Thursday, 28 March 2013

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


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


Before we started designing our final product we made sure we researched fully into the area we wanted to go into.We researched into the genre 'Indie Pop' and looked at the different convention they include throughout their products, we focused a lot of our research on the artist Ben Howard as he is in the the Indie Pop genre and when looking at his video's we liked the style he used throughout his videos and the use of nature was a theme in his videos. We noticed when researching not just Ben Howard but other artists such as Mumford & Sons that they also used the theme of nature in their videos. We think this has been a successful thing to follow because of the different shots we have used within our music video. We used different shots of nature throughout our music video to get the same effect we were seeing in the video's we had researched and we thought this would link nicely with the other shots we have included, we thought this would separate the shots of the couple together and the girl on her own at the beach. A big influence to our music video was the video 'Old Pine' by Ben Howard he uses a lot of close-up shots of nature such as grass, tree's and water to create a calming feel to the video when the audience are watching, all the different shots of nature match the music. In the video we see a lot of shots following the artist in the video it gives a sense of adventure and as an audience you want to know where he is going, we have used similar shots like this when following the girl on the beach as she is on her own, we gave this isolated look of her being alone because of the story we were trying to show. Ben Howard uses a lot of bright lighting in his shots and again gives this relaxing feel to the video and makes you enjoy the video and music more, with our change of scenes to black and white to colour we wanted our colour shots to be a lot brighter to create this home video effect and the not so perfect quality added to the effect we were trying to show. The brighter lighting we used shows the happier side of the story we are trying to show within the music video which is the happy relationship, whereas with the black and white scenes the lighting is darker and matches the loneliness of the girl. 



We were also influenced by other Indie Pop music video's such as Ed Sheeran's video 'The A Team' and The Vaccines 'No Hope' which are both shot in black and white, we really liked the effect it gave to each music videos. 'The A Team' video is very dull and the story follows a girl on drugs the black and white effect gives it quite a dark feeling which is shown within the story he is trying to show. Not only were were we influenced by the black and white effect in Ed Sheeran's video but the way he shows the narrative story throughout the video, which is something we wanted to do in ours. We used the black and white effect to show the isolated beach and the girl being on her own, but it also made our effect of the red balloon stand out more above the black and white effect. We were also influenced by the vaccines 'no hope' video because of the way the black and white shots made it have a vintage effect, like Ed Sheeran's video 'The A Team' the black and white effect gives it a melancholy feel to the videos and matches the mood the video is creating. From the research of these two videos, we wanted to created the same kind of look with the sad and lonely feel to the girl on the beach with the same effect they use in their videos. 





When researching into this genre for our album cover and logo we noticed that a lot of the artists in the genre use their name as the logo - making the typography so the audience know who it is as soon as the they see the name. We liked this idea and we thought we would do this to our artist. Artists such as Lana Del Rey she uses a type of text that matches her style, she is very sophisticated and her music is also very sophisticated and old fashioned, the text is very feminine and matches the artist. This text is recognisable as she uses it on all her products and the audience know from the text what kind of singer she might be. We used the text called 'bookman oldstyle' as we thought this was sophisitcated enough for the type of artist we were creating and all linked in with the images we are using, we also made sure we used it on all our products including the from the song names, album name and artist so it all linked together. 




We challenged the forms of conventions of real media products with the red balloon, we got the idea of the red balloon from the film Schindler's List and even though this is not a music video we liked the idea of the red coat on top of the black and white shots. We took this as influence and came up with the idea of the red balloon which would be the symbol of her relationship and the love she once had. When researching music videos within our genre nobody had done this, we thought this would be a unique but challenging idea to include within our video. We first used the effect Matte which didn't work because of the movement of the image it was difficult to keep the image we wanted in colour to stay in colour, the effect made the balloon red even when it was moving. I think this is an effective piece of our music video as it is unique and we haven't seen it in any other videos we have researched. We also challenged the fact that our artist is a male but we used a female for our video and album cover, we did this because we wanted to attract a wider audience. When researching we hadn't seen this happening as usually the album cover is of the artist themselves, we challenged the typical conventions of the indie pop genre by doing this.





When researching into the different adverts artist use to advertise their albums, i noticed a lot of them use the same image of their album cover as the background image. This makes it more reconisable to the audience that it is 'Elliot Guy's' new album. We were influenced a lot by Noah And The Whales advert because it is simple but effective, the plain colours links in with the image they have has their background and still makes both the image and the text stand out. They have made the text stand out above the image and placed it centre so the audience's eyes are drawn straight to the information they are giving us. The text they have used is exactly the same throughout all their products - like ours it associates to them straight away. When creating our advert we have followed the similar techniques they have used within their advert as we thought this was an effective product to follow. We toned down the colour of the image as we didn't want it as bright as the original album cover image as we wanted the text stand out above it so it was easy for the audience to read the information they were providing. 





Within the digi pack we stuck with the theme of nature and link between the beach images to the music video all linked together. Again, when researching into indie pop genre it was clear that the audience had linked together their album cover photos with the digi pack photos. We were influenced by the Coldplay Mylo digi pack because they had made it so the images were the main focus and hadn't included much text on the pages. We thought this was different compared to others we had looked that as a lot of digi pack's include the song lyrics; something we didn't want to include. With the Coldplay digi pack they have the text of who created the music etc. at the bottom of the image in white writing, we took this idea and put it into our own digi pack as we thought this wouldn't take the focus away from the images we were using. We included the song names on every page and two lines of the song lyrics below it, this was different to anything we had seen before as usually it is the full song on one page. 

Tuesday, 5 March 2013

Interview Questions

We are planning on showing our music video to a group of people to get audience feedback, here are some of the questions we are planning on asking them.


 
Do you understand the storyline?

What do you think about the transitions to black & white from colour?

Do you think it looks professional?

Would you see this on a music channel?

What do you think we could do differently if we do it again?

What do you believe the concept of the red balloon is?

Monday, 4 March 2013

Plan For Evalution

  • In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For this question i am planning on comparing with pictures our own products and the products we were influenced by. 

1) Images of the videos we were influenced by, the images from our own music video which have conventions of the Indie Pop genre.  Ben howard - Nature 
2) The typography we have used throughout our product - making the name of our artist the logo
3) Black & white shots - where we got the idea from
4) Challenge forms of convention - The red balloon 
  • How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Everything links together, the images of the beach and the beach setting in the video. 
  • What have you learned from your audience feedback?
For this question i will play our music video to an audience and ask them questions on what they think about the video. 
  • How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Photoshop - edit images for advert
Instagram - edit images for digi-pak/album cover
Blogs - follow ideas, research
Adobe premier - Edit our music video/ get the colour of the red balloon.