Our music video product I feel both challenges and follows forms and conventions of real media products that have already been produced to the world using a form of media to release to the general public. Our video is from the genre dubstep. Dubstep is a growing new music genre and is a mix between other genres which I believe has made it popular. Our music video is a cross between a narrative storyline and a performance based video. It has this blend of two structures as it gives the video more emphasis and is less general in comparison with other dubstep music videos that have been produced recently.
It was necessary therefore to produce a video with two structures to it and in our case narrative and performance based. The narrative part of the music video consists of one of our actors who is portrayed to be an alcoholic and a drug addict. This actor in the video has no real purpose in life and is lonely and has no one to turn to for help and tries to find answers within her. Our music video is fundamentally based on this fact as it gives the audience an eerie feeling towards this portrayed character. This I feel does not follow forms and conventions for other similar media products in this music genre. However, our other actor is more of the performance side of the music video. She was also a very key component to getting the blend right in our music video between the two structures in the video. Her part in our video was to lip sink our chosen song which is called Eyes on Fire Remix by Zeds Dead.
This is a common feature in many music videos and we as group were influenced by this is as it would be a pointless video that would be boring if was focused on only one of our actors. Therefore, we as a group felt it was necessary to research into music video and compare and contrast a textual analysis of a music video. This part of the video where our actor is lip sinking to the song gives the video professionalism as it is a key features to almost any music video that has been released to real media throughout history.
In fact my textual analysis on Katy B on a Mission uses this consistently throughout the song and has the same structure to her music video as it does to our music video. In regards to this I personally have been influenced greatly by other music videos in particular this one as it is similar in many ways to ours. It is similar to our music video as it is the same genre and consists of the same music video structure with being narrative and performance based.
Our use of the camera throughout our music video is consistently creative throughout and twists and turns throughout with the use of some inspired editing. The use of mise-en-scene in any music video is key to success and failure and as collectively as a group we took time to think our creative ways to make our characters and locations match what we had in ambition to make dubstep music video.
The use of editing is a make or break point for a music video and our video I believe has a sense of a professional look to it all. The use of editing in our video in some ways challenges both forms and conventions of other real media products as our video has a sense of evil to it all. The sense of evil comes from the constant reminder of one our actors constantly being revolved around alcohol and drug abuse. This evil side does deviate from established dubstep music videos as modern dubstep videos are usually about partying and having a good time with friends and ours in this sense is the complete opposite as it is dark and through editing it is emphasised greatly.
The point in the video where our actor is lying on a bed in hotel room where she has almost passed out through excess of alcohol and drugs is a pivotal moment to the storyline and concept of our music video. With editing Julio managed to replicate our actor’s body and almost become a guardian looking over herself. Which points out the inevitable that she is damaging herself and not going far in life at all?
Using mise-en-scene was crucial to our video and is evident that we as a group thought ideas through thoroughly in order to make our video a professional standard. The use of locations was major and we came to the decision to go to the backstreets in London near Oxford Street in the depths of the British winter to emphasise that our actor had nowhere to go and no one to be with at this time of year close to Christmas and is dressed to a reasonable standard to emphasise that any class of society can fall into the trap of drug and alcohol misuse.
She is portrayed to be an addict as she snorts cocaine in the middle of a back street in a dirty alley. This again does deviate from conventional dubstep videos as many dubstep videos are focused on having a good time and being together with friends and even family.
With our camera this is where we focused our attention on the most and drew up sufficient storyboards to illustrate what shots we would be shooting in that particular scene. Throughout our music video we used a lot of tracking shots which makes it feel that someone is always watching you and once again gives that extra dark side edge to the video. This is particularly evident when our actor is walking through an alley in London by herself in the dark and feels as if she is being followed by someone or in fact wants to be followed by someone. We also used a lot of panning and close up shots of Sophia our lip sinker.
This was used to give the sense of realism to the audience and is a common feature in many dubstep music videos and follows music videos in general. But by far my favourite shot throughout the entire music video is when our other actor Joedy is portrayed to be high on drugs in certain shot and is laughing in hysterics at the camera and seems really messed up and needs help.
Q2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
It is really important when a band or an artist is marketing towards a niche
audience. As their targeting towards a minority, the marketing has to reach
specifically to them. This will represent them as an artist/band creating
popularity. This is important as the music videos are very creative and
independent which stands out from the majority. The success of marketing will
affect the popularity of the artists or band. In our music video we have developed certain branding elements within the music video.
For example, in our music video we have branded at almost a niche market in terms of the concept of our music video. I think it has branded at a niche market as this is a new type of dubstep music video and differs from other successful ones in the market place with traditional branding such as raves and fast free flowing music. Our music video has a different sense of belonging in terms of the video being branded as our video has a sinister and evil side to it (as described in Q1).
So the branding elements that we as a group developed in the music video are very little. The reason for this is I believe is that it is a new style of dubstep music video. Due to the sinister and evil side of the music video we had to develop different types of branding within the video. For example, a lot of our music video was shot in the dark and we used a lot of creativity from the lighting. This is evident in the development work of our digipak and magazine advert. The combination between our main product and our ancillary texts I believe match exactly and combine very well and have a lot of synergy between them.
The branding elements we have followed through with the digipak has a lasting effect which people will remember when they view our digipak as it has a very professional feel around it and looks like that we have spent time carefully thinking how to brand this digipak to maximize its identity. The ideas that are seen on the digipak originated from the music video. The ideas such as our actor Sophia standing on the corner of a dark street in London for the video makes a perfect front cover for our digipak. Another part of our digipak that is usually branded in almost every digipak in modern society is advertising where to follow the band Zeds Dead and marketing the band via the inner sleeve of our digipak.
Our digipak does follow established forms and conventions in lots of ways similar to ours does. Our digipak on the front cover has the lyrics to the song and has been edited to follow other digipak’s in the market that promote dubstep albums. Our front cover of the digipak has the lyrics to our song Eyes on Fire Remix. This is a common feature for lots of albums with digipak’s whether it is on the front cover or on the inside or on the back cover of the digipak. The choice of the text and colour was agreed by all of our group and our lecturer who thought that it combined well and emphasised the lyrics to match with the beat of our song. So therefore, our group has been influenced by other digipak designs. We were influenced by other similar digipak’s that have used similar ideas that we eventually went on to produce in our digipak. For example, our digipak cover with Sophia is very similar to the front cover album of Kay B who also sings in the dubstep genre. It is very similar as her body is on the front of the cover with a street behind her which is almost identical to our cover.
Our magazine advert for our print products is a very typical idea that is replicated in other real media products. Our magazine advert you could say is a branded element as it used all over the globe in several magazines. The magazine advert consists of Sophia standing in a tunnel on the north circular. Obviously it has been edited to a great effect with the use of special effects which make the advert distorted with vehicles in the background and has come out to a really good standard. This idea of the singer being edited to stand out on the front of the magazine cover has been well developed over the years and is a very common feature. So therefore our magazine cover does follow conventional established forms and conventions in the real media. It follows forms and conventions in the real media as we were inspired by other magazines such as Vibe and NME magazines which use the same concept as we have chosen to use in our magazine advert.
They use the same concept where they have the latest up and coming artist spread across the front on the magazine on the front the page. All music magazines all seem to use vibrant colours to emphasise the artist and the artist is usually spread out across the page to fill up the page. Our magazine advert is different in this aspect as Sophia is in the middle of the page but covering the whole page as we tried to be different in this aspect and try to make to the audience see what is going on in the whole page and not just the artist in many cases.
Q3- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From our initial target audience research there were some interesting results that we analysed and drew conclusions from. Firstly, the majority of our results were from the male audience from all four of our questionnaires that we did. It was not very surprising that when we looked at the results that the most popular music genre from four questionnaires was Hip hop and RnB. This is inevitable in the young generation on taste in music from our questionnaire results as around 90% that completed the questionnaire were aged 16-24.
This is a typical view I feel as the majority of the younger generation do like Hip hop and RnB due to its fast pace and stylish videos. From our four questionnaires we also noticed that over half of our audience had an Asian ethnicity. You got be stereotypical and say that from our questionnaire the majority of Asian people do prefer Hip and RnB music to rock for example. Our target audience did have their preferences over some our questions and their own taste and aspect towards music.
From our results we drew a conclusion that the majority of our respondents do listen to music by independent bands and artists and the majority does listen to the genre Dubstep and Drum and Bass. Dubstep of course was our choice for our music video. However, the most interesting point we took from our analysing from our questionnaire was the fact that 30 of our respondents answered that a song affects their own opinion on the music video that will be produced for that song. So our target audience profile would be aimed at the age group of 16-24 as they were the majority respondents and did like Dubstep as a music genre. The gender outcome is a mix as the ratio was nearly 50:50 between the respondents so our profile should be aimed at both male and female which gives it a non bias outcome for results. Finally, our ethnicity profile will be predominantly aimed at the Asian background as they were the main respondents from our initial target audience. So therefore it would be pointless in aiming our profile not at the Asian background.
However, from our audience feedback. Which was from our main video product and its ancillary products. The majority of our respondents from our audience feedback thought our final music video and print products were to the highest standard that they had seen at this level. However, more than half of our sample survey did not understand the storyline. This came as a big dissapointment to me and our group as it looked like that we had designed a random idea and not thought it through. This was quite the opposite. On the other hand, the majority agreed and liked our use of the visual effects. Our audience really enjoyed the fact that they got to know the artist as the video went on for possible future releases. Our audience also found that the whole abusing and mistreating added to the disorientation towards the video. For example, drinking vodka from a wine class and abusing her social class.
The most pleasing fact from our audience feedback on our digipak is that our audience enjoyed the disorientation feel towards the advert in particular and full understood what we were trying to achieve. The 3D special effects and the vibrant seemed to be liked a lot from my audience feedback. This was very satisfying as we aimed to achieve this from the planning stage which is evident in the storyboarding.
However, my respondents did not think our digipak was up to professional standards which was very dissapointing. Especially due to the fact that a lot of planning went into the digipak process and Julio spent many hours producing the fininshed product. They advised me that our ideas were perhaps to complex for the task we had been set and the use of a simpler idea might have been more beneficial for us
The elements that we built into our song were of an interesting variety to appeal to the Dubstep fans and other similar music genre in the real media. For our music video we chose the song Eyes on Fire Remix by Zeds Dead. This song is in its own way unique as it is a different type of a Dubstep song. So therefore, the elements we built into our music video were somewhat different from the average Dubstep video. In our music video there was no hero or villain so to speak. However, our actor Joedy was portrayed to be our depressed character that was going no where in life and only had drugs and alcohol to turn to when she was downbeat.
You could say that Joedy did not really represent a social class as she is portrayed to be middle class by the mise-en-scene we used to portray her in the music video. So in a way it does appeal to particular audiences that maybe depressed or even turning to alcohol and drug abuse as there is no one to help them. I feel we maximised this in our music video particularly when there is a shot of Joedy on a bed near to the end of the video. She has pretty much passed out through an excess of drugs and alcohol and we edited to show a somewhat guardian looking over herself to show the damage that she is doing to herself in the context of the music video. So from a certain point there is a sense of the audience sympathising with this particular character as she is portrayed as being helpless. The elements I feel were crucial in getting the music video right and appealing to our potential audience from our initial feedback. I think we as a group chose the right song as it was very different to conventional Dubstep music videos. I think our video in particular is different in its own way as it has a certain amount of evil and being sinister being attached to the music video somehow. This is different and almost unique in competing with professional music videos in the real media.
In regards to meeting expectations set for our group I firmly feel we have delivered on the final video, digipak and magazine advert front. I feel we have stood up to our expectations and produced a very high level of quality for our final products which was recognised by our teacher and our target audience. I feel in particular we exceeded expectations for our final music video. This is where our creativity as a group really came alive and the editing that was done by Julio. We went with a narrative and performance based music video which with our choice of song Eyes on Fire remix really combined well with each other. All of the conventions after that all fell into place due to our good planning and creativity. We used many different locations to shoot our video which we thought long hard over for the mis-en-scene. We went to a hotel called the Grims Dyke which is very highly regarded in terms of luxury and class.
We decided to go there for the final scenes of the video where Joedy our actor is in the hotel room which is the finest hotel suite they had. The other locations we chose were also carefully chosen to fit in with our ideas and our actors. The use of the backstreets in Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus really emphasised the fact that we really put a lot of effort into this as for the London shots the weather was really appalling as it was snowing and the temperature was freezing. However, this made our camera shots even better due to the fact that our video has an evil and sinister side to it. The mise-en-scene was vital also as it had to be put to great effect to emphasise the point we were making. The props our actors had to use were all for the effect and the appeal of the audience. Our actors both were dressed to assume they were both middle class and just your average teenager. But that is far from the point as this was all thought and put to great effect.
The magazine advert cover has been put to great use through the editing skills used in Photoshop. The distortion of Sophia our other actor really emphasizes the location of the advert which is a tunnel of the north circular in London. This advert promotes the band efficiently almost like an advert you would see at the cinema for a film which does really draw the attention of our potential audience. The use of the image along with the text and colour makes our magazine advert stand out amongst the crowd. The use of the image is well used in terms of it is almost a USP as not many other groups would have thought to use an idea like this one as Sophia is standing in the middle of a tunnel with traffic. The use of colour blends the picture completely with the neutral colour white and the pink border around the white text. This in someway makes Sophia seem bigger than the traffic behind her and fills the gap and makes her centre stage to certain extent.
Our digipak is of a professional standard I believe and certainly would stand out if it were to go on mass produce sale in a leading music shop such as HMV. Our digipak front cover does stand out with its use of colour which is black to make the text and Sophia stand out on the cover. Our front cover for the digipak shows the simplicity of the idea which in turn does make it actually better than a complex idea. It has the names of the songs on the back cover sung by the band with 5 songs to listen to. We have also carried on with the idea with the text where the text colour is still white but this time with a red border instead of pink to compliment the black background of the cover. The front cover also promotes the band through social networking sites such as MySpace which is often used by independent artists and bands to get recognition and to promote themselves for free.
Overall I believe that our finished products would stand up to professional products in the market place and compete with leading artists and brands. I think it could stand up and compete due to the fact that it is almost unique and it is Dubstep which is an up and coming music genre that is getting more popular day in day out.
Our video certainly has that wow factor that is needed to be competitive and encourage people to buy the album instead of downloading the album due to the high quality of the advert and the digipak. I would like to say that we would be ideally promoted by a major record label and sold widespread throughout the world but this would be tough to accomplish. However, bands such as the Arctic Monkeys can be used for great inspiration as they initially were unsigned for a period of time and are now part of a major record label.
Digipak and Magazine advert
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Q4- How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?
Without the use of new media technology this whole entire unit theoretically would be almost impossible to complete to a professional standard. The use of technology has been vital in every stage of this coursework. The use of the internet has been vital. Otherwise we would not have been able to blog our work and products. The use of search engines has always been important especially for research into a particular subject such as my research into star image and power. The internet was very important for this as it allowed me to research into that field and provides an evaluative response to the question on star image and power. The use of social networking websites for me personally was really important. It was important as it allowed me to upload my questionnaires. This allowed me to get some feedback from people on my friends list of Facebook for my audience feedback and our initial questionnaire results for whom to target our audience profile at. Facebook as a social networking website did really me a great deal as it was a time efficient way of getting some quick feedback from my friends. I also used my MySpace account to upload our song Eyes on Fire Remix which also helped a great deal as I got further feedback from my friends who listened to the song which was linked to YouTube.
Julio who did volunteer to be the editor I believe has done a great job. I did contribute and help Julio in the editing suite. I did little editing with the programme Final Cut Pro but I did log shots and help create the time line on the the actual music video. This was vital as it is part of the miscellaneous which needed to be done and can be seen on the blog. However, we all did contribute in the editing suite with advice on which special effects to use and perhaps what colour would look better from a directors point of view. However, the college and the facilities they had were second to none and were brilliant. But, there were times when computers were all occupied and had to wait for other students to finish with them. This was rather annoying and I felt we lost time in the editing suite which is not productive at all.
For the actual construction of the music video, we used the Canon XM2 camcorder. To get thebest qualities from this particular camcorder we needed to know how to set up the extra effects that you would not normally use in every day life. For example, the white balance in particular so that our shots would be clear and not grainy and dark due to the shots we were using in London in the dark. The use of the redhead lights and the lilliputs were non-existent as we were advised we did not need them for our production. I disagreed with this as I had used them in my AS level production and the effect it gives for lighting was really good as you can use a variety of different colours to slide over the light. The use of the playback feature was perhaps the most important feature to this camcorder. This was due to the fact that we had to re shoot on more than one occasion due to poor shots from a previous production shoot in the studio in college. This was a big inconvenience for our actor and group members as we had to reschedule to everybodies preference which wasted even more time.
However, the evaluation process as you can see needed the input of the technology as you cant show videos on a blog on a piece of paper. The use of blogger has come to an important effect to make my evaluation a visual experience for whoever decides to view it. It also makes the use of the images stand out and gives the essay format some meaning and not making it to dull and boring. It is all about the visual experience I feel and connecting with your audience to make it a special experience and give it a lasting effect to the audience and give them a certain wow factor. The only downside with use of blogger is that it is very time consuming. For example, to upload my textual analysis took a very long time as you have to upload every single picture one at a time. This can be very confusing when you have many pictures to upload.
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