Final blog post

This is my final blog post and I thought I'd end it on a bit of inspiration I gained from the researching behind my music video.

In the Easter holidays, I decided I would take it upon myself to create my own online radio station. I did a set on rock and alternative music which through my research and planning for my music video I felt provided me with some good background information on various rock bands. So through my media coursework, I have definitely gained a wider knowledge around the rock genre in music.

The website I created it on was simply through searching on google, the link to my radio station is

www.sarahisaacs1992.listen2myradio.com - Sazzle FM (a name suggested by a friend) is obviously not always live on air, but I do enjoy playing music for people on it in my spare time!

I always do a 7pm-9pm slot on either Wednesday or Thursday, but usually I do both, as well as doing random sets on other days too, so feel free to tune in and give me some requests!

Evaluation

Question 1: n what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

Media Presentation

Evaluation

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks? on Prezi

Evaluation

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From the audience feedback I have gained, I learnt a lot in particular about peoples expectations of a rock music video. I began using audience feedback at the very start of the course as part of my research & planning towards my music video and ancillary tasks. It was important to gain audience feedback at this point so I had an understand of the expectations people would have. It also helped with the type of content I should have involved within my music video. I carried out a questionnaire which was handed to many participents to get involved in and I also decided to set up my questionnaire on social networking website, Facebook. I did this because lots of people use it and I could therefore gain answers as people may find it easier to use facebook rather than writing out their answers on a questionnaire.



From the questionnaires handed out at the beginning of the year, I found out the general expectations people have of a rock music video. As expected, the majority of feedback proved that the performance element within a music video showing a band and instruments is very much associated with rock music. From my questionnaire I also found out that people linked darker colours to rock music. I also found out that most people watched music videos on either the internet or TV.



Another piece of audience feedback I gained was from my treatment. The treatment was when as a group we had to present a pitch to the media class for our music video with the ideas we had so far. Through doing this we could then gain an understanding of what ideas were good, and it also gave people the oppurtunity to suggest ideas for our group. From our treatment we received some really encouraging feedback from the class. Our treatment really helped towards the production of our music video as it changed the basis of our main focus of the video. We began with the idea of a gig scene, which people pointed out would be hard to create due to the numbers of people involved and a possible venue could be hard to find.

We were always asking friends for feedback and a lot of the time this feedback was also good. This was very encouraging and pushed us to keep going with what we were doing. Originally there were two possible endings, and we put both in to get an idea of what people thought, and if they could possibly work together as a striking ending. There were two different shots, one of Charlottes arm lying amongst the magazine cuttings, and the other of Tom placing down his guitar on the amp. The feedback we got from people was that we needed to choose one ending as it looked too much and it would have a much better effect with just one ending. As we were not sure which ending to take we relied on audience feedback to help us make the right decision. The feedback told us that the shot of Tom putting down the bass guitar was a better ending to our music video, so we went with that shot for the ending.



As a group we were really struggling to come up with an ending to our video. We had footage but we wanted something more striking. When showing our almost finished video to both people from our media class, and people outside we came to realise we'd effectively produced a piece of work including Barthes Enigma Code within it. People informed us their views of our narrative and it came across differently to different people. This is good as people have all different interpretations of our video. To fit in with the obsessive theme our video contains, we ended up putting shots of Charlotte with some of the song lyrics written over her skin as it hints towards her obsession.



The last bit of audience feedback gained was from a screening. This invited the sixth form media students, teachers and students wanting to take media from the school. We handed out sheets with 2 questions on, these questions were:

1. What did you like about our music video?
2. What is your favourite part of our music video and why?

Here are some of the answers we got to those questions from the screening. Our feedback was very positive which made our group proud of the work we had produced.





Through gaining audience feedback, I have learnt there is always room for improvement as everyone has varied opinions. I've also learnt it is important to take the information received from audience feedback as positive criticism as people are suggesting ideas to help improve the work that is being produced.

Evaluation

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For this Question, we decided to work as a group and present it as a voiceover. There are also images to help illustrate our explanations.

Audience feedback on music video ending

We were unsure on how to end our video so we asked many people for their views, and here is some feedback from 3 students on our music video ending.

Split Screen

After researching into internet forums and youtube for answers on how to make our desired split screen. We finally have a result!

Here is a clip we have edited together of Tom and Charlottes feet walking. We were delighted when we realised how to create a split screen effect with our clips because this opened up many new ideas for our music video as we were capable of some more advanced editing.

Audience Feedback

Now all the media music videos of our group are completed. We were able to put together a showcase evening in which they were premiere'd to media students, teachers and aspiring media students in the school. This meant an opportunity for audience feedback had arisen and we were prepared to take full advantage of it.

Some sheets were handed out with two questions on them. Those being:

1. What did you like about our music video?

2. What is your favourite part of our music video and why?

We gained a lot of feedback from them and it was all positive, so we were very happy with our efforts and our hard work had obviously paid off.

Here are some examples of what people had to say:






We also set up a camera corner in which people could go and express their views on what they saw.

Final draft

Here is the final draft of our music video:



I am extremely happy with the end result of our music video. I feel the timing has been perfected to the best it could be and the audience feedback from the showcase at school definitely proved that our hard work paid off.

Draft 8

Here is the final draft of our music video:



We have made a couple of changes since the last draft. One of these changes is the split screen of the feet walking past one another. We had this clip twice, the first time was the feet normally walking by. The second time was the feet reversed, we took this out of our video because it wasn't particularly effective and it seems as if we were not capable of anything more advanced as we were reversing footage. This was obviously not the case so we changed it right away. The reason we reversed the walking was to try and portray the dysfunctional relationship of the couple. However we changed it so the two part of the screen had been swapped rather than reversing it.

We also changed the order of the shots and cut it up more when Charlotte has the lyrics on her body. We felt to fit in with the alternative rock genre it needed to be more choppy with our editing so we changed this factor about our video.

I feel very happy with our draft and I feel it does conform to the forms and conventions of a rock music video. I feel this is due to the research carried out behind the video we have made and the joint narrative and performance elements work well together.

Credits

With all music videos, there are credits with the song title and the band name involved. We included the song title, band name, the production company with the year of release and the album name in our credits.

Here is a picture of our credits on the black screen we placed them on before it fading out to our split screen.

Draft 7

Above is the seventh draft of our music video. There is a lot more split screen involved within this draft. However, we feel we really need to get an ending sorted for our music video. After asking different people their views on how we could end the video, the general feedback was that it needed to be something bold and shocking for the audience.

When people were watching our music video, people had all different interpretations of what we were trying to portray. Some thought the two characters had been in a relationship that had failed, some believed she was an obsessive ex girlfriend, and others thought that the boys career was getting in the way of the relationship. We realised we had incorporated a media theorists theory within our music video. This theory being Barthes Enigma Code.

Eventually we decided on painting the lyrics onto Charlotte and having her rub them away off of her body. We got inspiration from our audience feedback and also an existing video by Marina and the Diamonds for 'I am not a robot'.

Here is the draft including these shots of Charlotte with lyrics painted on her:

Voyeurism

When we visited Richmix, with head examiner Pete Fraser. He mentioned that voyeurism was a good element to have involved within our video. Lots of videos include voyeurism within them. Nat King Cole's 'Frim Fram Sauce' was the example we were shown on the trip.

Here are some other videos I have found that includes Voyeurism:

We decided that we would include voyeurism in our music video with our lead singer looking in to a mirror. Here is our attempt:

Draft 6

Here is the sixth draft of our music video. As you can see whilst watching it, it is nearly complete and there is just a small part before the ending that needs to be added now.



In this draft a lot of our split screens have been added in which I think have worked very successfully and really work well in the video. The 3 way split screen inspired from blink-182's video 'Always' has been added in. The split screen that opens our video has also been redone. As we decided it was better quality on Final Cut Express rather than iMovie which we had previously edited it on.

Draft 5

I am particularly happy with this draft of our music video as I feel it is all starting to come together and starting to look really professional now. We have managed to get the desired 3 way split screen that we wanted. After researching ways into it, we realised it was actually reasonably easy to do. The help of tutorial videos on youtube and peoples input on forums was heavily encouraging for us and enabled us to do the split screen in the way we wanted to.

We got the inspiration for a horizontal split screen from this Blink-182 video:



And here is our draft with the horizontal split screen:



I feel the split screen is brilliant for the narrative side of our music video.

Draft 4

This is the fourth draft of our music video. We have added some close up shots of toms lips and lip synced them accordingly to the lyrics in the song 'Charmer'. As well as this we noticed that we had not yet added credits in to our music video. This has also been added into this draft as every music has credits introducing the song title and band name. As you can see in our draft below, We have mimicked the way in which music videos contain credits.

Draft 3

Here is the third draft of our music video. After a long time of searching through various youtube videos for tutorials on how to do a split screen on either iMovie or final cut, we finally managed it!

Here is our draft with split screen included:

Final Digipak

Here is my final digipak pieced together:

Alexis Jordan - Good Girl

Whilst watching music channels, I noticed Alexis Jordan's latest single 'Good girl' is similar to our music video in the way that it fades to black quickly to the beat of the song, this can first be seen at 0.45 seconds into her video, but it is also used after this point as well.

Filming

This video, 'Always' by Blink-182 has a split screen feature where the screen is split into three horizontally. The strips do not match one another. We looked at this and thought we could film similarly to this to create the idea of a dysfunctional lifestyle containing Charlotte and Tom (the lead singer).



We found this video on youtube explaining how to do the split screen on final cut.

Media trip to Richmix

We went to Rich Mix for the second time on Tuesday 15th March and yet again had another interesting trip. The first talk was from Chief Examiner Pete Fraser on Collective Identity. It was focussed on youth and as an individual I found it very interesting and beneficial.

The second half was again with Pete Fraser but also introduced the audience to Misfits lead director, Tom Green.



I found it very interesting listening about the making of Misfits as I have watched both series so far. We watched an episode from the second series which Tom Green described as his most "proud" episode as it was a very hard one to make. Following this we watched short films made by Tom Green from degree level, which were too very impressive. Though they differed hugely to Misfits as they were very serious based unlike comedy series Misfits.

Influence for the idea of the ice hearts

Whilst watching Wretch 32's latest single's music video. My group and I stumbled across an element from his music video that we all really liked. This features within the first 5 seconds of the music video. It shows what seems like ice forming. However it has just been reversed with editing skills to make it seem this way. We looked at this and thought it seemed very possible for us to mimic the idea and construct something similar in our music video. Seeing as our video is based around an obsessive stalker, we thought the idea of ice love hearts may look effective in our video.

Here is Wretch 32's video featuring the ice at the beginning which influenced our decision into making and filming the long process of the ice hearts melting.

Magazine Advertisement

Here is the final image I have pieced together of what the magazine advertisement for 'The Mags' debut album would ideally look like:

Magazine Advertisement making process

I thought I ought to show the making process of my magazine advertisement. So here are some print screens of the work I carried out. I produced it quite easily on Microsoft Word. As I am not an expert on more experienced software such as photoshop, I thought it was best to stick to what I knew to make the best product I could. I started off by adding the photo I wanted of the drummers drum kit. Having the basic idea that the writing will feature around the drum kit in the space provided.



Following the image I had. I decided to add text to my image informing the viewer who the band are. I added a text box and tweaked the font type and sizing until I was happy with it, the image below is the process of choosing how it should look on the magazine advertisement.



In the next print screen that I have taken, it shows my magazine advertisement having advanced quite a bit. Having looked at other artists albums advertisements in magazines. I decided quotes from newspapers and/or music magazines would be a good idea. I decided to feature one music magazine which is known for being a rock magazine, and two newspapers. I also added in stars from auto-shapes on Microsoft word enabling the advertisement to look quite realistic with star ratings from each source. I also added a quote as quotes often feature on successful artists albums, so portraying the band we have created an image for as positively as I can, I thought I'd add in a quote!



Here is the final print screen of the making of my album advertisement. I have added a parental advisory logo, and also added the URL to the band's website. I have noticed many album advertisements have various logos and also feature the bands or artists website so I have mimicked this with my work.

Magazine Album Advertisements

Contained within any music magazine, whether it's specializing in one particular genre or another, you are bound to find advertisements for albums that are soon to be released by bands. Within these adverts there are similar features you will be able to spot in each one, you may not find all but it is likely you will find most of the following in a magazine advertisement:

- The artists name and the new album title.
- The release date of the album and the download.
- Website, myspace, facebook or twitter of the artist.
- Product content such as extra DVD footage or any bonus tracks that are included.
- Magazine reviews and star ratings from magazines and newspapers depending on the genre, such as NME, Q, Smash Hits, Kerrang, The Guardian.
- The name of record label.
- Tour dates.
- Photographs or graphics of the artist or things associated with their album.
- Where the album is avaliable to perchase such as HMV or Amazon.
- Lines such as “out now” or “debut album”.
- Any offers that are avaliable such as free downloads.

Prezi

Here is how the ice hearts were made that feature in our music video. We decided to put the photographs in a Prezi as a more interactive way of showing how they were made.

Ice & Paper Mache on Prezi

Audience Feedback

In order to gain a wider understanding of peoples thoughts regarding the rock genre we handed out questionnaires in person and thought of other ways to gain answers from people. Facebook seemed like a good idea so after creating a note and inboxing friends with the questionnaire we were able to receive lots of information from people.

I made a note and 'tagged' my friends in it so they were notified of being tagged in the note and were able to answer the questionnaire. Though not all replied, many did and this gave lots of valuable information to go towards the background research of making our coursework piece.

Here is a sample of one participants answers in the questionnaire.

Advertisement

For our advanced portfolio we have to produce a digipak, and also a advertisement/poster in order to promote our band, The Mags.

To do this effectively it is important to carry out research on appropriate magazines promoting bands from the rock, alternative rock genres. To gain a wider understanding of how different artists are promoted, I will also be looking at other genres use of advertisement for promoting bands.





Here are some examples of front covers for Rolling Stone, featuring Oasis and the cover of Mojo featuring the band our coursework is based upon, Kings of Leon.

Final Digipak

Here are my final digipak designs:

My front cover is simple but I feel it definitely gives the buyer a feel of the rock genre due to the drum kit illustrated on the front.



This is the CD holder of my digipak. I went for a random design around the holder for the cd because I feel the rock genre can be quite spontaneous and this reflects this idea and could represent the dysfunctional lifestyle of a rockstar.



Here is the other cover of the inside of my digipak. This shows a switchboard that features in the 'She' video. This may look familiar to buyers of the CD from the video.



Here is the back of my digipak. This features the tracklist and the guitar from the 'She' video belonging to The Mags lead singer. The kiss marks around the guitar could represent love towards the band and their music.

Original digipak

Here is the original front cover of my digipak. I print screened a shot from the draft of our charmer that we have recently put onto youtube. Looking at other albums from the alternative rock genre, the front covers are generally quite random. It meant that there was a lot of flexibility in what I was able to make my digipak look like.

I made a few possible digipaks, and after making my first one (pictured above) I realised I could make a much more advanced digipak than what I had done above. I challenged myself more and the result I was happy with was the following:



This looks much more professional than the other front cover I had designed. Firstly it is not blurry in comparison to the other one, the blur doesn't look intentional either so it looks unprofessional.

Following this, I made the back of my digipak, featuring the bands track list.



I then went on to make the inside of the digipak. I tried to make the cd holder quite random as it could portray the dysfunctional lifestyle of a rockstar. The other image is of a switchboard which relates to the bands music.

Here is my final digipak pieced together:

Chase & Status

Last Wednesday I went to see Chase & Status at KoKo in Camden. Chase & Status are quickly becoming bigger and bigger in the music scene. Following a university interview in Birmingham and heavy traffic, I rushed home to get back in time for it.

Chase & Status had been announced as special guest healiners a couple of days before the event so I felt lucky to get the tickets! It was part of the 'MTV's Brand New for 2011' competition. Many artists were competing and votes were taken in a poll. Some of the contenders were amongst those of Jessie J, Labrinth, Mona, Clare Maguire and many more.

Before Chase & Status, the two acts involved in this competition were Clare Maguire and Mona. Though we missed Clare Maguires performance due to myself being a bit late, we managed to catch Mona's performance, but admittedly we were gearing ourselves up for Chase & Status and making the most of the free photobooth during their performance. However, I did know one or two of their songs and enjoyed hearing them get played. Here is one of the pictures from the photobooth of myself, Charlotte and our two friends, Emma and Ellen that we met up with in Koko. Not too sure where I thought the camera was.. seem to be looking up a little too high!




Here is the video to my favourite song by them:



The votes have now all been counted and Mona infact won the competition. Big things are expected of them and I think they've got a good future ahead of them musically considering they were up against the likes of Jessie J who recently did fantastically reaching #2 in the UK charts with her Debut single 'Do it like A Dude.' Following a report on the vote, it seems Jessie J was a favourite and managed to gain 27% of the vote. She was closely followed by Far East Movement, Willow Smith and Clare Maguire. However Mona took 32% of the vote securing a win and taking over the crown from last years winner, Justin Bieber.



Chase & Status put on a fantastic performance and we managed to catch a glimpse of Noel Fielding up in a balcony watching them too!

Band name

Whilst thinking about the design and look of our digipaks, it is also important to make them look as realistic as possible. As a group we got together and sat around and thought of possible band names.

Though we are basing our band brand around Kings of Leon, it is important to come up with a different name for the band. We had tried using random name generators on various websites before but none of these names suggested got taken much notice of as we did not feel they were good enough. We came up with a short list of band names and eventually decided on "The Mags".

We considered this option before but not seriously. It was only until we looked further into bands similar to our genre and realised that many exsisting bands in this genre have a name involving 'The ....'. For example The Who, The Cure, The Clash..

The Cure's DVD cover with footage of them headlining 9 European music festivals in the summer of 2005.

So our decided band name was 'The Mags', and with a track list sorted, this is bound to speed up the process of designing our digipaks as we have content to involve within it now.

Track list

We needed a tracklist to make our digipak look as realistic as possible so we decided to use a random name generator. We sat round each writing a word and folding the paper over and passing it around. For instance an adjective, followed by a noun, verb.. etc. The first song title that came from this generator was The Crazy Crow Sleeps In The Magenta Theatre. We all thought this was a bit too long to be put on our digipak and wasn't the typical song you would expect to see on an artists cd from this genre. It seemed far too random and a bit too long. Another name we came up with from this generator was "The Idiosyncratic Bassoon Drowns The Magnificent Cactus". We decided that the name generator was giving us titles that were simply just too long, so we thought it would be a good idea to shorten these titles and take some words out to make their own titles.

Our list of chosen track songs are as follows:

1. Mag
2. Geilz
3. To Somebody
4. Cactus
5. Holy Leggings
6. Idiosyncracy
7. Proclaimation
8. Atonomy
9. Damaged
10. Magnolia
11. She
12. Magnetism
13. Check It Out
14. Molly's Mullet
15. Femme!

Filming day 2

In our music video we had planned to contain some performance shots, so we got together a band and got straight to it.

We all gave a helping hand in bringing in the equipment and helping set up the stage. We carefully considered our mise-en-scene and decided a plain stage would be boring so we decided to get some props together from the art room.

We played the song out loud from an iphone out of one of the amps on the stage so we are able to hear it when editing and so the band stayed in time with one another. Seeing as the main people on instruments in our band (Josh on drums & Ben on guitar) actually play for a band, they played along to the song too which made the timing all very accurate.

Once we figured out how to turn the stage lights on, filming went smoothly and we managed to gain some really effective shots. One shot we all like in particular includes a shot of Josh on the drums, and Tom's (the lead singer) shadow moving around in the curtain due to the way we set the lighting.

Filming

On 11.01.11 we began filming various shots for our music video at Molly's house. We began by filming some simple shots of Charlotte (the main character in our coursework). We got some shots of her putting her make up on whilst looking directly at the camera as if it is a mirror. We thought about the mise-en-scene of our music video and so we made sure her makeup was dark with red lips, this could hint towards her wanting to seduce the vocalist in the music video. Her clothes that she is wearing also put an emphasis on femininity.

Once we had gained these shots we wanted to film Charlotte lying on the floor surrounded by a pile of magazine and newspaper cuttings with random hand drawn images all laid beneath her. By having the strange images on the floor it could suggest the fact she is an odd obsessive fan that draws photos of the people she is obsessed with.





The filming ran smoothly and we were positive about the outcome. We also improvised when we were filming managing to think of some new shot ideas. We have already edited two examples of stop motion that we improvised on the day, one of a bass guitar with kiss marks all over it, and the drawings and the photos of men piled up on top of each other. The bass guitar will be a significant part of our music video, as there is a line that says 'She stole my Karma.' We will film a shot of her stealing the guitar with the kisses all over it to show her obsession.

Stop Motion with paper:



Stop Motion with guitar:

Digipak research

Here are some examples of album covers from bands of a similar genre to Kings of Leon:



Foo Fighters: This album cover shows how random a band from this genres album can be. The image on the front of this album cover doesn't particularly relate to the band. This differs from the typical images you would see on the album cover of an artist from the pop genre.



Kasabian: This is also a good example of a typical band from this genre. It has the band pictured on the front cover. In music videos of bands from this genre there is often performance elements involved showing the members of the band involved.

Here are some more examples of other bands from a similar genre:

Libertines - Up The Bracket:



Primal Scream - Screamdelica

Digipak

A digipak is a recently introduced book-style paperboard with one (or more) plastic trays capable of holding a CD or Dvd attatched inside. Digipaks are being brought in rather than the old style plastic cd cases.

Here is an example of a digipak: