For my media production I staged two focus groups were my audience would give me positive and negative feedback. Firstly this would help us plan the rest of our production and guide us down the correct root in which are audience were swaying to. Once we had completed our finial video we help another screening this is where we received their finial feedback and their understanding of the finished product. We also handed out in our final screening a questionnaire (as seen on blog) to find correlations between social stratifications which would determine their reaction to the music video.
On our first screening we showed a selected audience what we had produced so far, the results we received where useful and interesting and swung how we intended to create our final product. Feedback –
Ciara - "I am enjoying the start of your music video, but i am finding it difficult to understand the story line. I also feel the performance and narrative need to be shown as two different things, this could be done though editing?"
Emily - "I really like your mise-en scene, and how you have managed to create this folk theme to your music video"
James - "i find the actor interesting he is a good looking guy and confident i feel he really helps this music video shape what it is, maybe using more of him in the performance roll would be needed?"
From this feedback we re-thought our editing techniques and put our self in the decoders position this helped us understand what messages people where taking from the video and how we as encoders can create the meaning in a simple manner.
Secondly after we had completed our music video we screened it to a new audience and asked them to fill out a questionnaire (can be found on blog) the idea of the questionnaire was to find out the correlations between social stratification (age, gender, lifestyles ect) and reaction to the video. Some of the questions where constructed in such a way as to attempt to operationalise the Encoding and Decoding model. I found through my questionnaire the older generation did not fully understand the message being portrayed through the song and video due to moral values, but the younger generation were more knowledgeable and could relate to storylines seen in other medias, such a TV soaps and movies. Considering the all the signs portrayed through my music video they are seen as polysemic and people react to media texts in different and sometimes unpredictable ways. I feel the readings we took from our audience could of been influenced, this can be explained through the use and gratifications model, the setting in which the video was watch with a questionnaire laid out in front of the is very different to the conditions they would normally be watched in, this may have changed the typical gratification a person might taken when watching this video. Here are the negative and positives gained from the second screening.
The negatives - teacher 1-" i found the fast cutting scenes to be a little confusing to start with and did not understand the need to show a clock within the video. I also noticed the in one scene the girl was wearing tights and the next she was not"
The positive - Max age 16 - I really enjoyed the video, i found it exciting and i really felt i got pulled into the story."
Teacher 2 - "i found the editing of the video was really key in creating a visually interesting video, and keeping your audience attached. I can see this video appealing to people my age and the younger generation."
On an overview of my audiences feedback I have gained a knowledge of how effective it is to hold these focus groups and how it can push your project in the right direction. I would in future hold more when creating something as they are useful and supply you with knowledge to help you succeed.
Friday, 23 April 2010
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music. When picking my track I took in to consideration of how the genre of my music would work within a music video. Paolo Nutini has been categorised into the following genres folk pop, blues soul and electric folk, reasoning for this would be the style of his music, set in swing grooves, and the use of interments such as percussion instruments, different types of flutes, the bow and different types of trumpets. All of these contribute to creating this folk feel, but the artists roll is to fit in with the genre with clothing and vocals ect. Paolo Nutini’s clothing and style falls into the spring collections with checked shirts, cord trousers, deck shoes and so on.
The music video my partner and I have created contains generic textual features of a music video. From researching Andrew Goodwin and Steve Archer (seen earlier in blog) I have selected certain sections of their research which relate to my music video. We based our music video on a narrative and performance idea, with our main character singing a story in the performance roll, playing acoustic guitar, singing and dancing. The narrative side to the music video was the story he told was visually linked to the audience though images linked with lyrics and the music. Camerawork was important within our video due to the style of our main character, as said earlier the style of folk and Paolo Nutini is very unique to a lot of close ups are used to capture his outfits, his iconic hat, attractiveness and confidence of the singer. Editing the video was difficult due to the tempo of the song we has a great deal of fast editing to do, most folk songs videos flow smoothly or jump to the melody, we chose to use both of these in our music video and create a real groove throughout.
Wanting the audience to fall in love with our video we had to create an aspect of the video that would pull people back to re-watch and really get involved with the music and feel of the artist. This lead me to the Encoder and Decoder Model, encoding a message into my video where I could really show my creativity was restricted due to the decoder not understanding the meaning of the video, Putting myself in the decoders shoes I worked backwards on what I would understand from the video and how much I can twist the story line before the meaning of the song became complete lost within the video and made no sense. I feel the way the music video has turned out it has worked well. After asking friends and family to describe back to me after watching the music video what the meaning of song and video was trying to portray the ideas which had been thrown back where similar yet they all had their own interpretation of what was going on.
The idea of pushing boundaries and creating something new was exciting, yet we were still restricted from being too creative otherwise we would lose our genre characteristics. Conforming to one of Paolo Nutini’s most discussed performance issues was the when he would sing certain words his lips would almost seem as they were not moving, we have taken this on board and used in the end section of our music video. We have also stuck to the themes of autumn based videos appropriate editing and structure of a folk music video.
The Music video created was successfully challenged the conventions of a typical folk video by stretching the story line, creating diversity with in the video, using unknown intertextuality by conforming to the idea of a traditional love story but throwing the twist in, this can link to several films such as, note book, p.s. I love you and love actually. Sticking to folk styles and dress sense I feel this video has cast out a successful feel and viewing feed back has been flourishing.
The music video my partner and I have created contains generic textual features of a music video. From researching Andrew Goodwin and Steve Archer (seen earlier in blog) I have selected certain sections of their research which relate to my music video. We based our music video on a narrative and performance idea, with our main character singing a story in the performance roll, playing acoustic guitar, singing and dancing. The narrative side to the music video was the story he told was visually linked to the audience though images linked with lyrics and the music. Camerawork was important within our video due to the style of our main character, as said earlier the style of folk and Paolo Nutini is very unique to a lot of close ups are used to capture his outfits, his iconic hat, attractiveness and confidence of the singer. Editing the video was difficult due to the tempo of the song we has a great deal of fast editing to do, most folk songs videos flow smoothly or jump to the melody, we chose to use both of these in our music video and create a real groove throughout.
Wanting the audience to fall in love with our video we had to create an aspect of the video that would pull people back to re-watch and really get involved with the music and feel of the artist. This lead me to the Encoder and Decoder Model, encoding a message into my video where I could really show my creativity was restricted due to the decoder not understanding the meaning of the video, Putting myself in the decoders shoes I worked backwards on what I would understand from the video and how much I can twist the story line before the meaning of the song became complete lost within the video and made no sense. I feel the way the music video has turned out it has worked well. After asking friends and family to describe back to me after watching the music video what the meaning of song and video was trying to portray the ideas which had been thrown back where similar yet they all had their own interpretation of what was going on.
The idea of pushing boundaries and creating something new was exciting, yet we were still restricted from being too creative otherwise we would lose our genre characteristics. Conforming to one of Paolo Nutini’s most discussed performance issues was the when he would sing certain words his lips would almost seem as they were not moving, we have taken this on board and used in the end section of our music video. We have also stuck to the themes of autumn based videos appropriate editing and structure of a folk music video.
The Music video created was successfully challenged the conventions of a typical folk video by stretching the story line, creating diversity with in the video, using unknown intertextuality by conforming to the idea of a traditional love story but throwing the twist in, this can link to several films such as, note book, p.s. I love you and love actually. Sticking to folk styles and dress sense I feel this video has cast out a successful feel and viewing feed back has been flourishing.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
For my main task I had to create a music video and to accompany this, a CD cover and a magazine advert to promote the CD release. As an encoder I had to ensure myself what I was producing would fit to the decoders needs, finding my finial products appealing. Once I had created my main task I then moved onto looking and researching into Paolo Nutini’s past CD cover and magazine advert to gain an understanding of the forms and conventions of what was used to appeal to his target audience.
I did not plan all three tasks together, I created my main task (music video) first which determined what the advertisement and CD cover would consist of. Reasoning for this was because I felt if I had created all of them at the same time it would have restricted my creativity on my music video, this was I could change and edit the video to develop the most successful outcome. Although I had not planned all my tasks together I have carried through intertextuality which links all three together. How I linked them together was setting a scene, in the video we have accumulated a autumn feel through the mise-en scene, this was done by the browns and gold from the leaves, when it came to creating my CD cover I used Paolo Nutini’s conventional stripes and my artist had the same clothes on as seen in the video. The picture and colours of the CD cover show off a positive vibe, this has been carried out through all three tasks, and this would attract the decoder’s attention. The main link between the video to the CD and advert would be the artist, the decoder can relate the artist and this helps sell your product.
For my CD cover I took a photograph of our artist in the same clothes he wore in the music video, showing a clear cohesion between the CD cover and the video. This supports and promotes the main text at the same time. The advert links in with a copy of the CD cover placed the top centre of the page. I kept the rest of the page in a dark shade of blue, and this highlights the CD cover and the text on the page (in white). I find the link between my CD cover and advert has been produced well, with the snap shot of the album from page on the advert gives the encoder a sold idea of what they should be looking for in the shops.
I am pleased with my final outcome of my three tasks, I feel they relate well to each other and the links are obvious to my decoder. As the encoder I have done the maximum amount of research to understand what my audience want to see, in the video and ancillary tasks. However if I went back I would have liked to improve the music video and really enhance the autumn feel.
I did not plan all three tasks together, I created my main task (music video) first which determined what the advertisement and CD cover would consist of. Reasoning for this was because I felt if I had created all of them at the same time it would have restricted my creativity on my music video, this was I could change and edit the video to develop the most successful outcome. Although I had not planned all my tasks together I have carried through intertextuality which links all three together. How I linked them together was setting a scene, in the video we have accumulated a autumn feel through the mise-en scene, this was done by the browns and gold from the leaves, when it came to creating my CD cover I used Paolo Nutini’s conventional stripes and my artist had the same clothes on as seen in the video. The picture and colours of the CD cover show off a positive vibe, this has been carried out through all three tasks, and this would attract the decoder’s attention. The main link between the video to the CD and advert would be the artist, the decoder can relate the artist and this helps sell your product.
For my CD cover I took a photograph of our artist in the same clothes he wore in the music video, showing a clear cohesion between the CD cover and the video. This supports and promotes the main text at the same time. The advert links in with a copy of the CD cover placed the top centre of the page. I kept the rest of the page in a dark shade of blue, and this highlights the CD cover and the text on the page (in white). I find the link between my CD cover and advert has been produced well, with the snap shot of the album from page on the advert gives the encoder a sold idea of what they should be looking for in the shops.
I am pleased with my final outcome of my three tasks, I feel they relate well to each other and the links are obvious to my decoder. As the encoder I have done the maximum amount of research to understand what my audience want to see, in the video and ancillary tasks. However if I went back I would have liked to improve the music video and really enhance the autumn feel.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout my project I have used different media technologies this has helped to construct my project. It is important to use different software and hardware to progress and develop skills throughout my project. This is essential for today world with having an understanding in media technologies to be successful within the media industry.
The internet was a large part of my research process accessing different sites to gather information. The internet is beneficial for research but unless you have accessed a official site otherwise you cannot be sure the information you are reading is legitimate. For information about Paolo Nutini, .e.g. his genre, style, record label etc I used his official fan website site which had all the given information about him, as this was an official site the information would be accurate. This was accessed through www.google.com; this also linked me with other websites such as Wikipedia which was useful for when assembly information about the genre characteristics. When analysing Paolo Nutinis music videos I used YouTube which gave me his official videos, this was also useful when it came to looking at other artists of the same genre. Downloading the Paolo Nutini track I used ITunes a safe/legal and official site, I knew downloading it from ITunes would give me great quality and would also be accompanied by art work so when it came to creating my front cover I could look through his older album covers. I feel my skills of the internet have not developed as I was already well equipped of how the internet is run, but my researching skills have progressed and find it easy to gather information and know the correct places to look.
When coming to the planning section I found this rolled into the construction of the video camera and Pinnacle software. I understood how to use a video camera because I have had experience in this before, but the problems which occurred was the camera battery life, which was a lot shorter than expected, this was overcome by the use of our story board knowing what needed to be filmed. Pinnacle was a new software to me and I have no understanding of how to work it, after a few tutorials from my teachers and playing around with the software myself it became apparent to me how it works. The problems I came across using Pinnacle were editing and piecing the videos together, I found deleting a section of video which had already been placed down moved the whole story line, outing everything out of sync, the way a came around this was to use to storylines and lock each track after an edit. Another finding which disturbed my editing process was when we would re-open the program the screen would be black and the software to play the videos would not be loaded, this was time consuming reloading the video every time we used a new station. Editing and creating cuts was simple once you had gathered the understanding of the software, I feel I have gained a much greater knowledge of this program and would feel confident using it in the future.
For constructing my CD cover I used Photoshop software I felt highly confident in, and I knew this would work to my advantage knowing my software and what effects I could use to create a professional looking cover. I have been using Photoshop for several years this is due to my photography, this also fell to my advantage when photographing for the cover, using a studio and my Nikon D60 10.5 mega pixel camera. Creating my magazine advert I used the same program. I used the same techniques from last year in my AS work on how to lay out a magazine advert.
Creating a blog was a first, and did not find it difficult. Planning my blog was a difficult process if by mistake I missed out a section it was not possible to go back and re add a section in. Creating a plan of what I should enter into my blog and when was useful, I feel my blogging skills have enhanced and would be confident setting up a blog at anytime.
Through all the media technologies I have used through my project I have progressed and gained greater knowledge of how to work the software, although some programs have limitations I find this frustrating yet interesting because it gives you a new way of thinking and opens your mind to become more creative.
The internet was a large part of my research process accessing different sites to gather information. The internet is beneficial for research but unless you have accessed a official site otherwise you cannot be sure the information you are reading is legitimate. For information about Paolo Nutini, .e.g. his genre, style, record label etc I used his official fan website site which had all the given information about him, as this was an official site the information would be accurate. This was accessed through www.google.com; this also linked me with other websites such as Wikipedia which was useful for when assembly information about the genre characteristics. When analysing Paolo Nutinis music videos I used YouTube which gave me his official videos, this was also useful when it came to looking at other artists of the same genre. Downloading the Paolo Nutini track I used ITunes a safe/legal and official site, I knew downloading it from ITunes would give me great quality and would also be accompanied by art work so when it came to creating my front cover I could look through his older album covers. I feel my skills of the internet have not developed as I was already well equipped of how the internet is run, but my researching skills have progressed and find it easy to gather information and know the correct places to look.
When coming to the planning section I found this rolled into the construction of the video camera and Pinnacle software. I understood how to use a video camera because I have had experience in this before, but the problems which occurred was the camera battery life, which was a lot shorter than expected, this was overcome by the use of our story board knowing what needed to be filmed. Pinnacle was a new software to me and I have no understanding of how to work it, after a few tutorials from my teachers and playing around with the software myself it became apparent to me how it works. The problems I came across using Pinnacle were editing and piecing the videos together, I found deleting a section of video which had already been placed down moved the whole story line, outing everything out of sync, the way a came around this was to use to storylines and lock each track after an edit. Another finding which disturbed my editing process was when we would re-open the program the screen would be black and the software to play the videos would not be loaded, this was time consuming reloading the video every time we used a new station. Editing and creating cuts was simple once you had gathered the understanding of the software, I feel I have gained a much greater knowledge of this program and would feel confident using it in the future.
For constructing my CD cover I used Photoshop software I felt highly confident in, and I knew this would work to my advantage knowing my software and what effects I could use to create a professional looking cover. I have been using Photoshop for several years this is due to my photography, this also fell to my advantage when photographing for the cover, using a studio and my Nikon D60 10.5 mega pixel camera. Creating my magazine advert I used the same program. I used the same techniques from last year in my AS work on how to lay out a magazine advert.
Creating a blog was a first, and did not find it difficult. Planning my blog was a difficult process if by mistake I missed out a section it was not possible to go back and re add a section in. Creating a plan of what I should enter into my blog and when was useful, I feel my blogging skills have enhanced and would be confident setting up a blog at anytime.
Through all the media technologies I have used through my project I have progressed and gained greater knowledge of how to work the software, although some programs have limitations I find this frustrating yet interesting because it gives you a new way of thinking and opens your mind to become more creative.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Research of advertisements within magazines
I first started looking at other advertisements within magazines and where they were placed. selecting Cosmopolitan i counted up how many pages were adverts and the found the percentage of how much of the magazine was adverts and in this case was 56% which is over half. Most of the magazines income was due to adverts and the cost of the magazine would break even on the cost to produced and distribute the magazine, the adverts are used to salaries and profit.
most music magazines would carry through a theme so the viewer can relate to the CD cover when looking for it, or use the CD cover on the advertisement. A release date is used and sponsors such as itunes, play.com and the magazine title may appear on the advert it's self.
Focus Group
I held a small focus group and selected a few people from my target audience the results were positive.
Joise - "I find this CD cover aesthetically pleasing"
Leah - "This is a very visually interesting CD cover and colours really go well with the theme of the track. I find the artist on the front good looking and stylish, a iconic figure, I feel this would help the cover sell and pull people in to getting a closer look."
Lucy - "professional looking, this was achieved by the copy write section on the back and the quality of the photographs."
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