TASK 4: DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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

To understand the role of new media technologies in the construction and marketing and distribution of artists in the music industry I complete various research tasks which helped me evaluate their usefulness in my work this year.

I looked at several lectures on YouTube by Michael Wesch is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University:

The Machine is (changing) Us:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch#p/u/0/09gR6VPVrpw

An anthropological introduction to YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU


I also watched the first episode of Virtual Revolution played on BB2 in February 2010. The film introduced me to the orgins of the internet and suggests that although initially the internet was based on the ideology of freedom (Netocracy) and can be argued to be a an environment in which audiences can be producers of their own media and experience a creative licence free of institutional conventions, it is now being over taken by media institutions using viral marketing campaigns to sell products and place their own media products.





Below are some bullet points which helped our group collect their ideas for a commentary to answer the question of Evaluation Task 4:

RESEARCH AND PLANNING

Internet/youtube/

Searching the web searching for inspiration, music video ideas, successful advertising campaigns, album art, band websites, myspace etc.

• Explored anti-institutional material (amateur,independent, low-budget)
• User Generated Content and Mash Ups provided much stimuli. Much of the material disgarded institutional and industrial blueprints and produced some interesting juxtapositions of image, sound and text. This gave us much creative inspiration.
• The on-demand aspect of youtube made group brainstorming sessions work well and we churned over many ideas.
• Veiweing so much material was sometimes overwhelming and the Information Cloud was obvious. However we gained a good grasp of the polysemic nature of the bropad genre of the pop promo and were able to choose and reject specific codes and conventions.

Blog

• Example of free software application made possible by HTML code.
  Example of Netocracy but empowering audiences with the publishing and promotional capabilities of dominant media institutions.
  Also creatively very useful to organise images and ideas to make discerning choices (the Blog acts as a creative filter)
• We could use the blog as an online diary in which we would record and date our pre-production, construction tasks as well as evaluation our progress personally as well as part of our group. It was a good organisational tool for planning and storyboarding, collecting props and set design ideas aas well as setting the shooting shedule and running order for filming.

Photoshop

• Was used extensively to create the artwork for the Digipack and magazine poster. Using photoshop hightened our awarness of the generic iconography used to communicate a star image, a particular music genre and signal the expectations that the band performed live and were Organic (Kieth Negus, Producing Pop.) Having to constuct these in such a hands on way really help us think what the connotations were and how they would communicate our brand to the target audience.
• We used it to create the the city skyline from a collection of rooftop images and then imported the image into after effects in Final Cut Pro in Post-production.

CONSTRUCTION

Camera:
Used the digital camera to gather images that would inspire and gather pre-production ideas

• JVC: giving our pop video a finer resolution and a greater depth of field. Gives the product a high quality and professional look.
  Used the camera in a more creative way; explored a variety of shots and movements we had not done last year. Each of our storyboarded shots had a greater purpose to convey the star image of our band.
• we used a PD 170 to film our paperstoryboard and create an animatic which we transfered onto a timeline in Fianl Cut Pro. This gave us greater insight into the pace of editing and effectiveness of shot movement and shot size. It also helped us revue certain aspects of the overal narrative image we wanted to edit together.

POST-PRODUCTION

Final Cut Pro
As we had used Final Cut Pro last year we were able to make our own creative decisions on cuts and timings.

• Used Marker Points whilst editing to help with rhythm and pace
• We had graeter confidence to lip-synch our rushes to the track from the studio playback.
• We used more rushes bins to catagorise not just shot types but also the different scenes in our narrative concept and performance clips.

After Effects

• Use of blue screen and advanced superimpose techniques to create rooftop cityskyline.
• Used masking techniques to sharpen the bleed of focus around the edges of cast members and props.
• layering techniques and photoshop were used to create the depth of the tunnel and place the actress convincingly in it.
• Colouring and light balancing was added to the final cut to balance up various rendered sequences.

Creativity, according to a Department for Education and Enterprise report on skills in the film industry called “A Brighter Future” is made up of four elements: imagination, purpose, originality and value. Imagination is when you think of something inventive, purpose is that your thought fits the purpose, the situation you are facing and looking to meet. Value is that your idea meets the need and is not just an idea that is not relevant. While originality means that it is very different and something that has not been seen or heard of before by you.

Directors Commentary Script

Directors Commentary Script


• 0.01
In our opening shot we have straight away used new media technologies played a crucial role in the production of our music video.

• Now taking the opening sequence of our star on the roof top for example;

we super imposed an image of a new york city skyscraper on the blue screen. We then imported the image onto after effects and duplicated it to our sequence on to final cut pro. This new technology allowed us to give our music video a new location, which gives our video more variety in its mise-en-scene and helps convey the story of our video.

• 0.25
We used the internet to research a variety of prison locations to give our music video a sense of realism. We ‘googled’ Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, USA. From this cell, we looked at how the light green colours and rusty, dirty surroundings could be used in our own cell to give our star image a dirty and grounded attitude.

• In the zoom out to reveal the band we had to rescale the image in after effects to make sure it made it look authentic we used it by setting a key frame of her close up and then revealing a another key frame with the full wide image.
Continuing with our prison set idea we took inspiration from other music videos around which we researched on youtube. The vast amount
Of user generated content
Meant that there was a lot of visual stimiuli to draw from. We looked at convential music videos that have been or are in the popular charts today.

The Lady GaGa video ‘Telephone’ for example, gave us inspiration for our lead female singer to be enclosed in a prison cell, as we thought the video conveyed
Lady GaGa to be a woman who powerful, strong and wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believes in. This is an example of our use of Star image, explored by Richard Dyer. This research gave us the knowledge to create an original and interesting set that still would appeal to the target demographic and highlight our star images female empowerment.


• example we looked at Rihanna’s video disturbia for inspiration on the prison bars uses her sexual desire to get what she wants is suggested by her being trapped in a cell.

• Tunnel:
1.34 The new location of the tunnel- took influence for the Pussy Cat Dolls and Destiny’s Child. We wanted the tunnel to create an interesting image but also highlight our star’s strength and power to escape.

• We created the tunnel by duplicating our original footage to fill the tunnel as if it was spiralling down so that she was in the bottom of it.

• We used a layering technique to size up and down the tunnels degrees to make the depth cues larger than the actual tunnel itself.

• In the production process, we used the internet to create blogs, using them as creative filters. They allowed our group to share ideas and creative stimuli that would appeal to the demographic we researched. We uploaded our storyboard to receive early feedback from our fellow group members, se we could make collective decisions. This meant while editing our footage, we were easily able to refer back to the storyboards and the comments we have made on it.

• Using the new techniques on Final cut pro in the editing process we were able to use a series of jump cuts between tunnel and rooftop to give a sense of urgency to the narrative as she is about to escape. This also resulted in a more visually exciting video from an audiences perspective.

• New media technology gave us the freedom to try out new techniques and ideas to create a conventional video to support our target audience of 15 – 19 thank you for watching

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

Understanding Audience And Target Audiences[1]

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We asked media students, friends and members of the public who matched our target audience demographic to take part in a Focus Group and complete our survey. our survey asked questions related to the promo, the Digipack artwork and a promotional poster for a magazine. We constructed a set of questions to establish our sample group and establish their knowledge of music and bands and their other viewing and media consumption habits. We used questions that would give our audience an option to choose from for example what music genre you prefer. This makes it clearer for us which genre is most like for which audience with our own star. We saw that media students gave more of sustained answer as the public were very one word answered. We saw common interests in the positive and negative that the tunnels special effects were a great convention to use for the effect of a deeper tunnel but the gaffe tape made her look too sexual than needed in a prison.

A Web 2.0 application, a website called, Survey Monkey really helped us in the feedback process.

We found that many people understood the narrative, and what it was portraying this as a dancer as someone who would escape the name of our band uses this and reinforces the idea of indepdent woman.

Here are a few examples of them:



http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C57JHG3 - part 1





http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JKJLRZX - part 2







http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JK6LZQT - part 3








Youtube Feedback:

The feedback left in comments on youtube was not as constructive or as detailed as the info we got from our focus group. Although youtube is an effective platform for young audience/producers to promote and distribute their work, the freedom to participate and the masses of user generated content does not necessarily attract an informed response as many people contributing to youtube are not technically trained or aware of technical conventions and decisions or the function and effect they are designed for.While our promo and much of the content on youtube might attract a target audience interested in pop music the comment spaces are not really a forum for debate nor does it attract many media analysts!...


DRBZ(*: GOOD JOB!
1 month ago

Noodles84: the girl was sexy!
1 month ago

Comments from the focus group discussion gave more sustaind information:

I really liked the concept of the video and the theme of a a confident strong youngwoman and how at the end she escapes alone by helicopter. It was really clever how you used the lights to create the effect of a helicopter hovering over the roof top. i also really like the shots looking through the jail bars, especially the close ups with the bars blurred. She's giving direct address to the audience which gives us a connection with her.

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

Task 2

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INSIDE ARTWORK FOR DIGIPACK:

Evaluation Task 1: In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts -Montage

We used the convection of use of montage with narrative editing chopping up her importance of her seeing her in the prison then watching her getting onto the ladder but a few times to emphases the importance of her escape which tells us a story we see shots of different body on the building to create a connection with her consumer and we also use montage with the band to create a hiding process until we reveal them

Evaluation Task 1: In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts - Special Effects

In each location special effects were used in after effects to create the real feel of a skyline performing on a rooftop where we see her singing for her life where we see a in the tunnel a tunnel that is quite deep to have plastered several layers to create it is much bigger than it really is. Wee see this in toxic by Britney spears seeing the Eiffel tower and a big skyline behind her. We see that they have a lot of budget to create the skyline so that they seem to be important the money tells the people to view and give attention to the and of there well being.
In electronic shaman videos they are about the track instead of the representation of seeing the artist so they won’t normally appear in there own videos so they can take the music to another dimension the idea of drawing that audience that the music can take you there. Here we see a trippy image with the chemical brother in the salmon dance explains that they use fish instead of themselves with a blow fish beat boxing telling us anything is possible we see the horse fish spiralling into another dimension emphases that it is all about the music and not the performer.