said that the dancing scenes were very good and that the fast shots looked very effective. The only criticism we received through social networking sites was that the very ending where jon walks away on the beach was difficult to understand, and that it did not entirely match the rest of the storyline. We feel this is positive feedback and that it could help if we ever had the chance to improve on our work.

We also got feedback from a questionnaire which again was mainly positive comments. You can see from our audience feedback results table that most people thought the music video was excellent, but that we could add more narrative if there was going to be any improvement. This is one of the main issues we had when deciding wether or not to follow the conventions of a pop video. We think that next time ww should balance to two 50/50 rather than focusing on performance shots, but we still feel that the balance works well with the song chosen and that too much narrative would result in a more complex storyline which could confuse and eventually bore the audience.

A small percentage thought the genre was not clear enough because of how the ending included a killing. We can understand why people would think this because it is a very sinister thing to include in a video. However, the song is not a happy cheerful example of pop which could explain why the idea even came to us. However we knew whilst creating the video that this aspect was challenging conventions strongly.

Audience Feedback Graphs

Our Video on Youtube:

In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge the codes and conventions of real media products?"

When first thinking about the initial ideas for our music video we knew that we would have to research and discover what codes and conventions pop music generally follows. We did this by analysing a lot of existing music videos as well as posters and CD covers and booklets. From this research we could then begin to structure our music video around what we thought worked well within those videos. We could then also decide how we would like to challenge the conventions to work appropriately within our video.

We followed the basic conventions of a pop music video firstly by making performance shots more dominant than the narrative storyline. This allows the audience to connect with the character (Max Black). Also all of our performance shots are one on one with the camera with the use of many close up shots so the audience have a clear image of what emotions the artist is trying to show. The main emotions we tried to get across were; anger, obsession and hurt.

Our narrative storyline follows a male/female relationship showing how they have broken up because of the female cheating. This is very common within music videos, where the main artist is the one who is angry making the audience sympathise with them. However, this could be seen as a traditional view on mean because of how the woman is made to look dominant, showing the males emotional side and weakness. Despite this we feel that we followed the codes and conventions simply because the main artist was the good guy rather than the bad. The end of the music video storyline challenges the conventions of a typical pop video because of the main character running over his girlfriend. There is a huge build up, which is seen in a lot of pop videos, however the actually act is very rarely done, or shown. We thought this was a good challenge of conventions because it shocks the audience and makes them want to keep watching. We think the audience would sympathise with the character and probably agree with what he is doing.

Our performance shots follow the conventions of a typical pop video. We have used a variety of angles and distance to create different effects to the audience. The shots where the artist is stood still, just showing a pose, are very common within pop videos and we thought they create a very great effect to keep the audience interested. However we challenged this slightly by using quick shots of the still poses rather than a long still shot of just one… we have many different poses fitted together to create a kind of slide show of the artist before the song really kicks in.

The song ‘cry me a river’ has a slight R&B feel to it which we felt should be taken into account in the video. Most dance scenes within pop videos are a group of dances performing toward the camera or a band/artist performing on a stage. After looking at some r&b example videos we decided we would use their style of performance shot by having the artist alone performing to the camera. The style dancing is also an R&B style. Although this challenges the pop genre we feel that the song we chose could also fit within an R&B category, so this style works extremely well.

In the case of our ancillary tasks we feel that we challenged the typical conventions for pop advertising. Our original idea started with the title ‘Stop the world, I’m getting off’. When researching into existing material however we found that most titles were plain, simple and to the point. Both poster and Cd cover were going to use the same theme of a very artistic style photograph where something un realistic would be happening. To co-inside with the title we were sure that we wanted a picture of someone climbing out of or from the world. Very few examples we looked at were very extreme, they simply had the srtist and a background with a plain title being used. We used our research then to decide which colours and effects would work best with what we wanted to create. Most of the material we looked at used dark colours, costumes and props so we thought we would follow the conventions in that way.

A Typical Pop/R&B video that we analysed: