Monday 12 January 2015

JP - Navigation Post

Audience Research: Post Video
 
Audience Research: Rough Cut (inc. Rough Cut Video)
 
Audience Research: Concept Development
 
Song Moodboard
 
Print Analysis
 
Brighton
 
Genre & Representation Analysis
 
Institution & Audience Analysis
 
Narrative & Media Language Analysis
 
Initial Moodboard
 
Secondary Research
 
In-Depth Secondary Research 

WB - Navigation Post

Evaluation Q1, Q2 & Q4

Evaluation Q3

Final Music Video

Final Print Work

Audience Research: Rough Cut (30 Second Extract)

Audience Research: Concept Development

Storyboard Animatic

Treatment

Technical Analysis

Initial Moodboard

Digipak Analysis

Technical Analysis

Brighton (School Trip - Practice Shoot)

Music Video Theory

Song Choice

Semiotics Analysis

Music Video Deconstruction

Six Key Frames

Daniel Wild 8345 - Navagation Post

Daniel Wild 8345 - Advanced Production - Navigation Post



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Group - Question 3


WB - Evaluation


Sunday 11 January 2015

Group - Evaluation Question 3 Content

The target audience for Royal Blood are males between 15 and 25 years old. A lot of their songs relate to youth and rebellion, establishing the band with this audience.

It was important to test our concept to an audience in pre-production to make sure our ideas were heading in the right direction, and to identify any weaknesses in our concept. We carried this out by creating a questionnaire on Survey Monkey, and also by completing a pitch to our class.

The results of the survey showed us that our target audience agreed with our ideas regarding location, colour, lighting and narrative ideas. Our pitch was more useful however as it was carried out to our media class, who were more understanding, and consequently analytical with our ideas. They thought our themes were appropriate to the song, and in general liked our concept, however identified that we needed to plan our video shot for shot, as it was unclear at the time what the narrative chapter would be doing in his room. This is something that was later resolved, and can be seen in our animatic.

We were also told to "ensure an explosion of emotion is shown". This informed our development through a series of discussions, where we started started storyboarding our shot ideas, but also drafting up ways in which we could convey a conniving 'emotion explosion'. In the final product this can be seen by the use of overlaying footage and fading from one shot to the next. The repetition of shots is also helpful to connote the protagonists's mentality, of him thinking about the past and the passing of time.

To test the finished pieces to an audience we held a focus group where we showed them our printwork followed by our video, and asked them a series of short questions to try and gain their insight and understanding of our media products.

Keith Negus states that music videos are often consumed at low quality in external locations and are 'constructed and understood as a series of semiotic particles'. To try and make sure our viewing was ambient as to avoid a focused and over analysed result, we made sure the viewing environment was casual and relaxed. We used people we know who were all friendly together, which resulted in some casual talking and jokes during the session. This is the environment we were after, in the hope that the audience would pick out key parts of the print and video, as opposed to an over focused viewing.

With regards to Stuart Hall's theory on the coding of a text, we encoded the video to show the male protagonist turning to drink and drugs after the female leaves him for another man. From our focus group it is clear that the majority of the audience decoded our preferred reading when asked about the meaning of the video, using phrases such as "relationship troubles" and "self destructive youth".

We were then presented with a new negotiated reading for the video, in that the protagonist has never been involved with the girl due to his drink and drug problems, and his lust for her further increases his weak mentality for substance abuse.

With the printwork we set out to create a cohesive band image and promote the band and EP in the most efficient way. Because of this, the preferred reading for the digipak and advertisements is that Royal Blood are a noise rock band who can relate to their target audience.

The focus group identified the genre reasonably well, varying from prog rock, to alternative, but with the majority agreeing on a strong rock output. One of the candidates commented on the 'distinct style' put across by our campaign, and pinpointed how the lack of colour connoted the 'bleak nature' of the video.

The printwork was decoded by the audience to give our preferred reading in a lot of cases, and when asked what the magazine adverts say about the artists, one person answered, "The artists want to be taken seriously as a stereotypical rock boy band". Another answered with, "The artists are creative and have an emotional/personal connection to their work." The second of the two quotes especially, shows how the audience could connect with the band, and how it is easy to relate with them.

Overall, it is clear that with our audience feedback throughout the stages of the course, we have been on track and in line with the expectations of our target audience. The audience has regularly identified and decoded our preferred readings, and has given us useful information to elaborate and add to our ideas, especially in the planning stage.

Monday 5 January 2015

DW - Evaluation Draft

Evaluation

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

Royal Blood are a noise rock band from Brighton, UK. We tried to use characteristics conventional to their genre in our music video by conducting secondary research, looking at several bands like Queens Of The Stone Age, DZ Deathrays and The 1975, to understand genre conventions. It is unconventional for a rock music video to be conceptual so we focused on performance and narrative, by including meat shots of the band performing in the video as well as an intercutting narrative story. We also used our video to connote alcohol and drugs as well as reckless behaviour which is seen as stereotypical for the rock genre.

The relationship between lyrics and visuals is illustrative at times for example the line “another pill no good for my health” when a half empty pill pot was shown. However overall we had a more creative interpretation between the lyrics and visuals, creating an amplified relationship.

The relationship between the music and visuals was amplified, because although we synced the performance footage to the track, we intercut narrative between different lines of action, and tried to be more creative with our approach. We tried to connote the heavy, distorted tone of the bass by adding celluloid film overlays onto the performance shots, adding a natural grain to the shots. We also tried to connote a grungy, ‘careless’ feel with our narrative by showing empty pill pots and alcohol cans lying around, connoting the protagonists lack of care for his health.

We tried to think about the demands of the record label in our video, and with Royal Blood being singed to Warner Bros. Records it means they have quite high production value for example their most recent video for ‘Ten Tonne Skeleton’ which features an established narrative that uses a lot of large tracking and panning shots, as well as the use of fire and large spot lights. This is one of the reasons the band are the primary focus in our video, including lots of meat shots and close ups of them playing their instruments, as anyone who likes their music will be familiar with their live appearance.

The structure of the video follows a narrative fuzz story line about a ‘careless’ teenager following the loss of a loved one who doesn’t feel for him anymore, causing him to slowly lose his self-respect. The video then intercuts to performance of the band playing the song along with flashbacks of the narrative, which is used to connote time passing. Our video includes an introduction before the music kicks in, establishing a relationship between the characters situation and the audience, as well as obeying many modern music videos today, for example The 1975’s ‘Robbers’ video.

One feature of our video that is unconventional of our genre is a strong narrative storyline. When narrative is featured in rock music videos it is usually unclear, disjunctive and takes up little room on the timeline. However we felt that if we went for a typical rock style video based mainly on performance we would receive little marks. We also felt that by adding a stronger narrative sequence we would be able to be more creative with our ideas as it allows us to shape the emotional colouring and add a new dimension to the video, reinforcing the meaning to the song.

Our text is polysemic as the audience could take multiple readings of the video. The preferred reading is that our protagonist (the male) has been used and left by the antagonist (the female), and is using drink and drugs as a way to overcome his loss of her, leading the audience to sympathise with him. A negotiated reading could be that the protagonist is a negative character, and has lost the girl as a result of his drink and drug addictions, leading the audience to be sided against him.

Our narrative features a clear beginning middle and end, showing the development of the character through the piece. The introduction is used to connote his desperate attempt to clear his head, and as the video progresses we see how his life has turned upside down. The video ends with narrative closure as our protagonist is burning a picture of his ex-partner, symbolising him wiping her out of his life.

Meaning is created through mise-en-scene and the props used, but also through the camera work. In the opening sequence the close up shot of the beer can coming into focus is used to connote the protagonist looking around, still half asleep and hungover from the previous events. Handicam is also used significantly through out, to connote the unstable and unrecovered mindset of the protagonist. The use of props for example the photo of the female are used to signify the protagonists loss, and how his life still revolve around her despite the relationship being over. The burning of the photo at the end of the video is used to show how he has progressed and taken his anger out on his surroundings, and how she is no longer part of his life. It signifies the cleansing of his mind, and as he burns her he burns the memory of the relationship.

By association with the narrative, the band are therefore endowed with the myth of the rock and roll life style. This is part of Dyers theory of the star image which creates a meaning and persona of the band that is not directly shown in the video.

The video is postmodern in its style due to the use of narrative fuzz, slow motion, jump cuts and celluloid film overlays. These stylistic post production features are used to detract from the realism of the video and create an individual feel.

There is an ideological discourse on gender seen through the representation of males in the video. The discourse can be seen as two fold depending which reading you take. The preferred reading shows a negative discourse on females, and although not a positive discourse on males, you find yourself sympathising with the male protagonist. A negotiated reading however see’s a strong negative discourse on the male gender as they are shown to be dangerous and aggressive through the fight and woods sequences, yet does not show a discourse on the female gender as it is not heavily featured in the video.

Regardless of which reading you take, the narrative challenges the dominant ideology of gender equality and instead presents an emergent ideological discourse as it shows the female to control the male’s life, and the male to be out of control of the situation. However as the video progresses there is a power shift in this discourse and towards the end of the video it moves away from an emergent ideology as the protagonist burns a picture of the female, towards a residual discourse of men being more powerful than women, although the song ends before establishing his true feelings.

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

Our brief was to

We set out to create a cohesive band image across all our media texts to promote the ‘Careless EP’ through the use of stylistic features and colour schemes conventional of the genre. We combined the ideas of the band shots and the desaturated narrative into our print work to create a greyscale theme featuring the two band members.

The advertisements were designed to run in alternative and rock music magazines such as NME, Kerang, Total Guitar and Rhythm. The target audience for these magazines is the same as Royal Blood, and they have already been featured in these magazines making them even more suitable. We chose to design two landscape adverts, making them suitable for either a double page spread or one half of a single side.

The use of visual motifs across all three print products, such as the grungy textures  and Royal Blood styled text, are used to reinforce Dyers theory of the star image and such characteristics like rebellion, anger and disregard for social values. This is attractive to the target audience and leads to consumed consumption of the bands material. The visual motifs as well as band shots also link to the music video and are used to create a cohesive band image, easily identifiable by the audience.

The reading path of the advertisements utilises the rule of thirds and instantly draws attention to the eyes of the band members. This notion of looking breaks the fourth wall and channels the audience to connect with the band members before even consuming their product. In the first advertisement, the second thing you see is the artist and song name; Royal Blood - Careless, drawing further attention to who they are and how they feel, before leading you down the left hand side of the page to “EP Out Now” and the album artwork. This reading path is used to first position the audience with the band, establish who they are, and then slowly works in their product. Also featured in the small print in the lower left is their record label, a quote and their website and twitter address for people who want to find out more about them.

The second advertisement also fixates on the eyes, but then moves to the text in the centre “New EP Out Now” with the album artwork, before the artist and song name, and finally the small print. This advertisement takes the opposite approach to the previous advert and focuses on the band, then their product and then who they are. This is done to create an enigma and buzz when looking at the advert, as the audience finds themselves scanning the page to find out who these people are and what EP they have released. Without noticing, the audience are already actively consuming their product by searching the advert, as opposed to it being right in front of them as with before.

The text is very significant to the advertisements and digipak and connotes meaning to the audience, for example the band name ‘Royal Blood’ could symbolise war, anger and treachery, but also nobility and power. The song title ‘Careless’ further backs up both sides of meaning, as it could connote the anger and lack of respect yet also the extremes of power where one is in control and does not have to worry.

The images used are also endowed with meaning. The images on the adverts show the band in full face, establishing them to the audience. As the point of an advert is to promote a product, the band are used as the main selling feature and are designed to appeal to a mass audience as they are dressed in common clothing for their target audience. The digipak however uses the outline of the band but removes their faces with a texture is added to their bodies. This is a principal of Dyers ‘star theory’ whereby the band are both present and absent, leading the audience to consume their product to complete the image.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

We used blogger.com as a collaborative e-portfolio in our group throughout the planning, construction and evaluation. For example at the start of the project we undertook our own individual research into music videos and genre conventions, and posted our findings on the blog. This allowed us to then view each others contributions and comment on how useful the research was, but also where they could improve as to improve our all round level of understanding and research. This was very helpful as it allowed quick feedback on our work and also meant we gathered a large amount of research in one place, that was easy to summarise and refer to, to ensure our ideas were relevant to the genre and target audience appeal.

To carry out audience research we used Survey Monkey to create an online questionnaire, which we distributed to our target audience to fill out via social networking sites like Facebook. This was very useful because it was a fast and effect way to collect data, that was correlated for us by the website for easy review as answers came in. This is a good example of web 2.0 as it demonstrates dynamic, user-generated content that has been shared around with an audience and then returned again.

Using Adobe Premiere Elements 9.0, we constructed an animatic of our storyboard ideas by taking still images of our frames, but also found images we liked the look and feel of. This was a useful process as it allowed us to get a feel for how long the song is and how many different shots we would need to fill the space. For some of our favourite shots and ideas, it also gave us the opportunity to create sequences that we really liked, and we could identify the cutting rate that matched the song’s tempo.

When shooting our footage we used a Sony PJ530E Handycam with built in Optical SteadyShot image stabilisation, allowing us to get very smooth handicam and moving shots. This was a very useful feature as we wanted to include a lot of handicam shots without loosing quality and looking unprofessional with shaky footage. It also allowed us to film at 1080p, 50fps to ensure our slow motion shots didn't lose their crispness. When shooting our band shots, we lowered the exposure so that the camera picked up less of the background, and focused fully on the band. This also allowed the blacks to be deeper, as opposed to picking up reflected light on the walls and floor.

To edit the video we used a combination of DaVinci Resolve Lite and Adobe Premiere Elements 9.0 on a standalone machine with an upgraded graphics card, as we were having problems with our old machine. Using Resolve gave us several benefits over Adobe Premiere, for example being able to mute certain channels when not in use, and not needing to render footage. We started our narrative edit in Premiere by importing our clips and reducing the saturation to give them a cold, hard feel. We then experimented with timings by slowing down and speeding up certain shots.

After exporting the narrative rough cut we then moved on to Resolve where we created an RGB channel split. We did this following a tutorial by importing the selected clip, adding mattes, adding serial nodes, colouring them red, green and blue, turning off lum mix, adding a channel layer and then panning them respectively. Once we were happy with the clip we exported it ready to add to our timeline.

In a new timeline in Resolve we synced the performance shots with our track, both visually and audibly. Zooming in width ways on the audio tracks revealed defined waveform spikes, predominately the snare hits, which allowed synchronisation to be very precise. We then comprised a good performance edit, that was fully in time and cut to the beat of the song. Due to the limitations of the computer, we had to then export the 10 channel (9 video, 1 audio) performance cut into 1 video and 1 audio, which we reimported into a new timeline. Over the top of the performance export we added the narrative export and RGB channel splits which we cut into place, adding appropriate cross fades to layer and blend the narrative and performance together.

Software limitations hit us again, forcing us to export our work so far and start a new timeline. In the new project we began to add celluloid film overlays which were downloaded from free sites. In Resolve we set the channel mode to multiply, removing the black background from the overlays. We also reduced the opacity depending on how intrusive the overlay was, making sure each shot was still clearly in view. After already finding our narrative soundtrack, it was added at the start of the piece, with an appropriate fade in and out before the main song started.

Our decision to add the cinematic film overlay had come after shooting some clips, so after adding this over the top of everything we went sure to make sure everything was still properly in frame. Using the arrow keys, Resolve allowed us to scrub through frame by frame to identify exactly where each cut took place, where we then added markers for future reference. When shots needed to be re-framed we cut them out and then used the tilt tool to raise the images up or down accordingly.

Finally, we added the text that appears at the start of the video. This was created in Adobe Photoshop Elements using the font Optimus Princeps, which we found early on in the production process. We then added it onto a new channel in Resolve, before exporting the project for a final time.

We organised a photo shoot where we used a DSLR camera to take still images of Will and I, the band, for use in our print work. We set up stage lights against a blue screen so the images were well lit and easier to edit later on. We made sure to take a variety of shots at different angles and distances, to ensure we had a lot to play with.

In Adobe Photoshop Elements we used many techniques and tools to create our final pieces. Firstly we had to place our chosen images onto the blank canvas, and use the quick selection tool to select the band from the background. By holding Alt we were able to add or subtract areas of selection, checking our progress with the refine edge tool. When we were happy with our selection, we pasted it onto a new layer, making sure to leave the original image on a hidden layer as to not delete anything from the project.


Due to wearing leather jackets, there was occasional blue spill on the reflections. To remove this we created a new colour layer, selected a black brush and then painted over the blue areas. Using the colour layer ensured we didn't paint over the image, instead greyed out the covered area.