A2 MEDIA

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
You need to establish what codes and conventions you have used relating evidence back to your research examples. You need to complete a close textual analysis of your own products (don't forget the ancillary texts) using media language and the correct terminology.

Throughout the planning, production and post production process of my music video, I used many codes and conventions seen throughout the history of music videos as a music video itself and then used conventions from the chosen genre of the song choice to further increase the realism and professionalism of the finished product. Examples of this being the choice to shoot the video in it's entirety in black and white a feature commonly used in music videos of the indie genre. Associated with this choice is the fact the whole black and white effect introduced via the editing software fits the tone and lyrics of the song, the song itself being about a woman leaving her man which me and my partner saw as an opportunity to use as a sign of which to take away the colour as if to say that due to the loss of his lover has lost the colour in his life. Despite the bulk of the video being shot in the same location (the garage) I still feel the mise-en-scene played a strong and noticeable part in finished project, examples of what I feel to be good uses of mise-en-scene are the 'home furniture' box which is a signifier of the actors troubles being too much for him to stay with the woman which would of course result in him moving out, throughout the video the audience are given multiple shots of various items in the garage we used these in order to give a feel of the characters life being put into one room, but the placement of the home furniture was the key in the mise-en-scene. The garage itself is a suitable location for the video as indie videos very rarely tend to be seen as massively high budget and often use cheap rural settings, a common conventions in the music genre. An obvious convention used in the video is the performance aspect of the video, performed by my partner for the video, a key to his performance was his knowledge of the song lyrically and instrumentally we decided it important for the performer to know the song on guitar as originally we shot it with a different actor but his lack of knowledge for the song made the video come across very lackluster. Thus we decided on using Robert and in my opinion the choice improved the quality and professionalism of the video by tenfold.

The choice of costume in the video for the performer was also no coincidence, we chose this as a reflection to his mood, he is dressed smartly as one would perchance for a funeral, as if to say he is dressed in that particular way to mourn the death of his love. We also enjoyed the use of costume as a direct comparison to his surroundings, like maybe decided to avoid this metaphorical funeral and instead went to the garage in order to fight for their relationship which at the very end of the video it is hinted that there may be hope yet for the couple, so maybe his actions were, we decided to include this particular bit of narrative as a hook in order to leave the audience asking questions. For the sub-narrative of the video we had a separate two actors/actresses, we specifically asked the female involved to a wear white floaty dress in order to deliver a message to the audience as a symbol of marriage to further portray the idea of at the beginning of the video the couple are beyond happy. However as the video and the songs pans out the change in costume becomes apparent as the white floaty dress is discarded in exchange for a baggy jumper which the audience would immediately link to the boyfriend. We used this in order to compare the two as in the dress the female is seen to be a beautiful free woman, however due to the jumper its almost as if her femininity is being repressed. Also baggy clothes and leggings for a female is now a common stereotype associated with women being fed up and a lack of effort to some. Due to the main aspect of our video being very static it was ultimately important to include as many different shots as possible, which as the lone cameraman in the video was all down to me. Knowing this I made it my aim to research multiple videos on YouTube of similar singer/songwriters in order to see how they produce their music videos with a single actor involved, my main inspiration for my camera angles and techniques was the work of Cameron Mitchell. From viewing videos on his channel I used many of his guitar shots, such as focus pulls from the fret playing hand to the strumming hand, only done in the style of close ups, focus pulls themselves are a recurring feature in my music video.

In order to create a personal feel to the clips of the two actors outside of the garage, we edited them to give them a home footage effect. In order to achieve this we used a technique named 'whacking' which entails detaching the lens from the camera itself and holding a matter of millimetres away from its original place which causes the lens to flare creating an old fashioned feel to the camera due to the lack of light filter: a thing associated with old fashioned cameras.How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
You need to analyse the media language you have used in all forms. The impact on an audience. Corss-form synergy. Shared elements.

I feel my main product and ancillary texts link to a reasonably good standard. I feel my album cover and back link with the indie genre nicely meanwhile whilst the photo of the amp and the microphone and the front cover could be associated with the setting that my music video was shot in. However due to my digipak featuring multiple songs I deemed it logical to therefore not focus my entire artwork on linking it to my music video which is a hugely popular decision throughout the music industry therefore I feel my main product and my ancillary texts have enough in common to be associated with each other without making it largely obvious which was my aim.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Discuss use of the internet, mobile phones and any digital format you used: photoshop, non-linear editing, prezi, goanimate etc.

As I was working in a group, we had to try and distribute the work load evenly. The work was approximately distributed like this:

Planning:   75% Rob / 25% Mark
Filming:   10% Rob / 90% Mark
Direction:  25% Rob / 75% Mark
Editing:   50% Rob / 50% Mark

In order to complete this task multiple technologies were used such as the internet for starters, as part of the course all work must have been uploaded to Blogger, for which all of my individual work must have been posted. Work such as my planning, which used the services of YouTube in expressing where I found my influences, comparisons and camera techniques used within my final piece. The camera used to film the final edit was a Canon E0S 550D, a group members camera. We decided on using Rob's camera so we never had any restrictions on when we could film as well as it filming in full 1080p HD. As previously stated we used the 'whacking' camera technique in order to create an old fashioned lens flaring approach. The editing software used was Adobe Aftereffects, this software enabled us to get each clip down to 1/29 of a second which enabled cutting edge precision which as a result give us access to intricate timings in order to make it look as good possible. The software also enabled us to export the video in the highest quality possible, once again adding to the professionalism our finished product attempted to deliver. On aftereffects me and Robert were able to control our clips in many ways to help our video overall such as, time stretching, and speeding it up in order to carefully synch the track with the movements of Roberts face. We were also able to trim the clips down to the exact right time to fit in perfectly with our video. Another program used was Adobe Photoshop which was used to create my ancillary texts, all images used in the ancillary texts were photographed by myself and the background pattern was a downloaded paintbrush off an internet site I then imported into Photoshop so it could be used. Having an adept knowledge of digipaks themselves as a remaining consumer of hard copy music albums, this give me the knowledge of common conventions of hard copies such as bardcodes, images, thank yous, stating the record label etc.