Q3: - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Whilst undertaking the research stage of my advanced portfolio, I had to carry out audience research which allowed me to gain more knowledge and understanding of what was expected of a rock genre. To gather my information, I created a survey on google plus which allowed me to send it on to other friends by email. From the results, the most obvious answers I found was that music videos are not actually as important to the 4 out of 5 people I asked.  Also, that the way they listen to their music is mostly through new media technologies, with Youtube, Itunes and Other being the top choices, chosen by all 6 people. We also discovered that people prefer videos containing more performance shots focusing on the band itself rather than narrative or both.
Here are the top keywords that were noted down by each person when asked a word that comes to mind when thinking of the rock genre:-

- The highlited words are the ones in which we included within our music video.

After having a confident understanding of my rock genre, becoming familiar with it's conventions and supporting this with audience feedback to know what others expect, it helped me to plan appropriate ideas that were suited to the expectations of a rock genre and I was able to reflect upon this information through out my work.

After our music video was finally completed, I was curious to discover the feedback from the audiences. Ever since the viewing of my video, I have received many compliments towards it, and decided to record some of the audiences reflecting on my work and discussing their positive thoughts and criticism towards the video.


From this audience feedback, I have learned that out our music video was not only successful in my oppinion but also to the audiences. The positive feedback that we mostly received was how the video was edited, mentioning how the shots were fast pace, cut really well and fitted to the music. The lighting, shot types and the use of flashbacks were also mentioned as a good aspect of our video. The only criticism we received was the mise en scene in the bedroom shots, with the fact that the protagonists clothes were not exactly fitted to the genre and a bit out of place, I could of improved this by properly planning out his outfit to fit our genre.

Here is the audience feedback I received when uploading my video onto facebook:

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

It would not of been possible to achieve the work we have done without using a variety of media technologies, whether it was preparing for our video or actually creating our video, different technologies helped piece our work together. Firstly, I will discuss the use of media technologies in our research.

• Blogger obviously played a big role in contributing towards my work as it is where I focused on the theoratrical side of the course, including real music video analysises, audience research and information on different theories. It gives me a space to express all my different ideas and interpretations and convey my thoughts in an easily accessable, sharable and sophisticated way of which is safe and secures all my work.
• When analysing real music videos on my blog, it made sense to add the video onto the blog post therefore, you are able to watch the video aswell as reading my thoughts upon it. In order to include a video, I had to simply search it on Youtube, which is one of the largest video search engines in the world therefore any music video I wanted was easy to find. Once discovering the music video, I would then copy and paste the URL into the 'edit HTML' section of editing a post, this was made for the use of pasting codes into my work and by doing this I would successfully include a good quality music video which added to the visually appealing aspect of my work.
• To improve the appearance of my blog even further, I included screen grabs into my posts. By doing this I could reflect apon one specific shot, making it more clearer to the viewer as it shows them exactly what I'm talking about in my writing. In order to do this I would simply play the video on full screen, pause it on the screen grab I desired, and then printscreen. This would then copy everything on my screen so I could then paste it onto 'Paint' to save as a JPEG, I also created a collage of images on this programme when I wanted to evaluate the shots I thought were composed the best, or to sum up the overall look of the video. As blogger includes the option of uploading a picture, I was able to easily put this onto my blog post.

For the planning stage of my work, I started developing ideas and discovering a pathway in which I wanted to take our music video. From carrying out research on music videos themselves and becoming familiar with the conventions of my genre, I was able to gradually plan our own music video in a confident manner. I continued using the same media technologies as said previously as well as discovering new ways to portray my ideas.

• Rather than writing out my ideas, I wanted to capture the progress of how these ideas were formed and show the actual discussion that took place when these ideas were being constructed, showing the viewer raw material which would improve our marks. To do this, we set up a camera infront of our group and recorded ourselves while we were talking into the camera and springing ideas off of one another. We then imported it onto final cut, which is an editing programme we are all familiar with, to then tweek it a little, export into a quicktime video to then upload to Youtube, which allowed us to do as I said previously, and upload it onto our blog.
• As part of our planning, we had to create a story board depicting what type of shots we wanted, how we wanted to compose them, and organize them to fit in with the timing of the song. Last year in our foundation portfolio, we showed this on our blog with just pictures of our sheets of storyboards, however this year we have developed this technology by taking pictures of each drawing and then uploading each shot onto final cut to then put all together in time with the music. The effect of this is that it creates the flow of a music video and a better understanding of what we want our video to look like as well showing the pace of our shots. This also added to the visual appeal of my blog, making it more interesting to look at.
• After planning our music video, we had to then plan our ancillary task. To do this we had to use two technologies, firstly a camera for our practise photoshoot of which we captured a variety of shots to comfortably work with, and then another camera to record this happening so we could then put this on our blogs to support the evidence of us taking these photos. After capturing our photographs, we then uploaded it onto the macs which allowed us to use the software 'Photoshop', which is the leading digital image editing application. We then spent some time with our chosen image, adapting it to fit our genre and look as if it a draft of an album cover, which we managed to achieve successfully. After this was completed we then uploaded it onto blogger.

In the construction of our music video and ancillary task, we used alot of different media technologies to help us achieve the best possible outcome. Our music video invlovled using a variety of filming equipment and our ancillary task consisted of a lot of time and effort into specific media technologies.

• Whilst filming our music video, in order to achieve a still, correctly composed frame, we had to use a tripod -esepecially on shots that we were using the surreal editing technique and if we were cutting the subject inbetween objects in which the setting had to be motionless with no movement in the camera because we wanted the subject to look like she was flashing in and out of different locations within the shot, discarding the fact that we had to seperatly film each shot with the subject in different positions.
• We used a fig rig for our dynamic shots, so that we could hold the camera with smoother motion whilst at the same time having good support and not being over shaky when moving the camera around when we wanted to create a hand held, jolted look.
• When editing our digipack, it was important to select the right font. I find that with certain fonts, I recognize to belong to a band, I feel that the font defies the band in a way therefore we had to make the right decision as to what font we would use for our album to fit in with our genre and represent our band. Here are some fonts that I find very distinctive to it's band:

                         

The website we used to do this was 'www.dafont.com', which gives you the option to download hundreds of fonts with a wide choice covering different categories and endless pages.

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

Both our main product and album have a close relation in the fact that they are based around one girl. In our music video, the audience should experience a distant relationship with this character as her role adds a sense of curiosity and mysteriousness to the video. She creates a sense of uncertainty and should make the viewers feel quite uneasy and cautious as to who she is, they should also pick up on the fact that she is up to no good, portraying quite menacing characteristics. Even though this character may not be the most dominant through out the video, she certainly acts as the back bone to our narrative and the foundation from where all of our ideas sprang off from. Another music video from the rock genre that includes a character similar to this is Bring Me The Horizon’s video ‘The Sadness Will Never End’. Here is how she is portrayed in the video:

The presence of this character holds similar principles to the girl in our video. We see her lurking around the trees depicting quiet and innocent personality until this assumption is contradicted and we see more of a dark, evil side to her. 

Our video includes a similar narrative. During the beginning of our video, she is gradually introduced, consuming more screen time as the video goes on to eventually build up the character she plays.    

This theme continues on in our ancillary taks. The whole album art work consits of a female character who extends this this evil, unearthly feel. Much like the video, every part of our album is persistant in creating a sense of curiosity. It invloves a girl covered in blood which raises the question of why she is in this state. Her face is expressionless, giving away little to the audience emphasising their desire to know why she is involved with this. The costume in the front cover is simular to our music video in the fact that both subjects are wearing black dresses and as I have previously studied, black is a very dominant convential colour of the rock genre. It also supports her dark menacing characteristic which is reflected within the music video. Having her associated with blood also reflects this sinful, mischievous personality as well as following the convention of the rock genre involving alot of gore or dark art in a majority of it's art work. Also, by including this blood in our mise en scene it provided a strong contrast against the variation of colours within the frame and in the front cover it also has a strong comparison to the pale skin of which it sits on. Here are some examples of real album covers that use a simular technique and composition as ours, (with the album on the left being of a rap/rave genre and on the right, a rock genre from which the artists videos I have studied into alot):

What I notice about both of these albums is that the female characters seem to be the focal point of each cover, making these women a strong, simplistic, representation of each album which is very similar to the link between my music video and ancillary task, with the character that I played being quite a dominant controlling character in the narrative, as well as the whole of my album cover being focused on one girl. By having this over balancing gender through out my album covers increases the sexual appeal it may have on certain audiences, despite who this may concern, this possible attraction will obtain audiences and help influence the recognizability towards the album. Even if there is only one distinctive appeal towards an album cover, it still strengthens our memory of it and our opinion of that album based on how appealing it may be to the individual. Audiences may not necessarily experience a sexual connection to the subject in my work, but also the feel of envy and admiring the character herself, to be looked upon as an inspiration to the people of which this genre appeals to.

Not including the band in our entire album is what makes our ancillary task conventional to our genre. It is common to find the absence of the band within the actual album art work within the rock genre. We also didn't feel like it was necessary to do so, and that continuing on with the existence of this dominant female character would be what would make this album explicit to it's narrative of which we imagined would faintly continue on through out the whole album, defying the album to the video it'self.

Pictures to gif

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

In order to create a successful music video, our group had to be aware of the conventions of a music video and what was often included in our chosen genre. Each genre has its own style, interpreting a variation of conventions appropriate to the stereotypical view of the genre. I feel that our music video shows a good knowledge to the right conventions.

Here is our music video:

Once we chose our song ‘Breathless’ by Asking Alexandria, we became familiar with the song and researched into the lyrics, we discovered our own interpretation from which we formed a narrative. This narrative was like the base of our music video were our ideas developed from. We included a narrative because we found that this was quite common for the rock genre to either include a narrative with a performance, or just a performance on it’s own throughout the video.  By choosing to include both I think it challenged us more in the way that we had to think of how to intertwine both aspects into our video and also make sure each of their screen time was equaled out to balance out the video. By including a narrative as well as a performance, it helped us avoid viewer fatigue which is important to make sure that doesn’t happen in all genres of music videos. Another way we avoided this was by having a constant flow of shots which synced well into the tempo of our music. Also, as our music is of a fast erratic pace, our shots contained a short view time, therefore the audience is always being bombarded with something different to look at, keeping their interest and continuing to hook them in. This is also reinforced by our group following the conventions of varying our shot distances and exploring camera techniques.

By developing the way in which we controlled our camera, it helped us convey certain moods for example if the camera is still along with the subject it becomes a lot more calmer and mellow where as if the camera is shaky along with the subject, it reflects a lot of energy and excitement to our video. We use this shaky camera technique in our work because we discovered this was quite persistent in the music videos of the rock genre. Also, linking back to our narrative, the song is based on letting go of a past relationship that is messing with his head, therefore causing frustration and anger, the shakiness of the camera helps convey this manic look which links to the emotions in the narrative, however this is only successful when used at the right times and in the right way. I feel that our performance shots really reflect this and show the advantages of this technique, it also helped create the atmosphere and illusion of a live performance making the scene seem more realistic which is also what music videos are about.



It is crucial that the performance looks believable; this can be done by perfect lip syncing. I feel that we were lucky to have a member in our group that was already aware of the rock genre and because of this you could see their passion for it reflected throughout their performance. With our performer obtaining such confidence and enthusiasm for this task, we were able to follow the convention of making the vocalists role look believable, emphasizing their emotions and expressions in order to portray a believable, realistic performance. Another convention that reinforced this was being aware of the right type of mise en scene, especially in our performance shots. In order to help make it believable we had to gather the right props which a band would use and set the scene up to look like a gig, even though we had to change the plan of our performance set last minute, I do think it was still successful and the outcome was a lot better than expected. Not only did we film a scene in the style of a gig, but we also filmed in the woods, a drama room and a bedroom. This also follows the conventions of music videos having around 3 different sets, however we developed this further to include 4 which helps the audience get a better understanding of the narrative.