A2 Media Studies

Figure 1

The form of my production work is music video, with the genre of the music video being Indie/alternative rock, two similar music/music video genres which the artist of the song I chose fall in to. The genre ‘alternative rock’ implies that it is an alternative to mainstream music as well as an alternative to the standard ‘rock’ genre, whereas the ‘indie’ genre, now commonly known as a style of alternative music, covers bands that are not under the influence of a major record label, or minor labels, as they tend to release their music independently, sometimes creating their own label just for their music. Even though the genres of my music video and song represent anti-mainstream and conventionality, my product largely follows the forms and conventions of the music video genre, magazine advert and Digipack, especially in terms of the ‘indie/alternative rock’ conventions of the aforementioned texts. The lead singer of the fictional band ‘Renegades’, which I created to be the artist in my texts, features in the music video as the star and main focus. This is conventional of music videos, as is the other band members only having minor roles, if any, in the music video. The fictional lead guitarist plays a cameo in my music video, appearing during the opening sequence, holding a lyric board which says “drum solo”. Furthermore, the drummer of the fictional band, who is conventionally credited in the Digipack inside sleeve, does not appear at all, except for in the second draft edit – the female – but not in the final draft of my music video. Furthermore, the lead singer (but no other band members) features as the model in the magazine advert. The lead singer, in both texts, is represented as ‘cool’, ‘young’ and ‘hip’ through the use of costume in the mise en scene, where he wears fashionable clothing (hat, checked shirt) and has fashionable ‘alternative’ hair, which is long in length (as opposed to the mainstream short length). My music video, however, is unconventional in some instances. Modern music videos are conventionally performance clips or narrative clips, whereas my music video is an abstract clip, which is artistically motivated and features no narrative or performance, making it unconventional. It also features no narrative structure, as the form didn’t call for one. Furthermore, the use of hand-written text on the back cover of my Digipack is unconventional, as certain parts of the track listing are scribbled out and other parts are written upside-down. However, like I previously said, my texts are largely conventional, with the extensive use of black and red as a colour scheme, although unconventional of mainstream music, it is conventional, and iconic even, of the rock genre and its associated hybrid genres such as alternative rock, pop rock and hard rock, the latter of which is the influence of heavy metal music on rock music.

Figure 2

All music videos are postmodern, borrowing aesthetically from other music videos as well as being pastiches of other media texts. For example, a performance clip, where the artist performs their song in an arena, is a pastiche of a concert, whereas a narrative clip is a pastiche of a short film/full-length film as well as some narrative videos, such as ‘The Kill’ by Thirty Seconds To Mars (which I analysed on my blog) borrows stylistics from horror films, such as staccato sounds to create horror, as well as the video being a pastiche of ‘The Shining’, with intertextual references being made to it on numerous occasions. My music video is, of course, postmodern, as it is a pastiche of Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, with it being an almost-exact replica of it. My music video is a ‘respectful parody’ of the aforementioned music promo, in the sense that it copies it, but some of the lyric boards are wrong. For example, one lyric board, which I previously mentioned as the lead guitarist holding up, whilst making a cameo, says “drum solo” on it, whereas the sound in the music video is actually a guitar solo. Furthermore, the lyrics of the song go “following the white lines”; whereas the lyric boards on some occasions write “this is not the right line”, as it rhymes with the actual line in the song. This is self-reflexive, a feature of postmodernism, as it draws attention to the audience that the music video is aware of its form, and is emphasised through mistakes (although intentional they come across as this) such as the wrong lyrics on the board, some boards being upside down, and the running out of boards towards the end of the music video. My music video is in colour, with the lyric boards also being in colour. However, the lead singer is in black and white (see Figure 2), which creates a link to Bob Dylan’s, as he was in black and white due to the time in which the music video was made; when colour cameras weren’t widely available. The black and white is also conventional of the indie genre of music video. Another self-reflexive feature of my music video is when, in an instrumental interlude, the lead singer moves out of the way to reveal the ‘layers’ which were placed during post-production to allow the lyric boards to be in colour and the rest of the lead singer in black and white. It looks as though it’s a mistake, but an active audience would be able to see that my music video is supposed to be self-reflexive and drawing attention to its fictional nature, (even adding an arrow pointing to it, saying "look at that" (see Figure 3)) and so when the lead singer moves out of the way, they are encouraged to interpret it as connoting two meanings, due to the double exposure of the layers, where one meaning is the promotion of an album release (again, self-reflexivity is used when text flashes on-screen saying “buy this album” (see Figure 4)) whereas the other is that it’s a postmodern music video that is aware of its purpose of promotion (where it’s supposed to be perfect), and drawing the audience’s attention to its purpose by stating its purpose. The music video also fulfils its promotional purpose ‘badly’, in the sense that the layers are exposed, as is the green screen studio and at the end, the music video appears to have crashed, as the lead singer gets turned upside down (see Figure 6) which is used to signify and connote that the conventions are being turned on their head and the green screen studio flashes on-screen (see Figure 5), in which the music video comes to an abrupt end, whereas in a proper, conventional music video, none of these would have occurred as they would be ‘perfect’. The green screen studio was added afterwards, as a piece of video, as I wanted props within the mise en scene to signify that the music video had been made in a green screen studio, and so I placed, within the mise en scene, lighting equipment and a camera tripod, all of which are iconic of the green screen studio and make it look like a professional place of production. The postmodernism doesn’t just stop here, however, as my other two media texts are also, to a certain extent, postmodern. The Digipack and magazine advert are themed on Russian Constructivism, as is the background of the music video and the lyric boards, featuring industrial settings with the colour scheme of black and red and yellow, with the former two chosen to be a part of the scheme because of its associations with communist Russia, which also has links to Russian Constructivism. Some of my lyric boards even feature the hammer and sickle, which is an intertextual reference to Soviet Russia/Communist rule of

Russia

and one other lyric board is made up, in its entirety of a Russian propaganda poster, which follows the Russian Constructivism style. Bricolage, another feature of postmodernism, is seen in my production with the Russian Constructivism as the style is iconic of Russian propaganda, during communist rule during the days of Soviet Russia. However, my usage of the style has nothing to do with propaganda and communism as I have recontextualised it to create new meanings such as the ideology that it is cool, alternative and anti-mainstream, as these are ideologies that my band represent. In addition to this, my Digipack front cover is a pastiche of the Franz Ferdinand album cover for ‘You Could Have it so Much Better’, which is an alternative rock/indie album, with the band also being indie icons. In this aspect, my production pays homage to the band. However, the original album cover of the Franz Ferdinand album is also a pastiche of a poster which I believe called for women’s rights, and was in the style of Russian Constructivism. This pastiche makes my Digipack front cover simulacrum as it is a copy of a copy, with no meaning towards the original form.

Figure 3

Taking the postmodernism in to account, it is quite clear that my target audience would be encouraged to be active, due to intertextual readership, as they will be drawing comparisons between the music video for ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and my own, as well as seeing the influence of Russian Constructivism on my products. However, it is more likely that the audience will see the intertextuality and pastiche of the album cover for ‘You could have it so Much Better’. They are students at the age of 16-24 either in compulsory education or higher education. I also outlined their consummation of music habits, as they will, no doubt, download music, usually illegally, rather than buy the physical copy. This is why I have screen-shot my Digipack cover being distributed through online distributors, such as HMV.com, as this will be the main form of distribution for my product, so to allow my audience to consume it easily and in a way they are accustomed to. I also studied the demographics of my target audience, realising that they would be firmly within the E1 demographic. The E1 demographic covers pensioners as well as students. At first glance this may seem like a small demographic to target, but there are lots of students in the

(as well as across the world) who will also consume the most music compared to other people. My target audience will consist, mostly, of a mixture of reformers and aspirers. This means that they will be fashion-orientated, but not materialistic, they will download their music, as previously stated, and they will attend gigs and events as well as buying products for their quality. I don’t believe that my production shows hegemony, but the representation of social groups and their ideologies can be seen, especially in my music video. The facial expressions of the lead singer, who represents the teenage social group as well as the band, denote him as being care-free, which reflects the stereotypical teenager. Furthermore, the teenage social group are stereotyped and represented as all listening to rock music and its associated genres, and being fashion-orientated. This is reflected through the costume and mise en scene of the lead singer and the genre of the music video. They are also represented as being anti-mainstream, and generally rebelling against what is considered normal, as the theme running through all my texts is Russian Constructivism, which is not widely used in the modern day.

I believe my overall production, consisting of the three texts which are music video, Digipack and magazine advert, has been successful. These claims can be backed-up by my audience, as audience feedback suggests that the overall campaign is successful because all three texts can be seen to be related to each other, through the use of the colour scheme and Russian Constructivism style. The audience, saying that the three texts looked as though they belonged on the same promotional campaign, also said that “they have a unifying theme and look” on one feedback form, which emphasises the importance of the Russian Constructivism style and the colour scheme which can be seen the same on all three texts. I also believe, although audience feedback doesn’t mention this, that the appearance of the Digipack front cover on the magazine advert, as well as the lead singer’s appearance in the music video and the magazine advert both create synergy and link the three texts through the addition of certain aspects of the texts, as well as entire texts, appearing on other texts. No negative feedback was given on my production in terms of how they all work as a combination. However, I personally believe that the back cover of the Digipack perhaps doesn’t fit in as well as it could with the other texts, as it is very grey and feature limited colours from the colour scheme. The only link it has to the other texts and other parts of its own texts is the usage of angles, which is a feature of Russian Constructivism, the style which is linking all three of my texts. I was aware of this during production, however, but I decided not to replace it because aesthetically, it looked good, and still held features of the overall theme running through my production work. Other features of Russian Constructivism was the usage of geometric shapes, angles, bold lettering and bright colours, all of which were intended to be eye-catching, especially when the style was used in advertisements. Russian Constructivism is linked to many things, from, as aforementioned, advertisements, to state propaganda during the Russian revolution, in which the communists overthrew the Russian Royal Family.

Figure 4

Getting feedback from the audience was important to me, throughout my production. It helped me make decisions on my products, on numerous occasions, by helping me understand that my promo campaign worked as an overall promo package. I continuously asked my audience for feedback on my texts, as they would be the ones consuming my product, and so knowing what they liked and what they wanted meant that I could shape my product on what they want, even putting the chosen music/music video genre down to their taste, by holding an online poll on my blog, which asked the target audience what their favourite genre is. The largest amount of people chose rock and Indie, meaning I would make an alternative rock/indie music video with the same genres for my chosen song. Furthermore, my audience lead me to change my music video twice, with my third music video being the best, as said through audience feedback. During production of the final music video draft, I was unsure as to whether or not I should use the theme of Russian Constructivism in the background, with the alternative just being the standard black & white pictures of worn-down industry, in ruin, in the background. The audience preferred the edited photos, which followed the colour scheme seen throughout my production, so I chose to use that in my final version. I also asked the audience if they preferred the newly designed lyric boards, which used the theme and style of Russian Constructivism, or if I should stick to the original lyric boards which had the lyrics written on them, scruffily. The audience feedback, although initially mixed, was weighed towards the side of using the Russian Constructivism-inspired lyric boards, which is why I used them in my final product. As you can see, audience feedback was very important and essential for my production to be a success, as without it, I would have stopped at the first draft of my music video, the final outcome of which is very different to the one I have now, which my audience have stated is the best version.

During the pre-production phase of my production work, I intended to draw a storyboard as well as the drafts of my ancillary texts. This was made possible through the conventional pen and paper, but I managed to use a scanner, which saved the scanned image of my drafts and storyboard as a jpg file, which then allowed me to upload the image on Blogger. However, my drawing skills aren’t that great, so I also did some mock-ups on Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, which allowed me to quickly and effectively make these mock-ups in a neat and accessible way for me, rather than a scruffy drawing. I also intended to make an animatic, to further clarify how my music video would be pieced together. It consisted of a stick man holding up the boards which was made on Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, as my hand drawing is untidy, so digital technology allowed me to bypass my scruffy drawings, which may have resulted in a lack of clarity, when I used the storyboard to help me during production. Although neatness wasn’t a necessary feature for my coursework pre-production work, it did allow me to understand more clearly what my animatic was trying to convey. My animatic was also made on Microsoft Movie Maker, on the college laptops. This media technology is commonly used by amateur film-makers, who would piece together and edit their films using this free software, as opposed to Adobe Premier Pro CS3, for example, which costs. I also stored all of my coursework, be it pre-production, production or post-production, on a web-based blogging site, run by Google, more commonly known for its search engine, ‘Blogger’. This blogging site is easy to use, highly customisable and free. It also places the last published post at the top, which is an example of how organised my coursework was, because of Blogger. It also kept records of the time and date the posts were published, so to allow me to be even more organised and schedule a post in advance which can already have work on it a week, if not more, before it actually gets published. This further allowed me to keep organised. Because the blogging site, an example of web 2.0, is internet-based, it meant that my work wasn’t misplaced or lost or accidently thrown in the bin because the digital technology stored all my work online.

Figure 5

During the research stage of pre-production, I relied on websites such as Wikipedia, which is an internet-based encyclopaedia, and receives bad-press for its unreliability. However, in any information I gained from the site, I checked the sources to see if it was a trusted source, and I also re-wrote the entirety of the information accessed from the site, especially as sometime the syntax of the words is often wrote wrong, making it seem unprofessional, something which I wanted to avoid. Although I only used Wikipedia for my online source of information, I also used numerous books from the college, particularly from the Media department’s collection of media-related books. One book that I found particularly helpful was ‘Understanding Popular Music’, by Roy Shuker. This book helped me to outline the codes and conventions of my chosen genre, which was Alternative rock/indie, by featuring a large section on what I would find in an alternative rock/indie music video, such as black and white and the dominance of performance clips. Furthermore, other Web 2.0 sites, such as YouTube, helped me in my music video research, as I could access YouTube to watch music videos, which I would then go on to analyse. The HTML code of these videos could be copied and then pasted on to the HTML section of the blog post, on Blogger, where the music video would then be viewable on my blog. This allowed me to easily access the music video in the future, and also watch the music video in the same window, allowing me to easily watch the music video whilst writing about it on my blog. When researching and doing my textual analysis on ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ by Bob Dylan, web 2.0 let me down, as I couldn’t find the music video for it on YouTube, MySpace Music or other video streaming sites. However, I got hold of the ‘Don’t Look Back’ DVD, which documented Dylan’s 1965 concert tour of the UK, and gave me an insight in to how he thinks and what he represents. In my textual analysis, I analysed certain parts of the documentary, along with the music video of which mine is a pastiche of. The music video was added on the DVD as a bonus feature; also coming at the beginning of the film as its original intention was to provide an opening sequence for the documentary. I watched the DVD on a DVD player as well as a laptop, using two modern media technologies to help me in my research stages. One important convention of the music video, which will be found in almost all music promos, is the cutting to the beat. This happens throughout my music video in many ways, as the lead singer throws the lyric boards to the timing of when that lyric is said, and the background cuts to the beat, also. Furthermore, the begining sequence, shot entirely in black and white, features the cutting of the lead singer's position, to the beat (see Figure 1)

Figure 6

During the production of my music video, and audience feedback forms, also, I used a Sony HD1000E camcorder, which allowed me to capture my footage, on a DV tape, in a HD format. The camera was brilliant to use, as it had a zoom function which didn’t distort the quality of the footage, and also had other features such as night vision and auto-focus, the latter which really helped in my production as I wasn’t fully comfortable with focussing the camera myself, and so whenever I wanted, for example, a shallow depth of field, the camera automatically knew this, through the positioning of it, and put the foreground in to focus. This didn’t come in to play in my music video as my shot was a tableaux shot, in the sense that it didn’t move or cut; it was static. For the background footage, I took static pictures, which I then could edit. In order to do this, I first took the photographs of industrial places in the city, which looked down-trodden and deserted, with the Olympus SP600UZ. Again, this had a zoom feature which didn’t reduce the quality of the picture, so I could easily take pictures of factories from far away, but still get a superb quality. In addition to taking these photos, I also took the photos, using this camera, for my Digipack and magazine advert. Once filming had been completed, I imported all of my footage from the DV tape to the editing suite, which was of LG make. The program I used was Adobe Premier Pro CS3, which allowed me to easily edit my music video. The effects that you get with the editing suite were also very good, featuring important effects such as Chroma Key. This effect was used, by me, to drain the green from the shots I had taken, from in the green screen studio, which left me with a frame with just the lead singer, and the lyric boards, in it. After using this affect, I could then easily add background footage, which started as numerous places around college and the surrounding area, then to a snowy field with a building site in the background, both of which were video footage. However, my final edit featured images, as previously said, in the background. Firstly, I used Adobe Photoshop CS3, on the college laptops and computers, where I could ‘drag and drop’ the images I wanted to feature in my music video. From this, I decided to add the ‘cut out’ effect, which distorted the image to make it look posterized, whilst also creating a grey and black tone effect, as to give a paint-brush effect, but only using dark colours. This then allowed me to further edit the photos, adding colours from the overall colour scheme of my production, yellow red and black, to the grey areas. Saving them as a jpg file, I then imported them on to the editing suite, creating a ‘bin’ to store all the images in, so I wouldn’t misplace them. From this point, I could then add them on to my music video as I would with any other piece of video footage. Because of the use of the Chroma Key effect, in the background of my music video the audience can see these edited photos, rather than the green background of the studio. I also took care not to include any green in the mise en scene, such as on the lead singer’s costume. Once I had finished editing my music video, I simply exported the file using the Adobe Media Exporter, saving the music video as a WMF. Blogger has its own feature where you can upload WMF file videos straight to the blog. However, like I previously said, the quality is low and there is a limit as to how large the file is. This was ideal for my animatic however, because the quality didn’t affect its purpose. However, I decided to create a YouTube account, where I could export the music video from the editing suite on a higher bit rate (making the quality better but increasing the file size to around the 100mb mark, as opposed to the standard quality of 35mb) and then upload it to YouTube, which allows files to be uploaded from up to 2GB in size. I could then copy the HTML code, like I did with my ancillary texts, and pasted the code on to a blog post, where my music video would be shown in a high quality.

I also used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to create and edit my Digipack and magazine advertisement. I chose this program because I have used it before, during the foundation portfolio production work, and so it was fast and easy for me to use. The dimensions of A4 paper, which my magazine advert would be printed on, was an already set-up size for a work space on Photoshop, which again made things faster and easier for me. Although I didn’t edit the model (lead singer) on my magazine advert, except for changing the brightness and contrast levels slightly, I did edit the cover model on the front cover of my Digipack. I used a pop-art effect in the creation of this, so it would intertextually reference the ‘You Could have it so Much Better’ model on Franz Ferdinand’s album front cover. I used Microsoft Excel to create pie charts, in order to clearly view my audience feedback and research. In addition, I also usied Microsoft Office Word 2007 for any text that needed to be done, such as, on some occasions, analysing media texts such as music videos and magazine adverts. Word has a feature, which I used extensively, where I could publish the contents of the Word document by going on File – Publish – Blog – Register Blog. Once my blog had been registered, by typing in my username and password, Word documents such as my evaluation could be easily and quickly posted on to my blog, straight away after completion, as it could be done, due to new media technologies, with just a click of a button. This wasn’t time consuming as I no longer had to log in every time I wished to create a new post on my blog.

I really like my finished products/texts, although it isn’t perfect, I have played on the idea of postmodernism and how it doesn’t have to look perfect. Audience feedback was mainly positive which backs up my thoughts on my music video and ancillary texts that they are acceptable. Although I had some minor set-backs, forcing me to re-shoot my music video three times, I overcame them in time for the deadline which was pretty impressive, and I am especially glad that I stumbled upon the style of Russian Constructivism as without it, all of my texts wouldn’t link and the finished music video would have look half as good as it does now (I say “look half as good” because postmodernism is all about style over substance, meaning it’s more important for the text to look good, whereas traditional media would have to have substance as well as look good).

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