Question 1: In What ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Hard rock can be defined as a sub
genre of rock music whose origins lie in both the United States and the United
Kingdom and started in around the 1960’s with stylistic origins closely linked
to garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock. The typical choice of
instruments within hard rock music is a heavy use of electric guitars, bass
guitars, drums and can be accompanied with pianos and keyboards. This genre
developed into a form of popular music in the 1970’s with the fame of bands
such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, AC/DC and Van Halen,
Hard Rock reached its commercial peak in the mid 1980’s. The Hard Rock genre
has since started a comeback with the revival of bands such as Bon Jovi, AC/DC,
Aerosmith and Van Halen and with the recent fame of bands such as Shinedown,
Creed, Staind, Andrew WK, Buck Cherry and Nickelback which has brought Hard
Rock back to light in terms as one of the most popular sub genre within the
Rock genre.
When looking at the conventions
that occurred within each of the music videos from the bands within this genre,
I noticed that there is usually some kind of narrative, even if it is only
briefly shown, which I have gone against due to me wanting to make my music
video more individual to me and not like a normal hard rock music video. I feel
that me going against the norm of a stereotypical rock video has actually
helped me because it has enabled me to do my initial idea which I had thought
about more during the summer break. By doing this, I had imagined how it would
look and who was going to be my actors and where I was going to shoot the
majority of the footage. This had to change due to the person who I had
initially asked to be Alice had too many prior commitments which were hard to
manoeuvre around. But I feel that this was for the best as I had chosen two
people who I spent the majority of my time with and knew their commitments
which meant that I was able to arrange filming times around their timetables.
However, it has also helped me become different from others that are doing
their projects on my type of music, which has made my work stand out of the
crowd which is what I intended to do.
I did get some footage of a band,
Pastel Jack, performing the song live especially for my video which is a major
convention that is apparent throughout the music videos that I looked at. This
went against conventions because it was inside their practise studio, whereas
in other music videos, their performances were either while they are on tour,
on a stage which they have hired out or on location. However, because they
aren’t a well-known band I thought it would have been more authentic if they
were within a setting where it was all chaotic, unprofessional and mad, because
the theme behind my ancillary texts and the video is madness and defying the
stereotype which is what seeing the music notations and the poster on the board
behind the singer shows. When I looked at Shinedown’s music video for ‘Second
Chance’, I noticed that they had chosen to put the lead singer, Brent Smith, in
the background of the narrative or even just at the location which my lead
singer, Neil Bailey, had suggested, but he suggested me put the band either at
the location or in the background of the narrative. I had thought that it would
have been a good idea, however, due to the band unexpectedly splitting up we
were unable to do this so this was an aspect that I unfortunately missed out on
which I would have thought would make the video better. Also, I hadn’t finished
filming the band performing, so due to the band splitting up I had to get the
next piece of footage of Neil on his own, which was a major problem when it
came to editing it together because there were some parts where the footage of
the performance should have been longer and I didn’t have the footage which
went after the previous section due to the way I had shot the footage.
Therefore, me having access to a limited amount of band members caused a
problem and I had to rearrange my footage so that it wouldn't cause
that much of a problem.
While I was looking at other Hard rock music videos, I noticed that they
use a lot of dark colours and shadows which is a stereotypical convention which
means that when a person puts these videos on they will automatically know what
genre of music they are listening too. My music video both conforms to and
defies not just this stereotype but also the stereotype of an Alice in
Wonderland storyline. This occurs because the shots with Pastel Jack use dark
colours and low lighting which creates more shadows which conforms to the
stereotype, whereas the narrative is outside and uses bright vivid colours
I chose the Mise-en-scene very
carefully when it came to my narrative, I wanted to portray the reasons why I
had chosen not to recast Alice so I still had 3 actors and kept it at two. The
reason behind this was I thought that it would be better if the underlining
storyline was Alice's struggle to grow up and accept that the guy that she
thought loved her and was funny, like the Mad Hatter, was actually cruel and
dark like the Black Knight. Therefore, the Alice in Wonderland character is
Alice in her child form, being curious and the Alice that thought that her
boyfriend wouldn't hurt her. Whereas the Red Queen is her more mature, grown-up
side that accepts that the boyfriend isn't who she thought he was. During the
shots in Alice's bedroom, there was a dead rose in the background, I chose this
because it shows that Alice is still in the sentimental stage within her
relationship to her boyfriend because she has kept it so long, however, it also
symbolises their relationship in general because we can assume that their
relationship with beautiful and easy to look at, like the rose when the
boyfriend first gave it to her, however, how we see it now is in its final days
when it turns sour and is ready to die.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary texts?
Within
my media products, I have chosen to keep it narrative based, this is due to the
fact that I feel that rock music focuses too much on the music and the band and
not enough on telling the story that the lyrics represent or the story that the
person who wrote the lyrics is trying to tell. Therefore, by telling the story
that I interpreted from the lyrics, I feel that the impact I have made on the
audience is that there is more to rock music than just the instruments or the
good-looking members. If the lyrics are listened to, or even read, then they
will appreciate them and the music is just an added bonus to a possibly perfect
song.
By
keeping all my images, in both the music video and the ancillary texts, in
colour I feel that I have created a change because I made sure not to create
any emphasis on anything that really stood out in relevance to the lyrics. This
is because all the shots did in some way, it may not have been the lyric that was playing at that particular time,
but it was relevant. This is a change because some artists decide to keep the
images in colour, or make it all in black an white, but make specific emphasis to
the shot or prop that has some significance to the lyrics, or they even decide
to put the video in black and white and colour in the prop, to emphasise the
idea that those specific props were significant to the story somehow. Whereas,
I left it up to the audience’s interpretation in the video and then emphasised
the parts that I thought were particularly effective for the digipak images,
but touched them up to make them extra visible when it on display in a shop, so
people will get intrigued and pick it up and look at it. When it came to the
advertisement, I thought of the tag line before I had picked the image. I had
initially planned to have my friend draw the pictures for the poster, but when
I started to use Photo shop to put it together, I found that I wouldn’t be able
to get the same effect that I could get with using photographs.
When
creating my digipak, I decided that I wanted to use images from my music video
in order to create a sense of familiarity and make sure that the audience was
more likely to buy it if they liked the music video. By using some of the more
iconic moments within my video, I feel that I am able to grab the audience’s
attention if it is on display in shops or on online stores, They will want to
pick it up and see what it is called since it is brand new. I chose to put the
Queen on the front and to make her dress look redder because she would look
distinguishable among other albums if people were looking at her in a shop. For
the section with the song titles on, I decided that just an image of the trees
would look the best because it would show how lost Alice was. I feel that it
made an impact on the audience by creating a subliminal message when they see
the picture on the actual CD cover because the image will be placed in their
brain. In order to get these photos I had to retake them with a still camera,
due to the fact that the quality of the pictures that I had originally gotten
from the music video itself wasn’t very good.
My
first idea for the advertisement was for my friend to draw the different
aspects of it and I would manipulate it how I felt to make it more appealing
for the audience. I got her to draw me Alice standing on a Mad Hatters hat looking
at a bridge overlooking a cavern and over the bridge is a forest and the Red
Queen and Black Knight’s heads are in the corners looming over Alice. She did
this in paint and in her pro-markers. However, this didn’t really work due to
the fact that the different variations didn’t look the same, therefore, there
were aspects of the painted version that looked better than the pro-marker version.
For example, the background on the paint looks better than the one in
pro-markers but the Alice and Mad Hatters hat looks better in pro-markers than
in the paint. I tried to merge them together, but it wouldn’t work properly. Therefore,
I had to re-take the image that I had decided to use as the advertisement
photo. I feel that this picture has a strong message for the audience which is
assisted with the tag line and the colour scheme that I used. The colour scheme
flowed throughout my final project because black is a neutral colour which is
used in the parts with Pastel Jack performing and which can represent the Black
Knight, which would mean that she is trapped by the different sides of her
boyfriend. The red was taken on Photo shop from the Queen’s dress and was used
throughout my work because it can show that she is everywhere that Alice goes,
because it is Alice, and also that it is everywhere that we go because we have
more than one side to us. The purple was taken on Photo shop from the Mad
Hatters hat which gives off the message that we all have a bit of crazy inside
us and that the different sides of her boyfriend are all around her. The
colours mixed all together could represent some of the different sides to every
person’s personality not just the characters in my project.
Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From
my feedback that I obtained from 10 people, I found that seven of them understood
the narrative of my music video, 1 thought the narrative didn’t go with the
song and the other two thought that the narrative was too random to go with the
rock genre. When asked whether they thought any of the shots should have been
in black and white nine of my sample said no but one said that she thought that
the parts outside wonderland should have been in black and white in order to
make the time in wonderland a little bit more special. When they were asked if
they thought whether I had made the right decision when choosing my narrative,
9 of them said yes and one said that they didn’t think my narrative went with
my music choice. When they were asked if there was anything I could have done
to improve my music video, 8 of them said to add more performance and the other
two said that I needed to rethink my casting. When asked if they thought my ancillary
texts went well with my music video all of them said yes. I got a mixed
response when I asked them whether there could have been more detail added to
my ancillary texts. Six of them said that it was fine; two of them said that
there needed to be more detail on the advertisement to explain where the
audience could get more information about the band whereas the other two
thought that there could have been more detail added to the digipak. One of
those said that I should have thought to rename the band. When asked if they
would purchase my digipak, seven of them said that they would however, the
other three said that they wouldn’t purely because it wasn’t their style of
music. Lastly, when asked if they thought the advertisement promoted the
digipak successfully all of them said yes.
Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Before
starting this project, I created a blog on Blogger.com on which I would post
and display my work for everyone to see. I used Blogger because it is an easy
site to use and it is easily accessible for others to look at my work if they
would like to see what I have achieved. This website organises my work in
chronological order, so if I need to look for a piece of work that I did a
while ago, I can easily locate it by clicking on the tabs on the side. When
searching for my song and researching the codes and conventions of a
stereotypical rock music video, I used a website called Youtube, which would
also be the website that I would upload my drafts and my finished product to. I
used Youtube because it is the most used video website in the world and it has
millions of videos so I was bound to find one that would help me. This was the
first time I had used Youtube for something other than watching videos so it
was a brand new experience to me. I found it difficult to get my head around at
first because when I attempted to upload a video I could not find it for a few
hours afterwards, but then I got used to it and now it has become really easy
to use and I think I will be attempting to use it more after the project has
finished.
When
I planned what my music video was going to look like, I used Microsoft Word to
create a storyboard sheet for me to jot my plans down on. I made sure that I
could make it as detailed as I wanted to used the box tools to make the boxes
bigger so I could explain myself more. Once I had planned my video on my pages,
I scanned them into the computer and took all the pictures that I had drawn and
used Windows Movie Maker to put the pictures to my music and create an animatic
of my music video. This was quite easy to do as I have used this software
before. The reason I used Windows Movie Maker was that I am able to put the
music on it and make sure that I am able to cut the images to the music and I
can move them around and change the timings to make it more accurate. I used
Adobe Premier Pro CS6 to put all my raw footage on and edit it together. I found
this simple to use and soon got the grasp of how to put my footage together and
to cut it to the beat of the music. I used Premier because it is a professional
program that has a real time playback function, which means that I was able to
go back to any point in the song and not have to go back to the beginning and
watch up to the part that I originally wanted to see. Also, Premier gave me a
range of options that I might not have gotten with any other software such as
adding transitions before, after and during a piece of footage. I found that
this made a massive different when it came to the flashback part of my music
video because I was able to help the audience distinguish between what it
reality and what is Alice’s life flashing back as she realises she is going to
die. Otherwise, the footage would just be randomly going backwards which could
confuse the audience into thinking that it was a mistake.
In
order to create my ancillary texts, I used Adobe Photoshop CS5. I was fully
aware about how to use this software because I had previously used it to put together
my AS coursework. I used Photoshop to create my ancillary texts because I was
able to make the images the right size to fit the sections that I wanted them
to and manipulate them without having to move them or copying and pasting them
into another program. In order to re-take the images that I needed for my
ancillary texts I used an OLYMPUS SP-600 UZ still camera. I used this camera because
it produced clear and defined pictures where a normal digital camera would fail
and that it gave me images that were better graphics than the pictures that I
took from the video itself. In addition, because I re-shot the images that I
wanted, I was able to add little bits of detail that I missed while I was
shooting the original footage, such as the lipstick on the Queen. The main
problem that I found with re-shooting the images was that I was not able to
recreate the actual images that I wanted because I was not able to see the
originals so the images for my ancillary texts are a little different from
those in the actual video.
