Evaluation Progress

A draft is completed for each of the 4 questions all we need to do is film and upload them which should be completed within the next week.

Question 3 Progress - 29th January

This is a draft for Question 3 so far, as we are up to question 8 and will continue to add the other questions such as 9 and 10. We will add feed back from the class and Ben Young from Teeside University, which was very helpful as he gave us useful information as to how to further interest the audience. We will further add how we learned from audience feedback and used it to advance our final product.

Question 4 Progress - 27th January

This lesson Tom has made progress to our evaluation Question 4 by adding a further analysis of how we have created brand identity and why we've used certain things in our product.

Covet - Rough Cut 6

This is our 6th Rough Cut video, in which we have switched out the old narrative shots with the new ones. We will be continuing to reshoot narrative shots as the new shots that we got were too bright compared to the old ones and would create continuity errors within the narrative. This would make the whole video unbelievable and jarring and we want the video to be as smooth as possible.

Development of Advert

Comparing Our Digipak To Others

This post will compare our own digipak (shown below) to other digipaks from bands in the same genres/subgenres, as to show off the conventions that we used to create ours.

Our first example is the Lower Than Atlantis album 'World Record'. The album is a white background with two very well drawn open palms on the front, with various items that are supposedly carried by students/musicians (this is their target audience). As you can see, from the image below, they have used no colour what so ever in their album artwork, this could relate to the dark nature of the songs. In our original designs for the music video, we were going to have the narrative in black and white, in which our digipak would also have been to create brand identity, The album doesn't show any band members and only has artwork, possibly to show the creativity of the band or to create a link to their lyrics. Our digipak follows this convention to an extent, in which we used artwork for the outer part of the digipak but used the band on the inside as to follow the convention of the its second sub genre.

Our second example is Sum 41's album 'Underclass Hero'. The album uses a black and white picture of the lead singer to contrast against the bright pink text. This draws attention to the audience and will most likely grab peoples attention. The image below shows Deryck Whibley, the lead singer of the band, who is the star image and is used in most of their products. The image relates to the convention of the punk rock genre, in which the bands are often shown in the digipak. To follow this convention, we chose to use several photos of the band for the audience to identify with who they are. We used a photo of all the band together, one of the lead singer and another of the other band members, to identify with the theory of star image, by focusing Lewis away from the other band members. 

Brand Identity Between Our Products

Our media products feature the same elements as each other in order to form a brand identity. This is important to help the audience recognise the company and increase sales of the final product. Good branding can differentiate you from other products that are similar to your own and can give the audience a reason to choose your product over another companies.

We originally decided that the performance side of our music video was going to have a lot of dark shots with bright lights, to create a great atmosphere for our piece, whereas the narrative shots would feature lighter shots to contrast against the performance. To recreate this contrast with our other products, the digipak featured bright backgrounds for the outer sides with darker backgrounds on the inside. The advert was harder to do this for as it was only one side, nonetheless we managed to create a suitable advertisement that linked with the same theme.

Another way we linked all our products was with the colour scheme that we used. This featured black, white, green and grey. The darker colours were used to make the white and green stand out more. These colours were mainly used in our advert and logo with some aspects in the digipak. The original design for the digipak featured a lot of similar colours to the final advert, however we felt that the final digipak needed some contrast to the the advert and some brighter colour used.

All of our products feature the company logo (below) which was designed on photoshop. The design is fairly simple yet effective, using the colour scheme to make everything stand out. The Music Video features the logo flashing before the song starts, showing the audience that it was created by our company and that we are associated with these products. The digipak features the logo on the back side, next to the copyright information, and also on the spine, to show that the band is signed to our company. Finally, the advert shows the logo in the bottom half of the poster, which shows things that are associated with the band (HMV, YouTube page, band website).

The extended logo shows a black background with a green circle that gradually fades out. On top of this is the text, Gideon, and glasses, both of which are made in 8 bit. Our original idea for the name came from the popular animated book series/movie, 'Scott Pilgrim Vs The World'. The series focuses on a boy who is in a band who arent well known, fitting with the same characteristics of the band we have chosen. We named our record company after the main antagonist and styled it after the movies theme of 8bit; the glasses represented Gideons character in the series so we chose those to represent our company.

Storyboard Adaptations and Changes 2

Evidence of Filming - 9/11/14

These photos show evidence of all of our group members filming on our first day of filming for the narrative structure of the video on the 9th of November.

MAP 3

This feedback given by my tutor shows how I have improved since MAP 2. It shows the strengths in my work and what band I am currently working at. The first page evaluates my Research and Planning in which I am working at band 3. The second page evaluates the most recent music video (band 3) and the ancillary texts (band 4).

The final page shows the action plan after receiving my MAP 3. This shows the changes I have decided to make to enhance my grade.

For research and planning, I have decided to add more posts and organise them under the pages on my blog. This will include posts on theorists, location recce's and possibly extra research to show how we came up with our final products.

For several reasons we have decided to get rid of the idea of our central character visiting his grandmother at the care home. This is because the shots we have were very dark and grainy and didn't look as good as the other shots we had. In order to fix this we have reinvented the plot so that he is now visiting her grave. This will require extra filming and editing in tweak week.

The ancillaries received 10/10 marks and therefore do not need any extra work putting into them.

Although I am not required to attend the AST session on Monday, I will be attending as to improve on my Research and Planning.

MAP 2 Review

This review gives feedback on how I have developed following my MAP 2 Feedback, it gives me extra points of improvement to the initial feedback and tells me how I have improved so that I know whether I am doing my work correctly.

Covet - Rough Cut 5

This is our fifth rough cut for our final A2 video.

Covet - Rough Cut 4

This is our fourth rough cut for our final video of A2.

This Cut has been improved because it has no gaps in the visual footage and has once again had new footage included in it. It also has more footage of the lead singer to fit Goodwins theory that will increase the chance of creating an image in our audience's mind. We also shortened some of the shots (in particularly the florist shots because they didn't link between cuts- the protagonist wasn't in the same position that he was in the last) so that they link to each other better, so more shots could be included and to link the pace of the edit to the song.

David Buckingham

Christian Metz believed that genre alters over time through a process of development. He divided this process into 4 stages - 'Experimental', 'De-construction', 'Parody' and in the end 'Hyrid'. Gunther Kress argues that genre evolves with our progression and changes in time and that text is written with the ideal audience.

In contrast to these theories, David Buckingham studied children's and young people's interactions with electronic media. Ever changing media means ever changing identities - development of the genre suggests that it is not simply culture but rather a constant process of change and negotiation.

Buckingham explores how the development of individuals understands the concept of identity, as a child identity is seen as a simple concept where by a child will simply differentiate between the male and female genders.

When we age, our identity becomes a lot more complex and it is no longer largely dependent on the sole idea of just establishing gender. Buckingham argues that genre is not simply given by the culture rather it is in a constant process of change.

Location Recce/Risk Assessment - Florist

Barry Keith Grant

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist which shows he should have some ideas on audiences when it comes to media and how texts are sent for the audience to perceive.

He looked at the role of audience positioning in the interpretation of mass media texts by different social groups. Hall built a model suggesting three ways in which the audience may perceive a media production:

• Dominant Reading: The audience will read into the text or receive a message from a video exactly how the author or artist wanted them to, so the events seem natural and in order.
• The Negotiated Reading: The reader believes the text or products conventions and message/narrative to some degree but sometimes modify certain aspects as to allow them to reflect and compare it to their own situation.
• The Oppositional Reading: The position of the reader or audience places them perceiving the narrative in opposition to the dominant code and makes them reject the reading or narrative.

Hall was concerned with the power of media, with aspects of how it propagates particular social values, to create dominant ideologies (how it represents certain things and makes the audience think of them in that certain way).

He believes that the media masses create and define certain issues of public concern and interest with the theory of audience positioning and how they portray their message and what target audience they send it out to./ Polysemy - is the capacity for a text or narrative to have multiple meanings, it is to do with how individuals interpret and decode the messages in different contexts for reasons such as culture, age, upbringing and so forth.

Evidence of Group Discussion

To be able to contact each other though out the week, our group has created a chat inbox on Facebook. We chose this site because each member of the group has an account on it and uses it quite often.

We also used this site to contact the cast as each member has an account as well.

To plan times for meeting up with the group outside of college, we have got a Timetoast timeline which shows all the times we have done work together and what we did.

Props List

Julian McDougall

Julian McDougall suggests that in the online age it is getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable, identifiable group.

However- audiences still clearly make sense and give meaning to cultural products

An audience can be described as a "temporary collective" (McQuail, 1972).

Key terms:
Mass/Niche & Mainstream/Alternative

This theory can be applied to my products when identifying our audience as alternative rather than mainstream, mass or niche because it isn't found within the most popular of genres although it has still got a large audience size.

Andrew Goodwin

Goodwin is a theorist who specialised in media and came up with many different ideas about music videos and how they are successful. In his book (Dancing in the Distraction Factory) Andrew Goodwin writes about six characteristics and features seen in music video.

These are:

• Genre representation such as linking pop with dancing or rock with band performance.
• Lyrics/visuals link- words represented by imagery.
• Music/visuals link- the atmosphere of the video matches the music in ways such as through illustration, amplification or disjuncture and through things like thought beats.
• The need of specific shots such as close-ups requested usually by the record company in order to create a mental image of the artist or a label.
• Reference to notion of looking and voyeuristic treatment towards the female body which links towards Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory.
• Intertextual links to other media products such as TV shows and films. 

Our video will support Andrew Goodwin’s theory because it will use a large amount of shots that concentrate on the bands image; this will help to create a brand identity insisted by the record label. Another way our video will demonstrate Andrew Goodwin’s theory of six characteristics is by using performance shots of the band which will demonstrate the genre of rock using real instruments.