Evaluation Question 1: 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.

Our Avatars

Video still

Avatar still

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.

Mirror shot

Mirror shot in Stan

The split screening/paneling technique used in these two shots rresemble Example’s ‘Love Kickstarts’ promotional music video. 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.

Split screening

Split screening

Split screening in Love Kickstarts

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.

Still from video

Rihanna still

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. Also the silhouette was inspired by iPod's advertising style which we incorporated as a nod to the music industry.

Still from video

True Blood smoke

iPod silhouette

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. 

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

For our music video we ensured that we met the audience’s needs to help create a more professional finish and final outcome to our music video. It is clear that the market research we undertook before production has been mirrored within our work and fulfilled successfully.

Our main target audience was the younger generation mainly between the ages of 17-25; within this group we mainly targeted our audience and fit our production/choice of music to the ‘clubbers/party animals’ that are into the dance/techno music genre.

Because if this we then wanted our music video and promotional digi-pack to again appeal to this audience of the younger generation.

We forward planned before filming and editing to ensure we used the same character throughout our production and ancillary task, we did this in order to maintain a consistent theme throughout our works and to become a recognizable product/production in all areas of our promotions and final products.

Due to this we also used the same font from our poster through to our CD cover art, as again we wanted to reflect our consistency throughout our production and produce a well recognizable product that fits in correctly with the music video ‘I Need Air’.

For the ancillary task 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, however we felt that it was appropriate in order to create a successful, professionally finished product in all areas of our promotional digi-pack

Due to this, when looking at the ancillary tasks and music video, it recognizably connotes the techno genre which would be of benefit to our institutional record company as it would attract audiences unfamiliar to the works of our chosen artist, Magnetic Man.

The imagery used throughout our digi-pack was taken in the process of filming. It continues the occurring theme throughout our products and has been purposely used to ensure it is a recognized image for Magnetic Man’s ‘I Need Air’. We used a very iconic image of the main character as we wanted, not only to follow through with our audience research, but for it to become and maintain a recognizable product which has been inspired clearly by the nation wide phenomenon ‘Avatar’. It can be seen as an indexical representation because instantly, it is something that our audience will recognize not only through our promotional work, but also throughout our final production.

Although we found the combination of the music video and ancillary tasks predominantly successful, we found that the definitions between characters and their importance to the narrative could have been clearer, which proved quite a challenge during the process of editing. We did however use this to our advantage when endeavoring to achieve a complex layered and surreal effect towards the end of the video.

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When marketing a music video it is of great importance to institutions to gain audience feedback for their product. In doing so they can improve on their future productions and become even more successful. Although we are not an institution we used methods they were likely to use in order to analyse the success of our production.

In order to achieve audience feedback we needed to refer back to our market research produced earlier in the project. By specifying who our demographic was, we could use Media 2.0 to focus our publication to websites we knew our audience would visit. We used Youtube.com to post our video, then streamed the text to other websites gain renown of the video. However youtube itself was very useful in gaining statistics for the video, precisely who had been watching it and why they had watched it. In this screengrab you can see the age group who had watched the video and what made them watch it. Most views came from after the video was linked on Twitter.com, making it the most valuable marketing strategy.

Twitter.com appeals to a variety of age groups, however as the screengrab shows mostly the age group 18-24 year old had watched the video, which is the target audience we had predicted and based our construction and planning around.

We also gained feedback from Facebook.com, another social networking site, were we got great posisitve feedback. One user commented on the success of the cinematography and editing, which we also agreed were the most successful micro elements of the text. By gaining this positive critique we felt happy that those componants were the ones we chose to focus on most in during construction.

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and planning, research and evaluation stages?

In order to be successful in the research and planning stages of production we used multiple software techniques to gain understanding of our brief and ultimately meet our audience needs.

The blog for the project formed a backbone for us to demonstrate the new tehcnologies we encompassed. We used it to show the progress we made during the months of planning and constuction.

We created our own content on the blog, which was very useful when referring back to our research in the initial stages of construction. By using as many of the features on Blogger.com as possible we made our work presentation visually interesting. For example, when uploading progression videos onto Youtube.com we could stream the videos back onto our blogs, converging the software tehcnologies and taking advantage of the efficiancy and ease of Media 2.0. The blogging system is open to the public to explore, reaching a widespread audience.

The first posts onto the blog were the presentation of our research. We used an array of software and websites to overview our research including gaining statistics from questionnaires from Zoomerang.com and analysing the data by creatng graphs and pie charts in Excel which told us in simple terms what the audience wanted from the coursework.

The next stage of production was the construction of the music video and ancillary texts. For this part of production, which was by far the most time consuming but exciting stage, we used Final Cut Express and Adobe Photoshop CS5. These programs are incredibly sophistacated and used by professional film makers and graphic designers when creating texts. Although I had previous experience with Photoshop (making the ancillary texts a far simpler process), using Final Cut Express proved a demanding learning curb for both me and my partner. However towards to end of production we were able to achieve professional looking text including advanced techniques such as overlaying shots, split screening and colour effects. By being comfotable with this technology we achieved a far higher quality of work, getting close to the standards of mainstream music videos on the market today. If we had no knowledge of the software in hand, creating the product we had invisioned when storyboarding would have been impossible, and probably infuriating.

The biggest corpus of new media technologies used in the process was in fact in the evaluation stages. We used social networking sites to obtain audience feedback from our piers and more importantly the general public. The target audience for our production was the 17-25 year olds, which appropriately enough was the main audience our video was shown to on facebook. Because of this, the feedback we got for the video was positive (proving we were successful). However in order to gain a more comprehensive overview of audience feedback we posted the final video on Youtube.com, where it is possible to see exactly who watched our video. This was important when assessing whether our predicted target audience was in fact the demographic portrayed by the statistics on youtube. Turns out we were correct when forecasting 17-25 year olds would be more appealed by it.

Posting the video on youtube gave us great statistics, however there was no point in doing so if nobody knew it was there. To combat this, we streamed the video onto Twitter.com, a more general social networking site, which gave us brilliant audience feedback. This was the best way to publicise the video, even more so when users 'retweeted' the post to their own followers, uplscaling the audience.

By taking advantage of new media technologies both online and offline, we were successful in creating a media product which met audiences needs and would potentially be a good publication for institutions.

Analysing our coursework production in relation to Audience

A key area of planning for our coursework production of a promotional music video was understanding our target audience and basing our decisions on their interests. Before choosing which song we were to create the video for, we decided that the audience should be similar to our age group, which would make it easier when assessing what would relate them. After doing audience research by evaluating watch figures on YouTube, the song we agreed on was ‘I Need Air’ by Magnetic Man, a tune popularised in clubs and other party venues; places in which we would find our target audience. The genre of the piece and most of his other music is classed as electronic dubstep, music which is famed for strong bassline remixing rather than individual singers or lyrical relevance. This genre has a very young audience, exactly what we were looking for.

In order to decipher a narrative in the song we analysed the lyrics. It was clear the song was about a relationship with problems, an issue almost any 16-25 year old could relate to. However we did not ignore the fact that the piece is primarily a club dance song and so did not want the negative nature of the narrative to affect the overall upbeat tempo of the song. We did this by including close up shots of lips (inspired by Rihanna’s ‘Rude Boy’ music video) and shots of dancing girls; a convention of this genre of music. The video is split between three characters; two actors who represent the girl in the relationship and one for the man in the relationship (who we see little of). This makes the video itself more relatable to a female audience as the majority of the video is filmed and sang from the girl’s point of view.

The cinematography, mise-en-scene and editing reflect the modern and fast paced tempo of the song. The lighting we used in most of the shots is low key, reflecting the way modern clubs are lit. We limited the colour palette in the clips showing the narrative, and then used vivid hues in the rest. The blue duo-tonal shots seen in the sequence mimic the lyrics which repeatedly use the word electric. Also our inspiration came from the billion dollar film Avatar which achieved world-wide audiences. The success and instantly recognisable looks of the blue characters in Avatar would make the audience associate the music video with the high grossing feature film because of the blue, raising its status. Making most of the footage lip synchronised to the lyrics encourages the audience to copy the movement of the actors, thus making them sing along. This technique would familiarise them with the song and boost popularity and inevitably singles sales.

The editing of the video is highly stylised and would appeal to a younger market for the bright colours and quick cut shots. Because the bassline of the piece is very fast and prominent in the song, we endeavoured to cut each shot at the end of each line in the lyrics. The rapid movement of the video means the chances of the audience losing concentration while watching the music video would be eliminated.

The company we have chosen to distribute the single is one Magnetic Man is already represented by; Columbia Records owned by Sony Music Entertainment. This institution is renowned for signing up-and-coming acts, evolving the music industry and keeping up with audience expectations of genre development. The music video would be appropriate to be shown on music channels such as MTV at night time, when the highest ratings are to be had.

Ancillary Task - Advertisement

Ancillary Task - Front Cover

Ancillary Task - Back Cover

Ancillary Task- CD Design