Barney: December 2009

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

I believe that our media product uses many of the forms and conventions that you will see in a music video, firstly the variety of camera angles and shots that we used were essential. Like most music videos we had to show that we understood the 180 degree rule, once that was done it was important that we used a variety of different camera shots so that the audience would not get bored whilst watching the video. This arguably challenged the regular codes and conventions of a music video, this is because most videos do not have such a number of different camera shots in such a short space of time. But as explained earlier, the reason for doing this is to keep the audience fully focused on the music video and keep a sense of variety to our music video.

Our music video uses the codes and conventions of a music video in terms of how it is edited, like all music videos ours is mostly all continuity editing so what the video runs almost seamlessly throughout. We used a realistic mise en scene image, the main character was a typical over confident individual who are frequently shown and highlighted on shows like 'X factor' and 'Britain's got talent' the out fit he is wearing was chosen as we believed as the main character thought we had 'talent' he would dress similarly to one of the most iconic individuals of the music industry in Michael Jackson (hence the name Michael Jameson). It could be argued that our music video challenges the normal codes and conventions as well as the majority of the video is completely random (most of the town sections) their is no particular journey that the character is on, there are even times when there are just animals dancing. However, all of the clips relate back to the video in some way shape or form.

The CD album follows the codes and conventions of most CD albums, om the front cover we have one main shot, which is the penguin posing with professional dancers, doing a famous Michael Jackson pose. Like most CD album covers this cover had a main focus (the penguin) whilst also offering offer aspects. The two inside sections of the CD cover again both follow the codes and conventions of a regular inside section of a CD cover, the two famous dancing posers do however arguably challenge the regular codes and conventions as not many albums have images on the inside (normally just text) But we do include text about the Artist and a sing-a-long page which allows the listening to sing along with the song. The backing of the CD album again follows the regular codes and conventions, we have the track listings for the audience to read and look up and we have a bar code, website and picture.

The music poster does follow the codes and conventions of similar texts, we have chosen the famous 'Saturday Night Fever' pose (which is also present in the album, allows the audience to associate with the Artist) as the main image, as most music posters have one particular key image which attracts the users attention. We have also continued to use the same text on both the album and the poster to again help the audience associate the text and images to the music video and most importantly the artist.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I believe that our combination of our main product and ancillary texts clearly mix and compliment each other extremely well. Our music video is all about 'dancing like an animal' in other words dancing however you deem suits yourself and your style, so for our main poster we decided to use one of the most iconic dancing posers in history. The John Travolta 'Saturday Night Fever' pose re produced in an animal costume has a clear humorous factor whilst also clearly showing and highlighting that our music album and video are all about dancing and feeling good about yourself regardless of what others believe.

I also think that the CD album compliments our music video, all of the pictures have people in dancing posers (including Michael Jackson and John Travolta) so the audience will instantly realize that the album is all about dance music, we have also a dance floor as the main background on all four sections of the album, hopefully this will allow the audience to establish that our music video is all about dancing. This clearly relates to the music poster as well as both the poster and album continue the famous dancing posers theme, highlighting continuity. Overall I feel that all three products compliment each other as they are clearly relate which was the clear goal throughout the entire project, as we decided early on to use to the same animal costumes from the actual music video and implement them onto the CD album and then on to the poster would show a clear understanding of continuity and inter-textual knowledge. The idea of putting the animals in a number of different famous dancing poses we thought would work extremely well as the music video itself was designed to highlight get children it express themselves whilst dancing, we felt that the posters whilst offering the children humor (animals to strange dancing posers) the famous dancing poses would also attract a completely different generation.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have learned that the majority of people who have watched the music video have found it extremely humorous, enjoyable and original. These are all extremely valid points, our main goal when we set out to create a music video (with the song 'dance like an animal' in mind) as to make it enjoyable to watch, and obviously original. Many individuals have pointed out that during our 'Britain's got talent' like section, we appear to have two different judges. Now obviously we understand that this is clearly un professional, but we were unable to attain the services of one of the actors so therefore had to change the actor. We did attempt to re film that section using a different camera, sadly the format was incorrect and for continuity reasons decided to keep the original footage as it was all the same dimensions as the rest of the footage. The following video shows the footage we did not use:

Apart from that all of the feedback was mostly positive, myself and Michael were credited by many of the public with the large variety of shots and angles that we used. Again this was largely satisfying as one of our main aims was to make sure our music video did not drag on and had plenty of variation in it. We were also credited by how for the large majority of the song the different shots of footage ebbed and flowed with the music video and was in sync for the large majority, again this was pleasing as editing all the different clips in order to sync with the music video was extremely taxing and frustrating due to the amount of cutting and editing that was to be done in order for all of the footage and song it merge together.

As explained earlier the major negative feedback we received was due to the change of personal for one of the judges, as well as that many people said that some of the shots did not really make too much sense. An example was when during the song it says 'do the crocodile' and we have a shot of a penguin walking down a foot path, we clearly indeed to make a late change to this to improve the music video. Some people thought that there would of been a few more angles used and shots used, we did use high, mid and low angle shots and also some close up shots for our video.

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

During the the research stage of our coursework we used the Windows computers available to search for similar media texts for the CD albums, CD magazine covers and for similar music videos. I used the website www.muzu.com which is a music video website, this was done to research different music videos which I believed related and had similar codes and conventions to the music video we intended to create.

For the planning section of the project we used the Flip video camera, this was done because we wanted to film and explain where and why we were going to film our project in these particular locations. As explained earlier in the blog Michael was in charge of location spotting, he thought it would be a good idea if I filmed in at the locations we intended to use and whilst doing that we would explain what exactly was going to take place at the particular location. I also used the MP3 audio voice recorder during the planning stage to inform the viewers what our particular idea for the music video is and how we intend to achieve our goals.

For the evaluation stages I have again used the voice recorder, this was done for an interview with myself and Michael. During the interview I explain what particular parts of the project I thought went to plan, which parts did not and how I thought it would be improved and what I had learned from this task. I again used the audio recorder and the video camera to create a directors cut of the music video, this involves dubbing over all of the sound during the music video and dub over it with the recording of my voice, i will be critical of the video and highlight the parts I enjoyed and would wanted to have improved.
When creating the music video I used iMovie HD on the Apple Macs, this program is highly complex but allowed us to upload the video footage and edit the footage, after that we had to export it into a web quicktime file so that it could all be posted up on the blog. Whilst creating both the CD album and poster I used the Photoshop software available on the Apple Macs, this program was massively useful as it has a wide array of texts and visual effects which helped create what I feel is a very good poster.

Overall I believe that we have used a large variety of different media technologies to create the project, I used the voice recorder, video camera, flip camera and I took plenty of screen shots from the Apple Mac computers to highlight the different stages of creating the music video and the posters.

Here is the audience feedback which he received from members of the public after watching our music video:

HERE IS WHERE WE INTEND TO ADD THE FEEDBACK FROM ERIC HERMAN, I HAVE SENT THE EMAIL INCLUDING OUR MUSIC VIDEO BUT ARE STILL AWAITING THE RESPONSE, WILL BE POSTED UP ASAP!

Here is a short audio interview with Elliot Hamlin (lead actor), he describes what he enjoyed about the project:

Here is my summary of what I believe where the key strengths and weaknesses of the project:

With reference to Rolands Barthe's theory of 'Death of the Author' this project has played with the idea that it is not important who ahs created text (in this case the music video) but it is far more important how the piece has been interpretated by the audience. This was exercised within the opening section of the music video when by pure accident the school janitor walked through the shot in the background which went unnoticed by myself until the editng process, however we decided to keep it in (very much like Tarintino did with the balloon going across the screen when he was shooting Resovoir Dogs) whilst learning about Roland Barthes so that was the main reasoning forkeeping him in, it also allows the audience the chance to wonder what he represents in our video.