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.

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

Our pace of editing is to the beat. The tempo of the song is about 100 beats a minute. Cutting to the beat is a generic convention of most pop promo. We chose to cross cut between varuious narrative sequences of her breaking free to the roof top she started off so we used a regular pace on the beat of a change when she moved from location to location you see this in the view video of same jeans showing them performing then the lead singer based in airport waiting around seeing him in different location like his room for example our one used the tunnel to use as a mid loop the connection between the two

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

She is a commercial exhibitionist she is also like a TV bard who tells a story as she is much more than just a sex object she plays with her band which has a lot of performance value to our video which shows the organic authentic feel to we see shots of instrumentation with guitars and drums to emphasise this. Although our artist represents the synthetic performer instead of a organic one we have normal performances of the star we see this in the view video of same jeans where the base lots of band playing gigs to show what they are really about and have not forgotten about what’s real to them

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

In our video we have our concept idea of breaking free we support this idea of a prison self seeing her in her bare nothing to suggests she been beating down but she can break free from what she is singing from so that our audience is a youthful one who wants to rebel and wants to be free from it all although this is our concept to relate with the consumer that throughout the video suggesting she is going to break free we see here chop and changes in-between her jailed life and her escape

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

The six convention used in our video were
Direct Address, Use of montage, Use of pace if editing, Special effects, Lighting use of concept and use of performance section we also need to know what our star is what does she portray.

In L.E.S Artiste we see that ruby is a commercial exhibition when we see shots of her body and seeing sexual attractiveness to draw in attention she uses direct address in her first opening shot of her singing this creates a relationship with the audience giving us a chance to relate to our star for the consumer. We see this use in lady gagas video used a lot when she is basing her body to entice her male audience to have a go.

A2 ADVANCED PRODUCTION

RESEARCH AND PLANNING

Technologies:
Internet – Youtube – By A2 levels I was using Youtube much more independently and was able to grab key screen shots to help me analyse my own video for example a shot of lady Gaga giving direct address
Blog – in my A2 year I was using the Blog at a more advanced level I was still posting my progress but commenting on others talking in forums to see whether or not a idea or a viewing was good or not.
Camera:
Digital still – in my A2 year I have used my knowledge of a camera to take multi shots at once and to plan ahead before taking them to see what I can do with them for example editing a shot into Photoshop making sure I had the whole picture in frame.
JVC - in my A2 level I am much more capable of deciding when a shot is good I can set up a tripod put the camera on find the bubble put the tape in and use steady movement around to different shots using a higher camera gave a greater depth of field and a finer focus and gives a better picture quality
Edit:
Final Cut Pro – in my A2 level I had come off knowing how to use final cut pro this was a quicker process from the start and gave me chances to experience new things with the capable time for example at the end of a pop video using reverse effect to show the shot in the other direction.
After Effects – this was the first time I used after effects as I didn’t in my AS level but It was similar to ways of final cut pro but with a twist I leant a lot about logging shots from final cut to after effects to make sure the shots were exact after putting the effects on.
Photoshop: using it in my A2 level I was more primed and had a new idea of putting a digital still onto my poster and using other peoples logos as my own to create a authentic music poster
Scanner I used a scanner to get hard copy’s of call sheets onto the computer to base our shoot day on.
Color Printer
Sound:
Speakers – for our video in A2 it was important to hear the track all times to know hen and where we needed a shot change
Headphones – the headphones increased bite sounds and courtesy to others

CONSTRUCTION

Technologies:
Internet

Camera:
Digital still in my A2 level I was using the camera much on a developing side where we could keep taking shots of our storyboard and then base it on our own video so we have a brief idea of how to do it.
JVC HD10 – we used the JVC instead of the Sony PD170 because we wanted a better focus on the shots we had and we could have a motion used to get link time sequences with our track. The idea of a better leans gave us a better view on the day to tell if we needed another shot or not which was better time used
Edit:
Final Cut Pro – I used final cut pro in my ways differently to my AS year than my A2 year as of I used a reverse effect and used final cut severe to check in and out my project to keep it in a file where I could skip to each time I wanted to edit
After Effects: this was the first time I used after effects and was a exciting time. It was brief instruction to the programmed and was a sluggish version of final cut pro but was based in a Photoshop way mixed with motion where it made me learn the new boundaries I was allowed
Photoshop:
Scanner – the scanner was help for storyboard pictures
Color Printer
Sound:
Speakers - to hear
Headphones -to hear


EVALUATION
Technologies:
Internet – Blog – this in my A2 level gave me a eliminate process to get the best bits fro the Blog that would have been used in my video which are far more accurate great filter for our audience feedback
We used a Survey Monkey was used to get audience feedback which was used to wider our research and ideal to improve our video

AS FOUNDATION PRODUCTION

RESEACRH AND PLANNING
Technologies:
Internet – Youtube in my AS year I was using Youtube to look at different horror clips and give refreshing ideas to what I could put onto my own opening sequence
Blog in my AS year I was using the Blog as a posting site of what I did and uploaded things to show visually

Camera:
Digital still – in my AS year I was still learning all the rules to take a picture for example the rule of thirds to place a person in a box to see where they are in a shot example close up.
Sony PD170’s – in my AS level I was learning how to set up the camera and use everything I needed to learn was base don scratch and using a lower defined camera
Edit:
Final Cut Pro – in my As level I was starting from the beginning using a apple Mac for the first time getting use to the controls of the mouse and using the programmer final cut pro my main achievement was learning the arrow and blade tools
After Effects
Photoshop – in my AS level i started from scratch with Photoshop was learning how to get the feel for it and how to use layers onto layers as well as the magic wand
Scanner – I used a scanner to imprint hard copy images onto Photoshop to create another layer
Color Printer I printed out a poster made from my AS level for the thriller
Sound:
Mic Boom in my AS level the Boom was used to pick up sound and vocal dialogue to create the suspense of the thriller not using it in my A2 level as was not needed
Speakers – speakers were used to get sounds of what we created onto our thriller as well as any dialogue.
Headphones - the headphones increased bite sounds and courtesy to others

CONSTRUCTION


Technologies:
Internet

Camera:
Digital still – so in my as level the construction of taking shots of just learning each one for example a close up and the rule of thirds taking pictures for horror clips of certain locations and places and objects for example a bus.
Sony PD170
Edit:
Final Cut Pro – I was using final cut from scratch so we had problems of knowing when the the scene was right or a object was out of place or if the shot flowed with each other using the timeline was a useful experience
Photoshop:
Used photo Scanner
Printer in a Color Printer
Sound:
Mic Boom – used to pick up steps sounds all around that it was pointing
Speakers to hear
Headphones – using the headphones gave me freedom to isolate off when doing the video


EVALUATION
Technologies:

Internet – Blog – this has been useful in my AS year because of what I had t see from the feedback for our thrillers and use to get conventions from other peoples opinions where we could store different visuals from the internet which could help our argument

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 – created websites, such as YouTube, Facebook, twitter – can make personal info on the net expresses you personality

User generated content
Audience – become producer
Limited institutional control
Lack of traditional censorship

Netocracy

Fear that powerful institutions can shape history and dietate the ideology of a society

Technological determinism

Relies on audience being passive
‘Hypodermic needle’

Digtal technology and creativitiy

Digital technology and creativity: youtube links

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

Michael Wesch is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University

Youtube feedback

Many youtube viewers gave us intresting feedback for the main reason our video was in the public domain. we had viewrs from around the world wacthing and commenting giving us a broad perpestive of a star. we found one word answer were use dby alot of people for example

DRBZ(*: GOOD JOB!
1 month ago

Noodles84: the girl was sexy!
1 month ago

but we found media students gave us great sustaind information

I really liked the concept of the video and how at the end she escapes 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. really good guys! x 2 months ago

this gave us a better impression of who and what to target as our star image seems to attractive the male audince this can be a advantage to th epower she holds for exmaple in the prison cell.

audience feedback survey

We had media students and members of the public fill out our survey on our music video. 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.

The monkey survey really helped us seek out the ins and outs of our video and made us look twice eon it. Now we can say what we might have done differently from what we did to suit our target audience and even the boundaries outside of it.

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.Stuart Hall's "encoding and decoding" theory, the responses to our video were complex as some gave us a preferred reading and responded in a way we wanted them to, whilst others gave us a negotiated reading and interpreted the music video in a completely different way. In general, the audience feedback was very positive. They all said they felt connected with the star image through the close-ups, which was one of our main aims from the start. Moreover, many of the responses showed that the themes of female empowerment had been successful conveyed. "i liked the way she appeared dominant over the camera and looked powerful over the male band". The responses also showed that the special effects were particularly successful in conveying the narrative of the video, the audience understood the journey of our star escaping jail in a visual and exciting way "the tunnel was my favourite bit". However, some of the responses showed that the choice of costume in the prison (gaffe tape) slightly distanced the female audiences as her image was too sexual and overpowering. Furthermore, our audience feedback showed the need to include more shots of the band, many responses show that there was to much on the star and not enough of the whole band in general.



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

New Media Technology Vocabulary

Netocracy: The idea that the web is controlled by no-one. The audience/ consumer is now the producer
Web 2.0: An advancement on the “old world wide web”, a second generation that improves the first
Creativity: The notion that the user can create their own page/ area to reflect their interests and personality
Architecture of participation: The idea that web-pages are built to encourage the audience to get involved in creating their own “spaces”
User-generate content: The idea that the audience controls the content and how it is displayed
Information Rich: The idea that pages and sites are full of images, sounds, connections and uses
Information Cloud: A criticism of web 2.0, the idea that no one is controlling or filtering information, so the user can become lost or confused or misinformed
Granulated Data: The idea that web 2.0 pages provide you with bits of information at a time
Mash-up: The idea that web 2.0 pages provide audience to change content/ text pages and make things personal to them
On demand, convenience, Folksonomy: Web 2.0 is based around usable, searchable and navigatable windows or “tags”

Poster