1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Indie band videos tend to focus on a performance and have no real narrative. Some are also experiemetnal and as named, independant. However we decided to challenge these conventions by taking the focus off the band and concentrating on the overall look of the video, which is quite arty. We didn’t feel it was necessary to show the identity of the band because this was going to be “The Crimson Cucumber’s” third hit single; they have already established their place within the music industry. I took inspiration from The Radio Dept.'s animated video "Pulling Our Weight" where the band are not featured. Also The Avalanches videos that i reasearched do not feature the artists.
The Video has a beginning, middle, and end which follows the conventions of most music videos. It also goes full circle, ending how it started. We did follow the conventions of an indie video by having a weak narrative. There is a little romance story in the video but its subtle.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We wanted the style of the video to follow though with the digi packs, to further promote the band. As the video was predominantly photos, we used these to make the posters. The photos we used were of the band so that the audience will recognise them and be reminded of their newest song and video. This will help especially when their audience are looking for the band’s CD in the shops and it also encourages them to buy the CD because of the artwork. The style we've chosen runs through the music video, cd cover, and posters to keep our theme going. The band will become identifiyable and recognisable. The carefree colourful pictures would appeal to out target audience and reflect their style/chacracter. I think the band could also gain a wider appeal from their simple and playful images.
It is important to have the posters and CD covers alongside the release of the new song so the band can gain a mass audience and they can be plugged on music channels, chat shows etc.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In the initial crit, we presented the mood board of band. The class liked our band name of "The Crimson Cucumbers" because it is unique and totally spontanious. We explained that we went along the idea of "The Arctic Monkeys," putting two random words together. During the pitch, the class commented on the photographs we had taken which appear at the start of the video. They liked the location and the suuny lighting on the the shoot. overall the music video recieved positive comments.People enjoyed watching the video because it is photo animated unlike most most music videos today and we also tapping along to catchy song which i think is important because it shows our band's image and genre of music appeal to our target audience. At the pitch we described how during the editing stages, the video will eventually rewind all the way back to the start for narrative sake (all the photographs of James walking will reverse so James meets back up with the girl he meets at the very start). The class seemed a bit annoyed that we would only have to make half a video and cheat by repeating what we already had. However during our first screening they didn't mind because the video lasts around 4 minutes so we had created about 3 mintues worth of footage before reusing shots we had. A few weeks before the deadline we had another feeback/ screening lesson so that any last adjustments can be made and the class had said that the contrast could be tweaked to make things look more professional and we took this advice and did it. I think it looks a lot better now.I created two posters and i wasnt sure which one to go, but during the evaluation crit a few members of the class commented on my second poster and liked the simplisity of it, but also the effect of having images repeated as if they are moving. The video is now on youtube! We have recieved a comment at the moment. The Video is uploaded on my account but im going to upload it onto the school's account "Teamedia" so the school students can watch it and hopefully we can recieve comments from the media and film students and the sixth form.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
New media technology played an important role with every stage of this project. It easily accesible to research band/artists online because you can find their own social networking websites on myspace/facebook/ twitter and find their style and who their target audience is. Youtube let me watch and analyse my favourite music videos, videos from my case study artist and also videos from the indie rock genre. Although it wasnt entirely useful, Glogster was a fun way to express what type of music you like online, just like creating a poster. I did realise that Glogster do have a kind of community whereby anyone can sign up and create a glog showing their passion for music, film etc. it alsos you to pick your own designs, paste pictures,add text and upload music so it's totally interactive. The happen to love blogging more so than doing a sketchbook because the project involves NMT. This way i could upload videos straight to my blog, show our animatic, add photos from the day, and document each step like a diary which made the whole process more enjoyable (being a teenager its what we are used to really) Although temperamental and very frsutrating, the apple Macs made the video what it is now with its software which is suited for media/ music compnaies.Most of the video was made on I-movie because that's the program we are acustomed to. We used the effects on I-movie on the footage of the band singing along to the music, and the software made uploading all our photographs and easier task. Final tweaks we used on Final cut because it is a more advanced. On here we added a splitscreen to the opening which we couldn't of done on I-movie. We also the adjusted the colours and contrast which i mentioned earlier. I created my posters on photoshop because it has a range of tools to crop, add effects,add text and be able to move layers one at a time. Even i-pods/mp3s came in handy when filming on location because the music is portable and can play aloud for the actors to hear.
