A2 Media Studies Evaluation

Brad Linney

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real

media products?

My Music Video

• My music video can be found at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gowZ9SL_P6w&feature=g-upl&context=G20ace0fAUAAAAAAABAA It should hopefully work, if however it doesn’t work, I’m trying to work on downloading the videos from my youtube (as I can watch them) then uploading them straight to Blogger where it should work perfectly.

Andrew Goodwin

• Relationship between lyrics and the video

• Relationship between the music and video illustrating, amplifying or contradicting

• Genre’s are diverse

• Link between text, posters, album, single, music or film

Andrew Goodwin is a renown media theorist and his theory is particularly useful when analysing music videos. His theory consists of six aspects, however some can not be applied to my media project as it a male only video, my video genre also being rock music means I am unconventional in genre choice therefore I have an unconventional music video with few close ups therefore analysing a video’s use of close up in a video with few close ups is rather pointless. These are four aspects of Goodwin’s theory that I will be analysing with my music video.

Relationship Between Lyrics and Video

The lyrics for my music video were rather difficult to incorporate into the song for me, instead I incorporated time as a factor rather than lyrics. Such moments I used time are the jump at the start and the famous shout of “WHY!” to begin the chase sequence. The lyrics give the impression of anarchy, therefore I used the modern example of hoodies, whom most would consider the current rebellion in society.

Relationship between the music and video illustrating, amplifying or

contradicting

Does the music match what's happening in the video. The music style is “hard rock,” or can be interoperated as the unconventional “rap rock” genre, It is vital that a music video, to at least some extent resembles the lyrical content. In my video I have focused on the theme of rebellion and conforming to social masses. The idea of conforming to a social norm is an event that any teenager can relate to and is an important issue in society. I incorporated the rebellion aspect by using in sense the stereotypical view of “hoodies” being a “threat” and in joining the “threat” people feel safer, more like a gang. In the video the entire chase sequence is a example of gang violence in that two are better than one, therefore the one gets caught. I also used bullying as a key image of rebellion. There is also the key moment of the transformation from the bullied to one of the gang. One moment in the video that my target audience picked up on that didn’t seem right was the kicking leaves, my audience said that it promoted child like attributes rather than rebellion. When one thinks about it the whole aspect of gangs and rebellion are thoughts of a simple follower or an intelligent leader (Think the Nazi’s or Stalin).

Genre’s Are Diverse

The genre I used for my music is rock music. I picked this as a personal choice due to my love of rock and metal genre of music. I chose rock over metal as generally rock is considered more listenable to the mindless masses of people who listen to the same few over-played rock songs (Aerosmith, Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing and Bon Jovi, Livin’ On A Prayer are such examples). Basically a rock album would get more sales than a metal album due to the increased popularity of the genre. While it is interesting to note, if the masses of conformities individuals who fuel the talentless artists, “despise” metal music, then how come metal artists still frequently produce brand new material? It shows that the metal and rock genre’s are not as unpopular as is stereotyped by the masses.

Conventions of a rock video: • Close ups of band members playing instruments.• Not as many close ups on the singer or band members themselves. • Band members rarely make eye contact with the camera unless the song is a balled such as the above Aerosmith example and Five

Finger Death Punch; Remember Everything.

Conventions of a pop video:• Many close ups of the lead singer, showing off the person as a product due to their aesthetically pleasing looks and figure such as Justin

Beiber who is himself a walking advertisement. • No or very few views of people playing instruments, everything is focused on the single. • Usually utilises many low angle shots to show the figure and full body of the singer.

Conventional aspects of my video: • Has few close ups of the band members in general.• Only two moments of eye contact in the whole song.• Follows the theme of the song closely.

Unconventional aspects of my video:• Has no lip syncing at all to show the rebellious aspect of the genre and the song• Promotes conforming to an unjust cause that of bullying and youths.

How Have I Incorporated the Same Theme Between my Video and Digi-Pak

My digi-pak follows a similar theme towards the video. When I was shooting the video, my original intent was to incorporate various aspects associated with rebellion and being excluded. I originally picked the colour green as I was incorporating a natural theme, however I realised when editing my video that green did not suit the products so I changed it to a grey. The grey can be seen as either an attempt to conform to social norms as everyone else does, or the way its intended to be read as the industrial fight back against the masses. The large red band logo shows clearly that Flood are a dangerous band “in terms of rebellion” but red conjures images of anarchy and chaos. The red would also stand out greatly on a shelf in a shop.

How Effective is the Combination my Main Product and Ancillary (other

products) Texts

Cover and Back

This is my CD Cover, I have designed this cover to reflect the rebellious nature of the music and the video. I have had to make the most adjustments to this cover, mostly due the original name Fallen and the logo I had created, unfortunately shared many similarities with the brand “Fallen Footwear” therefore I had to change anything that had the original logo on and edit the logo to look different. The nature of this cover is excellent as in the video, Tom and Lee wear their hoods up to conceal their true identity and this cover shows none of the band and their identity making them mysterious and fills them with a sense of enigma as to their true identity.

My CD back is perhaps the most least changed of the products. I designed it to show the band members in circles, since in my opinion I believe that the band should always be seen at least one point on an album other-wise the person listening to the album aren't going to know who is performing the album. This again to some artists is considered unconventional who keep their identity hidden, such as KISS and Slipknot. Most bands however choose not show their faces since, unlike a groomed pop artist such as Justin Beiber their face will not sell albums.

Poster

My poster was perhaps the most interesting creation as I originally intended it to feature the band it. However my research and audience feedback once again showed the error in my way and that most posters do not have the band on them. Similarly it is useful that I removed the band since it allows the product group to look more like a collection and so that people will know that this looks similar to the album and therefore is Flood’s tour to go with the album.

How Digi-Pak Relates to the Genre

The common colours associated with the Rock music genre’s are a mixture or murky browns, greens and other dark colours with one distinct bright colour standing out on the page.

Similar to these examples: Iron Maiden use the yellow as their striking colour and the rest is either black or grey. “Piece Of Mind,”

Judas Priest, have an entirely black background with a single striking image. “British Steel”

My CD cover has a jagged grey background and a slightly darker text colour while it has the band logo in a stand out red circle which is the striking image.

This Aerosmith cover is slightly unconventional to my theory, however it still incorporates the same idea, the stand out parts are of course the red and orange parts with the blue being more darker and more subtle. “Nine Lives”

This Mötley Crüe album follows the conventional trend of having a solid black background but has a very striking unconventional image on the cover perhaps one of the reasons why I didn’t choose to incorporate an image on the cover since it is difficult to do it effectively like this “Shout At The Devil” album.

What I have Learnt from Audience Feedback

When I was creating my products, it was vitally important to gain an audiences perspective on what they wanted my products to be like, since after all they would be one who would buy the album if it were to actually go on the sale. The audience can be very harsh; in my case with my colour scheme (although quite late on in the product development) saying how it didn’t look at all like the genre I was attempting to replicate. The audience know what they want from a product, they know if they would want that album in their home next to their other albums and in my case originally they obviously didn’t want to but I think with the aid from the audience feedback that my product has evolved into a professional looking product that would be accepted into the genre that is rock.

Audience Feedback Questionnaires

When questioning the target audience, it was important to choose open questions which could lead to a potential idea being developed that could have been incorporated as an improvement to my products.

On the following slides are quotes from my target audience regarding improvements that could be made to my products at the time they were considered the current draft.

Changes to CD Front after Feedback

• Draft 1 Target Audience “The texture on all both parts of the cover look random and look like they have no purpose.” Brad Linney “I agree with this statement, I placed the textures in to try a different look to what is normal, clearly it didn’t work hence why I changed it. After

all it was a first draft!”

• Draft 3 TA “This looks really bland there’s no effect on the donut shape it makes it look really two dimensional and wouldn’t stand out on a shop shelf, also I can’t

see the band name.” BL “I personally thought the donut shape improved it! Each to their own I guess. I was going for a sort of spotlight effect around the band in the centre

obviously my target audience didn’t follow my idea. I do agree however with the text issue. I do however think that the green and white went very well together.”

• Draft 5TA “Still can’t see the title as well as I should be able to. Perhaps the circle is better as it looks more like a spotlight but I don’t get why the circles brown

shouldn’t it be a solid colour? I think you need to consider an alternative, you might be running out of options.”BL “The reason the back part of the circle was brown was to blend nicely with the dark green. I can understand the title, I perhaps should have made it

white then it would be perfectly visible. Now for the consider alternatives I was dubious but then I looked at research and realised that my idea was. Incorporating people on cover. Rock albums generally don’t have people on the cover so I went back to the drawing board and created draft 6 and 7 which were two new concepts to my work. I merged them together to create what was draft 8.

• Draft 9TA “Well its better than the other design. I still think there is something wrong with it green is not a colour that I would normal see on any shelf regardless of

genre.” BL “It never occurred to me until late on making the project that green wasn’t perhaps the best colour to use. However I have changed it now and when the

result goes up on the blog I think you’ll find that it more than simply corrects these problems.

When making my products it was very important to make sure that it was what my audience wanted since obviously it is the target audience who will be buying the product. However it was also down to general intuition and smarts of my own that enforced some changed. In the boxes below I have placed key tips from my target audience, all anonymous of course, and my opinion on their opinion.

CD Front

+ =

Changes to CD Back after Feedback

• Draft 1Target Audience: “I think on the whole this looks very bland, you also have no place to put anything like bar codes or details.”Brad Linney: “Well considering this was my first draft I thought that it was defiantly the best first draft out of the three, after all during my

research there were some abysmal looking CD Back’s out there (Billy Idol’s album in particular)”

• Draft 2TA: “At least it has a bar code now, Im not a big fan of the photo in the bottom circle, it looks like he’s a rather large whale.” BL: “I had been looking at research and quite a lot of albums simply place a solid black rectangle across the bottom of their CD back to place all

the legal information in one place to save having it clash with their background colour, hence I followed the idea. I thought that it actually works very well, I never got any complaints about it. As for Tom’s face I understand, I had the cropping wrong, I corrected it for draft 3.”

• Draft 4: TA: “I actually thought it was getting better. The pictures were fine and the colour was tolerable, yet the new colour doesn’t go at all. It clashes

with the white. I also don’t know why you have removed the photo’s, although I like the idea of having their name next to where a photo would be.”

BL: “So did I. When all was going well, I decided that it would incredibly hard to recreate a music video for Volbeat, hence I changed it to “The Beastie Boy’s” I had to change the theme to be a more rebellious unconventional colour and re film my video hence the absence of the photos.”

• Draft 5: TA: “The darker background really goes well, have you considered changing the entire colour scheme to a darker colour? I also like the way the

pictures work with the white. I would also consider cropping them again to make sure they are just right.”BL: “This was in the realisation period that green isnt the most user friendly colour to use in a project. I changed it for draft 6. I wish I had done

so earlier. I pretty much followed this piece of advice to the letter and I believe tha t my project looks all the better for it.”

CD Rear

Changes to the Poster after Feedback

• Draft 1Target Audience: “Well, erm… this looks interesting, it looks like someone has been sick and spat your band out, I

would to start with get rid of that horrid texture pattern and the brown, green and brown don’t mix.” Brad Linney: “I agree entirely, I think when I produced this draft I simply wanted to have a draft of an idea I had ready

to edit later on.”

• Draft 3TA: “This is of a great improvement from the original draft, the colours at least go together, but to me it’s still a little too

strong perhaps. I would also consider, can you read the details from a distance?”BL: “When I look back, Its easy to see how strong and dominating that green is. The font was a readable font, the only

problem is that the green is so powerful that it makes that it can’t be seen.”

• Draft 4TA: “The green is much easier on the eye, yet still retains its eye catching properties. I think it’s a little empty on the top

half, but the band logo being central, clearly shows the artist. It might be worth thinking about changing the logo so it doesn’t include the band name in it. Then you could fill in the top section with the band name.”

BL: “The space at the top was left so I could place a picture of the band, at the time, I figured its one way to make my band take centre stage.”

• Draft 5TA: “The picture doesn’t fit at all! I much preferred it without a picture, have you considered changing the colour

scheme aswell? Since your band looks like a band of green peace executives.”BL: “One of my main concerns when I placing a picture in the poster was would it clash and obviously it did. I learnt

from my research that having people on a poster didn’t work as well as without.”

Poster

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?

Range of Technology I used to Create my Series of Music Products

• Youtube: The site that hosts my videos, very useful for finding videos of other bands work.

• Vimeo: Useless website in my opinion, but was helpful in finding videos done by other students.

• www.beastieboys.com: The band website, I found the record label from this site.

• Fireworks 2004: If I knew how to work Photoshop I would have used it, but instead I used Fireworks. It still proved useful, but I wish I had Photoshop experience.

• iMovie: To me, the simplest and most effective way of creating a music video.

Process of Creation from iMovieDue to my only basic training with a Mac, did not know where or if the Mac has a print screen button therefore I had to use my camera to take the photo’s

Applying an effect to the video, the long winded way.

Applying a slow motion effect to the video.

Altering the length of specific segments in the video.

Process of Creation from Fireworks

Inserting boxes where tour information would be placed later on.

Erasing areas of my picture for draft five of the poster finally placing a new picture in the products. Testing various fonts to go with my

products. Learnt that finding a good font is very difficult and tricky.

Trying out an example on the cd back using a tattoo.

If I were to produce this again...

The main problem I had with my music video was deciding on the song, I had originally intended to use the song “Guitar Gangsters and Cadillac Blood” by Volbeat since I believed that the song was an appropriate choice due to its many different themes such as villainy and segregation. I even in the summer of 2011 filmed the footage for a potential video. However I had conducted little research on music videos and the material I had collected would not have slotted well into a music video. Hence I changed the song in November and filmed again this time to the song “Sabotage,” by The Beastie Boys and I think you will agree that I made the correct choice in changing the song. I also if I conducted that project again would change colour scheme I used and stop myself from using green as much since this halted progression in my product. My product only started progression when I changed the green to grey and made the album look far more like a rock album.