Beths Evaluation

Introduction: 

My project is a pop punk music video, I worked in a group with two other students to complete the product.  We all evenly contributed to the production of our video and ancillary products. This included editing the footage and putting the video together using final cut express, as well as using photoshop to create the ancillary tasks. 

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

Our video is based on the pop punk genre, we attempted to use typical elements and conventions of this genre to make our product appear authentic. We used elements such as, band performance, typical locations, typical clothing, bright colours and so on to create this authenticity.  It is vital to use these elements in our video for it to appeal to our target audience and for it to attract attention in the real world. 

In our video we wanted to try something new to keep the video feeling fresh and interesting, we didn’t want to go ahead with the obvious. For this reason we cut out video and created a very jumpy and therefore fast paced effect, to further emphasise these sections of the video we desaturated this footage. Within this basic outline for the video we cut in different elements of the band performance and included these in bright colours as would be expected.  We also incorporated different angled shots of each performer as well as close ups of the lead singer. We did this as from our research we are aware that the audience likes to see ‘the same but different’ and for this reason we decided to break some conventions but also follow others. In our ancillary products we also followed this same pattern, to link with our video we produced the back of our album cover and magazine advertisement with the band in black and white and the background in colour, we also incorporated some cartoon effects into our album cover to emphasise the brand image of fun and teen anarchy.

When planning our video we reaseched the typical conventions of a music video and decovered the work of Andrew Goodwin. He said there were 6 points...

- there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.
- particular music genres may have their own music video style and iconography
-there is a demand on the part of the record company for lots of close ups of the main artist/vocalist.
-the artist may develop their own star iconography
-there is likely to be reference to voyeurism
- there are likely to be intertextual references

We also descovered the work of Pete Fraser and what he said about each element of the music video including lyrics, music, cinematography, etc. 

Our video is relatively typical as there is a clear iconography, a number of close ups of the vocalist and a development of the stars own iconography. 

We included a lot of indie/punk conventions in our music video as well.  We focused on the working class element of indie music which includded gritty and real connotations. There is frequent use of guitars in the music and the video which is also sometimes considered an element of pop-punk music as well as the fact that the music and video are male dominated. 

We believed that our innovations were likely to prove successful because we did a large amount of extensive research before hand to ensure that our products would create the correct brand image and therefore appeal to the desired audience, as a result of this research we created our products in a manor similar although not identical to that of established media products

I believe that our choices worked effectively for our audience as when reviewing our feedback we received many positive comments:
9/12 people answered yes when we asked them if


                                                               a)the ancillarys worked well with the video
                                                                b)they  create a good punk image
                                                                c) if they would buy this single

6/12 answered ‘Very’ to all when asked if the costume/props/location were appropriate and the remaining 6 answered ‘very’ to 2 out of the 3.

The majority of the audience said that the video made them feel either happy or excited and said they would watch this video again and 12/12 said the video fit with the song and brand image.

Therefore I believe that our choices worked very effectively and we created an authentic and enjoyable music video along with effective and fitting ancillary products. 

If we were to do anything differently we would probably have added narrative into the video so it wasn’t entirely performance based, this may have attracted a wider audience.

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

Our brand image is decidedly ‘pop-punk’ and for this reason we decided to use a relatively punky image as our logo. We went with the bright colours as our target audience is primarily teenagers this is obviously attractive to them. 

We managed to maintain a brand image across our products by incorporating this logo into many aspects of our ancillary products. We also maintained the brand image by keeping the theme of some black and white aspects and some bright coloured. This contrast portratyed the individuality of our band. We kept similar colours, reds, yellows, etc throughout our products and stuck to two main fonts, one for the writing and one for the bands name.  I believe that the mixture of bright colours in our products creates the image of fun and excitement which is exactly what we wanted to portray as our brand image.

In the real world we would hope that record labels that already hold many ‘pop-punk’ bands may consider distributing our music video, for example ‘Filter records’ in the US.  We believe, that although our product follows many typical conventions and for that reason appeals to the market, we have something a little different with our band and its produce. I feel that our band delivers traditional punk music with a slightly mainstream feel without being classed as ‘bubblegum punk’ and still appealing to the original punk fans. Real bands that inspired our image were bands such as blink182, rolling stones, and so on.

I believe that our album cover and magazine advert push this brand image a step further.  We used the media language to present the image we wanted.  There is a use of bright colours in the artists to reflect their personalities and the type of music that they sing. We kept the advert a simple image of the band as this is similar to the video technique of band performance but tried something different with the album cover to keep a wider audience and also for variety. 

We researched into other artists that use a similar brand image to us to get a basic idea of what the pop-punk genre conventions consist of, The Clash use the same black and white style as we did and also use the same red title throughout their products

The clash also used a number of similar techniques in their video as we did in ours such as the basic band performance, the close ups of the lead singer and the typical scenes of anarchy. These are all very typical conventions of our genre.

What we have learnt from our audience feedback:

To discover our target audience we looked at phsychographic and demographic profiling, we discovered thay phsychographic profiling was much more effective. Psychographic profiling is aware the consumer are complex and can have many different needs. Therefore the media aim to please all the needs a consumer may have. The media may then look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and incorporate this into their advertisement to incite the consumer into buying their product as they believe by buying such they will fulfill all their needs.  In order to create an effective music video we had to consider these factors. 

We decided that the target audience for our video will be based in the age range of 16-25 as the younger generation are more interested in the pop-punk genre (although there is a good range of older people also interested in this genre). We will aimed to target the rebellious teen and portray this in our brand image. As this is a niche market we have a very loyal fan base and were be able to portray the correct image and target the right people which enabled our music video to succeed. 

Throughout our project we have used audience feedback to help us create the best products possible, we did this through the use of several questionnaires and in depth research into our target audience.

The results of such influenced our final products in a number of different ways.  We discovered that our audience liked band perfomance and believed band performance is a key concept of punk videos .

We attracted our audience by using similar techniques and conventions they would be already used to, for example the bright colours in our logo and album design immediately suggest the punk brand, the black and white sections are lowering the tone a little to attract the more mainstream audience as well. 

 

Audience feedback

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How we used media technologies:

During the production of our products we used many different media technologies.  When we first began our project we used Blogger to log all our research and initial ideas. This enabled us to edit and add to posts if we needed to along with being able to access our work from anywhere we needed to which proved to be very helpful.  During the use of Blogger we also learnt how to upload videos from YouTube which was also helpful to back up our research along with many other things Blogger aloud us to do such as upload images and graphs.

During the construction of our music video i learnt how to use finial cut express. After using imovive last year this was a big step which aloud us to experiment a lot more with different effects and techniques.  We used a lot of the ‘desaturate’ tool in our video to form the black and white effect. As well as adjusting the colour grading tools to give the footage a more professional look.

When we were filming our video and taking the primary images we learnt how to use the video and stills camera to their best ability in order to create an authentic product.

To edit the images for our ancillary tasks we used Photoshop, we discovered many new techniques to edit our images. We used polygonal tool to select aspects of our images and desaturate only certain elements, as well as using the saturation and hue tools to adjust the colour in the images.

To create our magazine cover we first selected the band members using polygonal and then desaturated the background. We then inserted the text over the top and placed extra images onto the original image such as the lightening bolts and the album cover.

Some times some of the software proved to be challenging, for example the use of blogger could some times freeze the macs, and if it hadn’t automatically saved you could lose posts. Also final cut proved to be difficult when we attempted to use effects some times things didn’t go exactly how we had planned and so we had to find different ways of doing this.

Over all i feel that the technology we had access to really helped us to create the most authentic products as possible and have advanced our skills dramatically since the AS projects.

To conclude : I feel that the research and planning we initially did has really helped us to come up with and create the best idea/product we could have done with the technologies we had. The research into target audience and looking at already established videos enabled us to create a video that was appealing to our target audience and successful in becoming an authentic product.

I am very pleased with the way that the products came out at the end. I believe that the music video is very authentic and traditional of our genre as well as meeting the conventions we originally planned we broke other to create a different experience to add something new to the market.

The ancillary products were also very effective and definitely authentic enough to be used. I was really pleased with these products and thought that we really brought across the image we intended. 

I think the products worked really well together to create a succesful brand image which became familiar to our audience as it was repeated through all our products and therefore they felt that they had got to know the band and would recognise the album etc.

Overall i feel that i worked well as a team member to the group and displayed a fair contribution to all aspects of our 3 products, the video, album cover and advert. I have learnt a lot of new techniques and over come many challenges in order to create the products we wanted. I feel that we have succeeded in doing so and therefore have 3 great products.  

Advanced Portfolio- Dan Sutton

Advanced Portfolio

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Evaluation Stephanie Soloniewicz

Introduction

My project was to produce a music video that would be suitable for TV viewing and the targeted audience. I did this with group members Beth Owen and Daniel Sutton. Particular contributions i made in the group were participating in the research aspect, helping organise the filming and the filming its self, editing the film and ancillary tasks. We used the idea of demographic profiling to attract the main target audience for our music video of people aged around 16-25 as they are the main consumers of music. our products would appeal to the younger generation as especially today there is a high demand on music due to new technology such as ipods and iphones and the increase in online downloading. This age group is also mainly made up of student won spend lots of money on music. These are a few inspirational videos we used to get ideas and create a plan of action for our genre and intentions.

From researching videos like these we could see that the use of fast paced editing, quick moving shots with a range of angles especially works well with a band performance.

Conventions of music videos

Question 1 Genre

The genre of music which we choose for our music video is pop punk as after casting shots and thought for our video process we thought the best idea would be to use an already formed band as it would make the video more authentic, realistic and the band would also use this video. From a questionnaire we wrote we asked students in our targeted group what their favourite genre of music is the results are shown in this pie chart.

As you can see from this pie chart our genre has nearly a 1/4 of a targetted audience as their favourite genre. However because we focused more on pop punk than rock it would reach a more mainstream audience. Typical conventions we used in our video relating to the pop punk genre were fast paced editing fitting in with the soundtrack, a band performance including shot of all members mainly the lead singer and also close up of instruments. These elements can been seen in this video by the clash.

://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZBPu7jJbJU

These images show the typical angles and shots used in a pop punk music video which we were influenced by and used in our video.

These pictures show typical shots such as a close up of a the band member playing the guitar, close up of the lead singer as he is the main face of the band, a long shot of the band playing together, and close ups of the other band members. The use of these typical shots help create the bands image. To make our video a little different we used the desaturate tool in parts of the editing as in most rock/punk music videos we only see colours which are typically black and red. We also made it very fast paced to fit in with the track. I think our video editing choices would prove successful as it conforms to many music videos with the angles and shots used. The fast paced editing also makes it very dynamic as proven with our questionnaire feedback as students said its "authentic and flows", "upbeat and enjoyable", and a "fun pop punk video".

Question 2 Branding and brand image

As in every genre of the music industry the particular artist of band needs a brand image which their target audience can relate to and meet the main target which is to sell. From researching many similar pop punk/rock bands such as Green Day and Blink-182 the same brand image of rebellious young people came across. Therefore seeing as we have used an existing pop punk band this image was already created with their fun rebellious behavior to their clothes. We also used this idea of brand image through to our location for the music video which was very messy and full of graffiti linking to their rebelious behaviour.

This rebellious and fun behavior was also portrayed in the video as the band look like they are having a good time which makes every audience member asked feel "happy" and upbeat. When making and designing our magazine page and album cover we looked at a range of examples which used both the bands image and designed images, however they were all heavily edited and colourful to again portray the element of fun across.

Analysis of ancillary tasks

As you can see we decided to design an image for our album cover linking to our research. The use of the gorilla is a connotation of rebelliousness and also humor with the sun glasses. The bright colours we chose to use also make it very appealing to a pop punk audience.

Our brand image has again been used in the designing of the inside and back of our album cover to make it more authentic. This has been created using similar bright colours throughout with also the use of desaturate, while the photos represent each band member and are portrayed as quite humorous.

As you can see all our products work well in showing the brand image which we wanted to represent to attract the target audience of young adults. The finished products use the typical generic conventions researched for a pop punk band and would therefore be suitable for today's music industry and sell to their target audience. Seeing that the music from our band is pop punk it is more commercial therefore labels which may produce our music video could be for one of the biggest music companies Sony BMG epic records as they have many groups from rock genres including AC/DC, The Gossip, Franz Ferdinand which have a rock/punk sound.

Question 3 Audience Feedback

To get feedback about our music video and ancillary tasks we asked a group of students in our targeted audience age range a questionnaire and videoed the results. Some of the questions and results are shown below: 

Seeing this particular result from the video we could see that the video was mainly a success with the highest rating from most people an 8. This shows that if we were to release this music video it would appeal to our targeted audience.

100% of the audience asked thought that the song fitted with the music video. This was one of our aims from researching conventions of music videos and particulary the pop punk genre as they are normally up beat and fun to watch and listen to. 

11 out of 12 people said they would watch the music video again. whith reasons being that the video was "upbeat and enjoyable", "fun" and "feel good song".

On average most of the people asked thought our cd and advertisements worked well with the music video showing that our brand image throughout had been a success.

This shows our use of branding throughout the products worked extremely well. comments we recieved were:

 "Shows the style of the band"

" Bright, in your face like the music"

"Reflects the fun music"

"Gives a rebellious feel"

Peoples reasons for it not to create the punk image were:

"Not what i expected, different"

"doesn't seem relevant, too happy/light hearted"

overall from the feedback i think the album cover was effective in creating a punk image.

This shows that the music videos fits with the normal conventions as the aim is to want your audience to watch it again and 11 out of the 12 people asked would.

Main reason for audience members not wanting to buy the song were because its not their type of music.

This is our audience testing filmed, showing their initial feelings and giving us feedback on our products.

 Question 4 Use of creative technologies

From producing this music video and ancillary tasks I have gained and enhanced lots of creative media skills. From learning how to use blogger again I have found the research part much easier this year as this format is not totally new to me. The use of blogger is also good to put research on as you can interactively use many different types of media by uploading videos, pictures, charts, music, and scanned work. This was a great advantage to bring all our ideas and inspiration together. I also found that having dealt with the cameras before with previous filming this was also better as we could focus more on shots and angle ideas. However when it came to editing our film in final cut express it was more challenging as i had to learn about this new programme which was more advanced from the programme imovie we used last year. At times it was very difficult as we wanted to do alot of fast cuts and editing throughout the video which was very time consuming and at times it was hard to separate them all. One of the hardest parts about making the music video was the authentic look of the lip sync and music which i feel ours worked very well. This proved difficult when the mac's ran slowly and crashed alot. This was particularly hard for us because we had a lot of small edited shots to make it jumpy which we then emphasised with the speed tool. The use of the timeline on final cut express was a great advantage as we could see when the soundtrack ended knowing how much editing space needed to be filled. Therefore on the whole, final cut express was a big advantage as it helped us create a profession looking music video and we had alot of editing ideas which we could use including the desaturate tool and speed .

When it came to making the album cover and advertisement i could already use photoshop so this made it quicker to edit the album cover and advertisement. Photoshop was again a great advantage for our group as we could experiment using bright colours creating our brand image. we also used our theme of colour and desaturate though these products. We used many different websites when researching music video in particular Youtube where we linked up the videos to our blog. We also used google to find similar artist websites and  images of album covers and magazine posters.

Conclusion

Overall i believe that our music video and ancilary tasks have been a real success as proven with our audience feedback. I think that all three products create a brand image of rebelliousness and fun which is a convention of branding in the pop punk genre. The happy fun attitude portrayed in the video and throughout the photos on the album cover and advertisement also emphasise this brand image we wanted to get across. The bright bold colours which covey joy and fun also relate to this brand image as does the gorilla which shows the humour of the band. The branding created in these three products would help sell the album as I feel after seeing all the products they would find it easier to relate to the band and young audiences would like their rebellious style. I believe that I made an equal and positive contribution to the group as a whole through the planning and creating of the products and I have learnt alot of skills from using final cut express to working well as a team and creating what I feel are three great products suitable for our target audience which i think could sell in the music industry today.