Goodbye from me

Wow, I am actually really upset. I have now completed my total media studies experience at Robert Clack School. I hope you enjoyed watching my thriller and my music video. I can thoroughly say I enjoyed it and will do my best to persue a career in the media industry. Thanks again, from me, goodbye :(

Evaluation

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

Our music video uses many ideas. Most of which are original ideas that we thought up and carried out. We compared our ideas to other music videos from artists such as The Monkees and Oasis. I chose these groups because they are of a similar genre of music as our song. I would say our ideas challenge those of other groups and individuals. This is because we are totally different and almost opposite. From what I can gather, other groups have fun with their videos but we almost seem to be over the top with ours. Some people believe that this may be a wrong idea, however we think its great. The song is bouncy and fun so why can't the video. In terms of developing ideas, I believe we did get some initial ideas off of The Monkees. These ideas are not direct, but ideas such as wearing plenty of bright and colourful clothes.
I believe that by using our own ideas, it makes it simpler in the sense of we don't have to try and imitate any other work. However there were some aspects that after watching some of the best guitar solos in the world, that some of our ideas had been used by other film crews around the world. One example of this is the famous Guns and Roses guitarist Slash. From the screenshots i captured, here is one shot that was used by both me and Slash.

As you can see, the shot between me and Slash is very similar. This is the only aspect that I could find that was similar to any other music video that I had watched. Here are some examples of how mine is different to other videos.

As you can see, the costumes we used were slightly different from those of the famous band The Klaxons.

Also, other parts we have to consider are :

Instruments - obviously to the band playing -

Camera Angles - these help the audience understand who may be in power or the object of erotic desire etc -

As we can see from this screenshot, the Point of View shot of the singer is at a high angle which shows that he has power over the object of erotic desire.

Make Up - to make the singer and characters "good looking" -

Dancing - some videos do not have dancing, others are nothing but dancing. I feel dancing helps a group to put across the type of song. E.G. fun and bubbly or sad and miserable -

As we compare Cheryl Cole - Fight For This Love to Professor Green - I Need You Tonight. Fight For This Love is mainly dancing whereas I Need You Tonight has hardly any dancing.

Lip Synching - If the lip synching is incorrect then people will not believe that it is them singing. For example, on some live performances, people such as Britney Spears, who was meant to be a role model to many young people, was often caught out"Lip Synching" rather the actually singing on live performances.

Mise-en-scene - this is key as people may not wish to purchase the song or video if the mise en scene is not very good. The Mise On Scene is what is on the screen. Therefore anything that may not be relevant may deter the audience from purchasing the video which in the long run, is the min stram of getting money, either from download or CD sales.

Even though i was unable to use extremely unrealistic features that most top music videos use, i believe our video is really good. We do not use the tropic scenes or the overly made up women.

Realisic music videos are being made more these days. This is due to the type of songs and people that are making it. This types of videos are being made for the younger generations.

One video that shows this is Chiddy Bang's "The opposite of adults"

Also, I tried to install a link that shows the comparison between my video and another video. I decided to use the song Replay by Iyaz. This music video enables me to analyse the texts and therefore am able to see the contrast between them. Here are my findings. I noticed that my video had nothing that had similarities to the music video I studied. For example, Replay by Iyaz had used extremely exotic areas whereas i did not. Also, the Iyaz also filmed using exotic women and rather exotic shots etc. During planning, i made sure that all of my ideas were original and that we did not feel that using ideas from a previous text was very professional which also allows me to express my creativity. Here is a comparison of my video to the Replay video.

As we can see, the scenery used by me and Katie and Iyaz is TOTALLY different. I used the local council flats whereas Iyaz used a tropical islands and beaches.

2)How effective is the combination of your main product and and ancily texts (DVD digipak, Magazine Advert)

Digipak Front Cover

Advertising Poster

Opening Scene of Our Video

Overall, the three parts of our coursework (Digipak, Music Video and Advert) worked really well together. I believe that all three reflected the song in the sense that they are fun and the song is fun. The video is fun and bubbly, the magazine is almost cartoony and the digipak has images of colour and screenshots of use jumping from trees etc. I feel that in the market world, the products wold have worked together and made people want to buy the product. Therefore i believe that our products were all a success. When designng the three peices of work, we wrote down all the genres and styles in which we have seen before and decided to try and be creative. One thing that we noticed was that there were not many music videos that were linked that well with their posters and covers for the tracks. Therefor we tried to focus our attention on making the ancillary tasks just as fun as the video itself. The way in which we did this was by using photoshop to mix the cartoon background with the real images of me. By doing this, I felt that the fun was still kept in the task. The image we used for the fromt cover of the digipak was jus totally experimental to start with but then we realised that by just having fun with the camera on the iMacs, that we were actually making great material for our digipak. This is the reason in which we used the image we used. It was a totally random photo that we wanted to take (purely through boredom to be honest) and VIO LA .... The perfect photo.

3) What have you learnt from media feedback?

I have learnt quite a lot from our audience feedback. I used the website www.wordle.net in order to produce a picture of all the most common words that were said during all the feedback session.The wordle website puts a cloud of common words together in order to see what the most common words used.

Here it is:

The use of audience feedback is key. if the audience do not enjoy tour product then the wholeTEXT - AUDIENCE - INSTITUTION chain is broken and then the company cannot continue to produce any more products. We used many different forms of technology in order to gain audience feedback. For example, we use facebook and myspace as well as recording people after watching our video. The most interesting fact about our audience feedback, was that people did not expect it to be as good as it was. It was a pleasant surprise and when we asked why, most people said that they were not expecting the levels of creativity in which we had. I also learned that somehow, less is more. This is because from the people we asked face to face, they loved the fact it was simple yet creative. We did not use any props that you could not buy in your average shopping centre and did not bother with make up as it makes it too staged and false. The best piece of audience feedback in which we received was from the band themselves, The 99s. The reason for this is because the E-Mail we received from them after watching our video expressed the fact that they really enjoyed it and we almost felt like they approved of the video. This put a huge smile on our faces as we felt we had accomplished our goal of making a great music video. After looking at my results from my online survey, I was actually rather happy to see that one person who had taken the survey obviously did not enjoy it as they said it did not look professional and that they would not purchase the video. The reason I was happy was that it obviously had to have some bits added and overall left room for improvement. If this little gap for the extra effort was not there then we would not have any new ideas and therefore would become postmodern. Each individual has their own ideas and this is what I felt was great. The person who did not like our video had their own ideas which in the long run, could produce a new genre or style.


4) How did you use new media products to construct and research your media product?

We used social networking sites such as facebook and myspace in order to find our music to use. We also used sites such as wordle, google, and youtube to try and research previous music videos, digpaks and magazine adverts. Without this technology, I think our video would be extremely hard to have completed. We used many new media products to be able to constrct and research our media product. Such new technology includes surveymonkey.com, YouTube, Facebook aswell as objects such as digital cameras etc. I shall now list in sections all the new technology I have used.

RESEARCH - I have used the following technology to research for the production of our video.

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Google

PLANNING - I used the following technology in order to plan my video.

• iPod - Listening to the music to learn lyrics
• iMacs - Producing anamatics
• Google - Looking at software to help produce the video
• Facebook - Get ideas that people might like.

CONSTRUCTION - I used the following technology in order to construct my video.

• Video camer - For filming
• iMac - For research, editing and blogging
• iMovie - For editing

EVALUATION - I used the following technology in order to complete my evaluation.

• iMacs - for blogging
• Online Survey - Audience feedback.
• YouTube - Feedback

Survey Results

After Completing my survey, I have (with the help of http://www.surveymonkey.com/) constructed graphs in order to compare my results. Here are my results. (Apologies for the quality)

Here are the questions that i put on my blog and also, I shall analyse each question in order to show the answers people gave.

1) Are you .... Male / Female

2) What age group do ou fall into ..... -16 / 17 - 25 / 26 +

3) What did you think of our musc video ..... Very Good / Good / O.K / Poor / Extremely Poor

4) What did you think made the video good ..... The Locations / The Camera Shots / The Mae up and Cosume / The Sory Line / The Lip-Synching

5) Do you think it lookedprofessional ..... Yes / No

6) For the purpose of marketing, would you be intersted in buying the product ..... Yes / No

7) Does the video add somthing to the song ..... Yes / No

8) Where did you see the video ..... In School / Facebook / YouTube

I shall now analyse each quation and the answers that I recieved. Rather then write the questions out again, I will refer to them using the numbers above.

1) 45% Were Male and 55% were Female

2) 0% were 16-, 78% were 17-25 and 22% were 25 +

3) 68% said Very Good and 32% said Good

4) 56% said the Lip Synching, 24% said the Camera Shots and 20% said the Story Line.

5) 89% said Yes and 11% said No

6) 89% said Yes and again, 11% said No

7) 89% yet again said Yes and believe it or not 11% said o

Finally .......

8) 57% said Facebook, 14% said YouTube leaving 29% to say in School

Overall, my survey resultsshow a rather positive reaction to the work me and Katie produced. There were a few negative replies but that did not put me off at all, after all, without critics, the media world, from advertising flyes to music videos, would not improve and move with the modern times of today.

Contribution

I think that my contribution to the production of our music video, digipak and advert was a fair contribution. Me and Katie did a rather significant amount of the editing together, I did most of the advert and we had an equal imput on the digipak. Overall we had a similar input on the whole task.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is the work which by does not look to the future. By this I mean not creating new ideas, but using ideas that have already been used and slightly changing them. Many media texts use it but sometimes it takes some careful looking at to understand them. There are many aspects of postmodernism :

Pastiche - Borrows work and ideas from others
Parody - Takes an idea, copies it to make it funny - Scary Movie
Reflexivity - Refers to itslef and uses internal references
Quotation - Repeats and quotes from other sources
Intertextuality - Uses different text in order to add new meaning.

I was looking at an episode of The Simpsons "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious " that was a parody of the Disney film Mary Poppins. A few ideas that The Simpsons used was obviously the nanny, who was called Shary Bobbins. They used references to Quentin Tarantino's Resivour Dogs and Pulp Fiction, aswell as English history and films with quotes about Jack The Ripper and Olver Twist.

I do not believe that any of our ideas used in our music video were "borrowed" and even though we did research on other music videos, we already had ideas set in our head.

Reply

The group that allowed us to use their music, The 99's replied to an e-mail I sent them regarding the music video. I emailed them saying :

Hi James, I would like to again thank you and the other guys for letting us use you song for our video. I have attached a copy onto the e-mail for you to watch. I hope you enjoy watchinf it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Thanks Again

Chris.

They replied :

Hi Chris,

Thanks so much for sending us that. Just showed the other guys ..... It's BRILLIANT!! It looks like you had real fun making it. Well we all wish you the best and hope you guys get GREAT grades for all your hard work and effort.

Take Care,

James (The 99s)

I thought this was great as we had impressed the original artist.

Representations

In many music videos there are stereotypes, especially towards gender. I do not think there are any stereotypes apart from the fact that at the end, stacy is the object of erotic desire and is the reason that the singer is singing the song. Apart from this, I do not believe that there are any stereotypes towards gender. The only stereotype is the clothing choice. I feel as the music is slightly indie, that the clothes should be slightly indie aswell.

Analysis of Finished Video.

How Does The Text Communicate To The Audience??

I think that the text communicates t the audience in many different ways. For example, we get a feeling of love and almost passion all the way through the video and that is confirmed in the end by the shot of the young girl which i represented as the object of erotic desire. I also think that the song is communicating to the audience subconsciously. For example, people that are not even in our class who are just in the room seem to be walking around singing our song. I think this means that the song must be rather distinctive and different which helps communicate.

Analysis of :

Camerawork - I think that our camerawork was really good. After watching our video and reviewing it, many people came up to us and asked for our advice and help. I think this was great as it helped me to understand that people appreciated or work, not only through the finished video, but through the camerawork. I think this is because we used a variety of shots, angles and distances between shots. For example, by the camera being low and looking up (low angle), it shows power and responsibility, whereas a high angle represents the person as small and weak.

Lighting - The lighting was not really down to us, but down to mother nature due to the fact we were outside for most of our video. This did prove a problem sometimes as we were sometimes unable to film due to the lack of light. The scenes we did do inside were perfect in terms of lighting, however some scenes needed some improvisation in order to be able to see the character, especially the scene with the guitar solo where the photo of me and Katie is in the background. This was a challenge as we needed to get the right balance of light. Too light and we would not see the photo in the background, too dark and you would not be able to see the singer/guitarist playing.

Colour - Colour is a key aspect in the music video as it adds a feeling into the song. Our song was rather upbeat and fun so we decided to use bright colours to add fun. The only scene we decided to use dark colours was at the start when the singer sings about negative things. as soon as the chorus starts and the song gets going, we change into bright colours in oder to allow the audience to understand it is fun.

Mise-En-Scene - During our music video, mise en scene was rather important. Anything that was in our shot that we did not want to be there was rather annoying as we would go back and re-film the scene. This is because it makes it rather professional to have only relevant objects on the screen. For example, we used a forest in one of our scenes. This is because it was a rather fun place to film and therefore I found it was a fun scene of the video. This means that when people do watch the video, they understand that particular part of the video. Also, during the song, there is a line that goes "Dirty old towns ringing in my ears". For this part of the song, we decided to make sure we used somewhere slightly grimier and dirty to again allow the audience to understand.

Editing - Editing is a vital piece of the video. If one part of the editing is done incorrectly then the whole video could be wrong. This is because the lip-synching could be moved ever so slightly which would cause major problems. I understood and realised that i should probably cut smaller chunks off of clips in order to allow them to fit perfectly. The only reason I decided to do this was because i made the mistake of moving clips ever so slightly which then mucked it all up. So this was a case of trial and error. What was rather frustrating was when i realised that other groups had pure pot luck and were able to cut a random amount off and the clip would fit perfectly! For most of our video, we used jump cuts. However for a few change in scene we decided to use a transition. This is because transitions can add an affect to a scene and make the change feel less harsh and bold. We did not use any graphic matches in our music video.

Levi Strauss (No Not The Jeans Man)

Claude Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss believed that many media texts ran on Binary Oppositions. <---> Male To Female.

He Says how people subconsciously believe in Binary Oppositions. For Example, the war in Iraq at the moment.

America and England <------------------------------> Iraq

Clean Weapons <-------------------------------> Dirty Weapons

Only Kill Military Targets <-------------------------------> Kill Civilians

This theory runs directly with many texts that we use today.

Theories of Narrative (Propp)

Vladimir Propp

Propp analysed folk stories and realised that there where 8 ky characters in all films:

- The Hero (Protagonist)

- The Villain (Antagonist)

- The Doner (Provider) Gives hero the special equiptment.

- The Helper - Helps the Hero

- The Father Figure - This Person has wisdom and knowledge

- The Dispatcher - Sends Hero on the job

- The Princess - The damsel in distress

- The False Hero - Somebody who we think is the hero but in fact is a villain.

I watched some 007 films and used Prop's theory. This is what i discovered:

The Hero - 007

The Villain - Jaws

Te Doner - Q

The Helper - One of many beautiful women

The Father Figure - M

The Dispatcher - M

The Princess - Yet again, one of many rather attractive ladies

The False Hero - Anoter Double-0 agent played by Shaun Bean.

Theories Of Narrative (Todorov)

There are many ideas behind the narrative towards media text.

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov had the theory that all media texts followed the same pattern:
-Equilibrium - Everything is O.K and normal and groovetastic!
-Disruption - The problem is caused (Enigma)
-Resoltion - Everything is hunkydory and the disruption is sorted
-New Equilibrium - All enigmas ad questions are srted and a new peice is created.

Narrative

Narrative is the way in which the story is organised. There are some elements to narrative that we need to understand:

Time- There is Realt ime and Chronological time covered. so for example, in the film High Noon, the film which is one and a half hours long covers an hour and a half in real time. Whereas the film Raging Bull uses a chronological time period. So over the Hour or so the film is on for, it covers 25 years.

Closure- This is when all the loose ends of the story and the plot are all tied together in order to give us an idea of the story closing, for example a murderer beng caught or a lost child coming home.

Enigma- This is the problem or the mystery that sends the protagonist on the journey or mission. It creates tension, just like in our thrillers. The mystery was the character in the black hoodie creeping around the school.

Classical Hollywood Narratives- Linear (In order of time) Beginning Middle To End. The Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction (1994) is not classic Hollywood narrative because it starts withe the end, then jumps to the start to go through the story.

Subplots - This is when there are more then one storylines going on which normally intertwine with eachother. However many films prefer to use closure and stick to one storyline.

A Few Little Things I Did to Remind People About My Survey

To help me to get people to do my survey, I decided to use the social networking site Facebook. To start with, I sent all of my friends who were on Facebook a message with both the link to my survey, aswell as the link to my music video which i published on the worldwide famous YouTube. Here is a screenshot of the process of sending the message.


On Facebook, you have the chance to tell people what you are doing and things that have happened through the section, "Whats On Your Mind". By entering text and submitting this, people who your are declared as friends with can then see what you have wrote. Therefore i thought it would be a great chance to promote not only my music video, but my survey. So i put the mentioned my video and my survey and put the weblinks on to enable them to do my survey. Here is a screenshot of My Facebook profile as people would now see it.

So Much To Do .... So Little Time !!!!!

We have now been told that the deadline for our WHOLE media studies coursework experience is due in on the 1st April. With some little bits and bobs to sort out, and the weekend ahead, I am confident that I shall finish on time!!

Houston we have lift off

I have finally got a few people responding to my survey. Woop Woop!!!

Ok New Survey

The website http://www.freeonlinesurvey.com/ has let me down. Therefore I will try my luck on http://www.surveymonkey.com/ and republish my survey. The new link to my COMPLETED NEW SURVEY is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PV2JKRM.

Here are a few screenshots of the completed survey

I Am REEAAALLLLLYYYYYYYYYYY NOT AMUSED

Ok, i am really trying to stay calm. My Free Online Survey account says that 4 people have responded to my survey. I was OVER THE MOON ..... until it says that due to the fact i was only using a free trial, i cannot retrieve my results. This is NOT good.

Survey Up and Running!

YESSS !!!!!!!!!!! People are doing my survey. Just need to get a few more people doing my survey and then the results will be up and running.

Online Survey

I started my own online survey today. It has several questions that will help with my own evaluation. The link is : http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=2y30jnvhwdiccb5722921 I will keep you updated with any replies I get.

Digipac is completed.

Guess Whos's Back ......

After a well deserved few weeks off its back to business. Digipac and blog galore at the moment so you'll be hearing plenty of me over the next few weeks.

Digipacs

We have just started to construct our digipac. It was all flowing well until we realised that we would require photoshop again :( So wish us luck.....

Half Term

Over the half term, I will be thinking about digipac ideas ..... as well as sleeping and chilling out and probably eating way too much.

Just in time !!

We have had a lucky escape ..... I was stupid enough to manage to rip, strain and stretch the ligaments in my right knee and now I'm on crutches for several weeks. I know this has no relevance to our media video but I think that if this had happened any earlier, we could have been in some serious trouble !!!!

The Chat Show ...

We decided to have some fun while doing our analysis so we made this short video that actually ended with me and Katie having a small argument which she said was playing ..... but ..... Im not too sure ! :D

The Advert.

This is our advert that we created. It consists of photos we took on the iMac aswell as editing we did on the photoshop application.

Just had a worring thought ........

This is the last time that I will be doing any sort of media work EVER. AND WERE FINISHED ... so now im a little upset.

Photoshop ..... DONT GET ME STARTED !!!!

Ok it is official that unless you have any idea or past experience with photoshop, then it is impossible to use. Some of the other students are clicking away like mad people and then theres me and Katie looking at the screen with a million or so icons trying to find delete !!!!! But .... there is a light at the end of the tunnel, if we stay calm, and take our time, then, with hope and luck, we might just get this advert done :) Wish me luck .....

Some Research on Adverts .... Before We Attempt Our Own

We decided to look at a few different adverts which have already been used in order to try and see what is affective and what is not. I realised that after looking at all the adverts and then watching the video or song it was advertising, i could see that colour played a massive part of the subconscious understanding of the advert. For example, the massive attack advert looks rather strange and slightly mysterious, this is reflected in the song. The Midlake advert portrays the song as being rather Gothic and heavy and without a doubt, it was what i expected. Therefore while making my own advert, I made sure that I reflected the song. i now know that i must use colour and fun ideas in order to get the viewer to understand my song without having to initially watch it.

Interview 1 - Charlie Duke

This is my friend Charlie. I interviewed him to see what he thought of my video.

The Excited Video !!!

Here are a few comments that we got on the social networking site Facebook after only a DAY of releasing our masterclass to the World.

FINISHEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD :D

Ok i'm really trying to stay calm at this point but ....... its not working ....... its taking over ........






WERE FINISHED

:D

A Job Well Done !

We decided that as we are nearly done filming, we should include some bits of filming that we didnt plan on using. We decided to do this in order to save doing any more filming, and also, after speeding them up seemed to be rather funny so we adde them in parts that we needed to fill in.

ARRGGGHHHH!!!!!

Ok this is the second time I have been unable to sign on to blogger for no apparent reason.

Weather Alert!!

Due to the heavy snow we have recieved lately, we have been unable to film. This is because we have done most of our filming with the acception of the last few seconds, we have finished. Therefore the snow has brought our filming, as well as the rest f the country to a standstill.

ARGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

For some reason, the past few weeks i have been unable to log onto blogger. Here is proof!