EVALUATION

CD Cover

Here is the front and back cover for our CD digipak. We feel the front image is a strong defining one and the font works well. We continued the same font on the back and used an image of our band along with institutional logos such as the Domino one in the bottom left corner.

WEBSITE update

This is our completed website. We tried to conform with the indie genre and the bands official page by using dark colours such as black and grey. We have included links to social networking site such as twitter. We also included an embedded video for all viewers to watch as well as an advertisement regarding their latest single, this has a link so that any fans can purchase it!

Video is finished!

The video is finished! we finished editing earlier this week and are happy with the end product. We feel we have filmed and edited to the best of our ability.

Evaluation

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

We decided to do the Arctic monkeys song 'Mardy bum' for our music video. Arctic monkeys are a typically conventional indie band so we aimed to conform with that image in our production and therefore use the same conventions, although challenging them in some aspects of it. The band we used in our video dressed in typically 'indie' clothes such as shirts and jeans and played instruments such as guitars and drums in order to fit in with the conventions of arctic monkeys and their genre. The lead character in our video was also dressed in a similar way, in order to carry on conforming to the typical conventions of indie music. Arctic monkeys also like to portray themselves as 'working class' and often set their videos in domestic settings. We aimed to follow this particular convention by shooting the band scenes in the basement of a working class house and shooting the narrative on a normal road and in a normal house. Also we decided to have a band playing as well as a narrative it fit in with the conventions of a normal music video. However, we also tried to challenge some conventions you see in music videos. To elaborate, the song is about love and a relationship, but instead of using the typical boy-girl scenario which is very frequent in video’s, we decided to do a an original twist by having the boy having love for his teddy bear. Despite some challenges, we feel we managed to pull it off and make it believable by telling the story through our lead character. We feel by challenging these conventions we have managed to produce a unique take on an indie music video and we feel it has made our video more recognisable and stand out from other videos of a similar genre. 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We have tried to maintain a clear image throughout the making of our music video, C.D digipak and website. We did this so that the audience viewing it would be able to see the image of our band and immediately recognise it. The video, website and C.D digipak are all interrelated as we used similar colours and fonts throughout. Also, we have used the same teddy bear that we used in the video on the C.D and it also makes an appearance on the website. This means that the audience will recognise the bear instantly from the music video. The purpose of the website and CD digipak is to promote the band and the video. The website specifically promotes the band’s upcoming gigs, makes the viewer aware of the music video and also allows you to purchase songs that are available. The C.D cover features the same character and teddy bear as in the music video on the front, and the band we used in the music video appear on the back. We feel the front image is a strong indication of our video and also fits into the genre of indie. This means that not only is the music video relevant to the song, but it also helps sell the C.D as the cover is a reference to the video. For the inside sleeve we carried on the theme of the teddy bear and again used the same font which helped us achieve a consistent house style. Overall, we feel all these aspects effectively appeal to an indie audience around the ages of 16-25.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We gathered feedback for our production by sharing our music video to a variety of audiences. These included our fellow classmates, other students around college as well as our family and friends to gather a range of varied opinions on our production. We did this half way through our production in order to gain feedback on how to improve our video before we completed the production. This helped as it gave us the opportunity to alter certain aspects in which weren’t as strong; an example is a certain bit of editing in which we changed due to constructive criticism regarding it. We did this again at the end of our finished production to gain some final feedback in which we could use if we were to do a similar project in the future. We generally agreed with the constructive feedback we received and feel this helped towards making our project stronger however there was a minority of feedback which was only negative and didn’t provide any constructive comments on how we could improve but this was the only slight problem which occurred when we were receiving feedback. Another good factor to this process is the fact different people have different opinions so we received a mass of different comments which gave us plenty to think about in terms of enhancing our ideas and overall project. The main thing we learned from our audience feedback was that opinions other than your own are vital towards creating a stronger more appealing production.

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

We used a range of technologies in all the stages of our production. Our research and planning was mainly internet based, we used music playing sites such as YouTube and MySpace to regularly to browse through and listen to songs videos to gain ideas and inspiration and to specifically analyse our genre once we had chosen it. We have also used YouTube to upload our finished production to gain even more audience feedback. For the construction and production of our video we used the software iMovie which enabled us to import and edit our footage on a timeline to our chosen song and add any desired effects if necessary. We also used iWeb to construct our website. This particular software allowed us to incorporate our own images and project them in a layout we seemed suitable and effective. Photoshop was also a vital piece of software as we used this program to design our CD digipak. It allowed us to import and edit/ cut out certain sections of our images and enabled us to add effects and edit image colours whenever appropriate an example being our final website layout. Throughout all the stages of our project we kept an interactive blog on the internet in which we added posts contrasting from images and screen shots to videos and worksheets. We enjoyed using more technology than our first year project as it gave us the chance to use a range of interactive services to produce our production.

Production Progress Update

We are approaching our production deadline! We are at the business end of our video and have nearly finished our CD digipak and website. We have also made a start on our evaluation in which will be in the form of a written essay and a video of our group explaning each aspect of our production aswell as our blog.

C.D cover ideas

These are two still shots that we took during the filming of the peformance scene for our music video. We intend to use an image similar to these two for the back of our C.D cover. We will edit the pictures, maybe blacking them out a little and making it blurier around the edges.

CD Digipak

With our digipak and website deadline also coming up, we are working on these as we speak, this is what we have roughly produced for our CD front cover so far:

Filming Progress

We are now fast approaching our deadline and are coming to the business end of our music video!

We have just about done all of our 

filming with perhaps one more shoot needed and we are left with editing our video, here are a few screenshots of our recent progress:

Filming

We have now filmed and edited some of our video and we are pleased with the outcome so far! we are currently preparing for our next shoot which will hopefully be at the end of the week! We are also organizing our performance scene to shoot in the upcoming week!

Music Video Inspiration/Ideas

This; an iconic video by The Verve, inspired us for the opening of our music video. In this video the performer has his head in "the clouds" almost and therefore bumps into people recklessly. In our own video, at the beginning; we aim to achieve a similar thing but with just one 'bump' and not as many. We aim to do this because our character will be fed up with arguing with his bear and his head will be a bit all over the place so therefore wont be concentrating on what he is doing!

Jordan Rowson

Jordon Waring

Website Ideas

This is a image we created during our last Media lesson. We aim to use the bear as our website layout and have navigation links from it. We edited this photo on Photoshop and aim to keep doing work on it in the upcoming lessons.

CD COVER IDEAS!

This is an existing album cover from the arctic monkeys that we may take some ideas from. The font is something that we are going to use throughout our production, on our website and C.D cover.

Website Design

We have started designing our website, experimenting and familiarizing our selfs with the Iweb software. Here is a sketch we drew in lesson that we are going to upload and play around with an maybe upload to our website.

Jordan Rowson
Jordan Waring

MARK RONSON CASE STUDY

The style in this video conforms with the style inherited on Ronson's album artwork and website. It has a recurrent 80's theme with the hairstyles, costumes, strobe lighting and instruments all included being conventional with that expected in the 80's decade. The video often looks amateurish but this could be because they are trying to be like the 80's where effects are often cheesy and look amateurish.

MARK RONSON CASE STUDY

The website conforms with Ronson's image on his album album cover Record Collection. There are lots of records/vinyls on both sides which is also apparent on the album cover. The same colours from the artwork are also evident. these are all examples of synergy as he is using the same style and image across different forms of promotion. The Mark Ronson website has the main functions that you would expect from a music artist website.

MARK RONSON CASE STUDY

There are three layers to this artwork, one showing a picture of Ronson himself, another of his name and one with a sort of red background. The album cover aims to reflect an old billboard. This may be because all the songs on the album are cover versions of older songs. He uses only 3 colours, red, white and blacks, which makes the cover quite plain and simple.  His music is quite old fashioned and retro which perhaps is why he has represented his album has sort of a 1960's billboard as if he is looking back rather than forward.

This artwork also inherits a similar style to the previous one. It has more colours and a variety of styles. Colours include pinks, blues blacks and a cream/beige in the background. His hairstyle and shades is very 80's which again could suggest he is inspired from past decades and tries to represent this style through his image. But the bottom right hand corner reflects a futuristic look so he is making references to not past and future. His face on this album cover is on numerous record sleeves. This album cover is made up of album covers from 80's artists. An example is Duran Duran's 'Rio' album cover which can be seen in the top left hand corner.

Location Photographs

These are some location photographs for the place we are aiming to shoot at soon. It is the place our lead character will live with his 'bear.' The photograph with the tele is where we are going to shoot the games scene I talked about in previous posts. We are also going to film a scene in the photographed car seen in this post. The gate is where he will walk through to enter the house at the beginning of our video.

Jordan Rowson
Jordon Waring
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This is the weather forcast for the next 5 days for the area in which we plan to shoot in. Sunday looks to be the best day to shoot one of our out door scene. We aimed to do a 'walk in the park' scene so we need a dry day to shoot this.

Jordon Waring

This is a drawing I sketched on a recee sheet for one of our chosen locations. The location is well lit and has no trip or fire hazards and no potential for street crime, and we will not need any extra lighting. We aim to shoot a scene where the lead character is gaming and neglected his teddy bear in which the bear gets unhappy with! The location is one of our bedrooms and we think it will work well as it is a typical teenagers bedroom and this is what we need to shoot a 'game' scene. There is no background sound so our shoot won't be affected! We aim to add indie posters perhaps of our chosen band to make the room more relevant to our genre.

Jordan Rowson

Below is an example artwork for our chosen artist. It is for one of their singles which is called "fluorescent adolescent." When I designed the template for our digipak, I had this particular artwork in mind as it as a convention example of our chosen band and I wanted to conform with the conventions. The font is unique and quite famously iconic to the band now and I tried to reflect this in the design of our own artwork!

Jordan Rowson
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Analysing Former Videos

This is an exercise we did in class recently. It allowed us to critically analyse the previous years’ music videos’ giving them a mark and level we felt they deserved according to the exam board criteria. It was a good exercise as it allowed us to look at the strengths and weaknesses of previous videos and to interpret what was good and bad into our own planning ideas! Below is the sheet we filled out:

Jordan Rowson
Jordon Waring

CD Digipak Ideas

Here are a couple of examples of the artwork I was talking about in the previous post. These are good examples we have looked at to gain ideas for own artwork and show how this idea is effective if used correctly!

Jordan Rowson

Kanye West uses a Bear as a sort of mascot for himself, almost like a symbol. He uses the bear on the front of every album cover, and whilst we are only producing a video for a single song maybe the bear could be used as a running theme throughout our project, reoccurring on the website as well as the digipack and in the video.
Jordon Waring

Digipak Design Template

These are some initial design sketches I have constructed for our CD digipak. They include all the typical conventions such as the song title, band name, intuitional logos and appropriate iconography. Due to our video including a ‘teddy bear’ we think it would be a good idea to use this in our CD covers as it would be a good way of appealing our product. We gained inspiration from Kanye West who was had bears on his artwork in the past (I will post an example picture up soon.) Other features include images of the band performing which is also an effective way of appealing!

Jordan Rowson

C.D DIGIPAK RESEARCH!

 

The zutons album cover is an interesting artistic piece. it has extreamly bright colours on it and has a running theme throught. They have used flames on the front, back and insert. The bright colours fits in with the indie genre and is something we may aim to do in with our own digipack.

C.D DIGIPAK RESEARCH!

 

The layout of this digipak is quite artistic. They've aimed to make something that may just look like mess be arty. It keeps in line with Radioheads clean cut image. We may aim to be quite arty with our own digipak. It may not be appropriate to the genre as there isnt any stereo typical indie conventions on this digipak.

Jordon Waring

C.D DIGIPAK REASERCH!

 

Whilst Kings of leon may not fully fit in with the indie genre, I felt that this C.D cover sufficiently matched that of other Indie bands. The front cover has been photoshopped and cut into 4 sections.  A picture of a band member has then been imposed onto a picture of a bird. This is appropriate for the genre as its quite unique and different. They use dark colours, greens and blacks. It sells the band as quite serious and creates a rock image. They have used a bird of pray instead of a nice, fluffy bird to coincide with the dark feel of the cover. The inside of C.D is completly plain, with an all green C.D and a black insert. This again is to portray the seriousness of the band.

Jordon Waring

CD DIGIPACK RESEARCH!

This digipack is that of the Kaiser chiefs album-employment. The front of the digipack has a black, rough look background with a yellow box in the middle of it. In the yellow box it says 'kaiser chiefs-employment. The name of this album reflects the bands image as they portray themselves as working class. In smaller print it says 'a box of tricks' and 'thrills for all'. This implies the great thrill people will experience from listening to this album. The layout is very simple, almost basic. this may reflect the bands laid back image. Inside the C.D a lot more is going on. The C.D its self is very brightly coloured, maybe going against the indie genre slightly as it tends to follow a darker pattern. It does, however, show the fun side of the band which they like to get acrosss in their image. The back of the C.D again returns to the basic layout. which little colour and style. The font used is also pretty basic and isn't fancy. Again this may reflect the laid back image of the band.

Jordon Waring

This is the homepage for ‘Tapes n’ Tapes’ is also one I personally like. Its colourful, has some appealing effects and goes a long way towards representing the bands style and image. The effect in the top right is effective and reminds me of the sixties with the variety of colour and the dress code inherited. This may be included because the band may have been inspired my sixties music and therefore have inherited a similar style in their own image. The site advertises the bands content really well. They promote their YouTube channel by including an embedded link of one of their videos, which is an effective way of doing so. Also towards the right hand side of the page there is a link to where you can purchase their latest music. The navigation fits in well with the background design and the font works well. 8/10

Jordan Rowson

Website Analysis

This is the homepage of the band ‘The Walkmen.’ The page is dominated by the one main image. It bears hardly any written text, with the exception the navigation menu, band title and a media player in the top left corner. The page is simply designed but is effective it what it achieves. I personally feel the band’s name could be enlarged to add more emphasis and that more external links could be added. Perhaps to sites such as YouTube; in order to promote their media products further. The media player is a good idea as it allows anyone to quickly listen to the band’s latest track without any difficulty. This a good use of new technology and is a nice feature. The page doesn’t offer too much on the bands image and has no real source of advertisement apart from the media player, so these are things I would address. 6/10

Jordan Rowson

This is a potential location for a scene we are looking to include in our music video. The scene will include a candlelight meal between the teddy bear and our lead character, which will show the positive side of their relationship.

Jordan Rowson

 

These are some ‘teddy bears’ we have found and in which we are considering using in our music video.  We gathered an idea during our pitch feedback which was that we could stitch or unstitch the chosen bear’s mouth in order to create the desired emotion. The one on the far left is the most likely option at the moment as it is most appropriately sized, but we are still looking at others!

Jordan Rowson
Jordon Waring

Test Shots

The hairstyle is quite messy and natural and has an 'everyday' look to it. This is because hairstyles in the indie genre are casual as the band members aim to fit into the audience that will be buying their music.

The style again is rather casual looking, with band members wearing jeans, shirts, polo tops and plimsolls. We are influenced by the genre in general and bands such as Kaiser Chiefs and the Arctic Monkeys themselves and have tried to interpret their image as well as all these other features in our Test Shot above

Jordan Rowson

Jordon Waring 

Contacting Domino

This is the email we sent to Artctic Monkey's record label 'Domino" in regards to permission about using our chosen song. We went into detail about our project, saying what we are required to do.

Jordon Waring & Jordan Rowson

Potential Location Ideas

Today we have decided on a few locations. The first location for  a particular scene will be in one of our bedrooms. This scene will include the main character playing on a games console, with the teddy bear looking on in disbelief. We have decided this is a good location as it reflects the sort of bedroom the audience would have. Our target audience can relate to this specific scene as they are likely to have games consoles themselves. In terms of background noise, there will be no disturbance from outside as it is an indoor location. We will make sure there is nobody in the house so that there is no noise or distractions. The lighting will come from the light switch as normal and if we need more we could use a plug-in torch if needed!

We will post pictures of this location soon!

Jordon Waring

Website Analysis/Research

This is the homepage of the band 'The Strokes.' This site is a personal favourite of mine as I am a big fan of the ‘stereo-like’ layout that is inherited. I think it's such a clever way of delivering a website as it doesn’t only conform to the genre of indie but conforms with music as a whole in general! There is not a lot of written text, with a main image bearing the bands name used instead. When moving your cursor over the volume knob at the bottom of the screen it moves with it as if you are turning the volume up! This is such a clever way method for navigation and goes a long way to appealing to the target audience. When browsing over the other buttons at the bottom, more links to pages are evident. My only criticisms of it are that the navigation doesn’t really stand out or appeal which a shame, considering the quality of the rest of the site. Also their is no apparent representation of the band’s style and image and also there is no external links to sites such as MySpace and Facebook- which are vital sources advertising  of advertisement in the modern music industry. 8/10

Jordan Rowson