Evaluation Question 1

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

Many forms of media are used to construct meaning through language, conventions of certain products, genres and styles, and through representation. In order to decide what meaning we wanted our media product to convey to the audience, we researched popular trends and interests in music, television, magazines, advertising and fashion, to gather information about how we could our own coursework piece in a way that was relevant to society today, and particularly the teenage and young adult target audiences we wanted to attract.

In order to analyse youth culture in television, 'Skins' appeared to be the best suited programme to research, as it contained the content we were looking to portray, as well being a programme based on the youth of Britain today. We used the promotional trailers, which are filmed in a similar style to many conventional music videos, in order to develop our own product.

These promotions featured and glamorized various teenage antics for the mere purpose of fun that we wanted to reflect, showing youth culture as rebellious, rowdy and energetic. This is done through the use of fast-paced cuts between shots, increasing the sense of excitement for both the characters in the trailer and the audience watching it. Additionally, the mise-en-scene, such as the revealing clothing and the sense of mystery created due to the dark lighting used, shows some of their behaviour is shrouded in darkness which further represents their promiscuity and rebellion. This is used to represent an enigma code to the audience. Ultimately, however we decided to follow some of the ‘Skins’ conventions as they are presented as having fun; and not caring about the repercussions of the actions, such as in our own video the vital ‘party scene’ and when after seeing a boy and a girl walk into a room, we then see the boy walking back out casually doing up his zipper. Sex and sex appeal is a huge element visible in Skins in order to gain an audience. When planning our media product we wanted to use a lot of girls in order to increase the attraction of the male teenage audience, and in order to enhance this sex appeal, planned to create some close-up shots of a girl’s lips. We were inspired by the beginning titles of the hit vampire series 'True Blood', in which a reverse shot of smoke going back into a woman's red lips, appears and we decided to include a similar shot in our own product.

As a result of their portrayal of youth culture, Skins has become a massive hit amongst our age-group, as well as older generations hoping to gain an insight into this hedonistic lifestyle. We used this concept as the basis for the images that we would portray in our music video and encapsulate this ideology, which the audience feel drawn into, so they feel a part of this new community.

We chose to use ‘The Black Lights’ as a member of the band is in our group, and his band mates are in our school, so we could easily access the song ‘Anyway’, as there were no copyright laws on it. Finally, having decided on using 'indie' as our genre of music for our music video, we researched music videos related to this genre, including: 'Boys Will Be Boys' by The Ordinary Boys, 'Smile Around The Face' by Four Tet, and 'Let's Go Surfing' by The Drums. We were inspired by the various techniques they used, we particularly associated ourselves with the ‘day-in-the-life’ style narrative which is often used and the ways in which these are portrayed, such as the huge use of close-up shots and point of view shots in Four Tet’s video which give a great insight into the characters’ psyche.

We decided we liked the idea of having a story to follow, which is often evident in music videos of the ‘indie’ genre. As a whole music videos do not follow this structure; but rather a combination of images of the leading member of the band, without a particular narrative. By building up our repertoire of videos which we considered to analyse within the indie genre; we were able to list a variety of conventions that often applied, such as, dark setting, bold colour statements, band or artist reappearing throughout, characters are often stereotypes e.g. a rock 'n' roll ruffian or seductive woman, an unkempt man and attractive women, drug and alcohol content, parties, and romance. These conventions were apparent in our own video, and even our ancillary tasks, as this is what audiences watching channels such as MTV2 would want to see. This was confirmed in our audience research, citing a demand for similar aspects in our video as to those which are conventions of real media texts. The group felt they also fitted in with the song we had chosen ‘Anyway’ by The Black Lights, which in the lyrics also presents the narrative of this free-spirited rock ‘n’ roll character.

Evaluation Question 2

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

For our ancillary tasks we decided to both a magazine cover and an album cover. This is because we felt that our study of magazines in the Collective Identity part of the course would aid us in the creation of our magazine, as we were comfortable with the techniques that are used in order to attract a readership. Furthermore, an album cover would be suitable as we have two very artistic members in our group so we felt that we could utilise their skills in the creation of an artistic style album cover.

In order to get a wider and more in-depth knowledge of youth culture, we decided to look into how it was presented in magazines. In doing so we found a magazine called 'Vice', a lifestyle magazine which focuses on contemporary youth culture, including fashion, art, music, film, and literature, all reflecting a culture away from the mainstream. We felt that if we wanted to follow this slightly more abstract and artistic representation of youths through the media, in order to captivate an audience and encourage them to consult wider forms of the media. Additionally, we studied ‘Dazed and Confused which eventually played a huge role in the creation of our ancillary tasks to gain further insight in to the ‘indie’ counter-culture. In both magazines fashion seemed to play a key role in representing both the models in the pages of the magazines, as well as the audience they were trying to include. Some of the images once again steered away from the popular mainstream press images, but focused instead on personal expression and how clothes could be used to represent aspects of one’s personality. These magazines mostly portray a care-free, rebellious youth of today but in a fashion that doesn’t conform to how some forms of the media represents youth culture – driven mad by video games and terrorising the streets. Furthermore, with this in mind we looked into historical subcultures adopted by young adults, such as Rockabilly, Mods and Punks who express a variety of beliefs through the media which are used to present them. We found that as the media picked up on these subcultures, they often grew in popularity to the mainstream, and so essentially these ideas are globalised through the media.

Further media texts which show this liberal and care-free sense of living that we wanted to portray included the Diesel ‘Be Stupid’ advertising campaign, featured in a variety of fashion magazines, which encourage the concept that those who are living life ‘stupidly’ are having far more fun than those who are living life ‘smart’. An example of one of these is a poster saying 'Smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls.' in which a woman is exposing her breasts at a CCTV camera. Thus, challenging the expectations of society and taking on a slightly non-conformist role – something which we would develop as a theme throughout the production of our advanced portfolio.




We wanted to show some continuity within our video and the ancillary tasks as this would aid in marketing the band. We chose to follow quite a dark colour scheme, which is apparent due to some of the lighting we used. Furthermore, this would help to become a enigmatic symbol for the band as they are called ‘The Black Lights’ and so, black and white, are the main colours which we used, thus connoting the colour scheme to the band’s name. We even decided to use a light bulb on the cover of the album but in order to represent the name of the band; we inverted the colours so that the image was in fact a ‘black light’. This was set against a cracked wall, which we decided would help to keep an element of recklessness which was a theme throughout our video. Additionally, for the magazine we used a black and white colour scheme, similar to that which we had seen in Hedi Slimane’s January 2009 edition of ‘Dazed & Confused entitled ‘The British Youth Portfolio’ – a similar concept to what we were trying to portray.

Here are some images from Hedi Slimane's British Youth Portfolio:






We decided to use an image with the band member’s face half covered in darkness – we felt this would create an air of mystery around the band which would eventually make the reader want to pick up the magazine in order to discover the mystery inside. This also created quite a slick & stylish effect to the magazine, which although it contrasted some of the content in the video, we felt this would give another good representation of the band, possibly to a wider audience beyond teenagers to adults. We felt this element of sophistication in our magazine and album cover was necessary in order not to alienate our audience – some of the content in the video like drunken teenagers asleep on the sofa would obviously not be appropriate for the cover of a magazine. Whilst it would appeal to the audience interested in the band itself, we felt it would also represent the magazine well, as we had chosen the name ‘Noir’, thus presenting a more realistic synchronicity. We chose the name ‘Noir’ as we felt it added a sense of sophistication and class, which would be likely of the culture magazine we were trying to create.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the planning stage of our portfolio we conducted some primary audience research in the format of questionnaires. We asked questions such as;

• What motivates you to buy a song?

• What would you expect to see in an ‘indie’ music video?

• Would you like to see a music video filled with girls, alcohol, sex and a live band?

• How often do you watch TV channels such as MTV and Viva?

• How would you like to see the main character in our music video styled for a magazine cover?

• What do you think would make an effective album cover?

We informally handed these out to some of our classmates because we felt they were roughly the same age as the market that we were targeting. We felt these questions were appropriate as they helped, during the very early stages of planning, to give us an idea as to whether our initial ideas were suitable. We only had 10 respondents to our questionnaire which may not reflect a wide demographic, particularly considering they are all from the same school as us and of the same age (17 to 18) and so may have quite similar opinions. Upon reflection, I think we should have of done even more audience research, possibly showing our potential audience some of the test shots and storyboards that we had done in order to get some more feedback which could be more specific. However, on the whole we felt we had successfully achieved the support of our target audience with the feedback we were given as they seemed to agree enthusiastically with the ideas we presented. For example, some of the responses to questions asked about how the character should be styled for a magazine cover included; 'Rugged and sexy' 'Smart and stylish' 'Retro/young/black and white' – very similar to what we already had in mind.




The post-production audience research that we conducted indicates that we met our audience’s needs as we had mostly ‘excellent’ ratings on our video and generally people decided that as a result of seeing the video they would want to buy the song. We created a questionnaire online using Googledocs. Ultimately, this means that it was a success as essentially a music video is a marketing tool to spread the word of a song and so if it makes them want to buy the song, a record company would be satisfied. Although we did get one ‘awful’ rating this was strongly outweighed by the positive results, so it’s likely that this was an anomaly. As a result of the feedback we got, I am quite pleased with how audiences received our product and think it is a good testament to the hard work we put in.

Click here to view our post-production audience research in spreadsheet form

Evaluation Question 4

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

During the very beginning of planning our product we used websites such as YouTube and MySpace in order to research conventions within music videos, and gather some ideas as to what would be suitable for the genre we were using, as well as actually finding a song from an unsigned band that we could legally use. This allowed us to study a wide cross-section of artists and how they were marketed. Furthermore, by using search engines such as Google we were able to quickly and efficiently bring up images of magazine covers and album covers of the magazines we studied, such as ‘Vice’ and ‘Dazed and Confused’ as well as easily being able to follow links to the magazine’s official websites Dazeddigital.com and Viceland.com. The ease of access to these products through the internet was particularly useful as we were able to study a variety of obscure music videos, not only those played on MTV in order to gain a true and diverse picture of what modern audiences like to see in music videos.

We also used issuu.com in order to host some of our pre-production audience research. Although initially done on Word Processor and printed out, we uploaded the documents onto Issuu and created an online booklet which could be posted onto our blogs, creating quite a professional appearance. We also used imageshack.us and the picture tool on Blogger to host digital images of our storyboards and mood board on our blogs.

Additional, we used the social networking site Facebook to spread the word of our film and help us to organise our planning. We created a group and invited some of our friends to join, asking them to help us out by being actors in our video. This was fairly easy as we could provide links to some our planning documents to help our actors understand the message we wanted to convey and how we wanted to portray it. We could also organise schedules easily by simply sending a message round to the group.

During the actual filming of our video we are fortunately able to have access to High Definition camera, allowing for a greater resolution and therefore more professional finish to our video. Unfortunately, despite using the HD camcorders, some of the shots still came out on YouTube as quite blurry, which is quite disappointing, but in some respects could be interpreted as representing the ‘blurry’ nature of the lead characters lives. However, through editing on FinalCut Express we were able to add various effects onto our video, which for me are a particularly highlight of our video. For example, we used a slow motion shot of a female character walking down the stairs in the party shot, which helped to convey the chaos of the party and due to the effects of drugs and alcohol; it is almost as if the characters minds too are moving in slow-motion. Additionally, we used played the whole video in reverse at the end of the video; this is to help emphasise the idea that this is a daily routine for the characters and the cycle of their lives. After finishing the video, we uploaded it onto the Berkhamsted Media YouTube channel and so far can acknowledge that we have had 134 views.

Click here to go to the Berkhamsted Media Channel

Most recently we used Googledocs in order to gain some feedback for our film. We created a questionnaire online and posted a link onto Facebook to enable people to watch the video and comment on what they thought of it. The form tool can also create spreadsheets and graphs in order to present the data. For me this was perfect as I didn’t have to spend any time translating the information in Excel and uploading onto imageshack as it could do it all for me and I could just embed it straight onto my blog.

Audience Research: Post-Production

This is a copy of the short questionnaire we used to gain some form of evaluation as to whether people enjoyed the product we created, which parts they didn't like, and which parts they did. We used 'googledocs' as it was very quick and simple to use.



Here is some of the data we got back:

Ancillary Task - Album Cover

These are some of the images we used as inspiration, but also to get an idea of the conventions of album covers within the 'indie' genre. We noticed that a lot of the album covers use dark colours contrasting with a few primary colours. We liked this idea because we felt it fitted in with the magazine cover as well as the video itself. Often the focus was also on having a quite artistic image, rather than a something which would commercially attractive, such as that you might see on the cover of a Girls Aloud or Sugababes album.






We also wanted to bring in the theme of The Black Lights, which is why the Kings of Leon album cover was particularly interesting to look at as it used the image of a smashed lightbulb. We thought this would represent the broken life of the character in the video, as well as being a visually pleasing image to look at.



We turned this image negative and put the Black Lights name at the top in order to get an clearer idea of what we could do for our own cover. We really liked this idea as we felt it reflected the recklessness of the rock&roll lifestyle we were continually trying to portray.

The Final Product

Ancillary Task - Magazine Advert

In order to create our magazine cover we researched a variety of magazines, but decided that in order to focus on our slightly niché market, we would base ours upon publications such as'i-D' and 'Dazed & Confused'. Dazed & Confused is a British style magazine,that was set up in 1992 and published monthly. Its founding editors were Jefferson Hack and Rankin. Topics covered include music, fashion, film, art and literature. The magazine reached its target audience of stylish, cultured, fun-loving young adults through club promotion nights.

DazedDigital.com




We particularly liked this edition, featuring Hedi Slimanes 'youth portfolio' photography.



We decided to use this as a focus for our own work, because we thought a magazine such as 'Dazed & Confused would represent the type of audience listening to The Black Lights well. We admired the use of black and white on all of their covers - we felt this, although possibly not as attention-grabbing as the colourful covers we see in tabliod-style magazines, would help to reflect the band's name as well as their image. Additionally, due to the fact that we used quite dark lighting and dull imaging in our promotional video we felt this would help to give a sense of synchronisation with all of our products. This would be essential if we were marketing on a larger scale because it would help the audience to familiarise themselves with 'The Black Lights' in terms of branding.

To follow this, we decided to give our magazine the name 'Noir'. We felt this gave the magazine a sense of style, culture, and class to represent the audience we were targeting. From this we eventually drew up some potential logos using photoshop, and using Hedi Slimanes photography started the process of creating our own publication.





Once we decided on the basic outlook for the cover, we went to a photography studio and took photographs of band-member and protogonist of the video, Morgan. He was styled in a Fred Perry polo shirt with a modern-style quiff - again we hoped that this would reflect the Black Lights audience. We tried to make him look as simple as possible, so that although he looked fashionable, he would not intimidate a wider, more commercial market.

The fairly basic theming was continued in the headlines we wrote. We wanted the cover to be bold and clear, but not too busy so as to keep Morgan's face as the primary tool in attracting a readership. We came up with a subheading under the logo of 'musicfashionculture' to help to give an unfamiliar reader an idea of the magazines content, as well as having an article on 'Noir's 10 Winter Essentials'. Underneath this we decided to put in a quote from the designer Giorgio Armani, 'The difference between style and fashion is quality' - we felt this would represent our audience who were willing to spend a lot of their disposable income on fashion as well as giving a slight twist to the slightly formulaic headline of '10 winter essentials'.

For the Black Lights headline we chose 'Paint it Black' followed by 'what turns the Black Lights on'. We chose to put this in a large font which was different to the rest of the text on the page as we wanted this article to be the sole focus to catch a readers eye, as it was the band we were trying to promote. Furthermore, through the reference to the song 'Paint it Black' by The Rolling Stones, we were again using intertextuality to portray the idea of Morgan as a sort of rock&roll persona. Through 'what turns the Black Lights on' we were trying to give a more sexual, provocative twist to the band and the magazine. This was because we felt the 'rock & roll' idea would be more appealing to a male reader, but we wanted to target females as well, so we used this to try and encourage a sense of sex appeal to the band.

The Final Cover

The Final Video

We shot on numerous occasions and locations in order to get the wide variety of shots that we desired. In retrospect, I feel we should've been slightly more organised in scheduling our filming because some of the shots were quite rushed. However, that said, I am really pleased with the final product. Although the editing was a particularly arduous task, it has contributed greatly to my favourite parts of the film, such as the reverse of the characters day at the end, as well as the slow-motion shot of Alex walking down the stairs. I think they help to represent the aspect of this just being one day of many in the cycle of this characters life.

Skins

We have chosen to base some of our music video on the TV programme, 'Skins'. This is because we are aiming at a target audience of teenagers and this programme has a huge fan base of this age group. Additionally, we like the messy narrative style of the programme which relates to the character that we want to portray, considering the 'sex, drugs and rock & roll' culture. As it is so hugely popular amongst our audience, we have decided that an element of intertextuality between the products could help work in our favour in order for our video to catch viewers attention.

Skins storms back with nearly 1million viewers

Storyboard

To get a general feel for the style of the video we wanted to create, we made a mood board of some pictures that we thought reflected the image we wanted to portray. Essentially, this is the beginnings of our storyboard.

Planning

What is our intended audience?
Aims to be played by music channels such as MTV 2, the UK's leading entertainment destination for teenages and young adults. The audience is young and modern, which fits perfectly with our modern day lad lifestyle represented within our music video (excess and taboos).

What we are trying to show within our music video.
Following the indie genre, we want to convey a disheveled man, a rock band, drugs, and romance, all the conventions of indie music videos. Within the video we are trying to portray the life of someone with, essentially, nothing substantial to live for or look forward to. This contrasts with the positive context of the lyricsm giving the video a certain irony. We want to portray this in our music video as it contributes to the idea that teenagers are a wasteful generation, just hanging around in parks and at parties, but at the same time, they're enjoying life.

What else we are doing to support the product.
In order to market and support our music video, we are creating a Facebook group. In doing this we can advertise acting jobs, as well as market our product. We chose Facebook as it is very popular with the audience we are aiming oue music video at, the young modern teenager. We are also making an Album cover, Magazine cover, and Poster to advertise and support it.

Audience Research: Pre - Production

Furthermore,through secondary research we found that the media as a whole plays a huge role in shaping the lives of our youth target audience; we felt that if we were able to create a representation that young people could relate and aspire to, should the video have been produced on a larger scale we could have a greater chance of succeeding in the successfully marketing and selling the song.

(Source: sfnblog.com)