Dear Mr/Mrs/Ms Moderator, this is my completed coursework. You will find that the research and planning is from September to January. My research on theorists is in September also. In December you will find that I have posted complete print work with feedback and eventually, inFebruary, my finished music video. The posts that were made up in February/March consist of my Evaluation posts. Hopefully the titles are clear enough to guide you through. My blog is now complete and is ready for assessment.
In the current world we live in we all have so many different versions of technology that we can easily access. For example for my coursework I have used, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Panasonic HD DV Cameras, Cannon D1100 SLR camera, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Youtube, Windows computers, my iPhone and many others. Without these different elements my coursework would not be what it is today.
Being able to use sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube allows me to share my work on a much larger scale. It is available to the world to view and comment on, which thus allows me to gain a much bigger response that I can work from to gain an understanding of how the audience perceive my work. This in turn helps me make the necessary changes I need to make, I asked for feedback in the early stages of my digipack and advert creating and I had lots of useful suggestions that I followed through to improve them both.
At certain points in my video production I had technical difficulties with the computers because me and my partner had an awful amount of clips/filming and the computers hard drives cannot process that much information our computer began to run slow. The program was finding it hard to run due to this. In an ideal world I would have used a much faster computer which is made especially for video editing so such problems would not occur.
Also if lighting was available to use outside I could have taken my photos using them, this would give me a much more professional look photos taken using a lighting kit have a really good effect.
I believe that media 2.0 has allowed us to be more creative. The techniques and skills we now use would not be the same without the use of the world wide web. If we can't do something or want to find something out we usually will watch a tutorial on Youtube or google a simple question and we receive the answers straight away.
Technological determinism I think also exists in present society. It is the theory that technology drives what happens and develops in our lives. Be that socially or culturally. Every thing is accessible online and I think this shaped what I created as my music video I took a lot of inspiration from things I found online. Down to the growing of the world wide web it is hard for anything to stay secret for long, scandals in politics and in the celebrity worlds come to the public's attention hours after occurring. The internet has huge power over us, for example something that was created and shared on Youtube has taken the twitter and Facebook by storm, purely down to people sharing it and letting their voices be heard. This video in 3 days has gained a total of 49,470,974 views.
It truly shows the power the internet gives us to make things happen.
For my audience research, Jack and I gathered some members of our target audience and asked their opinion on our video. We asked them a number of questions we had prepared and had a mixed response. They guessed the genre right but thought that it should have included more performers and more locations. I agree that it may have been nice to have more performers, however I did try to include a mixture of locations but we didn't want it to look all over the place.
They didn't seem to like the focus pulls, zooming and the vignette we put around the edge of the video. We were trying to make it look quite rough and edgy by doing these effects and techniques but this may have back fired if our target audience don't like/understand it.
Some of the audience would like to watch it again and some of them wouldn't. This means that they are all reading the text in different ways. Some are taking pleasure from it and enjoying the text, they are taking a preferred reading and like being part of the select group of people it targets as this makes them feel important. On the other hand some of the target audience are agreeing with the text but will only view it and take it in once as they feel that they have no need to view it again. They also feel that it doesn't consist of anything different that would make them desire to see it again.
This is some feedback that me and my partner had on Facebook. We have received comments and likes from people in our target audience. No one had said anything negative or mentioned things they don't like, so this is positive. I believe that the majority of my audience has taken a preferred reading to my media product. The things in the video are typical of the audience and most teenagers. Our focus group proved that they took a preferred reading. However some of the audience may take an oppositional reading and disagree with the message that teenagers drink, smoke and sometimes get up to no good so they may reject these messages.
Stu Collins - She Don't Know is a song which fits under the indie rock genre. The music isn't mainstream this effected mine and my partners decisions on things as we couldn't make our video look like it was too mainstream. Before we decided what we wanted to do we looked at other media texts to see what other artists music videos were like from our genre.
We took inspiration from these other artists 3 music videos. We tried to go for the same vibe that they had and all three videos influenced our final outcome in some way shown bellow.
In the Ed Sheeran video he is filmed playing the guitar while riding a boat along a canal. We really liked this image and the way it was quite rough and not a polished performance. We also liked the way he is playing a guitar along a canal, which isn't something that you see everyday, or in a lot of music videos.
From the City and Colour music video we really liked the rural imagery and the creative vibe of him performing outside. So we mimicked this in our video with shots of trees and close ups of the sun etc. We found in our research that our target audience are quite creative people and like the creative shots of nature so that was one of our goals.
From the Viva Brother Video we liked the urban edge they used to go along with the rock music. We decided to try and use this in our video to make sure it didn't loose its tie to the rock genre. We didn't want all the shots to be too much of the countryside that why we did some on location in a town and chose an actor that looked a bit edgy.
On the other hand, there were some texts in the indie rock genre that we did not want to replicate. This video to Vampire Weekends song Oxford Comma is a good example of what we didn't want to do. Their video is very polished and only consists of one location with extremely long shots.We wanted something rough and something that looked home made with not too much thought behind it unlike Vampire Weekends video.
I don't feel my video is much different from real media texts if you take a look at this professional Arctic Monkeys video it is rough and edgy and in the indie rock genre and personally I don't feel that it looks any better in quality. We used HD cameras to film so had lots to play around with on them such as a great zoom.
In our music video we tried to be different and make it look very home made as our target audience like to be unique and individual we thought this would work. They also like to feel they belong to a select group of people. One thing we did to our video was put a vignette around the edges, we did this to try and make our video a little different, however some of our audience didn't understand why we did this and didn't like it. Some however did like it but it wasn't a huge hit with the target group.
STEVE NEALE - Audiences take pleasure from genre because of 'instances of repetition and difference'
This quote from Steve Neale is very true of my target audience. Teenagers and people in their early twenties are constantly on the look out for what is cool and on trend. They like to be part of a group (genre) and check up on it regularly just to make sure they know all the latest and this is something they enjoy. They will always look on Youtube and notice what things are the same and what is happening differently in certain genres and they will then apply this to their lives. For example, Beats headphones appeared in a number of mainstream pop videos and now they are very fashionable and it is seen cool to be wearing a pair. So they are taking pleasure from their genre by feeling part of a group because they own something that associates them with it.
The intended effect of my coursework on my audience is to make them laugh and feel like they've not wasted their time after watching my music video. To create this effect I plan to have a fast moving video with lots of locations and humour to make sure the audience don't get bored. Not every teenager is going to want to be listening to the music we've chosen so me and my partner need to make sure that we tailor the video to the type of people that are going to watch it. They need to feel that we have done the music justice and got the message of the song through to the audience and anyone else who may view the video.
There is a media theorist called McQuail who believes that people consume certain media texts to fulfil their particular needs in life. I think that my audience will consume the text for their personal identity. They will use my video to find out about themselves and other teenagers and also see their own experiences in life reflected in my video for example teenage romances.
In recent years media has taken a new turn creating media 2.0 where the audience can now respond and contribute to the media in a new way online. A theorist called Flew said that the internet allows media to be networked and compared with other media, meaning that the audience can contribute with content as well as consume it, for example mash up of songs and fan made music videos. Youtube is the main way videos are watched and passed around the world. To make a Youtube video a big hit and go viral you need to make something funny or something that people haven't seen before so it amazes them and makes them want to share it with others. Here are 2 videos I have shared with my friends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pcdg9m7Dao&list=LLd5PLWIzgsvvZBUAOUp8xuw&index=4&feature=plpp_video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tcR19y7GPM&feature=plcp&context=C3ff94e7UDOEgsToPDskI8wmqKQPShrj_9ly3P0w33 To make this happen to my video it would have to contain humour and display really good editing skills that will make people think it is worth sharing.
Another theorist Morley states that people who read your media text will read them in different ways taking a preferred, negotiated or oppositional reading. Hopefully my audience will take a preferred reading to my music video. It is aimed at teenagers and young people and contains them too so they are seeing people their age do things that they themselves would do. In our focus group they said the videos we showed them were good and that they would watch them so this hopefully means they will do the same with ours. However some of the audience may take an oppositional reading and disagree with the message that teenagers drink, smoke and sometimes get up to no good so they may reject these messages.
According to the theorist Ang, audiencehood is becoming more fragmented this is down to new technology which makes all sorts of media accessible to all sorts of people. We can watch anything we fancy at any given time if we so wish. Me and my partner aren't making our video for a very small niche market we are trying to aim for a wider audience which is a bit more mainstream in the way that people who don't even listen to the music will want to watch the video.
I feel my strongest skill is creativity, I am able to use the world around me to influence new ideas and the way I see things. If there is a problem with one idea be it a location for example I can easily use my creative mind to think of a new way of getting the same effect. Even when I have a final idea I will still try to use other things to influence the idea and improve on it. This skill will have a big effect on the video Jack and I are making because I am constantly thinking up new ideas and concepts we can use.
My weakest area I feel is using conventions from real media texts. I find it hard to draw out the raw meaning of the text sometimes meaning I don't fully understand what is being talked about. To improve on this I could do extra reading around the subject and also ask my teacher to help me make sense of the things I don't fully understand.
Story- stu always thinking about a girl (I get this funny feeling) love, memory flashbacks of the girl being distant, using long shots and getting closer using mid shots and close ups towards the end. -Muffled music -Fade in shot of boom-box in woods -music starts with stock motion of boom-box -cut to stu singing/playing guitar in cripple-gate on bench (chorus) -leaves guitar on bench and walks away singing (I get this funny feeling) -match on action shot, following dolly (trolly) in park -cut to close up of running water at wier (when I look back) -cut to stu playing guitar on rock by wier (I know that I can live) -360 rotation shot around stu -zooms to close up until (when my feet touched the ground) -fade to long shot of female performer walking through field -cuts to female performer sat on the same bench stu sat on (left guitar?) -cut to stu singing in the tree (I get this funny feeling) -cut to fast motion shot of stu playing guitar on bench with people walking past (I get this funny feeling) -cut to long shot of girl walking down the beach barefoot (when my time comes around) -cut back to stu walking down path with dolly -cut to female on the bench -cut to stu turning back to look -eyeline match of the empty bench -extreme close up of stu upset Splare filling shots if need To cover her up ! maybe get dark and have Erie lighting to suggest her light went out. Go pitch black then have a fag lite for stu to light up frame? / or zoom from black hole in middle of guitar. When Stu's playing the guitar put girl stationary in crowd as they walk back and forth. When stu plays guitar and crowd walk past do a still shot where they face different ways with those burnt papers with his name on or she don't know on/ or add paper to falling leaves shot. Girls hand out of canoe leaving ripples in the water and leaves floating past to link in under tree. Stu playing guitar in canoe. Don't forget all ages and dogs in park : Couple in crowd carry canoe.
In one of our discussions together Jack and I have decided that we want to use a boombox as a prop. I have found one on google images that will look perfect for what we want to do with it.
