Thursday, 21 January 2010
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Adressing the target audience
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
What did you learn from your audience feedback?
Reviewing our audience feedback was very useful as it enabled us to establish what the audience thought worked well and what they thought could be improved or made clearer. It gave us an outside perspective which proved very useful.
A reoccurring aspect of the video that the audience picked up on was the use of performance shots. It wasn’t so much the shots themselves that was questioned but more the actions of the girl playing the artist. A common aspect of this picked up on was the fact that the girl playing the artist could have been more enthusiastic in her movements and lip syncing, perhaps getting more emotive with her actions as the song progressed.
As well as this it was stated that the role of the ‘performer’ was not understood by all, one audience member did not understand whether she was intended to represent the artist, which she was, or whether she was acting as a second character in the narrative, this coincides with the previous point about perhaps encouraging more enthusiasm from the actor.
The masks were intentionally the most ambiguous aspect of our video and so we were slightly concerned that the audience would not fully understand their purpose, yet this was not the case. The audience members asked found the use of masks very original and appreciated their meaning and the animalistic imagery fully, this being that they represent the fantasy in the girls head and that the mask each character wears represents their personality or their role in the girl’s life. It was found that the masks made the video stand out and conformed to the conventions of the indie genre.
The silent two shots of the video that were intended as an introduction were queried at one point by a member of the audience who stated they were unsure of what it signified or meant. If these two shots were not understood by the audience, an improvement may be to cut them completely so as to have the entire video make sense rather than the majority.
A positive comment from the audience was that they found our video to be balanced throughout in terms of fantasy verses reality and narrative verses performance.
The narrative itself was praised as it made sense and happened over the short time of one day and so was easier to keep with and was complimented greatly by the reoccurring motifs such as the masks. The audience found the narrative very clear and understandable as it was spaced out and paced well, although the animals coming together at the end was questioned by the minority.
The use of the “I Wish” sign was found to be very effective in reinforcing the meaning of the song, more so than merely having an actor lip sync the words. This was further appreciated as the video splits into four screens with the “I Wish” sign in each screen, again emphasising the meaning of the words and their importance to the song.
A slightly negative aspect we found out was that the narrative was thought by some to have outweighed the performance, giving our video the feel of a short story rather than a music video. However it was suggested that if slightly more performance was put into the production it would feel more like a music video. This was already a concern of our but to have it confirmed by the audience helped us realise what we needed to change according to those consuming the product rather than the group creating it
New Media Technologies
Monday, 11 January 2010
Narrative Theory - How concentions are followed or challenged
The narrative of the product takes form as a whole narrative rather than an enigma or section. As the video progresses so does the narrative as it follows the main character of a girl who suffers a terrible day due to a sequence of frustrating events. The narrative is made whole by the use of a twist at the end, conforming to the conventions of a resolved ending, in this case being that the entire narrative is a day dream and not reality as it is portrayed to be.
The structure of the plot is again conventional in some ways yet does not conform in others. The narrative is not linear, but made up of three layers: a primary layer of the conventional narrative, the second taking form in flashbacks being made clear through the use of black and white, and a third layer signified with masks. the layers are completely separate and yet are spliced into and integrated with each other. This integration is clearly identified by the changing and contrasting locations used. For example, the conventional narrative layer that follows the girl from her home, an urban, concrete city setting, is interrupted with jump cuts to the forest scenes. These ever-changing and contrasting locations echo the change and contrast between how the narrative begins and how it progresses, showing a working narrative. This concept is illustrated through the jump cuts to the flashbacks from the cafe of the boyfriend cheating. The way in which the audience is taken from the cafe to the flashbacks is sudden. It so fragments the narrative while at the same time providing information that informs it. Below are three examples, each representing a layer in the music video, urban, flashbacks and rural.



Due to the use of layers to fragment the plot or narrative our video can be seen to embody post modernist characteristics, and its lack of linear narrative allows it to be considered a post modernist production. Baudrillard's post modernist theory of simulara can be seen both conformed to and challenged in our video. For example, despite the fact that the situations presented to the audience are fairly mundane and easily relatable in real society, it is still merely a representation and not reality. However, the second part of our video is not set in reality but in a day dream and so we are not trying to represent reality, contradicting Baudrillard's theory entirely.
Intertextuality is another post modernist technique used, that can seen clearly throughout all three tasks, being the music video, the digipak and the magazine advert. For example, a prominent motif we carried through each task was that of the rural and urban setting. This is seen to be a dominant theme in the music video as we see the girl progress from the urband street areas, such as the cafe and the house she is evicted from, to the more rural areas such as the forest where she is approached by the masked characters. The digipak continues this motif but does invert the chronology of the transition from urban to rural, seeing the four panel digipak begin in the forest on the front panel, and slowly morph into a brick wall representing the urban setting on the back cover. This change in chronology echos the nature of the indie genre, never quite knowing where it is and allowing the childlike mind set of 'anything can happen'. Finally the urban/rural collision is reinforced in the magazine advert which sees the artist pictured against a brick wall, however there are three branches sweeping in from the sides of the frame. This sees rural still trying to penetrate the urban society it has been shut out from, and also echos the concept of fantasy and reality as the rural areas are intended to represent fantasy and the brick wall is intended to represent the gritty, mundane aspects of life. By the vines sweeping across the brickwork it communicates the idea of fantasy seemingly penetrating reality, echoing that seen in the video production.


Our group has embraced aspects of many theorues and yet refuted others. This partial compliance yet remained lack of conformity shows us still being faithful to the genre of indie as its principals are to literally be 'individual', hence the name 'independent rock'.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Challenging forms and conventions

The artist and the shots which 'promote' her were a key aspect of our music video, in that the ultimate purpose of a music video is to promote an artist and the single it is presenting , and so we tried to make her shots in the video have certain characteristics or a motif that the viewer would associate with her directly, we found this motif to be that she is filmed in a woodland area. In every shot she appears in she is immersed in or surrounded by trees, leaves and sky and even though these are all aspects that appear in some other shots in the video, ultimately the viewer relates the area of the forest with the artist. This association ensures a sense of memorability to the artist, providing a connection that the audience will not forget and ensuring publicity for the artist. Indie videos often have a separate motif for the artist, portraying them in different backgrounds or in different clothing to others, an example being Patrick Wolf's video for "Magic Position" in which he wears a bright red/ orange shirt at the beginning of the video and even though the colours of the video are bright he begins in a grey room and so his shirt immediately sets him out as the artist and shows his significance to both the track and video. We emulated this by getting the girl acting the role of the artist to wear a checkered shirt to contrast her surroundings, as seen below with a screen shot of Patrick Wolf's video.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Final draft of digipak
This combining of medias can also be seen to echo that seen in albums such Santogold's self titled album "Santogold", as seen below, seeing photography being manually manipulated with the use of glitter.
- The front panel is simplistic in its design and we did not deviate from our initial ideas much at all. The artist's portrait is a crucial feature as it is one thing to promote the album but by having the artist as part of the album cover there will be an instant association created in the audience's mind which will ultimately help better the sale of the album and band. The artist is also placed in the centre of the frame so as to accentuate her importance and to an extent, her fame.
- The band's name, The Joy Formidable, is placed at the top of the frame in a different font and style of writing to the the rest of the words on the cover, this positioning and font shows the band's importance and fame. This positioning also corresponds to most album covers, regardless of genre, in that to promote the band to their full extent they are usually placed at the highest point of the frame, the top. This aspect is also seen in the two examples above as well as our own product.
- The background of the panel is the forest and sees intertextuality in play as it links directly to one of the locations used in pour music video. This background of the forest is the are in which the artist is shot in the video as well as the area in which the character of the girl ends in at the end, so there is automatically a link with the artist as well as the video production. This association will ensure a sense of memorability, promoting the band in the subtlest way possible, subliminally.
- The inside left and right panels see the setting of the digipak change, slowly morphing into an urban setting of a brick wall. The inside left panel sees a brick wall slowly emerging through the trees although the trees remain the prominent aspect of the image, linking to the video again and echoing the sense of the girl being very much in control of her life and to extent, her sanity. This is completely contradicted by the inside right which sees the brick wall very dominant with only a few branches crossing the bricks. This now represents the idea of her insanity deteriating further and it is completely gone by the time we reach the final panel which is complete brick. The transition from urban to rural echos that seen in the music video.
Final draft of magazine advert
Here is the final draft of our magazine advert, produced after some minor alterations which we feel as a group truly help it to fulfil its purpose in promoting the band themselves and the album

- The changes made to the advert ensure that it completely conforms to our original designs and that the changes suggested positively effected the advert. An example of this being that the writing that was somewhat overshadowed by the image in the first draft is now completely bold and eye catching as it now bold white lettering over a black strip. This not only helps convey important information but also conforms to conventions of other adverts such as that for the band 'Hooked', depicted below. This link is not os much in the layout of the advertisement but in the way they have the band name and key information portrayed against a dark background, to enhance the lettering and what it is trying to say.

- The album's title 'Broken Pane' has also been made to appear bolder and so promotes the album further.
- Our magazine advert conforms greatly to the conventions of adverts in the indie genre as it is simplistic, features the band is the fact that it is drawn conforms to the sometimes child-like feel a viewer gets from indie album artwork, such as that of The Cure, as seen below.

Friday, 8 January 2010
Representations
Genre:
- The genre of our film was indie, a well known genre and one that has many defining characteristics which we tried to embrace as much as possible. For example, indie videos tend to use bright colours to capture attention and give the video something of an atmosphere, we tried to emulate this by using bright colour wherever we could. We used a cafe with a green front, the girl was dressed in vibrant blue colours and the performance shots were set in the forest in the sunlight which gave the shots a bright and airy feel. to heighten the use of colour in accordance with the indie genre we also heightened the contrast to get the best tone of colour for our product.
- The masks used also play a huge part in communicating the genre, as the indie genre is known for such abstract props. The fact that the masks were of animals also conform to the genre as there are videos such as Santigold's "L.E.S Artistes" who use animal imagery by using actual animals, although our production only used masks the concept was still the same. The masks we also used to establish a sense of character and personality of the people wearing them rather than just have the people's faces, this idea is conventional of the indie genre as it is an alternative way of representation rather than going straight for the mainstream concepts.
- Class was not a theme that was particularly focused on as it was not as relative to the narrative of our product, however there are ways and moments in our video that can be seen to represent the area of class. An example of this is the fact that the main female actress and the male actor playing the boyfriend are both seen to be well dressed. The girls clothes are brightly colored and fashionable and are neat and clean cut. the same can be said for the male character. He wears a clean black coat and has neat hair and a tidy apparel. Their clothes reflect their place in society, perhaps being middle class or at the higher end of the working class. The fact that they are meeting at a dainty yet pleasant cafe indicates that they have the money to do so as a result of their class.
- This representation of the 'higher' class can be contradicted by the shot seeing the jeering male in the pig mask. This is so in the sense that the boy's clothes depict the typical attire associated with the working and lower class. he is seen in a black, tattered hoodie and combat style trousers accompanied with dirty trainers. His clothes combined with his exhibition of behavior towards others is also associated with the lower classes as it appears uncouth and ill mannered and almost animalistic - this linking with the mask we used to represent his character exactly.
- Aside the general representations of male and females in our video, our production seems to find a general opinion of males forming as the video progresses. This view appears, by the end, to be that all males in the video are depicted as cowardly, lying and egotistical. This idea if formulated by the shots that see the girl encounter the male characters throughout the narrative. For example, the first character we meet, aside from the artist, is the character of the boyfriend. He is looking awkward and fidgety, as though he has a secret to hide that the audience is soon to find out. This represents males as secretive and possibly as Liars.
- There is only one female in the video and she is constructed as a strong character that is somewhat victomised by the male society, as the landlord and jeering youth are both male. This victomisation could also be reinforced by the fact that the girl is out numbered by the amount of male characters in the video and so appears vulnerable and this is confirmed as she ultimately yields and becomes one of the masked people.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Goodwin's Theory
- Music videos demonstrate characteristics of the genre
- There will be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
- There will be a relationship between the music and the visuals
- The artist may develop distinctive motifs that may reoccur throughout their videos.
- There is often intertextual reference to things such as existing films etc.
- There is frequent reference to the notion of looking and particularly voyeurtristic treatment of the female body.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Audience Feedback
We recieved fedback from our teachers after the first production of our video and worked upon that feedback to improve it. The feedback above sees most people acknowledging the improvements made and even though there are still areas that some felt could be improved. The general view that comes across in the feedback is that the video's narrative has been made much clearer, the purpose of the masks that were formerly misunderstood were also said to have been made clearer and the addition of the performance shots helped establish the video as a music video rather than a short film.








