BLOG TASK 4 How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We were really pleased with how well we have used the internet to gain helpful background information about 60’s bands, which then enabled us to re-create important mise-en-scene aspects of the style such as lighting and props.

Our confidence with using search engines such as youtube to find original 60’s recordings of bands, and Google to find official band websites of groups such as the yardbirds, helped us research how we could create an authentic 60’s style.

We also found that using email was a really efficient way of communicating with the cast and arranging rehearsals. We also used emails to ask permission from METAL BLADE records to use their song. We used final cut pro in pre production to create an animatic timeline to help us plan out our narrative more accurately.

We found that after creating the animatic timeline certain things about our video changed, the pulling round of the curtain was never in the original pencil storyboards. We also used Photoshop to edit a picture of the lead singer which we then used as a prop in our music video. We were really pleased with the blurry camera lens filter we used in after effects, it looked really realistic and authentic and really helped to create a believable 60’s style.

We also thought the color masking we used in after effects looked really striking and interesting. It worked really well in creating sudden contrast with the 60’s style, and then during the switch of styles, we used a sweeping saturation effect to bring the color back in, which really helped create jouissance in our video.

During this montage sequence we found one thing very helpful in particular which was that in Final Cut Pro, we were able to make use of markers with which we could mark significant changes in beat and rhythms. These then helped us edit the montage sequence easily according to the beat. One challenge we had to face was that we had difficulty with continuation and it was very hard not to make continuation errors, as we cut very quickly and cross-cut with the lead singer.

During our shoot the actors didn’t quite get the fact that they had to strip off the clothes exactly the same way and therefore there were some issues with not being able to take certain shots of the band because there were continuity errors. Therefore we got Will’s shirt off very straight at the beginning so that we could use all the shots of him singing (which was another issue because he didn’t quite know the words) to cut away to.

We shot our video using a Sony HD camera which logs each shot as an individual file to make it easier to manage, and allowed us to look back at what we’d shot, which helped us decide what we still had to shoot and what we didn’t need to shoot without worrying about breaking the time line of the tape. Also during the shoot we took pictures which we used in our digipack.

We used the blog as a creative filter We were kicking ideas around about blue screening the instruments and having graphics moving over the top, but we decided against it in the end as masking the instruments would’ve been really difficult and taken a lot of time.

In the end we decided just to have the swap over of the 60’s to modern instruments and that was the final plan we submitted to the blog.

BLOG TASK 3

Blog Task 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Collect a variety of feedback for your product from members of your target audience and from other audience demographics on your blog via YouTube or other sources. Discuss how this feedback related to your own view of the strengths and weaknesses of your product and use it to demonstrate Hall’s concepts of preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings.

Pre-Information

The JICNARS scale

n A - higher management/ administration/

professional

n B - middle management/ administration/

professional

n C1 - supervisory/ clerical/ junior management

n C2 - skilled manual

n D - semi and unskilled manual

n E - subsistence income/ pensioners/ widows/

casual labour/ unemployed

The Basics of Audience

“Audience Engagement” describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in a different way to the same text. “Audience expectations” are the advance ideas an audience may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Don’t forget that producers often play with or deliberately shatter audience expectations. “Audience knowledge/foreknowledge” refers to the definite information (rather than the vague expectations)which an audience brings to a media product. “Audience identification” is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle (diversion, personal relationships, personal identity). “Audience placement” refers to the range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them fell that the media text is specially “for them”. “Audience research” says measuring an audience is very important to all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and, once produced, audience will be continually monitored.

How we got our feedback

To get our audience feedback we first of all focused on the different theories and tried to find a variety of questions that would help us find out whether our text was effective or not. These were the questions we came up with (for Roland Barthes):

Which of the following props gave you a clue about what the video was going to be about? How far into the video did you get the genre of the music video and did you expect the time period to change? Could you tell part of the video was set in the 60’s? Looking at the poster, what do you expect the artist/genre/sound/design/video/band to be like (organic/synthetic)?

…for Katz and Blummler:

Do you feel you were addressed by the music video/artist/band and drawn into the video? Do you feel yourself being reflected in the product we created? Do you think there is a fair amount of information that could be useful for living in our media product? Would you put this track on your ipod? …Stuart Hall:

Did you think the video reflected the 60’s style in general (including mise-en-scene, sound, camera, performance etc)? Is there anything you would like to criticize about the video? Were there any thoughts or expectations you had (that were unfulfilled)?

…in general:

What style of music do you listen to? Did this video remind you of anything? Do you think the band is similar to other bands? Do you think the lead singer is attractive? What do you think about the other members of the band? Did the costume design satisfy your expectations of the 60’s? Did you think the change from 60’s to modern was done successfully or would you have wanted it to be any different?

After this brainstorm, we started creating a survey on a website called www.surveymonkey.com. We logged on by creating a user account and started producing questions, sometimes multiple choice, sometimes just yes or no or comment boxes. Because we didn’t want our sample to get confused we only chose about two pages of survey (one page only allows 10 questions) and the questions were as following:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L6F5DM8

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L663DB9

(click on the link to get directions to our official survey)

Then we got a sample together which was a focus group of 6 second year students. We used these, because they are the audience we wanted to attract, and also they have a knowledge about music and media and are therefore a good audience to use because they pay attention to all the different elements.

We showed them the digipack covers on my laptop, got them to answer the first questions and then showed them the video and made them complete the rest of the questions. This is how we got our result which we then evaluated according to the theorists.

All in all our audience feedback has shown that the majority of our attracted audience understood our concept and what we wanted to convey with our music video. Furthermore we also noticed that there was still some aberrant reading, however only in little details. Also we found that the element of jouissance was just enough for the audience to like it, and not get confused or disturbed by it.

Feedback on audience foreknowledge and expectations

(Roland Barthes)

Roland Barthes states that everything we do is based around audiences pleasures. We have to make sure we balance expected viewing pleasures with new unexpected viewing pleasures (also known as plaisir vs jouissance), because when we look at a product, we look at the structure of the text and analyse the choice of conventions and ingredients and see what choices are new and which are conventional. Then we can evaluate which ones have worked and which haven’t.

In our pop video we used a lot of expected viewing pleasures such as the direct address of the lead singer, the typical music video shots, the mise-en-scene and performance. However we also used jouissance because we created a 60’s style atmosphere which we then broke into the modern, with Ruby coming in. From our audience feedback in which we tried to find out whether the audience understood her relationship with the band, where she came from and if she symbolizes anything, 75% of our audience got the fact she is from the future, however none understood what her relationship towards the band was.

This shows, that the unexpected element we put into our music video worked for a majority of our audience, however they still remained confused as to what Ruby is actually doing in the video. However, this was an element we didn’t explore that well in our video anyway, and we should’ve probably taken more shots of her to create a pre-story that helps the audience understand her better.

Furthermore Roland Barthes talks about foreknowledge and therefore we asked our sample a variety of questions to test their foreknowledge, for example we showed them the digipack front and back cover before letting them see the video and asked them what they thought the band was trying to convey (either an international/jetsetter lifestyle or a homegrown, local band). 100% said they thought the band would be homegrown which isn’t what we intended, however after seeing the video they got the fact they were more international and jetsetter style. This seems to show that our video conveyed our intentions very well, however the digipack didn’t quite get there. Also we asked the audience to predict certain things about the video after seeing the cover and 60% got the fact it would’ve been something to do with the mix of 60’s and modern, simply from looking at the front and backcover of our digipack. This seems to show that the music video coordinates with our digipack.

Feedback on what the audience got out of the video

(Katz and Blummler)

Katz and Blummler focus on uses and gratifications. It was suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society: surveillance, correlation, entertainment. A text should give escape from everyday problems and routine (diversion), the media should be used for emotional or other interaction (personal relationship), the audience should find themselves reflected in the text and also learning values and behaviours from the texts (personal identity) and the text should conclude information which could be useful for living (surveillance). In our survey we asked our sample about whether they felt addressed personally by the video and a hundred percent agreed. Furthermore we asked whether they had similar fantasies to the girls in the video and again 100% agreed to that. As well as that 85% said they found the video entertaining which shows that we used Katz and Blummlers concept of entertainment in a good way. Also we wanted to find out whether they could engage with the music video and song in any particular way and therefore we asked them whether they would put the song on their ipods (100% said yes) and in which playlist they would put it. The answers were things such as “cooking music funk”, “chill”, “chill out”, “relaxed, chilled”. This was positively surprising because the song is actually about love, however we didn’t focus on that element too much in our music video but tried to convey a message of chilled entertainment and fun (mainly in the montage sequence), therefore the answer is quite satisfying. However maybe we should’ve thought about actually sticking more to the words that about the style of music because this is what we heavily focused on. All the girls we asked also spoke about the fact that they would like to be Ruby or one of the other girls which shows, that we provoked some sort of relevance to love and created a fantasy. Also 90% thought the 60’s idea was great which has surveillance in a historical perspective.

How successful our products were in communicating to our target audience

(Stuart Hall)

Stuart Hall created something called the reception theory. He extended the concept of an active audience even further and conducted a lot of work into how the individual receives and interprets a text and also how their own individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. This work is based on his “encoding/decoding” model of the relationship between the text and the audience. The text is encoded by the producer and decoded by the reader. Therefore there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, through using recognized codes and conventions and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as preferred reading. However there is also something known called aberrant reading which are the things that they misread and negotiated reading, but the audience reads but we didn’t actually think of.

To define out audience we asked them what their favourite style of music was, where all of them answered mainstream, and then what they thought our band was most similar to and they all answered “The Beatles”. This shows that our sample has a good foreknowledge and know what they are talking about which makes them reliable. However their own individual circumstances are all quite the same and they are all in group E, therefore you could argue that our sample is biased. However we tried to get to know something about their preferred, aberrant and negotiated reading so we asked them, for example, which aspects of the video signaled to them that it was a 60’s style. As options we gave things such as “the studio camera”, “the white background”, “the costume”, “the simple studio shots”, “black and white”. In this questions the answers varied heavily, because each element was ticked, however no one ticked all of them (which would’ve been great). However some came up with additional information, for example wrote that the microphone was signaling to them the different time period. Also we asked them whether they liked the video or what they didn’t like and all of them said that one of the female actresses looked extremely bored which annoyed them. We acknowledged that fact in the process of editing and tried to use as little shots of her as possible to prevent this reaction, however as we now see it didn’t quite work that well.

BLOG TASK 2

Task 2

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

Prepare a Powerpoint presentation to the following brief: With reference to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image, demonstrate how elements of the star image are sold through your creative choices in the video, digipack cover and poster. In particular, you should look to show how the three products work together to sell the artist and/or where there may be some contradictions in the images created. Make sure that you illustrate with images from your work and, where helpful, from existing products.

In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider the roles of music stars. The term "star" refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience.Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, TV and music. Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common.

A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music]).

Our Star image has been constructed out of a range of materials. We created a star image which we then marketed through the use of a promotional music video and a digipak. Richard Dyer describes the common values of music stardom, including youthfulness, rebellion, sexual magnetism, an anti-authoritarian attitude, originality, creativity/talent, aggression/anger, a disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour, conspicious consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods as well as success against the odds. The star image we constructed is an artist called Jack Thomson. The main characteristics we constructed for him are demonstrated in our creative choices in the video, digipak cover and poster. We chose the give him an star image with the following common values of music stardom: youthfulness, sexual magnetism (working as one of the unique selling points), originality, creativity, talent and a previous fanbase. These qualities are mainly shown in our pop video. The fact he is youthful is reinforced by the fact that he has a very youthful look to him. He is the typical “american sweetheart” with long hair in Zac Efron style which signals to our audience that he isn’t a teenager any more but has element of youthfulness to him.

This is vital for the star image, because to appeal to the audience of female teenagers the artist needs to have elements of youthfulness to him so they can fall for him, however for the male audience he should seem experienced and an “even opposite player” and even superior, therefore you have to make sure you find a good mixture between youthfulness and experience in the look. His sexual magnetism is shown in the video in the fact that towards the end he is playing his music topless and is surrouonded by attractive girls dancing around him. This therefore signals to the audience that if these girls think he is attractive he must be.

Furthermore the video works for the female and male fanbase because the males believe that if they were to look like him they’d have these girls dancing aroung them and the females may think that if they were to jump on stage on the next concert of Jack Thomson he might also continue playing the song. As well as this Jack Thomson has a prior fanbase, so he isn’t actually a “newcomer” but more of someone finally coming out. This is shown by the fact that at the beginning of the video you already have females dancing around him and he is on a TV show where the TV Presenter leads the audience/camera into the world of the star.

The last, but probably most important key element of our star image is the fact that Jack Thomson is an original who has creativity and talent and belongs to an organic band. Keith Negus argues that the organic ideology of creativity is a naturalistic approach to artists. Furthermore the seeds of success are within the artists, who have to be "nurtured" by the record company. The image of the artist is "enhanced" by the record company and the artist is given time to envolve and progress through their career. Emphasis is given to album sales and the construction of a successful back catalogue. This is often aimed at older or more sophisticated consumers. Profits generated by this kind of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record company.Furthermore Keith Negus said: "What I'm looking for is the working act. The real act. The act that can get up on stage and do it. That act will give you a career. I signed Black Sabbath umpteen years ago; they are still making records. These are acts that are career acts... Two years ago I started a dance label... Now that's not a career orientated label. I mean those records are non-off situations and every now and again maybe you'll get an artist come out of it." "When I first started it was more about going out and finding bands. That method is becoming more and more redundant. More and more these days I find it's as much about: I sit here and think "there's really a gao in the market for this kind of project...". Jack Thomson and his band show key elements of this, because he is on stage playing and performing the song live. This is shown in key shots of him playing the instruments and singing into the microphone. Also when the girls come on stage to take off their clothes and change their instruments, they continue playing their song perfectly which shows that they are talented. Furthermore the rest of the bands only pays little attention to the camera which on the one hand side lays focus on Jack, however this also shows that they are very into playing their instruments, showing that the song means a lot to them and they probably wrote it themselves.

Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strenght of their meanings. Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media - magazines, TV, radio, the internet - in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences. The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audiences. Fundamentally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and "open". Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes. THE STAR MUST BE SIMULTANEOUSLY ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE CONSUMER. THE STAR MUST BE SIMULTANEOUSLY PRESENT AND ABSENT FOR THE CONSUMER. Jack Thomson shows this as in our music video we tease the audience by having a lot of shots of the band playing the instruments and then only brief shots of Jack looking straight into the camera. This creates the impression, that on the one side he is present for the consumer and reachable however then again that he is still a star who is extraordinary and absent for the consumer. The incoherance of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to "complete" or to "make sense of" of the image. This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products. In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always ultimatley unsatisfying. This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image.Finally, the star image can be used to position the consumer in erlation to dominant social values (that is hegemony). Depending upon the artist, this may mean that the audience are positioned against the mainstream (though only to a limited degree, since they are still consumers within a capitalist system) or within the mainstream, or somewhere in between.

Evaluation of the ancillary texts:

The front cover of our CD signifies Jack Thomson to be the lead of the band because it is his face in a close up shot looking straight into the camera, reinforcing the elements from the video, that he is directly addressing his audience and has a sense of availability. The fact that it is black and white mixed with colour, red in particular, catches the eye of our audience and somehow to an extent reflects the music video because it is the combination of 60’s style to the modern (shown by the modern picture of the whole band).

The back cover of the CD says the name of the artist in bold which shows that he is the main importance of the whole album. Furthermore there is a list of songs (10 all together) with the single being second on the album which shows its importance. Furthermore we included extras on the CD such as “enhanced DVD of “For your Love””, “backstage documentary of the tour” and an “interview with the band and picture gallery”. This signals to our consumer that this CD/Digipak is worth buying because it includes extra footage that is fan base orientated. This ties in with what we tried to show in our music video, as the band continue to play their music even though fans run on stage and they even interact with them. The fact they have interviews and commentary also shows how they want to interact with their fans.

For the inlays we’ve chosen to take pictures of the band performing with a mixture of 60’s style and modern photography, reinforcing the whole concept of the band. Furthermore it stretches out the different members of the band so that the audience can identify with each one of them individually. This is something we haven’t actually focused on too well in our video but we use the digipak to give the audience a choice of who they like best. Written on the pictures are special thanks from each one of them which the audience can read through and feel addressed by, as if they were talking to them and somehow thanking them.

Lastly, we have the promotional poster which shows Jack Thomson on the cover with his guitar and a microphone, topless. This shows how he is extremely attractive but also an organic act that plays his music himself. The background of the poster is red and therefore ties in with the album cover (which is on the poster as well). To show that our band is very modern and into the modern media we wrote on the poster “available on itunes” which shows that you can get their CD also through the use of different/modern media.

BLOG TASK 1

Task 1

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

Choose six stills from your video, two panels from your digipak cover and one of your promotional posters (you probably only have one of these anyway!)

For each image, explain how it illustrates your choices in using or challenging the existing forms and conventions of music marketing. You should illustrate each discussion with images from existing music products

- visually stylish – “artistic” mise-en-scene

- “rhythmic” montage, fragmented style

- Inter-cutting

- Experimental use of camera/editing

- Fast pace

- Conspicuous lighting and cinematography

- Often break the rules of continuity editing

- Direct address by performers

- Significant shots of band playing instruments/singing

- Significant shots of band’s attractiveness

- Significant shots of bands key USPs

- Back lighting

- Significant shots of promo’s key concept

This Screen Grab shows an example of direct address by the lead singer Jack Thomson. Our Media product uses the effect of plaisir because the lead singer looks straight into the camera while singing. However we also use juissance because there were a lot of shots before that in which he was focused on playing his guitar. Furthermore in this still you can also see that the drummer still isn’t looking at the camera. This works effectively, because it emphasises the fact that only Jack is looking at the audience and draws focus onto him as he is the lead. All the focus is therefore on the lead singer which underlines his Star Image and makes him appear to be the superstar. Also it shows how the band is natural and not created because the band is too busy playing their instruments so they don’t even have time to look at the camera.

This Screengrab shows how our band is visually stylish and we used an artistic mise-en-scene. We painted our set completely white and on the right you can see the edge of a sixties camera that we build for the video to emphasise the fact its supposed to be in the sixties. Also we used after-effects to make it black and white which underlines the sixties effect as well. The band is dressed in 60’s outfits and they are playing 60’s instruments using a 60’s microphone. Through this we meet the audience’s expectations because they can clearly and directly see the world we are trying to create.

The mise-en-scene shows how our band is stylish and neat. Also the microphone is shining and there is nothing messy about the mise-en-scene which shows what kind of a band they are.

This shot shows emphasises the star image of Jack Thomson and his band because they are already popular enough to be on a famous TV channel, have girls cheering for them and Hugo presenting them. Also it leads the audience because Hugo is sort of leading them into this world that they are in.

This shot shows how we used conventions of real media, because as our band is all male and we want to attract a male audience as well as a female audience, we used this shot to show how attractive girls love the band. This is also effective, because they are looking at him, but Jack isn’t looking straight back at them, again reinforcing his famousness and professionality. Furthermore it shows them as a real band, because they continue playing their music perfectly even though girls are messing with them. Furthermore it gives an element of realness to them because people might watch the video and go “oh they are so friendly, if I were to do that at their next concert they would probably just continue playing as well”. This makes it all look more real.

These screen grabs show how we used fast pace editing in our music video to create a sense of chaos and fun. We jump cut from shots taken with hand-held camera to create the essence that a lot of things are happening really fast. We break the rule of continuity editing and have a more fragmented montage sequence which makes it fun, chaotic and exiting to watch.

This shows not only our key concept as this is a stereotypical shot of a 60’s band on television playing, but also it shows our band playing their instruments. The key concept changes audiences expectations and challenges them because we change from 60’s into the modern world through the use of Ruby, however this shot also shows that our band is able to play their music.

This shot shows our band’s attractiveness because the lead singer is pretty attractive to a female fans or maybe even the gay fans. Also it shows how the band is actually in the real world.

All in all we made use of specific key conventions of media products which we were convinced would work perfectly. Now we need to find out through the use of feedback whether our media product is as accessible and clear as we think it is or thought it would be.

FINAL MUSIC VIDEO

SURVEY

We created this survey using the website www.surveymonkey.com

This is the survey we created (2 pages)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L663DB9

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L6F5DM8

DIGI - PACK

Our digipack includes a promotional poster for the band, a front and back cover for the entire album and a couple of inlays.
We created these using Photoshop and pictures of the band we had already taken before.
These are also the photographs we used to show to our focus group in the survey.