Monday, 25 January 2010

finished Poster



Here is the poster i made. I combined the themes of nature and urban by having the nature inside a building. The link between this and our digipak is the font (which is thee same) and the image of the band in the woods.

Friday, 15 January 2010

Evaluation Question 4

How have you used new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?


The new media technology that I used in the planning stage was the Internet where I watched music videos on YouTube. I did this so i could research into my genre and see some of the reoccurring themes which appear in their videos. The advantages of this was that it was free, there was a wide variety of chose and it was assessable at any time. If YouTube did not exist i would have had to watch a music channel until the song i wanted came on which would take time and wouldn't give me a wide variety of chose. Or i would have has to buy a CD which would cost money. Another new media technology which was useful during the planning stage was a 3G phone. I did this so i could take photos of the locations and upload them directly to my blog by using the Internet of my phone. The advantages of this is that it is quite and easy to use and upload.


We also filmed our storyboard to create an animatic which helps us visualise what shots we will use and how our music video will look. After filming our drawings we uploaded and cut them by using imovie HD.

I used the worldwide social networking site Myspace.com, when we were looking for a band to use. Myspace is well known for its music section which allows bands, signed or unsigned to publish their music for online streaming. This saved a lot of time in finding a band which was not copy righted.

I was able to get your track by one of the band members bluetoothing me the song onto my phone. The advantage of using Bluetooth was that it was quick , free, on the right format and easy to upload onto computer. If bluetooth wasn't invented I would have had to of bought the CD from shop which would have been expensive.

During the stage of production the members of our group contacted each other through their blogs, allowing us to plan when we would be meeting up, send information to each other and help each other with our assigned tasks.

When filming our video i uploaded the track onto my ipod so i could listen to the song as we went along, making sure every shot matched the mood of the song and our genre.

Another new media technology which was very helpful was Final Cut Pro which we used when editing our music video. The benefits of this program are that it offered us a wider range of editing tools and features such as split screen, black and white effect and speeding up action. If we didn't has access to final cut pro we would have had to of used imovie which has much less editing features.

Evaluation question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


We asked 5 teenagers (our target group) to give feedback on our film. From this feedback we have learnt that our target group have enjoyed our use of colour and black and white when showing the difference between flash back and present day scenes . They also like the variety of shots from tracking to long shots and think that we have a good cutting rhythm and a good use of transitions. We have also learnt that our steadiness of filming is lacking and I think we should re-shoot some of our footage using a tripod. Our audience also thought that our lighting could have been improved, which we can hopefully change at the editing process.

Evaluation Question 2

In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To answer this question i will look at Godwins theory and see if i can apply it to my final music video.
1) The video will show a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals - We challenged the usual conventions with our lyrics and visuals. Instead of making the two match we decided to make it the opposite, instead of summer coming back we man the boy on his own missing the girl Summer. The word Summer holds connotations of nature, sun and flowers so we set our video in an urban landscape which was wet with rain and grey skies.

2) The video will have relevant references between the music and the visuals - We tried to make the cutting rhythm match the speed of the music, however because we chose a slow beat song we found it quite hard to do this. If we had time to improve our video this would have been the first thing we would have changed.

3) It will demonstrate characteristics of the genre - The characteristics of Indy/Rock music that we used was the band performing shots which are often seen in Indy/Rock music videos.












4) The artist may develop distinctive motifs that may reoccur throughout their videos - The motif within our music video is the colour green. This is because green has connotations of summer and nature which the boys keeps seeing, reminding him of the girl. We show this colour through the lighting, props and outfits.








5) There is often intertextual reference whether it is to films, TV programs or other music videos - our music video doesn't have intertextual references to films, TV programs or other music videos but it does have references to the season Summer, which we encourage with shots of nature and our motif of the colour green.
6) There is often sexual references towards the female body - We purposely decided to avoid this aspect of Godwins theory because we thought it would be inappropriate for our target market where we don't only want to attract males but females too. We also thought that the age of our actors would make this distasteful if we added sexual references.

Evaluation question 1

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


Intertextuality is important because it creates a brand identity for the artist and links the products together as a whole. Our product uses intertextual references such as our motif of the colour green which occurs throughout our three products. Our motif is stronger in our music video where green is emphasised throughout the different shots, than the poster and digipac where green is only seen in the background image and doesn't appear in the lettering. This is because we are trying to promote the album as a whole, rather than a single. The natural and urban side of our music video is also used in our digipac and magazine cover background where the band members are standing in the woods, the floor of which is pavement. We did this to show the theme of nature and the destruction of it which appears in the music video by shots flowers and trees juxtaposed with shots of traffic and buildings. This theme is also shown through the title “Seasons of the City” for it holds both natural and urban connotations. Another thing that links our products together is the font. We used the same font on the digipac and on the magazine because it look quite urban and to create brand identity.


The Genre of our music video is also shown through all three products. For example our digipac is like the Stereophonics magazine advert where the image is a mixture of weirdness and normality. This is related to rock/indi music. The magazine advert is also a mixture of weirdness and normality because the boy is opening the doors into a forest. The music video also relates to the theme of rock/indi music because there are shots of the band performing which is often seen in many other rock/indi music videos such as The Killers Mr Brightside.

Theory of semiotics

The theory of semtotics is about signs and how people automatically interpret them.

There are three types of semiotics:

Pragmatics: This is the relationship between a sign and the effect on which is has on the people who use them.
Semantics: This is the relation between the sign itself and the things they refer to.
Syntactics: This is the relations among signs in formal structures

The signs we will use in our music video are:
  • speeded up clouds - referring to changing of time
  • black and white effects - signifying flash back sequences

version 2 see DVD for final film