Directors Commentary - Task 4

Evaluation Comments for Director’s Commentary Evaluation Task 4

My Medicine – Natalya and Laura

Excellent and considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video. There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras (e.g focus pulls) and in the post production editing process – in discussion of continuity. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the propaganda themes of the MV. The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well. Excellent command of terminology and well presented.

Covers sound and technology. Exemplifies Photoshop well and the use of projection equipment and stop motion as an effect. Excellent commentary, well done.

Completed Digi Pak Design

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research of your digipak and poster?

Digi-pak

The construction of our digi-pak began after we had established as a group what song we were going to produce a music video on and the genre/style of the band. Theoretically the design decisions were all based on the genre of the band seeing as different codes and conventions are used for different genres of music.
Firstly, we decided to title our album ‘Burn Out’ which would feature the song ‘My Medicine’ on it. This is when new media technologies came into use during the construction and research stages of our digi-pak.
By using online fan based sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter I was able to compile different design elements that I would be able to incorporate in our own designs. Initially I had designed a simple logo using the band’s initials DR (Damned Reputation) and placed them in a red circle to represent a flashing red record button to link into our concept of the band filming themselves in the music video.
However, I then decided that I wanted to make the artwork more extravagant. My idea was to place rope in the shape of my initial design and set it on fire whilst photographing the stages of the rope slowly burning out (a basic representation of the album title). I uploaded my images onto the program Adobe Bridge in order to view my images in the same file and decide which were best to edit.

I then opened up Adobe Photoshop CS4, which is image manipulation software, to begin editing my images. I decided to choose an image of the rope burning strongly, and then also an image of the rope nearly burnt out (intending to use the brightly burning image for the front cover. Seeing as I shot my images in RAW it meant that more detail and colour was preserved in the image, resulting in me being able to manipulate the colour to a higher standard.
For my front cover I was not satisfied with how the rope did not make a perfect circle and the ‘DR’ was not very clear. In order to fix this I used the liquefy tool on Photoshop which allows you to distort your image by moving it around to however you please. This was a slightly long process because it involved a lot of tweaking and making sure the circle and lettering was as good as it could be, however I felt that it was important.
Before:

Having edited the shape of the logo and manipulated the colour I wanted to add another component. I decided, again by using the liquefy tool, that I would merge the flames of the image in the center of the logo to create the words ‘Burn Out’. I thought that this might have not turned out as well as it did but I am pleased with the outcome.
After:

Another technique I used on Photoshop was used on the back cover. I decided I wanted the floor I photographed on to cover the entire image, for continuity purposes relating to colour, on the album. So I used the clone tool on Photoshop, which allows you to focus on a single part of the image, clone it, and paste it to another part of the image.
Finally for the back cover text I used the magnetic lasso tool to break up parts of the text and move it around to create a ‘shattered’ effect that I thought would fit in with the genre of the band.

Poster

Seeing as I designed the Digi-pak first it was easier to design the poster because, in terms of continuity, I wanted the design features to remain similar. However, the design of a poster is different to that of a CD cover so I decided to go online in order to research similar band’s music posters. Again, websites such as MySpace which bands have designed around their own image offered a lot of design ideas that were helpful in this process.
A lot of the posters I looked at were of the ‘rock’ genre and were mainly designed for promoting their tours. I decided that I would design the poster for the Damned Reputation’s up and coming tour to promote their new album ‘Burn Out’.
Again, using Photoshop I set up the image size to be A3 to achieve similar proportions to official music posters. I then began with the design of the artwork, using similar conventions to my Digi-pak design such as the shattered text and DR logo. I also incorporated an image of the band performing during the music video in order to establish the band’s ‘star image’ to fans.

Task Three: Audience Feedback

Feedback on Evaluation Task Two

An excellent effort to explain how your music promotion works as a campaign.
I really enjoyed have you creatively linked what you created for your band with real media products. You also show excellent knwoledge and understanding of the campaign you have constructed with consistency aimed at your target audeince. You have created a brand image and marketing mix which is excellent and you have sought product placement and considered where the products would be promoted very carefully. Whilst you attempt to address the set question in evaluation could you have developed more academic debate on the star iamge and how this was used?

Producing a Questionnaire to get audience feedback

In order to collect more feedback for our product I decided that it was a good idea to create a questionnaire. Although YouTube was a helpful source for researching comments we could not ask specific questions, and therefore we couldn't receive specific answers that would benefit us more. The advantage of the questionnaire is that we can find out information that we can relate to our own views of the strengths and weaknesses of our product.
Here we have come up with eight different questions to cover different aspects of our product which will enable us to learn more from our audience feedback.

-What was your initial impression of the video?

-Did you understand the narrative? If so, what do you think it was about?

-What did you like about the music video?

-Would you watch the video again?

-What genre do you think it is?

-Did you pick up on the meaning of the projections?

-Would you buy the album if this song was on it?

-What do you think could be improved?

Audience Feedback Evaluation

In order to gain audience feedback on our music video product we gathered information in different ways by using media techonogies. Firstly we went onto Youtube where we had posted our music video. Below the video was a series of comments made by the general public who were expressing their thoughts and opinions on the video. Below I have screen grabbed the comments.
The second audience feedback task was to create a questionnaire. Below I have also posted the questions that we asked. These questions were constructed in order to achieve a range of different opinions regarding different elements of our music video. However, instead of writing down each answer to each question by a number of people we decided to film a small group. We asked the questions on our questionnaire to the group and recorded their reactions to the question.
Overall the group concluded with some positive responses in realtion to our music video, reffering to specific elements of our video and stating what they enjoyed.
Stuart Hall argues that messages are encoded by producers with intentional meaning, for example, the themem of propaganda that we have incorporated into our video has been read by our audience as a form of brainwashing. We attempted to reflect dominant values and beliefs that we felt resided with our youth culture that the music video is aimed at.
Hall argues that encoded messages can offer a preffered reading, but decoders are not obliged to accept messages as sent but can and do resist ideoglogical influence by applying variant or oppositional readings, according to their own expereience and outlook. For example, when examining my audience feedback I have found out that there are both oppositional and variant readings. My audience feedback was positive in the fact that comments made by our audience stated that they liked our editing techniques and the use of projections was enjoyed by all viewers comments.
All in all we benefited by gathering audience feedback because we gained information on what our target audience enjoyed, which will help us in any future productions in regard to what we should and should not incorporate into our work.

Youtube audience feedback

For the task of gathering information for our audience feedback we have to research into the comments made by the public on our music video. One way that we published out music video was on youtube. Here is a print screen of the comments made by the public on our music video.

Task 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Feedback

Excellent evaluation of the concept of conventions as used in your coursework. Can you add any comments from the reading completed in class which supports the conventions you have discussed.

Task 1: In What ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In order to show how our media products develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products I have chosen six stills from our music video, two panels from our digipak cover and one of our promotional posters and explained why and how we used music video codes and conventions.

Promotional Poster

For the band poster we had to create I decided to design mine around promoting our band’s album on a tour. For the development of this poster I decided to use the existing forms and conventions of music marketing, similar to when I designed the album artwork.
When designing a band poster there are a few elements to pay attention to such as; the images used to promote the band- perhaps the band themselves or their band logo (stereotypically one or the other is always used as a form of synergy so that fans will notice custom logos for example and relate them to the band). The colour scheme is also important- normally similar to the colour theme used for the album artwork, along with the font used.
Whilst I was designing my poster I thought that I would include typical codes and conventions that you would find on many rock music posters. For one I placed the bands logo in the center as a symbol of recognition. I also used an image of the band performing which is another convention that is commonly used on rock posters. I kept the text the same as the album artwork for continuity so fans can relate one music marketing tool to the other, and I established the ‘Burn Out’ tour along with dates and locations in order to make the poster look as professional as I could.
Before I began designing my own music poster I looked at a few other legitimate posters so that I could get an idea of what exactly to include. I noticed that most band tour posters all entailed the same codes and conventions, hence why I conformed to that design and produced my own poster in a similar way. For example here is a poster for the band ‘Pendulum’ which has been designed in a similar way to my own.

Digi pack panels

When we were set the task of producing album artwork for our band we had not yet filmed the music video. This meant that we were designing the artwork around the style of the band in order to conform to their star image. We began with agreeing upon an album title ‘Burn Out’ so that we could center the imagery on a theme.
In terms of music marketing I decided to make the images used quite bold so that it would appeal to our target audience who would be predominantly rock music fans. Stereotypically the imagery that is used for the word ‘burn’ would be flames, which is what I used for my artwork, conforming to the conventions of the rock genre.
Each genre of music has its own codes and conventions when it comes to album artwork. For example many pop albums will use bright colours and generally portraits of the artist on the front cover. In contrast, rock albums will tend to veer more towards using darker colours, bold imagery and ‘loud’ type font in order to give an idea of what kind of album it will be to the customer and appeal to their sense of style. The front cover I designed conforms to these forms and conventions of music marketing through artwork, along with the back cover.

For album designs it is not only the imagery that is important but also the font of the text used. A more relaxed genre of music such as soul or acoustic would tend to use a simple sans serif font, which would relate to the star image of the artist.
However, seeing as I was aiming to produce a rock album I decided to use a serif font, which I broke up to create a ‘cracked’ effect. This design of font was supposed to fit in with the whole ‘unstable’ and ‘damaged’ approach our band took towards their songs. Stereotypically rock band albums will use a serif font and be far more creative with the text design that is a convention which I conformed to.

By looking at an album by an established rock band allows you to compare and contrast the codes and conventions that I used when producing my own album art work. This album titled 'City of Vultures' by 'Rise to Remain' has used similar design conventions to mine.
The designer of the album has also decided to centre the artwork around the title of the album, picking out one word 'vultures' and using an image of a vulture on the front cover. The idea of one vulture tearing apart the body of another species of the same kind says a lot about the album. You can guess from the start that the genre of the music will be heavy, perhaps rock or metal. The imagery symbolises that everyone is out for themselves, no matter if your on the same team you will still turn against each other in the game of survival.
The text used on the front cover is custom made for the band which is another convention that I used for my album artwork. By doing this fans will familiarise themselves with that particular logo and link that font to the band every time they see it.

Screen Shots

The band shot is a stereotypical music video convention. Especially in rock genre videos band shots are used to establish each member of the band and what part they play in the group. In comparison to pop videos for example where the main focus in on the singer in order to market their assets the rock genre tends to try and balance out the amount of attention towards the whole band.
In our music video the set up of the band conforms to your typical bad set up which is used in music videos. That would be the drummer towards the back, the bassist and/or guitarist either side in the mid ground and the singer in the foreground. Earlier on in the stages of development towards our music video I looked at a rock band called 'VersaEmerge'. Looking at one of their music videos I saw the same band shots that we used in our music video, which are also used in the majority of rock music videos.

The shot we took through the lense of another camera is not your typical music video convention. Generally in music videos the footage will be taken using the main camera. However, we have chosen to challenge this convention by adding in another camera to our prop list. The reason why we challenged this media convention was due to the plot of our narrative.
Stereotypically a music video that is reliant on performance shots would not choose to incorporate another camera into the footage, however I think in terms of the production of our music video it worked into the narrative well.

The abstract part of our music video entailed us using projections, which displayed images onto our cast as a form of propaganda. This was our most powerful aspect in our music video. What made this element of the video so bold was because it is not commonly used, meaning that we were challenging the stereotypical conventions of music videos.
The images we chose to project had a meaning behind them and related to the lyrics of the song. A series of ‘brainwashing’ images were used on the band, which tied into the narrative we used. This isn’t a general convention that is used in most music videos.

This image showing a mid shot of the drummer was a typical convention used in music videos in order to show the individual members of the band performing either with their instruments or singing. In this case we were conforming to the codes and conventions of music videos because in the majority of rock videos each member of the band always has a good length of camera time in order to demonstrate their talent and also establishing their role in the band.
This was also a way of marketing the individual assets each band member has to offer. By doing this the target audience begin to decide which members of the band they prefer, for example a viewer who plays guitar may begin to idolize the guitarist in the band by watching their performance shots in music videos.

The narrative shot of our guitarist was a part of our music video, which played a role in telling a story or stating a message. Stereotypically, music videos will not always involve narrative but may be heavily reliant on performance or abstract footage. This means that we were challenging the conventions of music videos by including our own unique narrative, which will not be used in other music videos.
However, although the majority of music videos will not choose to include narrative, in the rock genre it is more likely that they will. In that respect you could argue that we were conforming to the codes and conventions of rock music videos.
The narrative in songs is rarely complete and often fragmentary, Steve Archer comments that ‘Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Sometimes the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same time. ‘ In our music video we conformed to Archer’s ideology by directing our band members to be both a part of a narrative and performance shots.

This is another shot where we were using our projections on our cast members. However, we did not solely intend to use this convention for the purpose of telling a narrative. We also used the projections in terms of our abstract shots. Looking at this particular screen grab the viewer relates more to the artistic side of the music video.
Keith Negus explains that the repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo) in music videos is commonly used. In our music video we have supported this statement with the use of our abstract shots of projections, which are used throughout the length of the video.
We purposefully tried to keep the footage of the majority of our video dimly lit with subtle colouring. We did this so that when we introduced the projections the bold patterns of colour created a stylized effect that became a part of the video. In terms of this idea I would say that we challenged the codes and conventions of music videos, which stereotypically use stage lighting in order to create a bright clear frame so that you can pay more attention to detail.