Jon Whyte Evaulation

Question 1.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses various different forms of communication. Our media language is conveyed to our target audience by use of dramatic effects. For example, we used black and white imagery extensively to create an atmosphere of depression associated with the loneliness and despair often felt by disadvantaged teenagers in today’s society. The raw nature of the music, and the violence expressed in the soundtrack (see our blog where “violent” and “mind” are the two most used words in the song) was expressively conveyed by our imagery. This included hand-held camerawork to impart a dynamic scenario similar to the style made famous by such artists as Andy Warhol. In a way, we wanted to revert to the raw impact of such “underground” classic films, the genre of which is evocative and forceful. We contrasted the black-and-white images with coloured text (the choice of blood-red colour was deliberate) in the dig pack for added emphasis. Our mise-en-scene had different elements. The setting was anonymous: parkland, garages, and a brick wall. This was to establish a sense of isolation from society. Our characters wore non descript hoodies to emphasise their anonymity and their isolation from society because we wanted to convey anger and frustration. The sound track is harsh and grating, and we tried to reinforce it by our use of harsh video, i.e. somewhat disjointed footage with random effects. In this regard, we used a mixture of shots, some close-up and others at a greater distance. We did this to create a sense of energy in the video. A fast pace is what we wanted to achieve. Our agenda was played on three levels, as is the usual case. This enabled us to deconstruct how both visual and text communicate – a sort of “science of signs”. As already stated, we used black and white imagery, together with coloured text, to convey a real purpose to the project. At a representational level, we used basic editing skills to try to convey to the audience the meaning of the soundtrack. Finally, symbolically, we wanted to convey the frustration, exasperation and indeed anger felt by many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is manifest in the sound track. One inspiration was the YouTube video by Justice called “Stress”. However, my group felt that this was too violent and we felt somewhat uncomfortable with that. The video “Stress” reflects on anger felt by disadvantaged young people in poor ghettoes of Paris: the banlieue, which erupted in violence in 2005. Another influence was the video on YouTube “La Haine”. Our product compares with others on the market in terms of its impact. We felt this was best achieved by making our presentation non-complicated, contrasting with the stereotypes of many of today’s “slick” productions with much video and audio editing. We wanted to challenge the “X-factor” concept and provide something to which young people could relate to in their lives. This was our ideology and, although apparently simplistic, it required a lot of work to make it successful. In addition, we wanted to convey a raw energy in our product, which helped us feel that we were successful. On a lighter note, we included a postcard to help develop a “fan club”, something which is missing from many bands today, unlike many years ago when every band or singer had a fan club. In addition, we included a competition in this postcard to attract more replies because we believed that such a gimmick might help market our product. Finally, we believed that the construction of the digipack was important to help promote sales of our product. It was intentionally uncomplicated for this reason, but resulted in a high impact value, which was evidenced by feedback [see Question (3)].











Question 2.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
All of our ancillary texts were produced in black and white to maintain the continuity of our music video being produced in greyscale. All texts included something related to the band itself rather than unrelated artistic designs. We took influence from the French independent film “La Haine”. The film translates to “the hate” and is set in the suburbs of Paris. It aims to show a more gritty side of the city which is often neglected from the media’s attention. As well as “La Haine” we were also strongly influenced by the music video “Stress” by the French pop duo “Justice”. The video follows the antics of a day in the life of a group of young working class afro-Caribbean boy’s. We attempted to maintain all of the codes and conventions that would be expected in an indie-rock music video. We included performance-based footage, as this is commonplace with most indie rock bands, we also thought that this would provide some diversity in our music video and help to break up the narrative. We included many close up shots in the performance as well as an establishing shot and various other shots panning from left to right.
We received a large amount of constructive feedback on not only our music video but on all of our other ancillary texts (Magazine Adverts, Competition leaflets, digi-pack cover etc. They were almost all positive, praising our work on the digi-pack cover and competition leaflet and how well they fit in with the convention of the music video itself. We did however receive one criticism about our music video claiming that shots 1 and 2 were too “shaky”. However, we did explain in a response afterwards that this was a deliberate strategy in order to obtain an aggressive tone about the video. Whatever the criticism, positive or negative we took it all on board and used it to better our final project.
The digi-pack contained photos of a variety of angles of the band members standing in isolated settings such as a field. Our inspiration for the digipack was derived from the cover from the Arctic Monkey’s debut album “whatever people say I am that’s what I’m not”, which also contains very minimalistic photograph of a young man smoking a cigarette and smiling as if he was making a statement to one and all!
The competition leaflet and the magazine advert both contained photos of the band members. We made sure that no stone was left unturned and even included the official “HMV” logo together with the “parental advisory” label. We copied the layout of the completion leaflet from a DVD of an unknown band and in the competition leaflets we included a subscription to our monthly music newsletter together with all the backstage gossip from the band and inside view of our band.
When we came to edit our music video, we did not need to add any specific effects on Final Cut. We did however use greyscale, to add an aggressive feel. Some of the performance-based footage was filmed under a Flood light; this gave quite a nice natural effect which radiated on the face of our lead singer. We used the internet for much of the research process. We used Google to get some initial inspiration and then we other websites such as YouTube to post videos on the blog. We collected all our ideas and posted them on the website “blogger.com”. As part our evaluation we had to produce a DVD commentary explaining the codes and conventions of music video and why we did certain things in certain ways. This was beneficial as not only is does to add realism to our project, but it also allowed us to gather all of our thoughts collectively and analyse our music video properly.




Question 3.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Although we did not receive a huge amount of audience feedback, the advice we did receive was helpful and constructive. Mostly the feedback was positive, and the only criticism was of one of our misspellings! It was very beneficial to receive audience feedback as it allowed us to gather a set of fresh set of ideas and perspectives on our music video project. We are especially grateful to Groups 14 and 17 for their comments (thanks guys!). The black and white imagery was highly praised, with one comment even stating “beautiful photography”. The use of panels on the inside of the digipack was described as a “great idea” to create an image of a wide shot. Someone even thought our whole package was reminiscent of the Arctic Monkey’s first album. All comments agreed on the effective impact of the package, including the novel idea of including a postcard with a competition.

Below are examples of some of the feedback concerning the music video itself.
“Good camera shots and mise en scene. Excellent performance, enthusiastic”.
“Gritty in its tone and its presentation so suits the music you've chosen.
The switch between narrative and performance is solid, but it would have been better to see the singer with the band during the performance to build up the idea of being gang.
It's odd that the band are the hooligans so that could break with conventions.
The depiction of youth is good Daily Mail baiting content so you could get publicity from the controversy”.
In the first comment, the audience commented on the shots being too “shaky”. However, we deliberately wanted to achieve this effect, to give the video an aggressive edge, but I can understand how this might have been construed as looking a little amateurism. It was also criticised, as we did not include the singer with the band as a whole group. Whilst this was true, we did not have any good enough shots to include in our music video. The media project proved a learning experience for all of us.
As well as receiving feedback from our official music video we also were given feedback on the other ancillary texts which we produced. We had to produce a CD cover, DVD cover and magazine advert as basic requirements. However, instead of producing a CD cover we produced a digipack. We included such features in the digipack as a postcard to send off for a monthly newsletter, a competition leaflet to win a chance to meet the band, and finally a magazine advert. We included these items as we believed it would add more realism to the digipack as bands do occasionally offer competition leaflets.
Below are a few examples on the feedback of those ancillary texts.
“Beautiful photography that's consistent with the mood, quality and tone of the video. Again there's a focus on the band and an attempt to develop their image as edgy and dark (ish).
The use of the panels on the inside to created a 'wide shot' is a great idea.
It's a very appropriate style for the music and band type and reminds us a little of the arctic monkeys first album”
“Really nice idea with the postcard, simple and basic design but effective. Consistent colours look good, nice contrast between orange of band name and black and white image”.


















Question 4.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
“New” media technologies primarily involve a digital format, rather than the older analogue technology characterised by use of tapes. It is hard to believe that it is not yet 30 years since the PC (Personal Computer) was launched by IBM in 1981. The rapid advance in technology since that date have led to the development of the internet, rapid (broadband) downloads, and digital technology. The last has allowed storage and transmission of huge amounts of data in high-quality audio and video formats. Video cameras today do not use magnetic tapes as used as recently as 10 years ago, but record either directly onto DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), or more recently, SD (Secure Digital) cards. The latest SD cards, SDXC (Secure Digital, eXtended Capacity) will allow storage of up to 2 TB (2000 MB) of information. This is impressive, as CDs typically can “only” hold 650 MB of data, and even multi-layered DVDs can only achieve this amount of data storage.
We used new media technologies extensively in our project. Our target audience (young adults) would be highly IT (Information Technology)-literate, and would download music directly from the internet (World-Wide Web, hence the WWW abbreviation) onto iPods (using iTunes) or onto mobile phones (using Bluetooth or wireless technology). They would want the product to be high quality but easily downloadable (i.e. not too large).
We used a Sony video camera with an MB SD disc to record our video. We recorded in colour and edited it to black-and-white using the video-editing software. For the digipack we used a Sony SLR (Single Lens Reflex) Digital Camera. Again, this uses a digital format on SD cards. A few years ago, SLR cameras used photographic film, which is now almost obsolete; such is the pace of advance of modern technology. For the audio track, we used a drum kit and a Gibson electric guitar. We wanted to advertise our album through modern technology such as downloadable formats (such as high quality MP3 files on iTunes) and MPEG-4 on a dedicated website (www.standardmeeting.com). Digital technology allows easy image manipulation using Adobe Photoshop and similar software. Recently, such image manipulation was performed in darkrooms by technicians who were highly skilled in such arts. Nowadays people who are more adept at electronic manipulation tackle such artistic interpretation differently. This is what all modern audiences, including our target audience of young adults, have now come to expect.
Blogs, twitters, Facebook etc. These are the modern means of communication. Even politicians, now renowned for their “techno-saviness”, use PDAs and Blueberries to keep in contact. Media has technology provides a high-impact presentation which imparts its effect much more efficiently than text alone.advanced in huge leaps in recent years, largely as a result of advances in technology, rather than any increase in sophistication of journalists or their skills.
We made extensive use of new software packages to help present our product and our blog. Adobe Photoshop and the free package Irfanview were used for manipulation and adjustment of the still images, whereas Final Cut Express was used for the video editing. Microsoft Word 2007 was also used for text, as were sites such as www.wordle.net to create word clouds for our blog.

Jonathon Whyte