1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When starting this project we began by looking at various music videos, from iconic one's to one's hardly seen and studied in detail Goodwin's theory and music video analysis. From this, I realised that for something to look and be constructed in a professional way it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to follow all set conventions. It was this change in thinking that influenced me at the start of creating my music video. By looking at the vidoes with a critical and observing eye it lead me to look at a key idea that linked to how we are effected by other media texts. Richard Sennett (professor of Sociology) came up with the “craftsmen” argument that in the past people were forced to make their own entertainment due to a lack of technology. However, he went on to explain that with the introduction of television/technology, people stopped creating and took a back seat in watching others create and do. With technology increasingly developing it is now the case that people are embracing the opportunity and using technology to create again, almost like a cycle. However, with this in mind and the idea that “culture is eating itself” it was apparent that throughout our advanced portfolio there was going to be some sort of influences from various media areas. In today's day, music videos are revolved around the artist/band and the narrative behind the lyrics. Typically the audience is shown extreme close up's and panning camera movements on the performer, as they are the one's promoting the video, however in our video we were interested in challenging conventions and doing the opposite.
As a group we were aware that now days there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute, so we found it extremely challenging to create an idea or product that had not be done before and wasn’t simply just a copy of the original. We were attracted by the work of the "Gorrilaz" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF9fqx4H_Cg in the way that they themselves were never or rarely seen in their videos and instead the band was played by cartoons almost like "Manga" characters. We liked the idea of not having a band and with various research it resulted in us using children to play the performers. By challenging this convention we felt it added interest to our video. Our song by the Libertines "don't look back into the sun" is a song with very little lyrics.
This made it difficult to use the conventions of real music videos, so we overcame this by introducing a basic, humorous routine, to be repeated at specific climax's of the song. Although this may have been seen as satire, we were influenced by an American rock band called Ok Go! who were frequently producing elaborate and quirky music videos that were strangely unique and humorous. The band are reknowned for performing with expressionless faces that included this random, unpredictable choreographed routine in the majority of their videos.
Here is some Youtube links of their type of routine.
This was a massive influence in our video as we was fascinated by the idea of incorporating a basic, silly dance into a video giving it a unique selling point whilst prooving popular during our feedback sessions. However, we had to remember that the song we had chosen “The libertines- don’t look back into the sun” was to be based on politics. With this in mind we started looking at other influences including “Eminem-Mosh”, “Green Day-Holiday”, “U2-Bloody Sunday” and other political based UMV’S.
Here is a link to my research on political videos.
Aside from these influences, we was also attracted by a scene in Eminems "Toy Soldiers" video ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lexLAjh8fPA. In our video we wanted to portray children as soldiers, to exaggerate the point of young soldiers being sent to war; and in Eminem's video there is a clip of angelic choir boys and girls, singing about soldiers around a grave at a funeral. We felt that by simply using children, it becomes instantly hard hitting and heart felt, because audiences don't expect to see children, they expect to see grown men and women. When it comes to talking about the sterotypical aspects of our video against other music videos I believe (and from feedback) that it does not follow set conventions. 
However, we was also aware that the whole brief of creating a music video and digipack, meant that their had to be some set conventions of a music video to make it recognisable as without following the majority of these conventions our video could end up looking like a film or maybe even a silent movie. The genre of our video was a mix of indie and pop so their was hundreds of influences and media texts to study. Our initial idea was to film a group of teenage friends, off on a happy, youthful trip to the beach as they packed their lugguage into to car. We mind-mapped this idea and asked a group of 10 students and our subject teachers, what they thought and it was interesting to hear that half the students thought it would make a good video, however the other half and the teachers felt it was far to cliche. Our song itself was used heavily in the British sitcom "The Inbetweeners" which follwed the life of three school boys and there various encounters. 
Without realising, we had based our video on exactly that narrative, just because when we played the song we subconsiously associated it with that programme. After a second feedback session we were advised to completely turn the idea "on it's head" and think of something that the song DOESN'T make you instantly think of; almost the opposite. We sat and picked out lyrics that had some meaning to them, and we were intrigued by the actual title "don't look back into the sun". We then made a third mind map of words and images that came into our mind when we heard that line, and we came up with "Afganistan", "Iraq" because of the heat and the image of walking away from the desert sun etc. We new that at first it may seem completely twisted and controversial to be singing such an upbeat song, about something so serious however we new from our research that it is the different, on the edge, unstereotypical videos that are remembered and loved. e.g. Eminem's Stan, Fat Boy Slim's Praise you, Lady Gaga's Bad romance etc.
Another area in which I found influence was from the recent war protests, where protesters would march and gather in Tony Blair rubber masks with red painted hands. We found these images really powerful and knew that if we wanted to create a political and controversial music video this would be a key influence to incorporate, however I found it difficult to not get too influenced and distracted by them as I still wanted to keep my ideas clear and un-spoilt, these visuword mindmaps help us keep on track of key ideas. Click to view one on war...
http://www.visuwords.com/?word=war
When constructing the digi-pack and advert for the second part of our brief, we was heavily influenced by 1940’s war posters including the iconic Uncle Sam and Kitcherner “the army needs you” image. These posters, together with CD cover influences from U2’s bloody Sunday and scenes and covers from Eminem’s Toy soldiers all formed a collection of influences for all the majority of our designs.
I feel I have developed and am able to take influences and use them in a productive way without feeling like I have limited options and should always stick by conventions and stereotypes.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary text?
One of the first things we learnt and researched during this project is that transition from the video to the advert, to the CD etc has to link and be clear enough so it doesn't look out of place. Click to see a visual mind map on transition...
If this combination is done successfully the audience will feel comfortable as it is expected to occur and the genre/style is clearly represented. When we had one part of our package designed and put together, it made the other tasks easier as it excluded things like colour, or extreme fonts. The intended role of our CD cover is to make our target audience want to buy the CD, but also to be proud of owning the CD. For example, The Libertines records can be quite masculine so if males were to buy a CD with flowers and pink patterns across the cover it would not work or sell. Another point we found was that people keep their CD's for years, so we wanted a cover that would be remembered and not become out of date quickly. Also the CD cover would appear on mp3 files and would be seen frequently so if it was wrong people would not click the image to download etc, plus we also had to think about how our products would fit into the web 2.0 theory that everything is collaborated and shared within a creative community. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
Our advert was a challenge to us, as when researching existing adverts, it is not as common as researching CD covers. We knew we wanted a main photograph to dominate the advert as our research told us that audiences become easily put off with small photographs with reems of text. Our intention for the advert was to have a military theme, in keeping with a music video, but also not to detract from the actual music and the promotion of the CD.
Examples of combinations that we looked at were Kanye West's "The college drop out" and Lady Gaga's "The Fame". From these we learnt that continuing the transition from video to ancillary text did not mean that the same font, layout etc had to be exactly the same as long as there is some link. I think our combinations work as we wanted to ensure we did not just promote our war and politics message but we also produced a recognisable music package. However, in hindsight I feel that our products could be improved by not having such simplistic designs and texts and maybe producing a video that told more of a story instead of of a message. For example, in love songs the audience can clearer see that there is a story (usually making up and breaking up) however in our video there is simply a message, there isn't really a story beginning, middle and end theme, or a situation where you "get to know" the characters like you would in a love song.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Research is key to producing anything worth being advertised and companies can spend millions just doing this. For our group, the initial research was what laid the foundations of all of our ideas. Before our research we had a vague, unclear image of how we wanted this project to be constructed, and only after our research did we realise we were far from it.
One piece of research that made us change direction completely was in the early days of our planning where as a group we were set on creating a fun, summer-loving, teenage road trip video to fit hand in hand with the song however when it came to presenting our ideas we couldn't have been more wrong. Collectively we were told that the whole idea was far too cliche and predictable and had been produced so many times before. Initially we were disappointed as we had put a lot of time into planning what we would like to create, however it showed us that if we had rushed off and produced the video without audience feedback it would have been a waste of time.
The types of research we did were questionnaires, online forems, physically asking music fans at clubs and music stores, feedback videos and organising focus groups of people the same age as our target audience. We also gathered feedback during our construction, and if we hadn't we could have ended up ignoring important points. Here is a video I produced so that we could easily refer to it for feedback..here is the link..
An example of changing our video due to feedback was when we were told that it was unclear in our video what some of the characters roles were. With this we went back and re-shot the scenes adjusting various elements to make sure it was more obvious e.g. filming the actor playing the dad holding a mug with dad on it and the dad holding a photograph of his son.
Part of our research that surprised me was that some audiences don't like stereotypical videos with all focus on one artist and a predictable provocative dance routine from various females or voyeuristic treatment of the female body as they aren't rememberable and is done over and over again and whilst sometimes being uncomfortable when viewing with others. We required feedback at set times of this project and those moments were usually at points where we was doing something out of the normal conventions. When creating the digipack, we asked for feedback after every stage (shown in slideshare presentation on blog) and this then helped us to develop it to the next stage. A piece of feedback that made us change direction was being told that one design (that as a group we didn't like) was actually prefered more than then one we thought worked well. This is something that as I can take away and learn from; that just because we think something looks great and portrays certain things, it is the opinion of the audience that is the final say and at times it was difficult for me to put my favourite designs and ideas aside and to listen to the audience. In the early stages of this project we stood outside HMV music store asking about people's favourite bands, music videos, CD covers etc, and it was at that point that we realised that you cannot assume you know a genre or stereotype but you have to do research and ask for feedback. Different individuals came out of the store, and before I approached them I automatically grouped them in my head as to what type of music they were into, and therefore what type of music videos they would like, and the majority of the time I had got it completely wrong.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Using media technology is something that had to run along side the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages in my advanced portfolio. It is because of this that learning how to use various websites, programmes and equipment was really important in producing work of a high standard.
In the planning and research stages of our project, our main ideas and thoughts were all documented on paper, mindmaps, drawings, storyboards etc. The main issue of this was that to create a ongoing critique of our work and an opportunity to show a synoptic understanding, all of this work had to be uploaded to our "Blog". We used scanners to aid this whilst cropping and manipulating the files to fit on the Blog. The internet played a huge part in our planning and researching stages( visuwords.com youtube.com, blogger.com, bbcnews, libertines website, Wordle.com, Xtranormal.com, Prezi.com, Slideshare.com ) and the majority of our influences were shown and accessed from various music sites. The construction stage was where a huge amount of technology was used. As the main part of our portfolio was creating a music video for a song of our choice, we were given huge professional Sony HVR‑HD1000U cameras to shoot our video on and we had a limited amount of time to master them. This brought us a problem as due to the fact that there was 4 students in our group, we all had to master these cameras whilst ensuring no-one was being excluded.
We planned various pre-filming sessions between the group were we could use online forems and instruction manuals to assist our learning. At this stage my digital skills were progressing and developing at a fast pace and compared to my foundation year I was now able to pick up new technology in half the time. As a group we were quite confident with using all the different settings on the camera but we would frequently forget we were using tapes and accidentally rewind and delete previous footage and at points we would forget to attach or detach the microphone as we were not use to having the choice of sound or no sound. When we had finished using the cameras there was still a huge learning curve for me in post-production. As a group we had a basic knowledge of editing when we created our own preliminary videos, however individually we were far from being able to create a professional music video. The first challenge was getting the footage off the camera and on to the Apple Mac’s into video editing software called Final-cut pro in an organized and filed way, without corrupting or loosing any of the scenes.
We then had to delete the footage which was not needed/of a bad quality and then start the time-consuming process of putting the video together scene by scene in time with the underlying song and dialogue whilst learning how to convert the song from youtube format into MP3 and include appropriate transitions and effects from clip to clip. When putting the video together we came across various hurdles and challenges, most of which we dealt with however on one occasion we had to abandon an idea until we had proper assistance. We had created a small stop motion scene of 6 photographs of toy soldiers put together so that when we pressed play they would move in a marching routine across the screen. However, when we tried adding it to our original footage the software recognised it as a series of photographs and it would play with a black border around the screen and know amount of zooming into the image would remove the border. We managed to get some assistance from various IT technicians and mature students however even when we had removed the border, we had feedback that it did not flow well from footage to stop motion and was adding very little to the video. Even though as a group we thought it looked effective, we knew that audience feedback was everything and with that we decided to cut it out altogether. As a group, it became obvious very quickly that each of us had strengths and weaknesses in different areas and this was an issue that we had planned for by assigning different responsibilities and lead roles. Some of us were skilled at editing whilst others were skilled at using "Photoshop" so we used this to our advantage and shared eachothers skills and knowledge between the group.
As I was completing a photgraphy diploma at the same time as producing our portfolio I started using my SLR camera to capture the correct photographs for our advert and digipack whilst using the research we found to assist us (e.g. 13/14 people prefer striking, different and unique images on CD covers). After various sessions and discussions about which photograph was best for our representation I started looking at online forums, various “how to sites” and youtube tutorials to help me learn more about working with “Photoshop”. This graphics editing programme enabled us to cut, crop, highlight, manipulate, saturate and completely transform my original photgraphs to make them fit well into our brief. Layering the photograph was a digital skill that I struggled with and found particularly challenging, and without watching various other students I would not have been able to help our group produce our CD cover and advert. Within a few months time, the video was completed and our final stage was to upload it to Youtube and to my Blog whilst learning how to present the final stages of my work using new and interesting interactive websites including Slideshare.com and Prezi.com. An area where I feel I have built on mistakes is with my Blog. At "AS" level we were required to use Blogs, however I simply used it as an area to present everything i'd done and upload reems of text in a dull unorganised structure. 
However, this time i feel I have progressed as I can now confidently use Blogger as an online site were I can present my work whilst linking it to relevant websites or using it to communicate with other media students for feedback. I also feel that I have mastered SLR cameras and can confidently take an photograph to fit a representation or brief whilst ensuring lighting, mise en scene, tone, aperture and shadow etc are all appropriate for what the photograph is trying to portray or present. On reflection I can see how the skills I have learnt in media technology enabled me to create and achieve two successful portfolios and on a design level, media technology allowed me to go from being as creative as I could with what I knew, to me knowing what I wanted to create and using technology to achieve that.
