Finished Production

Q1 In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We found this shot the most effective shot in creating response from the audience as it outlines the narrative of the video and typifies the relationship the feud.  This is similar to many leading promotional videos from global institutions, however a narrative such as this being portrayed in a video is more frequent in songs not in the techno genre, such as love songs and ballads. In showing the narrative of the song we have challenged classic conventions of our genre. Shot 2 also connotes the same character representations as the previous one, again challenging the genre conventions.

The colour in this shot is a subtle vertical intertextual reference to the blue skinned characters in the movie phenominon that was Avatar, in a pastiche style as defined by post-modernist theorist Fredric Jameson. This development of the fantasy genre worked well in creating a stylized effect for our final product, although retaining independent imagery which would be recognizable in the ancillary task, and thus to the general public. These particular shots are in indexical visual sign which automatically make the audience correspond the text with Avatar, and transfer their cultural knowledge of the film’s success to the music video with positive connotations.

From our initial planning and research we made sure to include a direct intertextual shot from Eminem’s ‘Stan’, a video which we previously had analysed in terms of semiotics. This shows a development of a real media product into our own work, and plays with the idea of converging two genres with we are both fans of.

The split screening/paneling technique used in these two shots rresemble Example’s ‘Love Kickstarts’ promotional music video. Evidently we have again crossed over this technique to another genre. Another subtle intertextual reference keeps the audience stimulated, and comforts them with the notion of familiarity. Although the two shots are visually similar in style, they hold two very different representations. The top one connotes sorrow, whereas in the shot below we endeavored to simulate a club-like atmosphere with lighting effects. This challenged our technical ability but was successful in merging the narrative and performance sections of our video.

We have seen fading shots and the use of opacity levels in our inspirational videos, which we researched at the beginning stages of the projects, and attempted to replicate these techniques. Rihanna videos often use this effect, and we also used it heavily, in specific areas where we wanted to portray the two sides of one character’s personality.

The mirroring effect here was also a technique we used a fair bit, and again to pastiche Rihanna’s “Rudeboy’ music video as well as make intertextual references to the inspirational video used within our research and planning stages of the project.

The smoking shots were inspired by a shot from the introductory sequence from ‘True Blood’. The homagistic style of vertical intertextuality is not directly replicating signs from the text but has taken inspiration from it, including the muted colours as shows in the narrative portrayal in our music video.

We used a modern typeface, this we thought would be better suited to the modern genre and appropriate to our youthful target audience.

We found this an occurring theme throughout the promotional music video, and felt that it was appropriate in order to create a successful, professionally finished product. From researching into existing CD covers and promotional posters we knew exactly what our target audience would expect to see from a techno music track, and tried to mimic this as closely as possible.

Q2 How Effective is The Combination of The Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Throughout the research and planning of our music video and its current processes, we have ensured that the theme has remained continuous throughout the all areas of the project, not only for our production itself, but the self designed promotional digi-pack which has been created of a high professional/institutional quality and equally mirrored our research that took place before production. We felt that the continuous standard was key to completing the project as a whole as well as reflecting the skills we have used throughout our production and promotional digi-pack through our overall research and planning.

Throughout the planning process and research statistics of our chosen song we came to the conclusion that our target audience should not only be suited to the genre of our music but also to the age of not just the genre of song, but also the content in which we would be putting into our works and who it would appeal to most, taking into account the influences we have made intertextual references to and the audience that the footage has appealed and been viewed by most. By doing this we have been given a clear idea of what we needed to include for our target audience, which in the end was decided upon the ages of 17-25 based purely on the genre and style of music we used for our production, taking into account the places it would most likely be played at/listened to.

Because we wanted to continue our occurring theme and mirror the majority of our research, we then wanted to ensure that our promotional digi-pack as well as our music video appealed to the correct target audience to ensure it was viewed upon as a successful well linked/recognised product.

To ensure that we did in fact create a consistent theme throughout our works, we forward planned prior to our production and ancillary tasks to make sure that whatever final outcome we produced, it would be a well-recognised production/product and would therefore maintain its professional well thought out theme and finish.

One of the simple links/ties we made between our promotional digi-pack and our music video was the use of characters.  We ensured that the same main character was used throughout the production and our promotional digi-pack so that there was an instant iconic and recognizable feature to each areas of our work and was instantly viewed and recognised as a product of ‘I Need Air’.

When producing the ancillary task we wanted to make sure we reflected the techno genre that would not only be a benefit of our audience but also as a credit to our institutional record company. We found by doing this we have been able to give an instant insight as to what the institution is like and help it to become recognizable to those who are unfamiliar with the works of Magnetic Man.

Again even throughout our promotional digi-pack, we wanted to connote a consistent theme throughout, and really reflect the techno genre through our promotional products as we felt it was the appropriate way to project a professionally finished product throughout the various areas in our digi-pack.

The imagery used throughout our promotional digi-pack has been purposely chosen to become the image for our production and song of ‘I Need Air’. Unlike a lot of the imagery that has been used from the music video itself, these photos were taken throughout the process of filming and have purposely been modified/made to a high quality, not only for reasons for using the other imagery, but because as a promotional photo we felt that it needed to be of the highest quality and standard if it is going to become the image that will be most recognised from audiences worldwide.

The inspiration originally came from the worldwide phenomenon know as ‘Avatar’. We felt by making this as an intertextual reference and a clear iconic image for our promotional work, it would become something that audiences are instantly familiar with, and arguably viewed as an indexical representation, as it is something that is instantly recognised by those worldwide, now not only through the movie they know as ‘Avatar’ but for our promotional works/production.

Overall, we came to find that the combination of our production and promotional products were very successful. We feel that the ties between the two works have been very clear and we have maintained a consistent theme as well as mirror our planning and research prior to the tasks at hand. However, despite our achievements, we found that trying to find the clear definitions between characters and their importance to the narrative, very challenging in the processes of editing.

In spite of our difficulties we were still able to use this problem to our advantage when coming to the end of our production, as conveniently we were able to create the iconic and desired surreal effect towards the end of our video.

Q3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

While in the process prior to filming, using our blogs and research to complete the on going task of our music video, the audience research and feedback were key as to what aspects of our production worked and as to whether or not our planning and research was successfully met through our ideas and organisation throughout/recorded on our blog.

Throughout the process of planning we have been making notes and showing examples of our ‘inspirations’ and what key aspects of other successful music videos have included within their works. We have then made clear notes and evidence of what clip/screen shot we would like to interpret into our own music video.

We made the intertextual references between our video and our inspirational video very clear so that instantly it would become indexical to our audience because it would be something they instantly recognised.

Also through making these references, it has then made it a more successful production due to the success of the original videos we took the idea from.

 We used many ways how to record someone of our audience feedback from our music video, not only did we place our video publically on YouTube to see the type of feedback we would be getting from the public and possibly those that are in fact our target audience.

By doing this we could keep track of how many people were watching our video and how much of a general audience it is gaining overall. This gradual raise of viewers was in a space of 10 minutes, this type of research and form of response is initially and automatically helpful as it becomes clear it is something that is being liked by the public and therefore becoming a success the general and target audience.

Not only did we post our video on YouTube, but we also began to post it on a social networking site called ‘Twitter” We specifically chose this particular site, because it is automatically more of a general audience, it is not friends or people we know, it is people round the world who would get the opportunity to view the video and tell us their responses, this I think is more accurate as to what feedback we would really be getting.
Here are some of the general responses we got after posting the video on the Twitter account; these are from random members of the public between the ages of 16-24, which initially is our target audience. Therefore I feel this audience feedback has been accurate and based on the comments it has met our personal brief and target audience.

The video was also “Retweeted” by one of the “Followers” which is then sent to his list of followers to see, not only is this fantastic because it got a positive enough response to be re-posted and wanted to be shown to others to what they have just watched but it was then recognised by 634 additional people to the 500 we posted it to.

Due to the successful method of using Twitter when posting our video, we also then came to the conclusion to post the two main ancillary tasks that would be most viewed if being distributed by an institution. By doing this we got to see the amount of people who had viewed it as well as the responses that were posted by Twitter users, some being people that it wasn’t even posted to. 

Again these were viewed positively from a number of different viewers and the feedback we got back for the pieces was very positive and encouraging. One being from a ‘Follower’ that produces music successfully and has his own YouTube channel, viewed the two images and labelled them as “sick” and “dope” instantly due to the amount of people that view his blog and get notifications on what he says, instantly became interested and wanted to view what he had just complimented.

This again publicised the products hugely as our promotional digi-pack and instantly gave us the desired response that we wanted in order to see what the younger generation/general audience would think of/view our production and promotional work as a whole as though it was being distributed by institutions

As well as publicising our production on the social networking site ‘Twitter’ we then came to the conclusion we would like to carry out even further research and also broadcast/publicise our production on one of the biggest social networking sites in the world to see the responses not only by our ‘friends’ but also to the other linked YouTube accounts who could now also access the public video through another source. Again this feedback is mainly from our intended target audience and therefore not only enforces the statements and conclusions we have made, but also meets the personal brief and meets all our areas of our planning and production.

Here are some of the statistics from our publicised video including: who, where and when it is being viewed and how many times, with the most popular locations it is being viewed in.

Q4 How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the process of production and planning of our music video, we used many different programs and new media technologies to project our initial ideas and research throughout the project.

We felt that in order to create a successful media product, which met the brief and target audience’s needs we used a number of different media technologies in order to produce the best outcome possible and meet all our expectations.

Not only did it enable us to do this, we were also able to then use different sites and Internet technologies to publicise our production and receive the correct and relevant feedback we needed in order to reassure that our production is in fact successful and appropriately linked to our research and planning as well as our promotional work.

One of the first media technology we used is, Final Cut Express, this is the program we used in order to complete, create and edit our music video, without this particular technology we would have nothing but original footage and would not be able to create the overall effects like we have done through using this particular program 

One of the second technologies we used was Photoshop. This was mainly in order to complete our ancillary tasks and create the striking and unique effects to our main character throughout our production, which has been included in our ancillary tasks. It was also used to produce the layout, effects and overall promotional digi-pack, without its effects we would not have achieved the overall desired effects like we wished.

http://www.google.com/

This particular technology has been our whole starting point, without it we would not be able to carry out half the research we have produced nor have the information that we gathered on inspirational artists and our chosen music as well as find the modern social networking technologies that we used throughout the project in order to carryout our research and publicly promote our production. 

http://www.youtube.com/

This technology is the main one used in order to gather our feedback and publicise our production to the worldwide public as well as upload our footage and stream it back to ourselves to evaluate the process. Our main inspirations came from YouTube and the research we carried out throughout the project process. It also enabled us to publically post our work to the world as well as the subscribers that post their own and assess others media texts. 

http://www.facebook.com/

This is one of the newest media technologies available to the public, which is used by billions all over the world; we used this technology in order to gain feedback from a national audience on our production as well as answer questions about our work and how the public viewed our video against our brief and overall research.

We found it a quick way of communicating between the people involved within the work/project as well as a good and effective way to publicise photos and progress of the overall production.

http://www.twitter.com/

This technology is the second main one that was used to gather our research and responses. The reason we chose Twitter more over the research of Facebook, is because of the bigger range of audience and the overall easier access of posting and viewing by others. Whereas Facebook would be posting mainly to people you know, Twitter is more of a general audience and would get more of an honest feedback by random members of the public. It is also easier and possible to re-blog our production by other people and then spread it to an audience of their own as well as ours. I found the most feedback we gained was via Twitter, and this feedback is of the most useful of them all and helped us with the statistics and overall view of our production against a wide national audience.

http://www.blogger.com/   

Finally this technology has been the key in order to record, assess and present our work and planning. It has been like our own digital journal of our progress and journey from planning stages, sketches, updates and final productions that again have been made available to the public, however is very maintained within the blogging system and not shown to the public, but mainly for planning processes and referring back prior to further research, planning and production. 

http://www.apple.com/itunes

This is one of the newer technologies that have been used in order to complete our production. It is with this program we were able to purchase our chosen song from iTunes as well as research into its popularity and its official genre and rating by one of the biggest institutions in the world. We were also able to view its single selling price as a purchase download before going on to an iTunes Library. We used this information as a contribution towards our planning and research.