Storm Queen - Look Right Through (Our Own Edit)

Thursday, 15 May 2014

Welcome

Welcome to my A2 media blog, on this blog you will find all of my A2 coursework in terms of research and planning and also the final stages of the making of our A2 products. These being A music video from the track Look Right Through and 3 ancillary texts, these being a digipak and 4 magazine adverts.

Final Cut

This is our final cut of our media product which is our music video of the song Look Right through from the artist Storm Queen which is a remix by MK.

Ancillary Texts & Video

This video is our finished final ancillary texts and they consist of our Digipak, Lyric Booklet and our magazine adverts.

Final Digipak




Digipak Front Cover


Digipak Inner Pannels

Lyric Booklet Cover

Lyric Booklet Page 1
Lyric Booklet Page 2

Lyric Booklet Page 3

Final Magazine Adverts and Teasers



Magazine Ad 1
Magazine Ad 2

 
 

Teaser Ad 1
Teaser Ad 2

Evaluation Question 1 Conventions




For our coursework, we were set the task of creating a music video, a magazine ad and a digipak. We had to look at the common codes and conventions for each product and create our own. Below are the common codes and conventions for all of these.

Common conventions

Digipak
  • They tend to be made from plastic and are most commonly known as a CD case and this is where the artists CD goes but is how the marketing of the cd is done via the front and back covers
  • The artists name and song title are usually clear on the front. 
  • The artists image or print work is on the front, usually recognisable and have a close link to the artist or the songs which are on the CD
  • Website information and Artist website for people to find out more information. 
  • The artists and album name on the side, including category number and company logo. 
  • A brief description of the artist or a lyrics booklet which we have included in ours is in usually found on the inside. This provide you with information and song lyrics.
  • A sellers barcode
  • And a Copyright statement and record label information. 
Music Video
  • They tend to include both a mixture of performance and narrative, a study done by Goodwin looks more into this concept idea. 
  • They use a wide variety of shots. Panning and short shots are commonly used to create a fast paced look and feel for the song. House music videos mainly use short snappy shots of the main character and club footage on screen to add more emphasis. Whereas in other genres they tend to use close ups of the characters and of the performance members. An example of a video where the camera angles used are to hide the artist face is Run this Town by Rihanna. A lot of close-up shots of the singer are used with constant camera movement. 
  • Lip syncing is commonly used to portray the sense of a performance going on. Most artist use this nowadays, mainly incorporating it in with the video. Unless the video does not contain a performance aspect. However in our video this is not the case as we didn't have much performance footage other than the old man on the DJ Decks
  • Music videos feature jump cutting and the footage which matches what is going on on screen. Producers tend to edit the video to the beat of the soundtrack and to sometimes in our case as you can see in the first 30 seconds to the song lyrics.
  • The mise-en-scene is usually selected to match the genre of the artist e.g An RnB artist would use some sort of warehouse or studio or urbanised area to create a mysterious feeling, whereas a House artist would use a brighter and stranger place. 
Magazine Ads 
  • They always show the artists name in large lettering to make it stand out in the magazine, the smaller the artist the bigger the writing tends to be. 
  • They show the dates when the tickets are for sale or a cd is on sale. 
  • Star reviews help promote the artist and make people want to buy the song or songs or tickets which are being advertised. 
  • The artists information and websites, so people know where they can find out more information about the artist. These are usually shown through the use of Twitter or Facebook icons. Which we have included to promote our own track
  • Record label information and a copyright statement. 
  • Artist image or cd image. 

We then moved onto looking at the common codes and conventions for each product for our chosen genre, house genre. This was to help us when making our final products.  A Film that inspired a lot of our idea was the Film Bad Grandpa and some songs from Storm Queen such as the original video for look right through


Firstly we looked at some of storm queens video. We found that House music originated in America in the early 1980's in the American city or Chicago. Early house music was generally dance-based music characterized by repetitive beats over and over again which meant that the repetitive rhythm of house was more important than the song itself. House music today, while keeping several of these core elements has changed drastically where by now you get less vocals used in the songs and when you do get some lyrics its only either for a short length of time or is repeated over and over again. Then we looked at and found the video for Look Right Through very helpful for filming our video.They used a lot of close-ups of the old mans features and a lot of steady camera work. We decided to go for the same sort of feel when filming ours which added to the inter textually. Although the performance was not very prominent in this video, we were mainly looking at how they filmed their narrative footage. We also looked at the fast pace of editing used in this video, it matched well with what was going on on screen. Also this video incorporated a diegetic opening which we chose to do so it fit in well with our choice of what we were going to film and we believed that it worked very well.


We then looked at the digipaks. We noticed MK went for a very simple design. Apart from the common codes and conventions we mainly liked the black and white backgrounds which he has used for the covers. We then decided that for our digipak we also went for a black and white image on the front to solidly signify the house genre. There was also a lack of textual information on the front. So we also went along with that theme and put on the artists name, album name and the information about the bonus video. We found that the majority of the images which are brighter in colour and depth and most of the information was included on the inside. Therefore we chose to do this as well.



Finally, we looked at a magazine ad's. We noticed again they used a very simple design. The image colour chosen was black with limited text used. It used some of the main codes and conventions of a normal magazine ad and was well edited and had a lot of imagination. In order for us to gain full marks we had to include more conventions from the house genre, also because they artist is barely known we needed to put more text with it. We included Facebook and Twitter links in order to help promote our digipak and get all the information across with a QR code aswell.

Evaluaton Question 2 Combination








Our task was to create a Music Video, Digipak and a Magazine advertisement for our chosen band or Artist. We chose to do it on a song from an Artist who does remixes called Marc Kinchen (MK)  and these all contribute to our final grade at the end of the year. Our primary target audience is males aged 15-24. The reason we chose this was because we believed that the mainstream genre aimed more towards a male audience than a female one however this is rapidly becoming not the case.  This is because in our video text we show a relationship between the old man and society. With our selection of artist being in the house genre, it is quite obvious where the texts would be displayed. NME and MTV are a huge organisation who mainly focus their attention on the House genre. I believe this would be the perfect magazine to put our advertisement in, we would be aiming our product at our targeting audience. Youtube is a great place to promote our videos. However, if our video was to shown on a particular channel I believe it would be MTV or NME or VIVO. These are some if not the biggest music channels in the world and mainly focuses on House, RnB and rock music. Finally, we would have our digipak available to buy on websites such as; Amazon and hmv also mainly itunes. These are three huge companies which would allow us to target both our secondary and primary audiences. 

Magazine Ads

We found that in real life, separate companies are given the roles of producing, advertising and designing these products.  Companies such as; Wewow tend to deal with the designing of an album cover or a magazine ad, they don't deal with the mass production of it. Whereas companies such as; Creando deal with the making of the music video and Image works LTD deal with the designing of advertisements. This shows that it is not just one singular company that produce every text. These two mainly focus on the designs and the creative aspects for the artist. It is then usually left down to the record labels to find the right magazines and websites to promote their own artists under their record label on.
As a result of this research we decided that our media text would ideally fit into magazines and on the covers of papers and websites such as NME, 
MTV, Q Magazine, MOJO Magazines, Music News, FACT Magazines.

Our magazine adverts would fit in well with these magazines if shown in them due to the popularity of the magazines and the type of genre which appears in such magazines in our magazine adverts The main image on the magazine advert should follow the same colours and image themes as the album cover this is usually seen due to the images been taken for the album cover and the magazine ad are similar in many ways due to them usually be taken on the same shoot as each other. However the image on the magazine ad is different in some ways for example the image has been enhanced or only a proportion of the image is used of the same mage and it follows the same colour patterns of the album cover artwork. The largest text on the magazine ad will be the artists name and commonly the second largest text will be the albums name or title and usually features below the artists name on the page and usually the advert will have an 'includes' list somewhere on the image and there will be a popular track list on the advert too sometimes with a bonus track added in there too.  What is also very common in the way that some digipaks have the artists image or bands image on the front cover of the album as well as the inside of it, this is a good way of presenting the digipak and we feel that this idea does suit the style of our artist or genre.

Our magazine ads would fit into the magazines listed above due to them all having relavent pages and sub sections within them for example they have sub sections split down into different genres and specifications.

Differences:
  • We used a person in the video and the digipak who were the same character to add more emphasis on that being the main feature. This meant the old man in the digipak match the one in the video. However, we thought this was good because it was more about trying to sell the magazine ads and digipak.
  • We also used different editing techniques when using photoshop. For example part of the magazine advertisement is faded colour, this was down to a different layering effect used. Also we added images onto images and cross faded them so it looked like just 1 image.

Similarities: 

  • We chose to use different images on both the magazine ad and the digipak. One is an image of a singular figure (The Old Man) sat on a Bench in a lonely a derelict area. This is not linked closely with magazine adverts 
  • In all three texts we have used a light enhancer to ad more of an emphasis on the picture. We used this after looking at our research into the House genre and we found it wasnt a common convention but we thought it did look good. The colouring used helps highlight the vulnerability and lonelyness of the old man on screen. 
  • Also, in all three texts we have used the idea of isolation and to make the audience feel that the ld man is on his own. This is achieved in the digipak by there only being one person in shot and looking into an empty space, he is also surrounded by nothing but a natural environment such as trees and sub urban areas showing he is on his own. The images on the back and front of the digipak link well with the video because it is about a singular person who is marginalised and isolated from society.
  • Finally, we used a common theme of using black backgrounds for the magazine ads and digipaks. This is good due to it being a common code for the conventions of the house genre.
Overall we are happy with the final progress and final cut of all three texts. We believed they worked well together and that the audience could make links with all three texts. We tried to stick closely to the common codes of our genre when making all three and we believe we achieved this. Because the artist is not a recognised artist this gave us a chance to explore and use more of our imaginations towards making the texts

Evaluation Question 3 Audience Feedback


When looking at our audience feedback we have gained various comments of praise and comments of which have given us clues on what to change and we have learned that feed back and lots of it is good to look at when you are analysing your own product.

A target audience is a group of people who you aim your product at, you use certain ideas in the hope that it will appeal to them. However, all good video makers try and make their products appeal to everyone in order to make more money. 

From our rough cuts we have gained some feedback on which we have thought about and considered changing from our first cut to our final cut. Some of these changes are experiments such as editing and others are changes that for sure need to happen due to the lack of footage in some areas so more shot variety is needed in some key areas.

Our primary audience is between the ages of 15-24. After researching we found that it is mainly males who like the House genre. However, we noticed that there was room for a secondary audience. We found that now more and more females are now looking more into the house genre and are growing of followers of this genre.With the narrative being based around a lonely old man, it is around this age where people start to notice older people more being it grandparents or just people in the street. People experience relations with people of old age all the time and can relate to the video. This also helps us appeal to our secondary audience, through the use of a comedy like genre being used. After playing around with colouring and style of the hat we managed to make the hat significantly stand out. 

Throughout the process we recieved all sorts of audience feedback helping us to improve our video. We used such social networking sites as Twitter, and different internet Forums, where we posted our video and asked for any comments. However, we found that our most helpful source of feedback came from class discussions and friends in the school. This is when we showed our work in class and in the 6th form centre and then asked for feedback from the rest of the group. We took notes and blogged on what was said during the discussion. Here is an example of feedback we received after we showed some friends our 3rd rough cut.

Here is some audience feedback we filmed after the class watched our first rough cut.


This is Pt 2 of the video.


This is our last video is our latest audience feedback from Jake, another media student.


Mise-en-Scene

Negatives
  • Seems like two videos in the club and in the street
  • Verisimilitude lost on the type of shoes used
  • Trousers seem different with the lightings of the weather 
  • People looking at the camera from the public
Positives
  • The club scene works well and suits the style of the videos and son choice
  • The mise en scene from the sort of urban town feel works well 
  • The way in which the character is in a lot of random different locations works well

Shot Variety

Negatives
  • Close ups needed of the iconic features of the old man
  • More long shots and extreme close ups of the dancing scenes and in the club scenes
  • More shots needed of the old man in the normal old man mode
Positives
  • Alot of good shot variety within the whole video
  • Good shot variety and a good range of different angles and locations
  • Good use of shot variety in the urban town area and the dancing but needs a bit more maybe

Steady Shots

Negatives
  • Start on the train in between the chairs is shaky and needs to be edited 
  • When the old man is walking past the shops with the walking stick in hand
  • Club scenes are shaky but it has a good effect in a way but shouldn't be used as much
Positives
  • Didn't see an unsteady shot and would be excellent if the nightclub shots were reasonably steady and if the shakiness was on purpose
  • Steady shots throughout an all round good performance
  • Good steady shots when the break dancing is in Slow-Mo 

Framing

Negatives
  • End shot feet were out of the way and ruined the shot
  • The dropping the tissues didn't exactly work that well so maybe another angle or frame for that one
  • Dancing in the streets the framing was off due to the walls being too much in shot
  • Average and some good shots
Positives
  • The framing in the break dancing in the streets worked really well and was a good use of the urban environmental view to the song.
  • The break dancing with the dutch angle worked extremely well 
  • Good use of the framing with the police car in the shots

    Appropriate Material

    Negatives
    • People looking at the camera at the zebra crossing and all the cars at the begining  
    • Need shots of the old man in the club to show the narrative continuity only one shot of being ignored need more
    • Not convincing that he is an old man
    • Club scene is too early
    Positives
    • The club scene worked well with the mad party thing 
    • Suited the style and genre of the music and the style of the original artist
    • Works well and most of it makes sense and you get some sense of verisimilitude

      We took on board all the feedback that was given to us and discussed very idea. Some ideas such as adding more hazards which the old guy has to avoid in the narrativea no add  transitions into black, we rejected because we didn't believe it would work. However the majority of feedback given to us we used to make changes to our video. Here is a list of changes made due to our feedback:
      • Less performance shots and more narrative.
      • Have 4 bad situations instead of just the 1
      • Get rid of the poor ending and film another one
      • Keep the camera steady in the all the shots possible
      • Make the narrative more clearer at the start of it maybe a diegetic opening
      • Change the way in which we go from stereotype to counter type in the narrative. 

      After gaining feedback we made the changes to the video and then asked for further feedback. The people who we aimed at getting feedback from 

      There is a clear use of audience feedback shown in all three of our products. Every time we received feedback we produced a new version/idea after using the notes we gathered together. This meant that our work was meeting all the common codes and conventions needed to attract to our target audience. 

      Here is an overall recap of Evaluation Question 3 

      Evaluation Question 4 Technologies

      ">

      To produce the music videos that we are making in school non of this would happen without the technology we have these days, people 20 or 30 years ago could not even imagine the amount of technology which is available to us now as back then. To gain research for our primary and secondary audiences we are going to devise a series of questions to ask random students and teachers within our school to find a target audience for our music video. This will help us create a much better quality video as we can target a specific age range.

      First we did play our track to the audience and then asked them the series of questions below.
                       Do you own or stream this track (original) 
                       Do you own or stream tracks by this artist (MK) ?
                       If not, would you consider buying or streaming this track or anything by this act?
                       Can you name any other tracks by this artist?
                       What would you expect to see in one of there videos?
                       Who would you consider to be the target audience for this act?
                       Do you like the House/Deep House genre?
                       Do you think this genre of music will appeal to a large audience?
                       Do you think this genre of music is more popular between 14 - 25 year olds or 25+?
      And this was how we gained our target audience from this shot survey.

      Our idea is of an Old Man walking around town struggling whilst everyone looks right through him (like the title). However when the music drops the old man chucks away his stick and starts dancing. We will be filming peoples reactions as this wont be staged and will be included in the video. We will include special effects on the video in certain parts to suit the genre of music. Here is a video that highlights the audience research. 


      For the research and planning of our coursework we used many different technologies to achieve such levels these technologies consist of Blogger, Facebook, Youtube, IMDB, Twitter, USB Sticks, Mac Computers, Gmail, Mobile Phones, Final Cut, Grab and Google


      Blogger is the place where all the information goes on how we progress and share what we have found in terms of research and the process of making some footage of the putting together of our music Video also all the vodcasts and podcasts of how the process of how our coursework is going.




      Youtube is a very good and useful place to get video clips to compare and to post video's of how the progress of the music video making is going also we can share and embed previous video's of what are relevant to the subject for example video's of already successful Music Videos and other Viral Vids too







      Div Share is also another technology that we have used to get our media product to where it is now and div share has enabled us to get our weekly vodcasts up and online on our blogs by embedding them on.




      IMDB is the place which provides the most relevant information for music video creating and what sorts of things come from old already made videos and newly up to date ones which are very successful, IMDB is a online website which lets you look up any music video and director. This is ideal for when we 
      are researching or analysing past music 
      videos.
      




      PhotoShop elements was also another key technology that we used when creating our media text and this helped us create our digipak and magazine ads. This type of technology has enabled us to transform images into a decent standard media product. And for producers and artists 10 years ago this sort of up to date technology was not even around for them to use so we are using the top end types of things to create our own ancillary texts.



      Final cut pro is where the footage of the filming gets edited. This is the sort of technology that the pro directors and production company's use for music video creation in the world wide industries. It just shows how the world has been subjected to digitalisation and it benefits the people like us who do not have a lot of funding to produce the hugely successful videos.




      HD Video camera's that we use to shoot the footage for our music Videos are so high tech that major producers didnt even use them about 10 years ago and they are more advanced than the one's they used back then. They provide us with an endless amount of opportunity to shoot the key footage and right frames to put our music videos together and with only an SD card as the storage device it is so much cheaper than 
      the huge industry ones.



      Audacity is the final technology that we have used. This was used to edit, trim and loop parts of our track so that it was radio friendly as the original track was roughly 6 mins long so we had to trim it down to around 3 mins.





      Another Technology that we have used is the Mac computer and non of these technologies would have been accesable without the use of these highly powerful Apple Mac's, They are the main key piece of technology that we use in our Media work as they hold all the things we need in terms of editing and finishing off and creating key parts of the Music Video also the Apple mac's hold all the information we need for research which is all stored on the internet and various blogs to help us.



      SD cards/ Adapters have been one of the most important part of technology we have used due to them we have been able to add our footage from the cameras which we have taken from the shopts , then these are able to be imported onto the computer from these SD cards via the adapters so this in terms of technological value is very high up in the ranks. 




       
      Screen Capture is what we have used to evidence what we have been using in terms of technologies on the computers, for example we have screen shots of all the effects we have used on final cut and it is good to use this screen capture to then evaluate what we have learned.






      Magazine Websites were used to show what we need to know about our own magazine adverts where by we can look at the general codes and conventions of the actual magazine adverts so it was a good eye opening tool to look at.







      Twitter was a main feature when we were gaining world wide feedback we used it to broadcast our own media product via this form of social media and this has been useful in terms of gaining research and tips on how to improve our own media products and ancillary texts.





      We used all of these technologies in the research and planning of our media throughout the whole course. And all of these were vital in the preparation of our media product they all came into play when creating our video and our ancillary texts. However when using all of these technologies there has been some minor hickups such as the macs not working or the cameras not having battery power or the software on the computers not being up to date enough or having some minor technical issues. Dispite all of these happening we have managed to come up with a fully functional media product along with its added texts.



      .