How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Research and Planning
We used a variety of different new media technologies when doing our research and our planning. We used the following websites.
Google was useful for basic researching, when finding preexisting bands and music groups, and useful for finding a genre we wanted to work in.
Realtime Board was useful for presenting what we had found in our research. we used this when doing advanced research.
We used sites like Facebook to communicate with each other while making creative decisions while constructing our music video. We had a group chat, to make and discuss important creative decision.
Whilst researching we used a variety of websites. We were able to present our research though means such as prezi's and realtime boards. This was useful as we could present our findings easily making it obvious what we were researching and what we found.
Planning we used similar techniques as we did for the research but for the evaluation stages, I used a large range of new media technologies like slideshare, realtime board, prezi and word documents.
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Tuesday, 20 January 2015
Evaluation Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our target audience was teenagers between the ages of about 12-20, we aimed to appeal to both male and female. Someone from our target audience would typically be an 'emo' or 'alt' meaning alternative, as they typically like more niche music, We dressed our singer in clothes from store such as 'Killstar' and 'Drop Dead' which gave our target audience something to relate to. Our target audience are people that like rock and pop-punk music, the kind of people that stereotypical like reading comic books, films and spend a lot of time on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube.
Audience feedback is very important for the media industry. It is useful so they can see what audiences do and don't like, which means they can apply how they majority feels to new products and make people want to buy/watch these products more meaning they make more money as well as giving the fans what they want. With Web 2.0 it is very easy to collect audience feedback it's as simple as liking a page on Facebook, everyone has the chance to comment on a post on any social media, meaning everyone can get their views across, sites like YouTube have got both 'like' and 'dislike' buttons allowing people to share how they felt about the product. On Twitter hashtags are great for seeing what people are talking about and how they feel, the media industry can just check the hashtags for their products making it easy for they to see what their audiences think of their products.
At different stages of production we got feedback from various people so we could see what they thought we should change and improve.Perhaps the most critical piece of feedback would be the feedback we received on our pitch, this was when our product was merely and idea, this meant it was straight forward to change what we could and take on the feedback and improve our product before even creating it. After we presented our ideas, and we got feedback which we will used to improve our ideas to help us reach our highest potential. We had to put more focus on our costumes, and research how current alternate artists dress and how we can use their styles in our music video.We also needed plan and find our props making sure we have the appropriate props for the genre we chose.The main thing we have to improve is our story line/concept because we don't really have a narrative yet, so we need to make make a narrative so we don't have just a performance based video.
This lead us to research further into costumes and props used in other alternative rock music videos and what was on preexisting websites and digipaks, meaning we were able to have a more realistic and desirable product. We also received feedback later in the process, after our first draft, we were told we should make our website more full and more colourful, making it more pleasing to the eye and also to edit the content like the tour poster that I then took and improved, making it fit with the colour pallet we had chosen to use, the tour poster makes the whole tour page on our website.
We collected audience feedback here is an example of some of our feedback.
Tim Simpson
· What genre are the products?
Rock
· What did you like and dislike about the products?
Likes: camera work, likes the narrative sequences, reflective of the target audience
Dislikes: close up of lead singer, erratic movements from band members, abrupt ending
· Who would say is the target audience?
16-25 year old who like alternative rock music
· Would you watch the music video again?
yes
· Based on the music video would you buy the single?
No not a fan of the song
· What story line is the music video portraying?
The narrative feels like she is being chased by the unknown
Annabel Hand
What genre are the products?
Alternative rock
What did you like and dislike about the products?
Like: different range of shots, what the band members are wearing, and location of film.
Dislikes: dislikes the close up of lead singer, needs more shots, abrupt ending.
Who would say is the target audience?
14 – 20 year old
Would you watch the music video again?
Yes I like the song
Based on the music video would you buy the single?
Yeah I would
What story line is the music video portraying?
The singer being chased something that we don’t see .
Caitlin Small
What genre is the product?
Pop punk
What did you like and dislike about the products?
Likes: transition between performance and narrative, Liked the setting in barn and woods, like the song
Dislike: main singer breaking eye contact in close up shots, guitarist didn't look like he was playing the guitar, woods went from POV shots to still shots.
Who would say is the target audience?
12- 15 pop punk fans
Would you watch the music video again?
yes
Based on the music video would you buy the single?
No
What story line is the music video portraying?
She is running away from the past
From our feedback we can see that the most common that people disliked was the close ups and how we framed the lead singer. and the abrupt ending, we could make the ending round better. Everyone seemed to understanding what the narrative was about, which was good because we achieved what we wanted to.
Audience feedback is very important for the media industry. It is useful so they can see what audiences do and don't like, which means they can apply how they majority feels to new products and make people want to buy/watch these products more meaning they make more money as well as giving the fans what they want. With Web 2.0 it is very easy to collect audience feedback it's as simple as liking a page on Facebook, everyone has the chance to comment on a post on any social media, meaning everyone can get their views across, sites like YouTube have got both 'like' and 'dislike' buttons allowing people to share how they felt about the product. On Twitter hashtags are great for seeing what people are talking about and how they feel, the media industry can just check the hashtags for their products making it easy for they to see what their audiences think of their products.
At different stages of production we got feedback from various people so we could see what they thought we should change and improve.Perhaps the most critical piece of feedback would be the feedback we received on our pitch, this was when our product was merely and idea, this meant it was straight forward to change what we could and take on the feedback and improve our product before even creating it. After we presented our ideas, and we got feedback which we will used to improve our ideas to help us reach our highest potential. We had to put more focus on our costumes, and research how current alternate artists dress and how we can use their styles in our music video.We also needed plan and find our props making sure we have the appropriate props for the genre we chose.The main thing we have to improve is our story line/concept because we don't really have a narrative yet, so we need to make make a narrative so we don't have just a performance based video.
This lead us to research further into costumes and props used in other alternative rock music videos and what was on preexisting websites and digipaks, meaning we were able to have a more realistic and desirable product. We also received feedback later in the process, after our first draft, we were told we should make our website more full and more colourful, making it more pleasing to the eye and also to edit the content like the tour poster that I then took and improved, making it fit with the colour pallet we had chosen to use, the tour poster makes the whole tour page on our website.
We collected audience feedback here is an example of some of our feedback.
Tim Simpson
· What genre are the products?
Rock
· What did you like and dislike about the products?
Likes: camera work, likes the narrative sequences, reflective of the target audience
Dislikes: close up of lead singer, erratic movements from band members, abrupt ending
· Who would say is the target audience?
16-25 year old who like alternative rock music
· Would you watch the music video again?
yes
· Based on the music video would you buy the single?
No not a fan of the song
· What story line is the music video portraying?
The narrative feels like she is being chased by the unknown
Annabel Hand
What genre are the products?
Alternative rock
What did you like and dislike about the products?
Like: different range of shots, what the band members are wearing, and location of film.
Dislikes: dislikes the close up of lead singer, needs more shots, abrupt ending.
Who would say is the target audience?
14 – 20 year old
Would you watch the music video again?
Yes I like the song
Based on the music video would you buy the single?
Yeah I would
What story line is the music video portraying?
The singer being chased something that we don’t see .
Caitlin Small
What genre is the product?
Pop punk
What did you like and dislike about the products?
Likes: transition between performance and narrative, Liked the setting in barn and woods, like the song
Dislike: main singer breaking eye contact in close up shots, guitarist didn't look like he was playing the guitar, woods went from POV shots to still shots.
Who would say is the target audience?
12- 15 pop punk fans
Would you watch the music video again?
yes
Based on the music video would you buy the single?
No
What story line is the music video portraying?
She is running away from the past
From our feedback we can see that the most common that people disliked was the close ups and how we framed the lead singer. and the abrupt ending, we could make the ending round better. Everyone seemed to understanding what the narrative was about, which was good because we achieved what we wanted to.
Monday, 19 January 2015
Evaluation Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Evaluation Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We created a music video, digipack and website for the band Animal Silence, our band was an Alternate Rock band, we had the theme of the woods throughout all of our products, our video featured a girl running through the woods and the band was in an open barn, which fit well with the kid of out door theme. The digipack featured a picture of the woods and a sofa outside with the woods behind it. The website also had a picture of the woods in the background of most the pages. It was obvious all our products were connected through the use of recurring themes, such as the woods and the colour scheme we used, we mainly used a combination of 4 colours, black, grey, red and white. These colours our common throughout the rock genre as a whole, meaning when people saw the colours used on the website and digipack it was obvious what genre we were working in.
Like the bands in this prezi we too made sure all our prodcuts linked, we used the same house font in both our website and our digipack our website have the font.
The woods featured in the music video are also seen thoughout the digipack and website. The colours used in all our prodcuts also clearly let you know what genre we are working in and the same colours, red, white, black and grey are featured accross all our products.
Social Networking.
Bands and artists use social networking for a number of different reasons. It can be a form of free advertising or a place for fans to talk about the bands. Social Networking such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr and often used by bands, the bands we researched like Paramore had Facebook pages, Twitter pages and an Instagram account.
Paramores Twitter
Paramores Facebook
Paramores Instagram
A good use for social networking is spreading the word about a band or artist. We created a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so we could post updates about what was going on with Animal Silence our band. We used the same photos for both the headers on Twitter and Facebook, the picture contains the woods which is a running theme featured thoughout all of our products, this clearly shows that all our products are connected and it makes it easier to identify these pages belong to us. The facebook contains our album cover again signifying that it belongs to us and again reenforces the running theme of the wood and nature. The facebook and twitter pages both contain links to our website and our music video so people can watch our video and easily access our website. There are also links to these websites on our website so you can easily follow and like our pages.
We created a music video, digipack and website for the band Animal Silence, our band was an Alternate Rock band, we had the theme of the woods throughout all of our products, our video featured a girl running through the woods and the band was in an open barn, which fit well with the kid of out door theme. The digipack featured a picture of the woods and a sofa outside with the woods behind it. The website also had a picture of the woods in the background of most the pages. It was obvious all our products were connected through the use of recurring themes, such as the woods and the colour scheme we used, we mainly used a combination of 4 colours, black, grey, red and white. These colours our common throughout the rock genre as a whole, meaning when people saw the colours used on the website and digipack it was obvious what genre we were working in.
Like the bands in this prezi we too made sure all our prodcuts linked, we used the same house font in both our website and our digipack our website have the font.
Social Networking.
Bands and artists use social networking for a number of different reasons. It can be a form of free advertising or a place for fans to talk about the bands. Social Networking such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr and often used by bands, the bands we researched like Paramore had Facebook pages, Twitter pages and an Instagram account.
Paramores Twitter
Paramores Facebook
Paramores Instagram
A good use for social networking is spreading the word about a band or artist. We created a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so we could post updates about what was going on with Animal Silence our band. We used the same photos for both the headers on Twitter and Facebook, the picture contains the woods which is a running theme featured thoughout all of our products, this clearly shows that all our products are connected and it makes it easier to identify these pages belong to us. The facebook contains our album cover again signifying that it belongs to us and again reenforces the running theme of the wood and nature. The facebook and twitter pages both contain links to our website and our music video so people can watch our video and easily access our website. There are also links to these websites on our website so you can easily follow and like our pages.
Synergy
Synergy is where multiple for of media and comanys work together to sell a product. We used this in our website. We made a store page where we were able to sell products for our band that we had created, we also made a button that allows people to buy our albums on itunes. You can also download the music off our website. There is a link to ticketmaster on the tour page. There is the option on our website to join our fanbase which will allow certain perks and emails when there are updates with the band, like new music or a now video. The music video will evident on both the homepage next to the new album.
Monday, 8 December 2014
Evaluation Question 1. In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our project we created an alternate rock band called Animal Silence. There new album was a self-titled album so it is also named "Animal Silence". For our music video we used the Paramore song 'Now' it is largely performance based, it is set in a barn but for the narrative we chose to have a girl running through the woods in the night like she was running away from something.
We decided we wanted to do an alternative rock band with a female lead, stereotypically rock bands are all male and we wanted to challenge this convention by using a female lead. We researched similar bands with women in like Paramore, Tonight Alive, The Pretty Reckless and Mindless Self-indulgence. We used Paramore as our main focus as they have a female lead like we wanted.
Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Theory.
Typical Genre characteristics - though out our music video we showed typical alternative rock characteristics, such as having the band playing instruments usually associated with rock music, like electric guitars, bass guitar and a drum kit. We also thought the kind of run down location was useful to represent our genre because a lot of alternative rock music can be related to run down, dirty, broken locations.
Links between visual and lyrics - To link our video to the lyrics we thought it would be a good idea to have the narrative part of the music video having a girl (our singer) be running away from the past and running towards the future.
Narrative and Performance - In our music video we thought it would be a good idea to do both narrative and performance, although for the best part of the video it is performance there is still the running away narrative with the girl. Doing a both narrative and performance based video was a good idea because it shows a wider range of camera angles and allowed us to explore different ways of using a camera and seeing what effect that had on the video.
Star Image - We created a star image around the lead singer, it was obvious she was our star because we used her for the narrative as well as placing her center frame during the performance based part of the music video showing she has agency over the other band members. One of our panels on the digipack also focused on Holly (our lead singer) again creating a kind of star image. We focused on just the singer with a black background for parts of the video reinstating the star image as there is no other band member in this part of the video.
Mise-en-scene - We tried to use a range of different lighting, this created a problem because we wanted to film in the woods in the dark, we had to find a way of lighting up our actor so the video camera would be able to see her running away. We used a work lamp form a building site so we could see. It was still very dark which created the right atmosphere for our genre.
Genre.
We researched into the alternative rock genre, we looked at websites, album covers and music videos.
These are some examples of album covers from the Alternative rock genre. Bands like Deftones, Bring Me the Horizon, Paramore, Rage Against the Machine to name a few. We looked at some of the conventions of the album covers.
This slideshare shows how we took the generic genre conventions and applied them to our album cover, generally we stuck to the conventions but we also did try to challenge them slightly generally black and white are used in most alt album covers, we decided to use a picture of the woods where we filmed (Gilling Woods) we chose to do this as the green helps the cover stand out from other bands covers, but the the white still stands out well on the background of the woods.
For our project we created an alternate rock band called Animal Silence. There new album was a self-titled album so it is also named "Animal Silence". For our music video we used the Paramore song 'Now' it is largely performance based, it is set in a barn but for the narrative we chose to have a girl running through the woods in the night like she was running away from something.
We decided we wanted to do an alternative rock band with a female lead, stereotypically rock bands are all male and we wanted to challenge this convention by using a female lead. We researched similar bands with women in like Paramore, Tonight Alive, The Pretty Reckless and Mindless Self-indulgence. We used Paramore as our main focus as they have a female lead like we wanted.
Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Theory.
Typical Genre characteristics - though out our music video we showed typical alternative rock characteristics, such as having the band playing instruments usually associated with rock music, like electric guitars, bass guitar and a drum kit. We also thought the kind of run down location was useful to represent our genre because a lot of alternative rock music can be related to run down, dirty, broken locations.
Links between visual and lyrics - To link our video to the lyrics we thought it would be a good idea to have the narrative part of the music video having a girl (our singer) be running away from the past and running towards the future.
Narrative and Performance - In our music video we thought it would be a good idea to do both narrative and performance, although for the best part of the video it is performance there is still the running away narrative with the girl. Doing a both narrative and performance based video was a good idea because it shows a wider range of camera angles and allowed us to explore different ways of using a camera and seeing what effect that had on the video.
Star Image - We created a star image around the lead singer, it was obvious she was our star because we used her for the narrative as well as placing her center frame during the performance based part of the music video showing she has agency over the other band members. One of our panels on the digipack also focused on Holly (our lead singer) again creating a kind of star image. We focused on just the singer with a black background for parts of the video reinstating the star image as there is no other band member in this part of the video.
Mise-en-scene - We tried to use a range of different lighting, this created a problem because we wanted to film in the woods in the dark, we had to find a way of lighting up our actor so the video camera would be able to see her running away. We used a work lamp form a building site so we could see. It was still very dark which created the right atmosphere for our genre.
Genre.
We researched into the alternative rock genre, we looked at websites, album covers and music videos.
These are some examples of album covers from the Alternative rock genre. Bands like Deftones, Bring Me the Horizon, Paramore, Rage Against the Machine to name a few. We looked at some of the conventions of the album covers.
Saturday, 6 December 2014
Friday, 14 November 2014
Website Comparison
Paramore Website compared to Animal Silence Website
The top is Paramore's home page and the bottom is ours, Ours is very plain and the bands name is too bold, it doesn't really fit with the theme of the rest of the website, Paramores has a lot more going on in it, it has links to Instagram, their blog and photos of the band, it has a link to their videos. To improve our homepage we could put our music video and some pictures of the band, so when you open the website you get a better idea of the band, also we could change the colour scheme, the red and black works well but it needs to be more colourful and not so simplistic.
The Paramore tour/shows page, doesn't have much on because they don't have many current dates, paramore's page is quite simplistic, the link down the side with merch and other websites that sell their merchandise, it also has links to facebook and twitter so you can follow/like them on their social media sites. Our's tour poster is slightly plain, if we added links then it would make it more realistic.
The main difference here is the layout, we have albums then songs where as Paramore have songs then albums. to improve ours we need to change our font colour as it is barely visible on the background, we also could change the font size and add more contents to the page making it look more full.
Paramore's photo page is a lot more full, they have promotional photos and fan art and we just have our album covers and some pictures from a fan meet and greet we could put more pictures of the band on the website as well as individual members of the band.
Paramore's store features the bands name at the top of each page of the website, they also have more merchandise than us, We need to add our band name to the top of each page and bring the tabs lower so we can fit a header in.
Thursday, 13 November 2014
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