What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We posted our music video on facebook and youtube, which allowed us to see what our chosen audience would think about our video. Our feedback was very positive, " That's top mate 1.15 is well funny", "mint, the beginning is well good" and "Absolute quality well done guys". We asked a couple of our friends what they thought about our video and many liked the "blurr" bit at 1.15 as this added comedy to the video but was also a good link to then start to follow Jack/Kyle.

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

Our video is inspired by our chosen artist Jamie T, his video have a more edgy feel unlike the majority of contemporary videos today. Our video has broken away from conventions because ours has more of a narrative based video. A few music videos have a narrative within the video so the audience can be engrossed in the video not just the music. The most famous narrative video was Guns 'n' Roses - "November Rain" which left the viewers at home more engrossed with the song because of the mystery's within the video. We also have used different conventions of abstract qualities like spinning of the spoon for the drug reference.

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

Well first off our music video has a narrative structure to it with some abstract elements implemented within the film. The CD compliments the video with images from the video, for instance the front cover involves an image of Helen on the canal looking back into some bushes which you cannot see, In the video Helen looks back at a Stella can which Sheila has thrown before she passed away, that’s where I got the idea of the image to go on the front of the album and I feel the desaturated image with high contrast links in with the theme of the past. The magazine advert features the song title, the artist, the date it’s released and a mention of a website at the bottom which helps promote and sell the featured song. This links in with the back cover because it has Helen featuring on it yet again. I feel I have used the same abstract design and style across all three.

The video has fast cuts, jump cuts, close ups and even a 360 view of the character etc. These are the key elements of an abstract video but our groups have managed to create a narrative to it as well. The earthquake effect, the use of the bad TV effect along with line art made the video even better; we used cross dissolves, fades, black and white imagery, and also used freeze frames to give it a more authentic look and feel to the work.

The song featured has an indie vibe to it so the target audience is going to be young. The representations of young adolescent people can be shown in a negative way for instance some people think teenagers are all drug takers, alcoholics and have a live fast die young attitude. In some ways that’s what this video is connoting; showing young people in a horrible situation and have just grew up in the wrong crowd and how a girl (Sheila) went down the wrong path and died because of it. But it’s showing how drinking, drug taking and even teenage pregnancies are the wrong thing to do for instance lyrics say ‘Lisa had a baby with Sam, And now Jack’s on his own man’ this suggests that your going to end up lonely if you choose that life of crime etc. This music video will be aimed at teenagers and telling them not to go down that road so I feel it is an excellent opportunity for teenagers to think about their lives; creating a society of teenagers knowing not to mess with drugs and alcohol etc.

Album Cover

For the album cover I used an image of Helen from a stills camera and with the help of Photoshop I created the desaturation , turning contrast up and inserting font.



The back of the album is another image of Helen leaning against a wall with a door to her left. The font on the door is my own handwriting which I scanned onto the image and made it look like some sort of graffiti. My original idea was going to be gothic century text listing the songs but then I got my own writing idea from a Red Hot Chilli's 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' back cover below:



I feel the back cover is somewhat original and unlike any other cover out there and I have added a little love heart at the bottom, this I feel makes the songs more personal. I included a barcode and information about copyright etc, for a more professional look to the back cover.



The inside cover is Helen and Sophie's faces merged together to create a weird effect and an abstract design that confuses viewers. I recently put them on the social networking site Facebook where friends commented on my design and i got feedback like 'it's scary but good' 'I love it' etc.


I have also created a magazine ad that has come from my own imagination, with the help of Photoshop I inserted a part of the image I used on the back cover which was Helen leaning against a wall, with text overlaying the background image, adding a blue tint onto it. Its a simple design that adds my own originality. This poster is showed below:

Evaluation

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

In constructing our product we used many different media technologies. For example we used a camera for capturing our footage, and Final Cut Pro to log, capture and edit our raw footage in order to create a fitting sequence and narrative for our chosen audio track.
During filming we used the greenscreen to record part of our creative idea. This is difficult to do as you need to ensure the person whom you are recording is not standing too close to the greenscreen as it would create a shadow and/or a green ‘fuzz’ around them when you transfer it to the Apple Mac’s during editing. Once we uploaded the footage onto the editing software, we applied an appropriate graffiti background to the section and animated text.
Throughout the blog we have used such technologies as camera recording and video streaming. We also uploaded pictures of our location and characters. We also used a microphone when recording some audience feedback to upload onto the blog. In gaining additional audience feedback we used the internet, such sites as ‘facebook’ and ‘youtube’ as these were readily accessible to us, and also allowed us to receive feedback from our target audience. This allowed us an outside opinion so that we could adjust or improve anything we needed to.

Overview of our filming.

Green Screen.

Within the music video with have a used a green screen sequence for the spoken bit of the song. This sequence helps to develop our abstract image for the video. We involved the professional acting skills of Mr Rees the head of Loreto Drama and Theatre. Whilst he was miming the piece we directed him to do a number of hand gestures, so it would allow us use a number of editing techniques, for example if he shout his hand out to the right we would make the words shoot out in the same direction, to create a more modern abstract feel. We replaced the green screen with one of our chosen themes “Graffiti”, thus creating an urban feel.

Content

Content:
As well as being creative with our music video, we decided to take a lot of the lyrics in a literal sense. For example, “In life he was dealt some shit hands” involved a deck of cards being shuffled and thrown into the face of the character ‘Jack’. We also took the implication of ‘Stella’ to be a real person, whereas in fact in the song it is referring to Sheila being an alcoholic and her friend being the beer Stella Artois. However we took it in a literal sense so the negative connotations of alcohol and alcoholism were personified and portrayed to create a strong moralistic message.

Further developing on our creativity and influence of abstract qualities, we used several unusual camera and editing techniques as we thought it appropriate and fitting with the ‘indie’ genre and ‘arty’ element of the video.

The Process.

The song we have chosen is titled “Shelia” by an artist called Jamie T, who is a London based songwriter. We chose this record because of the more abstract and edgy feel than other songs.

We decided as a group to film our music video at the Bridgewater canal in Timperley. As the scenery establishes a distinctive tone and relates well to the “indie” genre of our chosen artist. As the video is set over a one day period Stella, played by me, and Jack, played by Kyle, had to make sure we were wearing the same costume attire for each day of filming in order to ensure excellent continuity. We also had to make sure I was always walking in the same direction, so as to dictate the success of the continuity. Also the weather would affect the continuity of the video, so we could only film on days with similar forecasts.

Research, Influences & Themes

Research:


As a group we discussed and established the importance of researching into the chosen artist and genre of ‘indie’ music. We acknowledged that this would assist us in ensuring that our video sequence was appropriate and fundamental to the song. The research is as follows:



Jamie Alexander Treays, known by his stage name Jamie T, is a 23-year-old English singer/songwriter from Wimbledon, South London. He is currently signed to Virgin Records, but released his Betty and the Selfish Sons EP on his own Pacemaker Records label. His backing band is called The Pacemakers and he has lately been touring, advertising and releasing material as "Jamie T and The Pacemakers”.





















In popular music, independent music, often generally abbreviated as "indie", is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels and an autonomous, Do-It-Yourself approach to recording and publishing. Independent labels have been known to strive for minimal influence on the artist they represent, avoiding the artist-cultivating behaviour of many major labels. Artists represented by Independent labels have been known to be focused more on producing music than becoming wealthy and/or well known. These artists use more off beat styles to create music since they are not hindered by the record label.

Influences and Themes:

The music video which we produced was greatly influenced by the original version created by the artist; however we adapted it greatly to input our own ideas and enforce particular moralistic views. We saw this as an opportunity to be creative and to actively produce and deliver something which we were proud of. We were also greatly influenced by abstract qualities and graffiti art, which features regularly throughout the video. We thought this to be appropriate as not only has graffiti existed since ancient times, but it is a form of abstract art exercised to communicate both social and political messages.

Graffiti has since evolved into a pop culture existence, creating a lifestyle that remains hidden from the general public. The controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials/ law enforcement and graffitists looking to display their work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly contested, being reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

Another influence of ours was devised from the work of Danny Boyle, from the film he directed, ‘Trainspotting’. His use of pausing action to still images to develop on a characters attributes and personality, whilst telling the story was more recently used by Quentin Tarantino in ‘Inglorious Bastards’. We used this technique on occasion employing a similar effect.