1 . In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For my A2 coursework I chose to make a music video for the song ‘Empty Space’ by a young Pop Punk band called ‘The Story So Far’. The Pop Punk genre is one that has a heavy use of loud guitars and a distinctive way of singing. Some examples of more famous, but slightly out dated Pop Punk bands are, Blink 182 and Sum 41. A typical Pop Punk audience, being both male and female, could range from the age of 17-30, so the age range is fairly large, this being due to Pop punk being a popular music genre during the 90s with Blink 182 being at centre stage. Interests of a Pop Punk band would be playing an instrument, having a general interest in rock music, as it can be quite heavy to some ears that are used to listening to softer music, and is a genre that is commonly rejected by non-rock fans, due to its unique, loud, heavy style.The lyrical content of Pop Punkmusic is most commonly about relationships and is full of emotion, suggesting the music videos would have a strong narrative describing this emotion. However most Pop Punk music videos are performance based, and this is what I would like to create my music video in the style of.
For my preparatory work (deconstructions) I looked at an album cover and an advert from the band ‘Guns ‘n’ Roses’. I chose to deconstruct these particular print works, mainly due to the fact that they were within the rock genre and at the time I was listening to them a lot and it was an easy decision to do so. But also because I thought they covered the codes and conventions of the rock genre very well, with the advert having a very edgy and rebellious feel to it. What I found so intriguing about this album art is the way the codes and conventions of rock are represented so clearly and let the audience know that this is a rock album, this is why I chose to deconstruct it.
The lyrics of ‘Empty Space’ by The Story So Far are hard to understand, and I’m not certain of their meaning, but I do know that Pop Punk is a rather emotional genre, and the majority of songs talk about relationships and break-ups. So my best guess would be that he is singing about a break-up and the song conveys how he is dealing with it. My advert was mainly inspired by the same band that I used for my music video ‘The Story So Far’, their print work is most often graphics, and being an arty person, I wanted to create some graphics as a pose to a still image, as that didn’t inspire me in the same way. This is mainly due to my interest of drawing; I have always been artistic but never in the way of photography. I was also inspired by another band called ‘Neck deep’, that I spoke about in my brief; they also produce some very interesting graphic work on their adverts and CD covers. I chose to analyse ‘empty space’ in the preparatory stages, because I knew that this is how I wanted my video to look, there is clear passion behind the singers voice and this is evident through his performance. The camera work and editing is another reason I chose this video, the quick cuts and earthquake effect are very synergetic to the pace and lyrics of the song.
My video is much like the original, as I found that style of filming (the narrative parts fitting with the live performance) very interesting and unique and wanted to try and produce something of a similar style. Having looked at numerous Pop Punk music videos, it’s clear that there is a heavy use of earthquake effect and lens flair. This is because it follows the codes and conventions of a rock/punk genre, being aggression, violence, and gives the audience the effect that they are in the crowd. I thought this was an interesting effect, and thought it was necessary for me to include it in my video, as it seemed to be a convention of the genre.
To follow the codes and conventions or pop punk you would typically be, a younger audience with tattoos that skates and has a strong interest in rock music.
Before researching I thought that this was the case and that pop punk music is highly music based as a pose to image based. Yes pop punk is very music based, and most bands within the genre take a long time to make a break in the music industry, and therefore are not living a very wealthy life style for long periods of time, thus suggesting that they are clearly very passionate about music. But at the same time, pop punk does have its own ‘dress’ style that can lead people to think that it is image based, however this image is never glamorised nor does it suggest otherwise, it is a rather raw style that in most cases looks quite worn and scruffy. In contrast to this to help explain my point, pop and R&B music is very image based, they sell themselves through their image, and this is clear through the performance of the music videos within these genres, the artists are very egotistic. This suggests that punk music is so anti-mainstream because they don’t want to be adored through their image, to them it means much more than that, again emphasising the point that they are so passionate about music.
Also through research and having listened to pop punk music for a long time, I know that it seems to be a ‘convention’ within pop punk to sing about relationships and breakups, suggesting pop punk as quite an emotional genre, which it is. The tone and register of the pop punk genre is much like that of other rock genres, they address the audience is a somewhat informal, aggressive and common tone. Pop Punk music is very close to its target audience as it is a very relatable genre as the lyrics are very true and talk about events that everyone will have done already, or will experience in their lives. Hence how the bands are also very close to, and interactive with the audience when they are performing live.
A typical photo of a pop punk band would either be taken during a live performance, rarely one that is staged, or outside in a common, fairly urban setting.
However there have been some pop punk bands that have taken images in more natural environments such as neck deep did in a rather recent photo shoot.
It is clear from this music video how certain punk codes and conventions are communicated through a number of different aspects, such as mise an scene, performance, lighting, cam movements, clothing and attitude. The layout of the stage is very pop punk, very rarely do pop punk bands perform on large stages, especially smaller pop punk bands such as The Story So Far, so by using a small stage it helps suggest to the audience that this is a pop punk band. The performance and camera work in this video work very well together as the camera work flows very well with the style of song. When the singer has slower more emotional parts to sing the camera (not just the edit) moves much slower and get closer to the artist, using close-ups and mid shots. Contrasting to this, when the song picks up and more emotion leeks, the camera backs off to wide long shots, almost as if the passion of the music is pushing the camera away.
The idea that I had for my poster changed quite a lot in comparison to the final design.
I knew that I wanted to create some graphics for my album and my poster, as many Pop Punk bands produce their physical media with graphical images, and personally I prefer graphics as a pose to photography. The original idea I had for the advert (shown in the flat plan above) was to create a graphic of a Chinese style dragon in the centre of the poster with the text in a conventional layout at the bottom of the page. However for the album cover graphics, I was already convinced that I was going to produce flower graphics, which I did, and I am very happy with. The flower graphics as well as looking like tattoo drawings to suggest aggression and emotion in order to link it to the genre, but they were also an attempt to suggest that this is a young band that have not yet peeked with in the music industry. I did this by drawing the flowers closed, and not yet blossomed, letting the audience know that that maybe there is more to come when the flowers have full developed. I decided to hand draw the graphics in order to highlight the rawness of the genre, and also to underline the hard work that goes into writing music. So I thought it would make sense, in order to keep synergy within my work, to use the same graphics from the album cover, on my poster. The thorns on the flowers suggest aggression, and again emotion as they look quite dangerous. The wrapping of the flowers proposes that they are squeezing/draining the emotion out of the emotion out of the band and is therefore present throughout the music. Pop Punk, as I have already stated before, is a fairly emotional genre in terms of the lyrics, so I kept this in mind when deciding what colours to use, I didn’t want to use bright, colourful colours, as this would convey the wrong message to the audience. So, with this in mind, I selected colours that were dark and felt drained of colour as well as brightness.
This colour I felt helped express the mood that exists within the lyrics, as it doesn’t really have a positive feeling to it, in fact it has rather negative vibes which is what made me think it was a good colour for this specific aspect of the advert. It has these negative vibes as it is not exactly a lively, bright and joyful colour, it is rather washed out and looks drained of any positive emotion. Again, I chose black because of similar reasons, black has many negative connotations which I felt suited this genre of music. I didn’t just select these colours straight away of course, I did have a few other colours that suited the genre in similar ways, but I felt these two were the best match, and looked good together.
The name of the album ‘album name’ was originally a template that I used to suggest the font style that I would write the final title in, and I initially had no intentions of using it as the album name, and neither did the thought even cross my mind. But after writing more about Pop Punk and getting an improved knowledge of the genre, I thought that the name ‘Album Name’ seemed quite suitable. This is because it leaves you wondering if this is a mistake and gives the feeling that the album doesn’t belong to anyone, which seemed appropriate when alongside the intentions and emotions within the lyrics. Again this is very punk, with nonchalant vibes, suggesting they are not bothered about it and is very anti-normal.The band name ‘Pop Shovit’ actually derived from a skate move known as a ‘Pop shuvit’, but I just felt it looked better with an ‘o’ instead of a ‘u’. I wanted to name the album after a skate move because a lot of Pop Punk bands are not only associated with skating, but also skate themselves, so I thought it would be a good idea to do so. Also this shows an anti –pop message as in pop … shove it! were not interested, don’t have time for all that egotistic, image based rubbish.
I originally had two fonts that I had to choose from for the album name, both hand drawn that I would scan into the computer when the production stages come around. The font that I eventually selected for the album name was strong based around the font that ‘the Story So Far’ used for their album ‘What you don’t see’ in the image above. What I liked most about this font was the solid black outline around the text, and the way it appears to be seeping in to the edges of each letter. This gives the text quite an old, messy style and it gives the appearance that it has been drawn with ink, which attracted me to it, as I wanted to produce the flower graphics in an old school tattoo style, helping to draw in the attention of the target audience, as they will most likely have an interest in tattoos, and possibly have some of their own. So the fact that it seemed inky again felt fitting. The name of the album ‘What you don’t see’ suggests that he is singing about his emotions, as you don’t see emotions, so the target audience can guess that the music in the album is going to quite emotional. The bold font that I used for the band name was fairly random, it was quite spontaneous when I was designing the font, and was virtually the first idea that I had written down. I liked it because it was quite contrasting to the other aspects of my design, in the way of it being smooth and rounded, as a pose to rough and edgy. Initially the band name looked fairly flat and boring, so in order to liven it up a bit and give the overall image more depth, I copied the text and placed it slightly off centre in a layer behind the original, to give it the 3D look.
From this song clip, you can understand the tone and register of pop punk music, the language used is not exactly polite, so this is something I had to consider when creating the graphics for my CD package and advert. I wanted the graphics on my CD cover to give the impression that they were tattoo styled drawings, to try and convey the tone and register of pop punk. Typically tattoos are considered to hold a rebellious attribute, which is also a common attribute within the Pop Punk genre, so I thought combining the two would make sense and help suggest the tone and register of my chosen genre.
Many real media examples have influenced my decisions upon content and style of my music video, which helped convey the meaning towards the audience. After watching and analyzing various music videos within my genre, it appears that in more contemporary and recent videos, it is rather conventional to include both narrative and live performance. Live performance makes the genre more recognizable and narrative helps to illustrate the song and keep the audience interested in watching. I decided to split my video into 2 parts: live performance and a narrative which follows the band on tour when they are off stage. By breaking the video up into these two parts, the audience will be more visually aware and focused as it will be constantly changing, reducing the chance of them getting bored. The live performance conveys the passion the band has for the music, and the narrative parts should give a, not necessarily ‘in depth’ but an understanding of the bands character and what they do off stage. I didn’t make the video follow the storyline of the lyrics mainly because it does not suit the conventions of a pop punk band, but also because I was so indulged with the style of the original video, I didn’t want to challenge the conventions and style used in it, I wanted to try and create a similar styled video.
Most music video that follow a narrative, have the band or at least the lead singer at some point throughout, in some cases throughout the whole video. For my video I used the band that were on stage in the narrative parts also, this gave a clearer understanding of the band, and the narrative. In order to make the two parts visually separated I had the band in different clothes, outside with natural lighting. This was an attempt to help give a difference to the video, and keep the audience engaged. For the live performance parts I used white lighting, as most live performances that I have watched through the research and development stage used white lighting only, this helps distinguish the genre and suggests that it is pure, in the sense that rock music does not try to stand out from the norm, it is raw and about the music. Also in the original video, the live performance parts only used white lighting, this played a large part in my decision.
In order for the music video to be identified as a pop punk music video other than the song, I wanted the band to actually look like a pop punk band. I feel that I have achieved this by dressing the band in the way that a pop punk band would dress. I also used certain camera work and editing that I found seemed to be very much within the pop punk genre. It seems to be conventional within the rock genre to have the pace of the editing to match that of the pace of the music, and this is something that I tried to include in my video. Earthquake effect was another editing FX that I found apparent throughout rock music videos, this helps convey to the audience how loud, and aggressive the music is. The rock genre is a very passionate genre, and this becomes clear when watching live performances of rock bands. Therefore I felt it was important for my band to look passionate and look as if they were actually enjoying themselves on stage, this not only suggests passion to the audience, but it will also help keep them focused on the video as they will feel the passion behind the music.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
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3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
my ideal target audience, or a ‘typical’ Pop Punk audience would range from 17-30 years old consisting of both male and female, however more typically males, due to the conventions and ideologies behind rock music, such as its aggressive tone and register associated with males as a pose to females. Most Pop Punk bands are young adults and will not have had great education, this is not due to any economical or political reasons, but more due to lack of education where they were more focused on their music over their education. Therefore suggesting that the target audience would have an interest in playing an instrument and have a strong passion for music to try and be like their favoured bands. Due to the possible lack of education a pop punk audience would not have a great job and probably wouldn’t have a great amount of money, therefore working wherever they could get hold of some money would be quite likely. Although pop punk music is very passionate and not image based, it does have its own style, which is very similar to that of a skate style.
The majority of pop punk audiences would do most of their shopping in shops as a pose to online. This is because they are sociable people and like to get out and spend time with friends, hanging around skate parks and stores. They would mainly have a smart phone and download their music through either iTunes or Spotify, and potentially YouTube. I say this because Pop Punk is quite a modern take on the rock genre and therefore, presumably the target audience would be fairly into modern technology. However, Pop Punk has a mixed audience, that don’t specifically get too involved with technology, therefore some may be more behind than others in terms of the technology they use.
I feel that I have succeeded in attracting and addressed my target audience through my print work, and this is clear when comparing my advert to that of existing Pop Punk cd covers and adverts.
As you can see, graphics on cd covers and adverts is very popular, this is mainly due to the emotion behind the music, on top of the hard, punk attitude. Therefore by using graphics I have not subverted the conventions of the genre and made the print work recognisable as Pop Punk. It would not be in the nature of a punk band to take an image of someone looking upset and lost, as this would have more of a pop/mainstream feel to it. Therefore they use graphics to express the emotion, and include certain colours to express the different emotions as colours all have certain meaning. Also using graphics almost seem to mock the emotion behind their music, as punk artist have a hard/aggressive appearance and attitude, and when singing about how emotional they are, it almost under minds their defiance.
I used this particular shot as I thought it would attract the target audience. The close up allows the audience to see the passion and aggression on the face of the artist. He is clearly getting into the fast pace of the music and this is evident through his lively performance. This would attract the audience because they would also feel the same way about the music, and at live performances, the crowd always stage dive and crowd surf, suggesting that they get pumped and feel anxiety which is what I wanted to express with this shot.
It is fairly common amongst Punk artist and audience’s to have a messy look, and tattoos are a large part of expressing someone’s personality. Tattoos particularly are associated with rebelliousness and disobedience, something that falls strongly within the Punk genre. Therefore, in order to attract my target audience I created some graphics on my print work in the style of old school tattoo art.
According to my pre-production survey, my target audience mainly use Apple products to the majority of the media they consume. With the internet being such a wide spread necessity in our everyday lives, it seem common sense that people would have a Smartphone, as they can constantly have access to the internet in their hands. My target audience would therefore use websites such as Youtube to watch and share videos. They would also be enrolled with popular social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter for contact. This is further emphasised through another set of results where 57% of my target audience answer that they would prefer a free digital download over a CD or poster.
Another point, according to my pre production survey, suggested that my target audience read music magazines. It is common amongst rock fans to play an instrument, attend live gigs, and music in general to be a close aspect of their lives. Therefore it is not suprising that they are interested in reading music magazine, where they can read about their favourite bands and keep up to date with the whats going on within the rock genre. They may also be influenced by the styles of their favourite bands, and therefore try to express their preferred genre through the way they dress, as each genre has its own unique style.
From looking at CD covers and adverts within the Pop Punk genre, it is clear that there is an artistic approach to its style. Therefore my target audience is likely to value an artistic approach to media products, suggesting they might have an interest in independent films, which have more creative and complex themes to that of a Blockbuster movie. This challenges the audience with more philosophical messages and story lines, which get you thinking, suggesting the audience is more mature than that of an audience who watch movies that follow basic linear narratives.
I have used my pre-production survey and target audience research to help shape the ways in which I presented my production. Despite the majority of my respondents not actually being followers of my chosen genre, I have still used this to help my understanding of audience expectations.
According to my audience feedback, my narrative could have been improved by making it clearer as to what the narrative was actually about. The narrative was intended to portray the band on tour, and show them having a good time off stage to strengthen the audience understanding of the band. I could have improved this, or made it more clear by including my print work of the advert. I had got a shot of the advert on a billboard, or placed on a wall outside of a venue site, then it would have suggested to the audience that this is the bands advert, therefore they must performing soon, and leaves the question of them being on tour or not. Time did have a part to play in this, as finding a suitable location to place the advert would have taken time that I did not particularly have at the time. However, my narrative in general was not criticized largely, and some people did recognise that this was portraying the life of the band off stage.
The comments I received from my camera work were mostly positive, and people did pick up the fact that I used unsteady camera work in places to help the imagery fit to the song. They particularly liked to close-ups of the singer, as it tied in well with the general attitude behind the genre, and captured the emotions on the singers face, which is something that I wanted to achieve. They commented on the visual separation of the performance part to the narrative parts, saying that it kept them more visually aware and helped maintain interest. There was a comment about the image being out of focus in some areas, this was mainly due to having to transform certain shots to cut out certain parts of the frame that I couldn’t use due to various reasons.
Although it wasn’t obvious at first glance it does become clearer when analysing that the drummer isn’t using actual drum sticks. This is because I could get hold of any drum sticks at the time, therefore had to improvise by using bars of wood which are clearly much shorter than actual drum sticks. Therefore the performance part of my video was criticised to some extent, but this did not affect the performance as a whole. Surprisingly only one person noticed that the lead singer didn’t know the lyrics to the song. I spent a long time looking through my footage to try and find parts of the singer mouth movement that actually fit with the lyrics of the song, and I feel that this paid off.
The mise-en-scene was not harshly criticized by the audiences, but they did however pick up that the stage in the live performance parts did not really look like a stage that a band would perform on. The narrative parts were filed out doors in a rural environment in a house that looked fairly old and rustic, this helped to suggest the rawness of the band and not glamorise them by placing them in a modern home with fancy furniture. If I had more time I would try and find a more suitable stage, as it was obvious with the wooden flooring that this is a school stage, and the size of it was too big compared to the stages that Pop Punk bands normally perform on.
Concerning costumes, the majority of the comments were positive. The band are wearing typical clothes of a pop punk band, being large t-shirts, backwards caps and flannel shirts. One comment stated that the shorts worn by the lead singer look a bit out of place, however I disagree as most contemporary Pop Punk singers ware baggy sports shorts when on stage. I think this is probably so they can have full movement, as they tend to jump around stage a lot.
A lot of the feedback that I had from the editing was positive as the pace of edit matched the pace of the music well. However some comments said that at some points there was too much going on and the use of earthquake effect was too heavy during certain live performance parts. The slow motion parts I feel worked well in contrasting to the fast pace of the other editing, however if I could change the slow motion part in the narrative of the singer performing alongside the acoustic guitar, I would either take it out completely or speed it up a bit, as it does look a bit out of place. The opening sequence had good feedback, and helped prepare the audience for the fast edit pace throughout the video. This wasn’t my intentions, but if it worked this way then so be it, it’s not negative feedback so I am happy with that. The intentions were to try and replicate the original video, where the narrative parts were very short frames and looked like a jumping image. I did this by cutting up the footage using the blade tool and deleted every other section of the footage, and then when placed together it gave the jumpy look to the video.
If I had the chance to make the video again I would spend a lot more time on planning, and ensure that I had all the right props ahead of filming in order to produce an authentic video. I would also make sure that everyone was aware of filming dates before the day I decide to film, so all of the band members can be available for filming, and at the same time gather more footage to reduce the amount of clips that are used more than once. A fairly clear example of this is the clips where I had to use the same footage of the drummer playing the drums. It wasn’t necessarily identical as it was a later part of the footage, however it was from the same sequence. Therefore I would take more footage of the people playing the instruments, and from different angles to reduce the same look throughout the video, in an attempt to maintain audience focus.
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the entire production process I have used technology in the way of the internet as well as media technology such as, video editing software, cameras and graphical applications. I used Photoshop for the planning stage and the production stage of my print work. This allowed me to get a good idea of how the programme works such as enhancing and saturating my imagery to help make it stand out from being just a simple hand drawn graphic.
I used various tools such as inverse effects, contrast and cropping tools to change the framing of the images. Using various effects in Photoshop can really help an image to stand out from its original format, however an over use of effects can look childish and ruin the effects that you want to achieve. Therefore it is important to try out many different effects throughout the planning stages to ensure that you know what it is that you want to do with you imagery. Using layers in Photoshop can be particularly helpful, as it allows you to try out many different styles without losing certain styles that you may be happy with, by giving you the option to view or hide each layer. Although I produced graphical print work, Photoshop does have many advantages in the way of changing an image from its original form to help suggest the genre that it belongs to. For example, with pop music it is important for the artist to look glamorous a perfect. Therefore using a clone tool, you can disguise any blemishes or imperfection in the appearance of the artist.
So even though I produced graphical print work, I still found Photoshop useful when trying to aim my work at a particular audience. As I have stated before, I used effects such as saturation, contrast and enhancement to lift my image from the dull colours that it once was. This enabled me to get more emotion out of the colours, and give the flower drawings particularly a darker outline with the help of the stroke tool. This would appeal to my target audience as makes the imagery look harder and more edgy. Something that the my target audience can relate too.
For my moving image work I used a Cannon EOS 600D camera, which enabled me to shoot the footage in a high quality, making the outcome look more professional. By removing the autofocus for certain shots, i was able to get both full focused and slightly distorted shots which enabled my video to look more stylistic and keep the audiences focus.
The editing software that I used is called Final Cut Pro, an editing programme on a Mac computer. This was a very easy programme to use and enabled me to slow down, transform and use a blade tool to cut up parts of my footage. Although there are many effects on offer, for my chosen genre the only effect that would be necessary is the earthquake effect which I did use a few times, to match the heavier, more intense parts of the song. As I used mainly live performance, I didn’t want to use any special cuts, such as a cross fade, as it would not look natural and might give the effect that it is cutting to something in the future, where as this is all during one performance. I used the retiming option to slow down certain parts of the video to express the emotion behind singer and help fit it to the lyrics. For me, it was quite challenging using a Mac as I have never actually used on before, but when I got used to it, it become a lot easier and simple that an ordinary desktop computer.
As the budget is a main criteria for most independent film makers, having software and technology such as this available, at relatively low cost in comparison to editing software used for large budget blockbusters, it is a lot easier to create and share your own media productions. To present my work, I used WordPress, a blogging website that allows you to create a range of productions, such as polls and standard blog pages. As long as you have an internet connection, you can access wordpress form anywhere in the world, be it on your Smartphone, laptop, tablet or desktop computer. To make the blog more attractive and interactive, I inserted images, videos as well as links to my prezi page on synergy.
WordPress was particularly useful through the planning stages and post production stages, as I was able to create polldaddys, which other people could access and vote on, giving me the responses that I could then look at and analyse to understand the demands of my target audience. This was also useful in the post production stages, where I got feedback on my music video, which I could then use to help me answer the evaluation, as it told me what I had done well and where I could have improved. Such technology is very important within the media industry, as it allows them to understand the certain demands of their target audience, such as what promotions to offer, what types of technology to advertise and what style of branding to use.
By analysing real media examples, I have understood many of the conventions not only behind the clothing style and ethos of the Pop Punk genre, but also the camera work, editing and visual effects of Pop Punk music videos. Using sites such as facebook, YouTube and instagram, I was able to get a deep understanding of how the Pop Punk style is presented. I followed Pop Punk bands on YouTube such as ‘Neck Deep’ and watched a video of their ‘wonder years tour’, which helped me to understand how I should film my narrative parts, and what kind of attitude Pop Punk bands show when they are off stage.
benjaminfyfe 