Evaluaion Q4

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

Created by Aiden Scott on a group members account.

Evaluation Q3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In the beginning we collected audience feedback, but it wasn't very much help due to the fact that we had a lot of blank spaces. This meant that many of the feedback forms had things like, not enough footage and a lot of blank spaces. Because of this they were not very constructive towards the idea and construction of the music video. However, when we did start to make more of the music video, we found that the more feedback we got the better the video would become, this was because it made the possibilities more extensive and made a clearer image of what we had to do.

The most recent feedback gave us a external insight into our project, letting us know that what we had done was, in fact, good enough. Many small things which may not have shown up to us, other people saw and pointed out, giving us the option to change it, which we did. We have realised that it is important to receive other people’s perspective, making sure that everything is alright. As we progressed we received less negative feedback and realised we were doing something right, and with this, we were able to delegate our time and management time effectively enough, so we could complete the filming sand the editing in time.

At some point within the making of our music video we wanted to give up. This is due to many people dropping out on us when we needed them, and from the time that we had completed around 30 seconds, the rest of the class had nearly finished. We shortly received a moral boost when people began to say that it was improving on the feedback sheets.

To conclude i believe that the audience feedback sheets are very useful and we have learned a great deal from them. Having the access to people or an audience to judge our work, gave us the opportunity to make it better based on judgement. However, the only down side to the feedback sheets were that a few select people did not understand the plot to a full extent, but the majority did. This left us with two options, fix it to please everyone, but rush it, or keep it the way it is and make sure it is the best we could make it. We chose to leave it the way it was, since it was only about four people who did not understand it out of the entire class.

Evaluation Q2

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

Evaluation Q1

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

For the entire course of making the music video, I worked within the group of myself and Rosie to form Tear Down. We Have made the video according to the genre specifics of post-grunge. This happens to be because we very much enjoy that genre of music and therefore decided to make one of the songs we listen to the main focus of our music video. To find out what the codes and conventions of the specific genre of Post-Grunge were, we decided to investigate into bands such as Seether Stained and Hooberstank. With the elements of all of these bands and some deeper music such as Disturbed we came up with the idea of Tear down and the music video. We decided to go along the lines of a suicide awareness video, which can be perceived as "sketchy" or a bit too "dark" but it was with good intentions.

The typical connotations of Post-Grunge is depression and darkness. For inspiration we looked at the past stories for not only bands but for individuals, making the process of making the music video and ideas a lot easier. In many cases the bands members had suffered some sort of tragedy making the lyrics and music in general based not hat individual. This adds the representation and connotation of sadness and darkness win the video and song, this is because it is representing the love of a lost one. By doing this and making the song based on that individual, it makes it easier for the lyrics to develop meaning an to make the song have a more emotional impact on not only the listener but for the singer, where in many cases has broken down on stage. The lead singer of Seether, Sean Morgan has had the tragedy of his Brother committing suicide and devoted not only his new album but to songs directly aimed at him. This gives the strong connotation of death, tragedy and depression in Post- Grunge.
  However, when it came to making Tear Down, we tried to make the band as positive to the thoughts and feelings of depression. so when w thought of the concept of Tear Down we decided to make sure that their main goal was to make sure that they not only turned heads away from depression and suicide but to also help people who are suffering from it, By doing this the pain was to make sure that people know that suicide isn't always he answer and make sure that they know that the do have people to support them. This was represented in our video by showing the lead singers girlfriend committing suicide and then his friend coming to comfort him, so he doesn't take that way out as well.

The clothing  often represented within the genre is perceived as dark and has the convention of "Grungy". The style of grunge and the music was brought around before the introduction of Post-Grunge and Post-Grunge is a derivative of Grunge. Kurt Cobain who was the lead singer of Nirvana, brought in the new styling of Grunge. Grunge is often represented by the mannerisms of the person, i.e. being depressed and down, and are often perceived  as wearing checkered shirts, black jeans, piercings and often boots of some kind. This is what we decided to follow for our band but decided to mix it up due to the conventions of our band and the examples they set. We wanted to be conventional but unconventional at the same time, to do this we decided to follow some of the conventional outlooks, using some checkered shirts and boots but during the band performance we had the majority of black clothing. This means that we followed the guidelines of the genre but added a different twist, so we could become an individual stylistic.

I do believe that we have challenged all of the conventions of not only a general music videos and typically of the genre. I believed that the use of clothing  compared to the typical clothing is a clear difference in our bands difference, and the ending to our music video is also different to what will usually be expected.

Problems we have encountered

Problems and resolution

Throughout the course of the year me and my group member Rosie found it vey hard to get started and started off very slowley with the production aspect of our video. We spent a lot of time on our digi-paks making sure that they werte to the best standard they could be. By doing so we fell a little behind with the filming and editing.

When we did start to film we encountered a problem where our lead singer decided he did not want to help us in our project, this meant that we had to find someone else. After considering who would be the best to we voted on making Terry (a felolow A2 student) to be our lead singer.We also decided for the original guitarist to remain the smae , but voted on our teacher becoming the new drummer instead of myself. This is because we viewed him as having a better rymthm and looking better when playing the drums to the song. Overall this made for a better finished product for the band. By making these changes we managed to get the work done in time and to a reasonable standard. When reading throught eh feedback sheet everybody seemed to agree that it was a vast improvement from before, and many of them said it looked very good as a finished peice.

Poster Analysis:Stone Sour

Stone Sours Posters:

Both of these poster advertise the release of their new album which I have annotated the digi-pak for. The album is simple yet gets the genre across very easily, you may not be able to pin point the exact genre but you can clearly tell it is not pop, but something much darker. This is due to the dark contrast and the images of a man on fire running and another of a man drowning. These are very dark and meaningful images and have been placed there to show suffering and darkness. Which is also shown with the flames appearing out the back of the Digi-Pak image
showing that it is dark and possibly having that evil connotation since flames are often a connotation of hell or evil.

The different band names allow everyone who look at the poster know bands similar to the ones bing advertised.The names of the other bands give a clear representation of the type of music which is being advertised, names such as Pop Evil and Stolen Babies does not show the typical connotation of pop, bu instead shoes something of a darker genre.

Final Draft

This is the final draft of my music video. For ther final cut we have made a few changes and moved and decoloured more images to fit in with the style of our genre. We also had to make sure that all of the peices were in time and all synced together, without any mistakes. By doing this it allowed us to get a much better draft than the original.

Final feedback

Member Change

Changing the band members:

We have had to change the members of the band due to the lead singer not being able to make all of the deadlines for the shooting arrangements. This means that we had to change the band and add someone else into the band to cover for the lead singer. This also meant that we have had to change our already shot pieces of work, and we have to reshoot.

We have a couple of options, one of the options is to have our friend Terry be the guitarist of the band and delete all of our already shot guitar pieces with our original guitarist,Max, or we have the option to replace the lead singer with me or Terry, making the guitar shots completely acceptable to keep.We have decided to use Terry as the lead singer 

Guitar:Max

Lead Singer:Terry

Drums:Shaun

Cross Media Case Study

Cross Media Case Study:

For the cross media case study I am going to look at Korn. This is because all of his videos and artwork is meaningful and unique. Korn have a very independent look to their albums and website, looking very sinister and edgy.


WEBSITE

this is their official website. Instantly the band are the large key image. this is because it feeds the listeners needs. They go on the official website to find original pictures and information on the band, such as tour dates, news etc, and they see it immediately and can access it easily, creating a better bond between the band and audience. the colour scheme of the website creates an edgy sinister look. this is important that this happens so people know exactly what they are abuot and the music they make.

 POSTERS

 This is another form of media in which Korn advertise themselves, which is posters.  posters ar e a god way of advertising because you can make them as big as you want to have the best result. I think the way that Korn has created their poster is different in comparison to their website, which has a slightly more professional look to it because its smoother and, yes its still cartoony, but it had an older feel to it. I think that the colours, even though bright, still present the band for the genre which they are. The band themselves are not on the poster meaning they are selling their music rather than their image which pop artists tend not to do. I think that the posters links to the albums more than the albums

ALBUMS

These are some of Korns albums. The colours show a clear indication of the genre but dont really link with any of the forms of advertisment Korn have. The albums dont have anything in common with eachother apart from the bands name. This in comparison to the website is a very traditional way of using media of advertising and presenting a band.





                                                                     SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook, twitter and youtube are very good media  platforms to advertise Korn as a band because they are well known and used everyday by people all over the world. The webpages being do known means that they can be accessed easily and quickly whenever they want meaning that it feeds the audiences demand. I think these are the best ways to show korn because it means that they will never loose views because the websites are so known. i think its good that all the web pages link in with eachother because it looks professional and is easier for the audience to relate an individual image to the band and build a profile off what they learn from all the various web pages and link them together.  

Overall Korn uses a multi-media platform which gives them the ability to reach all the demands of their audiences, for example, simple posters with tour dates for the older generation who are not familiar with teh internet, and for the younger generation, webpages what they can look at on mobile devices and find information about the band whenever they want. 

Steady Cam Testing

Steady cam shooting

We have tested out the steady cam after a few unsuccessful shots. This resulted in a very shaking video and meant we may have to go back and reshoot some. We were instructed to try the steady cam and here are the successful videos from the test.

More Locations

More locations

These are some new locations where we are going to shoot our video. Having multiple location will make the video look more interesting and more dynamic. We have chosen the room because it is dark controlled lighting and a very large open space where we could set up the entire drum kit and other things.

This is a room in the drama studio which we are going to use to film our music video. The room will not have the chair in it when we dilm, but it will have all of the necessary pieces of equipment we need to dil, including all of the band members and all of the instruments. The drums will be placed at the very back in the centre and the guitar will be placed either to the right or to the left whilst the lead dinger moves around on stage.

The second is simply a bench which will be used to show the lead singer sitting on it. We will have him looking very angry, depressed and unaware of anything happening around him. The bench will be situated on its own so we can show the isolation which is connoted through his actions.

First Draft

The Gift First Draft





This is the first draft of my music video. There needs to be many changes to the video, including desaturation the video, changing colours of clips, syncing and reshooting. We will need to do this before we can submit it as a final piece. We have shown it to the class and they have given us feedback on what we have to do.

Filming of Max

Filming of Max

Today we decided to do a couple pf shots of Max oplaying his guitar.With all of the hassle of our lead singer not showing up, we have decided to go ahead and record Max's shots anyway. 

These are the shots from today.

Plan for Shooting

Plan for Shooting

We have completed the first couple of shots however the only problem which we encountered was the majority of the class said that the shots were amateurish and needed to be re-taken. This means we need to continue shooting for our music video as well as re-thinking our first couple of shots and producing the rest of the music video. 

We will need to do the beginning shots again out of principle and this is because we need the first shots to be taken seriously and not look cheap or amateurish, these are the most important shots and are the main ones, which need to be corrected.  

The culture Industry- Adorno and Horkheimer

Adorno and Horkheimer both said that the culture industry is similar and akin to the assembly line of a manufacturing company. This is because the theory is similar to the assembly line of a factory, since the artist will produce new things continuously and will always be" in trend". The producers believe the more goods, songs etc they put out the better. This is because they will earn more money at a quicker rate. The reasoning behind this is that all of the artists produce new things, but none of them are unique. This means if anything become popular or unpopular, the band or artist will change to still become popular. However, the idea of being unique and featuring the culture industry, means that things will change, this is because things are believed to be in a standard state, which are then changed and become unusual and then are turned into something new and "unique" which means that in time, the item that was unique will then become the "norm".

The highbrow people believe that many things are alike nowadays and that nothing is unique. For example the x-fact and the voice are great examples, since everything has been heard before nothing is unique or original. This means that both of these shows are in fact low-brow and the highbrow people believed that nothing is original.

The theory according to the Google page:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry 

The essay is concerned with the production of cultural content in capitalist societies. It critiques the supply-driven nature of cultural economies as well as the apparently inferior products of the system.^[1] Horkheimer and Adorno argue that mass-produced entertainment aims, by its very nature, to appeal to vast audiences and therefore both the intellectual stimulation of high art and the basic release of low art.^[2] The essay does not suggest that all products of this system are inherently inferior, simply that they have replaced other forms of entertainment without properly fulfilling the important roles played by the now defunct sources of culture.^[3]

Horkheimer and Adorno make consistent comparisons between Fascist Germany and the American film industry. They highlight the presence of mass-produced culture, created and disseminated by exclusive institutions and consumed by a passive, homogenised audience in both systems.^[4] This illustrates the logic of domination in post-enlightenment modern society, by monopoly capitalism or the nation state.^[5]Horkheimer and Adorno draw attention to the problems associated with a system that ‘integrates its consumers from above', arguing that in attempting to realise enlightenment values of reason and order, the holistic power of the individual is undermined.^[6]

Music Video Influences

Music Video Influences:








These are two vuideos that really helped me personally when coing up with the idea and looking back on them for reference when creating the music video. The main reason for this is because both of them have similar views in the video and similar audience, both of them share the thought of people feeling as if they are on their own and have lost a very big part of their life.

So what actually is Post Grunge?

Post-Grunge

A style of alternative rock that evolved from grunge in the mid-90's. Post-grunge employs the distorted guitar, vocal dynamics, and lyrical tone of traditional grunge music, albeit in a more radio-friendly manner.
Post-grunge can be plain hard rock or edgy alt-metal. A few post-grunge bands, like Chevelle, Breaking Benjamin, and Godsmack cross over into Nu-metal.

Types of Post-Grunge:
Traditional Post-Grunge:
Bush
Candlebox
Creed
Foo Fighters
Matchbox Twenty
Silverchair
Nickleback

Heavy Post-Grunge:
Three Days Grace
Breaking Benjamin
Seehter
Chevelle
Staind
Trapt
Puddle of Mudd
Godsmack
Cold
3 Doors Down


From: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Post-grunge


Grunge
I remember way back in the early 90s in fact in 1990. the uprising of bands like Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, and in the underground post-punk, gothic, alternative club scene where everyone would get together and talk about these bands because we didn't have the internet back then. everyone I knew called them Alternative rock or Alternative metal. these bands were played in the club scene like a whole year before Nirvana came into the picture. once Nirvana came along with overnight success with Nevermind like so many other different elements in these bands there just had to be a name for this sub-genre. the term "Grunge" came out of Seattle Washington to categorize this new wave of bands coming out of the Seattle area.

here on the west coast states California, Arizona, New Mexico etc, everyone I knew just called these bands Alternative rock or metal. then just over time the term "Grunge" dominated this wave of bands. the same thing can be applied to the term "Screamo" in my opinion.

From: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110710163710AAMuH0p

First Draft Of Poster

Poster Number One

This is the first draft of my Tear Down poster. It has not been shown to the rest of the class yet but it is the basic draft. It has no text or information as of yet but they are the next thing which I going to be added.

I need to add all of the information as to when the album is going to be released and the name of the album. These are the key pieces of information, which needs to be added, and I still need to ask for others opinions on the poster cover. By getting the opinions of others it means that I can make adjustments to make it appear more appealing

  

I like the poster but the only thing I am unsure on is the size of the man sitting down and the image behind the tree. This is because I feel the image behind the tree is to big and feels too over powering compared to the rest of the image. The man, I feel is too big, I feel that if i scale him down he is going to be un-noticeable, but making him any bigger or keeping him the same size will look strange as well. I plan on taking the original image and making it bigger, but moving the old background will hopefully make the tree make an appearance in a different way. 

All together I am pleased with the way in which the poster has moved on from its original stages and planning, but I am still not happy with the final piece and I personally feel that it could use more work in order to make it look the best that it can look.