In order to discuss which digital technologies were used in the creation of our Pop Promo we put together a commentary script to be read alongside the screening of the promo:
1: When shooting our pop promo, we used three cameras, one camera was a Sony PD170 this was used to film close ups of the stop motion effect, as this camera uses a tape there is the ability to pause, which maintained the effect that objects were appearing and disappearing realistically. The other two cameras were Sony NX5s, these cameras are high definition giving a better quality and more professional appearance.The use of three cameras allowed us to be more creative with our shots and shoot a wider range of footage. One camera was used to shoot close ups and the other was place at a high angle filming continuous wide shots, this gave a wide variety of footage and shots to use and made the shoot day process more efficient. The Sony NX5s use SD cards which make the post production process more efficient as shots were already cut in comparison to one continuous tape which needs to be cut which the Sony PD170s provide.
2: In the post production stage final cut pro was used to slow down the stop motion footage. Another software used was called After FX where the split screening effect was used, this involved masking one side of the mise en scene and replacing it with half the mise en scene of another shot. The split screen was used to enable a band member to be placed alongside the stop motion effect on of objects around the room and create the illusion that time was passing. Colouring and grading was also used in After FX to make the colour quality of the promo better and make it appear more professional.
3: In the pre production stage of the pop promo, we used the internet in order to research other songs and music videos using YouTube. Examples of the specific promos looked at were The Kooks promo for the song ‘Shine On’. Our intention was to set the promo in a domestic space and in ‘Shine On’ the Kooks are depicted in a similar setting. The Kooks have the same genre and audience as the Arctic Monkeys so they were a appropriate band to use as an influence. The domestic, relatable image created for the band is similar to that of other bands within the genre. YouTube enables us to watch videos and listen to songs and helped further our research into the genre. YouTube was also useful in providing other examples of stop motion which gave inspiration for the stop motion effect we wished to use. A user had created a purely stop motion film to the track ‘Sleepy Head’ by Passion Pit, this gave us more examples of the use of stop motion in a domestic space. We used Google to research different bands with a similar star image and music genre, The Ordinary Boys, The Libertines and the Arctic Monkeys provided a similar image we wished to portray for our own band. We found out that these bands are focused on their music and their own music influences so we decided that we would place posters of other artists in The Factory’s living space to show that music was also their passion. After this initial research we pitched our idea using PowerPoint for windows and then presented it through an overhead optoma projector on to an activboard.
1: In the post-production stage we used final cut pro on a Mac G5 which enabled us to edit our footage on a timeframe, this allowed us to view all our shots and then cut the most successful to the track as well as editing the stop motion effectively. The editing was rhythmic however there were still aspects of continuity editing as there was some form of narrative within our promo which was the idea that time was passing. The shots were cut to the loudest beats within the track. The shots of the band and singer were also cut in sync to the track. Final cut pro was also used to slow down the stop motion shots using the slow motion tool. The shots cut to the track created rhythm and flow for the promo as well as conforming to the conventions of music video editing.
2: The playback of the track on the shoot day was on a CD and played through a stereo, a 42 inch Samsung monitor, this allowed us to play and pause the track if we needed to shoot a new take. A monitor gives instant feedback on takes and performances to allow us to make instant changes if needed.
3: In the pre production stage we also used the internet to email the manager of the arctic monkeys and to email each other within the group using hyperlinks via Google and youtube, making the process more efficient. We bought the track on CD through Amazon and mp3 through itunes. We then cut the duration of the track using soundforge, this is due to pop promo conventions where a radio edit is often used to maintain audience’s attention and interest. We filmed our storyboards frame by frame using a Sony PD170 and cut it using final cut pro to produce an animatic this helped to indicate which shots were effective or ineffective and what changes needed to be made.
1: Natural sidelights were used to create a naturally lit living space as well as the use of floor lights to create the illusion of a music studio. Individual spotlights were also used to create emphasis on the transition. The lighting rig was also controlled on an iPad app called Lumanair DMZ controller which was used to control the lighting rig, the introduction of the iPad at the end of 2010 gave us the ability to do so and made the lighting process more efficient.
2: To exhibit our pop promo, we uploaded it onto Youtube and facebook. Youtube allowed us to reach a mass audience of all ages and cultures whereas facebook only promoted the promo to our friends therefore particularly to our age group of 16-25 year olds. Reaching a mass audience helped generate audience feedback to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the promo and find out whether the narrative had translated effectively, from the feedback we recovered we found out it had and our promo was particularly popular with our target audience of 16-25 year olds who gave the feedback that they enjoyed the promo regardless of whether they liked the genre of music or not, however many commented that the transition from the bedsit to the studio could have been bigger.
Friday, 18 March 2011
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
task 3 what have you learned from your audience feedback
1. How did you carry out your audience feedback?
We as a group created a questionnaire full of questions that we wanted answered about our music video. We played our music video to a group of AS students and asked them if they would please complete the questionnaire for our audience research.
In our questionnaire we asked questions such as their gender and age, if they likes the music video, what in there opinion could have been improved upon, what they thought the meaning of the video was, what sort of music they lessoned to etc… as well as giving this group of people their questionnaire we also asked they questions verbally and read there body language such as laughter and facial expressions while watching the video. The video we posted up on you tube to our school account and invited people to make comments and give us some relevant audience feed back. We had comments such as “Good effects :) band works well together” I also posted you tube link to the video in order to encourage more views and comments from a wider range of people.
2. How did the feedback reflect the strengths of your product?
In our questionnaire we received lots of positive feed back. 100% of the people who took part in answering the questionnaire said that they liked the video, regardless of if they listened to the indie genre of music or if they thought we could make some changes to make it stronger. All of the candidates also answered that they liked the stop motion element of the video writing comments such as “makes the video visually interesting and tells the storey well” and “it gave the video its unique selling point “ most of the questionnaires also said that they liked the way the band were dressed and the image that they portrayed. We also got positive feed back from the comments left on the you tube video in the form of “Really good effects :) band works well together” which was very encouraging to us as the comment was not made to our face and was an honest opinion. The body language that we read from our focus group was very positive smiling and looking interested and focused throughout watching the video.
3. How did the feedback reflect the weaknesses of your product?
We did receive some feedback that highlighted the weaknesses of our video such as some comments left on the you tube video one of the comments said “Its a good videoexcept the drummer is obviously not playing that song” this comment highlights the weakness we had due to the actors not luring the song properly which resulted in us making do with the best shots we could get of the instruments being played. One of the weaknesses that were also pointed out in our survey was that the transition of the band becoming famous stars at the end of the video could have been made clearer and more obvious to the audience by maybe the room changing into a stage with bright lights in a concert hall. Some of the focus group also mentioned the drummers and base guitarists problems with playing the song corectly.
4. Explain the Encoding-Decoding model
The encoding and decoding model Derives from the work of the theorist Stuart Hall, he has 3 theories that he calls the encoding and decoding models 1 2 and 3 his 1st theory is that audiences do not act on mass but as a collection of smaller groups which are defined by social and ideological elements. Model number 2 is the theory that media texts are encoded with the values of there producers making them bias and most of these men in halls opinion are white middle class men. He also says different groups within society are likely to interpret these texts in different ways depending on there class, rage, age etc… model 3 hall expresses that the decoding model can only have 3 possible outcomes which are A preferred reading, A negotiated reading and An oppositional reading. We as a group have applied these 3 outcomes to our audience feed back and have separated them in accordance to there reading.
Examples of preferred readings achieved
We were as a group happy with our audience feed back during the focus group because when we asked what they thought the narrative of the video meant the majority answered there interpretation was the band going from being poor, normal young students, to becoming famous and getting a record deal which was our intentional interpretation. This was very pleasing for us to know that although members of the group thought that we could make the ending of the room transition more obvious, the majority still understood which we believe to be a success. Also all of the people who filled out our questionnaire for us put that they liked the video, especially the stop motion element to the video.
6 Examples of negotiated readings achieved
Some of the students taking part in our questionnaire and focus group voiced the n opinion that though they understood the idea of the band growing up together and there dream of trying to make it in the music industry, they see the end sequence of the changing room and the band playing in smarter clothes appearing famous and successful as a dream or a fantasy played out in the band members heads rather than the band actually achieving success.
5. Examples of oppositional reading achieved
When reading the question air there was one person who didn’t seem to understand the concept of our video completely and had the thought that the video was a show of how false and set up the music industry is due to our bands problems with learning the cords, they seemed to think that it was trying to show a lack of skill within bands and that looks are the only thing that matter, not talent. This suggestion was a helpful one to us because it alerted us to the way in which some of people may view our video. Some people we poled also had the opinion that because the ending showing the changing rooms and the bands break through into success in the music industry, could be misunderstood and just look as if the band had woken up the next day and changed their clothes. All of the oppositional readings were very helpful to us when discovering the strengths and weakness to our video
6. Conclusions
It was very encouraging to us that so many of the people we questioned understood the video so well. For those who were confused at the ending and thought it may have been a fantasy or a dream, if given the chance again we may consider making the ending clearer and more of a show, Such as having the band performing of a stage. We also would make sure that the band knew the music well enough to perfect the continuity between the music and the instruments to counteract the opinion that the video was a show of all the bad elements of the music industry such as being untalented and looks orientated. All in all we were happy with the feedback we received and our happy with our end product.
We as a group created a questionnaire full of questions that we wanted answered about our music video. We played our music video to a group of AS students and asked them if they would please complete the questionnaire for our audience research.
In our questionnaire we asked questions such as their gender and age, if they likes the music video, what in there opinion could have been improved upon, what they thought the meaning of the video was, what sort of music they lessoned to etc… as well as giving this group of people their questionnaire we also asked they questions verbally and read there body language such as laughter and facial expressions while watching the video. The video we posted up on you tube to our school account and invited people to make comments and give us some relevant audience feed back. We had comments such as “Good effects :) band works well together” I also posted you tube link to the video in order to encourage more views and comments from a wider range of people.
2. How did the feedback reflect the strengths of your product?
In our questionnaire we received lots of positive feed back. 100% of the people who took part in answering the questionnaire said that they liked the video, regardless of if they listened to the indie genre of music or if they thought we could make some changes to make it stronger. All of the candidates also answered that they liked the stop motion element of the video writing comments such as “makes the video visually interesting and tells the storey well” and “it gave the video its unique selling point “ most of the questionnaires also said that they liked the way the band were dressed and the image that they portrayed. We also got positive feed back from the comments left on the you tube video in the form of “Really good effects :) band works well together” which was very encouraging to us as the comment was not made to our face and was an honest opinion. The body language that we read from our focus group was very positive smiling and looking interested and focused throughout watching the video.
3. How did the feedback reflect the weaknesses of your product?
We did receive some feedback that highlighted the weaknesses of our video such as some comments left on the you tube video one of the comments said “Its a good videoexcept the drummer is obviously not playing that song” this comment highlights the weakness we had due to the actors not luring the song properly which resulted in us making do with the best shots we could get of the instruments being played. One of the weaknesses that were also pointed out in our survey was that the transition of the band becoming famous stars at the end of the video could have been made clearer and more obvious to the audience by maybe the room changing into a stage with bright lights in a concert hall. Some of the focus group also mentioned the drummers and base guitarists problems with playing the song corectly.
4. Explain the Encoding-Decoding model
The encoding and decoding model Derives from the work of the theorist Stuart Hall, he has 3 theories that he calls the encoding and decoding models 1 2 and 3 his 1st theory is that audiences do not act on mass but as a collection of smaller groups which are defined by social and ideological elements. Model number 2 is the theory that media texts are encoded with the values of there producers making them bias and most of these men in halls opinion are white middle class men. He also says different groups within society are likely to interpret these texts in different ways depending on there class, rage, age etc… model 3 hall expresses that the decoding model can only have 3 possible outcomes which are A preferred reading, A negotiated reading and An oppositional reading. We as a group have applied these 3 outcomes to our audience feed back and have separated them in accordance to there reading.
Examples of preferred readings achieved
We were as a group happy with our audience feed back during the focus group because when we asked what they thought the narrative of the video meant the majority answered there interpretation was the band going from being poor, normal young students, to becoming famous and getting a record deal which was our intentional interpretation. This was very pleasing for us to know that although members of the group thought that we could make the ending of the room transition more obvious, the majority still understood which we believe to be a success. Also all of the people who filled out our questionnaire for us put that they liked the video, especially the stop motion element to the video.
6 Examples of negotiated readings achieved
Some of the students taking part in our questionnaire and focus group voiced the n opinion that though they understood the idea of the band growing up together and there dream of trying to make it in the music industry, they see the end sequence of the changing room and the band playing in smarter clothes appearing famous and successful as a dream or a fantasy played out in the band members heads rather than the band actually achieving success.
5. Examples of oppositional reading achieved
When reading the question air there was one person who didn’t seem to understand the concept of our video completely and had the thought that the video was a show of how false and set up the music industry is due to our bands problems with learning the cords, they seemed to think that it was trying to show a lack of skill within bands and that looks are the only thing that matter, not talent. This suggestion was a helpful one to us because it alerted us to the way in which some of people may view our video. Some people we poled also had the opinion that because the ending showing the changing rooms and the bands break through into success in the music industry, could be misunderstood and just look as if the band had woken up the next day and changed their clothes. All of the oppositional readings were very helpful to us when discovering the strengths and weakness to our video
6. Conclusions
It was very encouraging to us that so many of the people we questioned understood the video so well. For those who were confused at the ending and thought it may have been a fantasy or a dream, if given the chance again we may consider making the ending clearer and more of a show, Such as having the band performing of a stage. We also would make sure that the band knew the music well enough to perfect the continuity between the music and the instruments to counteract the opinion that the video was a show of all the bad elements of the music industry such as being untalented and looks orientated. All in all we were happy with the feedback we received and our happy with our end product.
task 1 in what ways do your media products use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
This is a close up of the bass guitarist playing. This still is an example of the large performance element of our music video; this screen grab tells the audience that our bands image is very performance related and that the band is about the music, not just the star image. In order to make this clear we have made the whole video performance related rather than having a purely narrative video or even a narrative element to the video. Keith Negus has identified this approach as being typical of an organic ideology to creativity, which privileges the development of inherent musical talent.
This screen grab is of a Marshall amplifier poster. I chose to take this as an example because this screen grab captures the theme of our video, because our video is trying to portray a band’s rise to fame, and the transition from poor students living in a bed sit, to a successful band recording in a proper studio, which has three real Marshall amplifiers. The contrast between the poster in the bed-sit and the real thing in the studio represents the bands success and the dream becoming a reality which is the theme to our video. This section of the video in my opinion is not typical of other music videos because most others show bands when they have already become famous not on there rise to fame.
This wide freeze frame I took after the transitions between the two rooms and is of the band in their professional studio. I chose this wide shot because it shows the transformation that the band has undergone. We changed the band’s outfits to enhance the way that they have grown up and become successful, so we dressed them in smarter clothes than before, for example shirts and boots instead of trainers and t- shirts. This change of clothes we felt was essential to the transformation they undergo, which is difficult to portray in such a short space of time. We made the transition between the two rooms by using two swivelling spotlights, which we had shine at the camera to create a white out and in that white out we changed, between the different rooms. As our video is purely performance material we tried to really tell a story with the changing rooms and clothes to make the video more interesting without adding a narrative story, which would take away from the image we have tried to create for them. This section of the video I believe is typical of other music videos because other artists often use both performance and narrative. However, we have tried to combine both elements into a single series of sequences which is more unusual.
This is a still from the first shot of the video. I chose this still because it represents the emptiness of the room and how characterless it is, but when the boys move in it becomes a personal and creative place in a room which is not interesting or exiting at all. The development of the band’s image is mirrored by the changes to the room and this was a theme which we kept going throughout the video. It was very important to the video that we had at least 4 wide shots of the rooms 4 various states of change, because that is the main theme and story which runs through the video. we made the bands image very central to there talent of performance and the importance of this to them over an image. In Richard Dyer’s theory the band would have the values of creative/talent, youth, An anti-authoritarian attitude and Success against the odds these 4 traits and values are taken from Richard dyer’s Common views on music stardom. A successful star or band will embody some if not all of these traits in order to be a success, in dyers opinion. The idea is that the target audience will be able to relate to some of these values and still be abele to aspire to be like them and
slightly envy the star.
This screen grab is of the room in its messy lived in state which we show in the middle of the video. This shot was one of our essential four wide shots because it shows how much the room has changed after all of the stop motion shots, it also shows the band are still the same people playing their instruments and staying as a performance centred organic band. You can see in this that the band are still not stars yet from the lack of microphone and half of the drum set. We did this because we wanted to keep the illusion of their success of there fame as a dream. We felt that leaving out the microphone and half the drum set would still keep the feel that the band are still practising in their bed sit and can’t afford flash equipment yet. We did however want to show that the band have gained more success than at the beginning. We did this by adding some fans or “groupies” in the form of the two girls listening to them play. We also started with the drummer having no drum kit at all and just hitting the sticks on his legs, since then we have tried to show there rise to success by adding parts of the dumb kit at a time. We also changed the camera from a dark grainy one at the beginning to a high definition one half way through suggesting their lives are brightening.
This screen grab is from early on in the video. It shows our lead singer lying on the floor in a relaxed position singing while in stop motion magazines, beer cans, a rug and coffee mugs come in around him. We chose to use stop motion to fill up the room because it was our narrative element to our video which was much needed to stop the video becoming to repetitive or boring. We also felt that it gave the best effect for the suggestion that these changes took place over time rather than all at ones on the day they moved in to the bed-sit. We chose to use lad’s mags and music magazines as the magazines surrounding his head to show to the audience that they are just typical teenaged boys in a band who like women and music. We used the beer and cider to show that they are students and not used to drinking exotic alcohol like champagne. As the video moves on and they slowly become more sophisticated, we added wine bottles and a globe to show their tastes are becoming more sophisticated and cultured. Before the room begins to empty again. The stop motion is the element that holds the video together and is the theme that runs throughout. I think this is both not typical and typical of music videos because there aren’t many videos that use stop motion and especially not as there main narrative element. However the use of bear and cider cans to represent youth and rebellion is a typical trait of videos.
This is our poster that we made to promote our album ‘keep calm and carry on we chose to use in image of a mug of tea that we had taken to keep the theme of tea stains that runs throughout our ancillary project. The tea for us represents normality and the working class, which is the image that we have created for ‘the factory’ we wanted the band to seem ordinary and working class to embody Richard Dyers common traits of stardom, of success against the odds and his second paradox of being present and yet absent so the fans aspire to be like them. I don’t think that that our poster is conventional in comparison to most new bands first album promotional posters, most new bands tend to be on the front of the poster trying to promote themselves as an image together and to get there faces recognised.
This is the front cover of our album cover. Again we have placed the tea stain image over our photograph to keep the tea theme running throughout. We chose a photograph of the mess of shoes and clothes because we wanted to promote the bands youth and anti authoritarian attitude which our target audience of 15 to 25 would be able to relate to well. The most prominent part of the photograph is the big black boot. We chose to place it in the middle because we felt it looked like a typical working class boot and all of the other are trainers which our young target audience will hopefully be able to relate to. I don’t think this from cover is conventional to most bands first album cover because in nearly all cases the band appear on the front cover to promote there image.
Inside left of our digi pack is our only image of the band we have used. We chose this image of the band performing because we didn’t want to have a posing photograph of them as we don’t feel that, that would be in keeping with our band image. We have again used the tea stain for our running theme. We also made the photograph slightly grainy and lower quality to keep to the working class image. This image is both conventional and unconventional, it is conventional because it is an image of the band which many bands use in there own album cover packs, however it is unconventional because we haven’t used a posing shot of the band which is cliché we have used a performance shot which is not usually done.
Monday, 17 January 2011
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