Media A2 evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product can be seen as challenging forms and conventions of real media products as the outfit which the artist wears isn’t fitting the usual conventions, such as she singer doesn’t have brightly dyed hair, have piercings nor is she wearing black/dark clothing as seen in bands such as Green Day and Rise Against. This type of clothing that is seen in punk bands is reflective of the rebellious, youthful attitude that the usually teenage artists hold. The connotation of the clothing to the rebellion is also reflective of the rejection to authority as demonstrated in songs such as Holiday by Green Day.

I choose to not use the stereotypical fashion of people in punk bands and instead researched into Paramore further and found that Hayley Williams tends to wear very unique clothing which I found refreshing. Therefore, I choose to make a similar outfit through using shorts with brightly coloured lips on them with a crop top and metallic shoes, I also copied Hayley Williams make-up from Monumentour and used bright pink sparkly eye shadow. Through making my artist wear different clothes to what is stereotypically worn makes her stand out through challenging conventions and norms to reflect the genre of punk itself.

• The majority of artists in this genre are predominantly adolescents or young adults, the music generally reflecting the energy of teenagers. Women can be seen more frequently in rock bands with members such as Jenna McDougall, Hayley Williams and Taylor Jardine however the percentage of males in rock bands is significantly higher. The artist in my music video is female as the song has a female singer therefore it’s fitting to the vocals. This could be considered as going against conventions of punk, however, with more and more women entering the rock genre I think it’s important to continue this by including a female in my video.

• The focus of my video is similar to other punk videos in that it centres around the singer. This is done as the audience is mot likely to know and remember the main singer as being the face of the band. This will help my audience to recognise the music through seeing the lead singer. Therefore, I followed the convention of having the lead singer feature in most or if not all the close-ups used.

To keep with the passionate convention, I made sure the artist conveyed the lyrics through expression and movements such as the lyric “I can be strong” is paired with the artist doing a power sign by showing her muscle. It is also shown in the way the artist plays her instrument which fits with the lyrics to help the audience relate to the music.

The moral of the narrative fits with normal conventions of the genre as many music videos within punk tend to have underlying meanings behind the narrative. This is evident in songs such as ‘Holiday’ by Green Day which considers the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and in particular George Bush and his war drive. The underlying meaning of my music video is that you can distinguish insecurities through holding onto hope. This means that my audience is active as they can interpret the message of the music video themselves.

Katz and Lazarsfeld came up with the theory that audiences discover understanding of a text through friends or family who might consume the product in a particular way which can then influence your understanding of the product. This can be applied to my text as some of my audience may understand the message of the song which they then may pass on to a friend or family member which will still make my audience active in that they are consuming media through others understandings.

The use of instruments in my music video challenges stereotypes of the genre punk as

you would normally expect electric guitars and drums, however I chose to have the artist

play the piano as it’s a slower song which the piano reflects effectively.

However, when bands and artists in the genre choose to write slower songs, the piano

stereotypically features. This is evident in songs such as My Chemical Romance –

Cancer, The Pretty Reckless – House On a Hill, Queen – Who Wants to Live Forever and

Paramore – When it Rains. Therefore, although instruments such as the electric guitar

aren't used in my video, I do use a piano which can also be found in many slow punk

songs, fitting to the convention.

How effective is the combination of your main product and

ancillary tasks?

• The combination of my main product with ancillary texts is highly effective, from the colour scheme to the attitude of the text they both present the same clear themes which tie them together well.

• The colour scheme was the most important for me for a focus through my work by depicting certain colours from my music video to integrate into the poster and digipak.

• For example, at the end of the music video, the colour scheme mainly consists of orange, purple and pinks. Therefore, I decided to use the colours purple and pink throughout my digipak.

• Here is an example from the last page of my insert in my album and the front cover of the digipak.

• By making the front cover of the album fit with the theme of the music video was extremely important as I believe by making the CD appear similar to the video will allow my target audience members to recognise the musician.

• The rest of the colours on my digipak are black and white, which helps the artwork with the sparklers stand out more effectively an idea also used within the music video to contrast narrative against live performance.

• The use of lights within my ancillary texts and main product is important as the light is a repeated motif which symbolises hope which is evident in the lyrics.

• The use of the cross on the front of the CD case can be interpreted as a symbolisation of war as it is made from sparks of fire, which again fits with the theme of the music video as the narrative presents a dream-like war between yourself.

• The album itself only includes pictures of the artist inside of the insert as I didn’t particularly want her to be the main focus of the digipak. I did this to reflect my chosen genre, punk – which usually focuses on meaning instead of artificial things such as the artists appearance.

• In the insert, the pictures of the artist used were from the video itself which allows the audience to recognise the musician. However, the images of the artist are slightly different from the video in terms of the colouring. I decided to make the images of the artist purple to fit with the rest of the CD’s colour scheme, allowing the digipak to look more professional and flow together more efficiently.

• Not only this, but images from the narrative were also used in the insert that follow the same purple colour scheme. This allows the CD and video to link together effectively, both having aspects of the narrative story that the audience will recognise.

• Another ancillary text which I constructed was a poster to advertise my artist.

• I decided to create a poster opposed to creating a website as I had already advertised my music video through social networking means such as distributing the video on YouTube and giving information about the video on Twitter. Therefore, through creating a poster I was able to construct a product which would be available for people to view who don’t use these sites giving me a wider target audience compared to just the ones who use social networking sites.

This bright neon effect was created through Photoshop, I drew this design then

edited the colour to make it as bright as possible. The design is very similar to the

artwork I created for the disk in the digipak, helping audiences to recognise the artist. The use of

bright colours in the two texts links to my chosen genre which is punk, as many followers of the

subgenre are stereotypically seen dying their hair these unnatural colours.

These two designs are from the digipak, the first was a design which I

created to go behind where the disk is. Through using the ‘liquify’ tool in

Photoshop, then editing to produce bright vibrant colours I was able to create

this neon effect.

The second is obviously the design for the disk, the dripping paint effect

similar to the posters where I used the paint tool to draw the design free-

hand.

• My poster includes a picture of the artist in the background, however is not the main focus of the product as I wanted to emphasise the initial idea that the album revolves around the music, not the artificial looks of the artist.

• In addition, I made the background image of the artist darker so that the green design would become more prominent and capture the audiences attention. The darker background therefore allowing text such as the album name to be more noticeable.

• These use of colours throughout my ancillary texts clearly presents the tone of my music video. The difference between light and darkness as seen on the album and poster representing the symbolisation of hope.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• I decided to get all my interviewees together that took part in my last focus group so that they could suggest improvements and state elements throughout my work which they found effective.

• I found from my focus group that they thought the colour scheme was particularly effective as it runs through all my tasks.

• They also agreed that the underlying message of hope is evident in all three projects which effectively links them together so that audience will be able to associate the particular style I have created to the artist.

• As my interviewees found my video, poster and CD effective means that I have managed to reach my target audience by creating an appealing media product which they would purchase.

• Even with the overall success, Allora and Kirsty both offered some constructive criticism in order to make the project appear more professional to the target audience.

• Improvements such as more artistic use of font was a point which often reoccurred. For example, Allora stated that the writing on the poster could’ve ideally been bigger so that people from further away can still see the advertisement. She added that even thought the font size on the digipak is fine, the font used wasn’t very unique and therefore didn’t stand out effectively to her.

• Even though the title and tracking information font could've agreeably been more unique, I didn't particularly want to use a font which could’ve made the CD hard to read. By using a simplistic bold font meant it was clear and easy to read so that my targeted audience of teenagers wouldn’t have to spend a long time trying to decipher the album name.

How do you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

• I used media technologies throughout all stages of my coursework.

• When researching into other music videos I made use of different platforms such as YouTube and Twitter.

• These sites allowed me to discover new popular videos of the genre that I am researching into which is Punk.

• Having a twitter account myself meant that I could see what music my followers were listening to and find out the latest music of that genre.

• Due to being a teenager myself, the majority of my followers are youths which also my target audience. Therefore, knowing what music they are predominately listening to was useful in terms of picking a song which would appeal to them.

• Many of my followers seemed to be enjoying Paramore’s songs and therefore I thought it was a good idea to choose one so that I could then market the finished video on this site to promote it.

• Using YouTube was also thoroughly useful as I was able to look up many different areas of punk and assess the music videos and how they are produced.

• For example, I was able to look at classic punk videos such as You're Gonna Go Far, Kid by the Offspring, Holiday – Green Day and No Doubt – Sunday Morning. These allowed me to get an initial idea of what to include in the music video such as a flowing narrative with meaning, what clothing to make my artist wear so that she will look unique and how to stage the live performance.

• I found YouTube particularly easy to navigate and knew it is a highly popular site as found from the amount of people I follow who often refer to music videos they like found on YouTube. As a result of this, I decided to use YouTube to distribute my music video on, knowing that it’s free to upload videos onto, it’s easy to use and my target audience are most likely to view it on this platform.

• When planning how I would make my music video I looked at the different equipment that the school offered such as Canon and Nikon cameras, Tripods and Lighting. As I was planning to film the live performance inside during the day the lighting wasn’t an issue and I decided that I could just use natural lighting.

• Choosing the camera wasn’t difficult as I used a Canon for my last video I did for AS which I made an opening for a film. Therefore, I already knew how to use the camera and also had one at home which I had been practicing on.

• For equipment in terms of recording the song for the video I used what was supplied for my school, but also what software I had at home.

• For earlier projects in GCSE I used a sound desk which gave a clearer sounding microphone for my song, therefore I decided to use the same one for this project. The sound desk that I used is called ‘Multimix8’ with a USB cable to enable me to connect the equipment to my computer with ease. The sound desk also had slots in which I could put a microphone in and a small button at the back which allowed me to turn it off and on.

• The software I used to record the song was Garage band which easily connected to the equipment I had which meant I could often set it up to record my song quickly.

• During the construction stages of my coursework I used a video editing software called ‘Adobe ‘ using the software was simple to use as for AS ‘Final Cut Pro’ was the software I predominately used to edit my opening scene on.

• Having previous experience of using editing software meant I was able to adapt my skills into this project and learn different skills such as playing with the colours in a video and shot transitions.

• In the beginning of my AS studies we were given a lesson on the basics of how to use Photoshop, therefore I thought I would use it to create my Digipak on as there are a range of different tools offered.

• Learning how to use Photoshop was quite difficult with all the different equipment offered on the software it was hard to know what I wanted to use.

• To learn how to use these different tools, I often referred to YouTube tutorials to guide me through wasywhich you can edit a photo to make it look effective.

• In my case, I knew I wanted to create something that contrasted the dark from light to portray the lyrics of the song and this idea of hope.

• Therefore I used sparklers to create this lighting effect, getting my sister to move the sparklers while I took a pictures on the Canon camera using a slow shutter setting to allow the best images to be taken.

• From this I put the pictures on Photoshop, blacking out the background and accentuating the light trail made my the sparkler, adding a purple tinge through using the colour corrector tool.

• From creating my Digipak I learnt a lot about Photoshop which led me to decide to use the software again for my poster.

• For my poster I was able to use similar techniques I learnt when creating my Digipak to make the two similar in their colour scheme so that they compliment each other. This will additionally allow my target audience to recognise the poster as it follows the same theme as the CD.

• To upload my video I used YouTube, and sites such as blogger and slideshare to upload my written work onto. These formatted my work efficiently, Blogger being the basis of my work was useful as it allowed a lot of freedom as to how I wanted my work to be laid out to make it easy to navigate through.

Conclusion

• To conclude, I believe my products have achieved their purpose. My video presented the lyrics effectively through the message of my product through which I was able to get other ideas on how to present this message through other tasks such as my poster and digipak.

• My video has appropriately demonstrated clear shots with effective mise-en-scene to reflect the unique style of the artist reflecting the genre effectively.

• My digipak contains aspects of real media products, using images of the artist, with a variety of different imaged which attract an audiences attention using bold fonts which reoccur throughout my work.

• The poster combines the skills learnt from creating my digipak on Photoshop, clearly signifying the development in skill through this learning process. The poster also follows similar themes to the digipak, creating links between all three of my products.

• The audience feedback shows helpful constructive points such as which will enable me to further my knowledge. I am pleased with my final products and received the positive feedback from my target audience that I wanted.