In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

The band that I used throughout my portfolio of productions was a local band named 'Kapok'. Kapok are a rock band also deemed under the subgenre of Grunge or Alternative rock. I think my products use as well as challenges and develops conventions.

I first of all established my bands genre and researched into similar bands of similar genres. Such bands as Muse, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I researched into these bands productions, especially their music videos and print productions. All of which seemed to have a theme. For example Muse's space/sci-fi theme that is apparent in all of their productions.

For my music video we wanted to capture a theme that the audience could recognise as the band's and use this to target their potential audiences. As well as use music video conventions. One way in which we achieved this was by using the conventional performance element, with a conventional band setup. This reflected the bands lively live performances, although shot in an attic, which we wanted to catch on camera for their fans to recognise. Also the lively performance is highlighted with the quick editing and short predominantly close up or extreme close up shots. The extreme close ups and fast editing are a convention of the genre.

This is much like Muse's music video for 'Dead Star' in which you see the band perform within a small dark claustrophobic area with many close ups and fast editing. This links in with Goodwin’s theory in that record companies wanting there music videos to show a lot of close ups of the vocalist or main artist. Another convention we used was the combination of the performance element with a narrative structure. The narrative itself used an enigma which at the end was tied in with and answered by the performance using a conventional converging narrative structure. The enigma is symbolised by the picture we see the girl holding at the start of the music video which is dropped at the end answering the enigma. Many music videos use this conventional of asking a question at the start of a video, why is she holding a picture; who is in the picture, and then answering the question at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhci-MG4DNE

We challenged and developed conventions of the music video and are genre as well. One way in which we did this was by having a alternative narrative in which we see a fan fanatical about Kapok shown through the narrative with her many posters and leaflets, writing letters to the band and pictures of the band.

For the digipak and magazine advert I used a combination of imagery to create a theme throughout. This theme used cassette tapes and tape along with a sci-fi space like font. Like many artist the theme was continuous and created an icon feature to the digipak to which would help throughout all advertising due to audience recognition.

One way in which I challenged the conventions of real media products in my digipak and magazine advert was by using simplistic photography. I didn't type in lyrics for songs or have any real photographs of the band, only used a stencil like piece of art of Joe, the lead singer. I also did not use a conventional CD case. I designed a case to mimic the aesthetic quality of a reel to reel tape to continue with the tape theme. The booklet also was unconventional due to firstly being round opposed to square. It also only had predominately photograph in it rather than any wording. The only wording I used was on the back panel to list the songs as well as the lettering for the tape cassettes.

The niche market that the band have makes targeting their target audience easier due to the collective demographic and collective interests. Also such bands will have dedicated fans that the band can rely on and also target. One way we target the bands niche market was with the alternative narrative within the music video. Another is by using a theme throughout all the productions. This being the sense of claustrophobia such as the music video's mise en scene or the magazine and digipak's claustrophobic dark, red photography. Also the sci-fi and tape theme that is seen throughout both the magazine advert and digipak. The sci-fi like fonts used for the magazine and digipak also can be seen as creating an image for the band, a convention many bands use such as muse with their recognisable logo and radiohead's themes of the new technological age.

Case studies

Films

• White Girl
• Fish Tank
• Control
• This is England
• Dead Man's Shoes

TV

• Skins
• 
  

Youth Culture and Collective Identity: BFI trip

Identity and the media:

• jaques lacan's Mirror stage
• The mirror stage is the point in which a child begins to develop their identity
• Applied to screen with audiences, audiences start to see themselves in the film (or other media) and start to aspire to be or create an identity with a character.
• This can act psychologically in a negative or positive way
• Representations can be accurate and therefor bring solidarity
• or they can be inaccurate or distorted and portray a false representation.

Youth Culture

• First reconginised youth culture was the 'Bowery Boys' of the 19th century, who were a gang of youths with there own sub culture and identification.
• Was the first time the entertainment industry and fashion industry targeted youth culture as a potential market for profiting
• 1900-1940's
• Youth culture started to become more vibrant but still not recognised as teenagers
• magazines start to target insecure young girls
• WW2 demands large labour force which in turn means many young people have disposable income to spend on entertainment and fashion
• 1945-160
• potential economy growth is obvious for youth culture to be the market of the future
• first negative stereotypes of adolescents
• the rock n roll culture and films such as 'the wild one' start up the new generation gap that don't want to identify with there previous generation and rebel against it.
• Adult Hegemony?
• hegemony = a dom. social group keeps an oppressed group in their subservient position by making them feel this position is normal or desirable.
• dult mainstream exploited the image of the 'rebel teen'
• sold to teenagers as aspirational
• sold to adults as a fear
• James Dean
• First real star to capture the dissonance of youth
• 'rebel without a cause'
• Characterised the 'live fast die young' culture
• 1960's and 70's
• Subcultures to counter cultures
• Next generation of teens very cynical about commercial exploitation of youth
• rebel chimes with social upheaval
• young people support movements, such as civil rights, feminist, anti nam movements, the rebel now has a cause.
• resistance to marketing and consumerisation wanted to make the world better
• Punk and Hip-Hop
• Both reactionary and rebellious music that was realities of their own areas, being that of poverty or being anti-establishment
• Adult obsession with youth
• women in journalism reports: 'Am i Bovered' and 'hoodies or altar boys'

Identity and stereotypes

• Internalised stereotypes
• youthful search for collective identity could result in these representations being internalised and accepted and self fulfilling
• Are the films 'kidulthood' and 'harry brown anti-youth and adult hegemony?

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages

Within all my productions, including my music video, magazine advert and digipak, as well as the planning and research and evaluation stages i used many varied new technologies and resources to complete them.

Within the music video i used a combination of many new media technologies. Most predominatly the digital camera for filming and Adobe Premier Elements for post production editing and then uploading the final result to Youtube. The use of digital cameras was mainly due to the practicality of using the smaller easier devices opposed to old cameras. This also due to making editing much easier within Adobe Premier Elements as editing software. With Premier Elements we were able to use the certain effects and level settings editing to produce the aesthetic quality of video that we wanted. Such an example would be the use of the brightness and contrast settings to create a darker more claustrophobic atmosphere. Also with the use of MP3s we were able to put the song over the music video along with simple cut and paste non linear editing we were able to easily syncronise the music and video.

With both my music video and digipak and magazine combination i have uploaded them to Youtube. This producing a forum for people to both view and give feedback on my work. Also a possibility is the 'remix' culture of many works on Youtube in which someone may like my work but may develop their own ideas over it.

For both my digipak and magazine advert i used a combination of digital photography, Adobe Photoshop and online fonts from Dafont.com. With the photo editing software i used many techniques to create the quality of photography that i wanted for my digipak and magazine. As many my photos were already had a red like filter to them, using the flash of the digital camera and my finger over the flash to create a blood red filter, i used the colour contrasting settings to create a consistent red throughout all of the photos. I also used the blur and eraser tool to produce a consistent red throughout the whole photo. The font that i used was under Dafont.com's 'Sci-Fi' section and is an old digital type font that i think is fitting for the band and the grunge audience as well as the theme throughout the digipak and magazine that is the use of cassette tapes and tape to create different types of artwork, such as a stencil type piece of art of the lead singing of Kapok, Joe.

For my evaluation and research and planning stages i predominately used the internet. For all the written i used Blogspot.com to produce the work on it's inbuilt word processor and published each work onto my own blog. This was the same for my evaluation works. For research i did branch out further. One example being my audience research to find the demographic of my band i used the social networking site 'Facebook' for people to fill out a questionnaire i had posted on my 'Facebook wall'.

The simplicity of Adobe Premier Elements and, like many new technologies, it's wide spread de-valuing and popularity means amateurisation has become a fundamental part of new media. This all mainly due to new technologies and the accessibility of these new technologies to many amateur producers, such as myself, that may be de-valuing porfessional media jobs but is creating a huge amount of new resources and a new way for the audience to perceive media. This being that the audience, through new technologies such as youtube and editing software and digital cameras, can now navigate what they want to see opposed to a broadcaster chosing what is shown. They can also respond to these new mediums with there own production, such as a blog, response video on youtube or amateur short film. This amateurisation also has stopped the domainance of corporate production teams as not as much money is needed to produce professional quality productions. Whoever having said this corpporate business, such as 'Google' still make money from the 'free' media put out onto there domains such as Youtube that is paid for and makes money through advertising.

Adobe Photoshop was the most admirable of the available programmes. Compared to Microsoft word it included many more features. Such as many effects tools and colour editing tools. Also it was easier than archaic photo developing techniques in which without trained knowledge i would not have been able to create such quality within my digipak.

Throughout each of the stages of the course I used web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the way in which the internet community can react to one anothers work and comments etc. It creates a global community in which anyone can responded to anything put up on the internet. So again links back to ameuterisation in which produces become audiences and audiences become produces. One way in which I used web 2.0 was within my blog in which i could upload work to which people could respond and give feedback. Also within the terms of uploading videos to youtube when users can comment back as well as rate your video. Web 2.0 has changed production as responses and feedback can now come from anyone to production made by anyone.

In conclusion new technologies have been very useful. Without such new technologies as digital cameras editing and filming would have been very difficult and not such a simple task which then let us focus more on the use of the camera and connotations and techniques we could use with the camera and editing. Also with the research without the internet it would have been considerable harder to find appropriate songs, videos and audience responses. And without the programmes available such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Elements many of the effects and techniques i used would have been possible.

How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary tasks?

For my A level portfolio I was briefed to create both a music video and accompanying digipak, consisting of a CD and magazine advert, for an unsigned band. I chose a band that I know and have seen around Norwich named ‘Kapok’. They produce a mix of alternative rock and grunge rock. I produced a 4 pain booklet to accompany an alternative CD case and CD print as well as the magazine advert and music video for their album and single both named ‘Ignorance is Choice’.

Throughout the productions I think the main overall theme would be that of claustrophobia and being stuck within somewhere. This is shown in the music video through the mise en scene mainly the location. The location we used for the main part of the shoot was my attic. Being quite a small space with low lighting the mise en scene creates a claustrophobic atmosphere which the protagonist in the video reflects by being stuck in a world of her own not being able to get out. This claustrophobic theme carries through to the digipak in which my main artwork for the booklet consist of photography using old cassette tapes. The use of a red type filter and close up shots with no real background or backdrop to the art makes the photos themselves feel claustrophobic along with the sci-fi type fonts that produce connotations of future closed in lifestyles.

The most obvious effective combination of the digipak and magazine is the artwork that is evident within both the booklet of the CD and the magazine itself. Both use the same photograph as a main and icon image that the audience would easily recognise. It’s an image of a cassette tape that is unwound and the unwound tape snakes into a zig zag formation. Within the booklet this zig zag is used to list the song names and within the magazine is flipped vertically so the tape winds down rather than along. Both are very striking images that the audience would easily recognise.

Another feature that occurs throughout both the main and ancillary tasks is the use of simplicity. Most evident within the magazine that is as minimal as possible but still projecting is use and point. Also the CD has not got too much ‘going on’ and is simple in it’s design and aesthetic quality. The music video itself is simple due to us not using any over the top effects or elaborate editing techniques. As well as us not creating a too confusing narrative or narrative structure. This simplicity isn’t over simple that the audience will be bored or uninterested but used to have the most amount of affect on the audience with no other distractions from the main point of both the main task and ancillary tasks.

This shows the strong continuity that is evident throughout all three works and that creates a self image for the band that will be recognisable to all there fans much like ‘Radiohead’s’ use of the mixture computer and social images and muse’s iconic symbol.

Unprocessed and original images

The last image is a stencil of Joe mazzei from which I used to create the tape stencil of Joe which is the 3rd page of the digipak booklet. I firstly printed out the stencil of Joe and then applied the loose tape to the stencil, covering the areain which needed. I then took a picture of the new taped stencil, adding a red filter.

Digipak