Before production we had to decide on the song and genre we were going to produce the texts for. We decided on ‘Ben Howard-The Wolves’ who is a young solo alternative folk artist, we then researched his background and the folk genre, finding out the conventions for it.
The genre of our chosen genre was alternative folk music. Folk is a historical and traditional music genre that has a niche following. Folk music is conventionally a solo artist playing an acoustic guitar but as time has gone by the genre has expanded and more bands and duos have become well known for their unconventional ways towards the genre. Folk is a not mainstream music genre and the artists are very unconventional to the mainstream, folk artists wear unique clothing to gives themselves an identity and represent the genre in which they are involved in.
My productions follow the forms and conventions of the music video genre, digi-pak and magazine advertisement, especially in terms of the ‘alternative folk’ conventions. The solo artist ‘Jakob Bjorn’ is the fictional artist I created for all my texts; he is featured as the main focus and star of the music video. This is conventional of music videos as solo artists are mainly just seen on their own in their own music videos. Conventional to solo artist productions, the artist is the main and only focus on all three production pieces. The artist is represented as ‘Individual’, ‘stylish’ and ‘appropriately styled’ through the costume in the mise en scene in which he wears a red chequered shirt (To connote love) with black jeans and messy hair which is conventional to a folk artist. My music video, however, is not completely conventional and features some unconventional parts. Modern folk music videos are conventionally performance clips, whereas my music video is abstract and narrative forms but features minor performance clips with the artist strumming the guitar making it unconventional to a conventional folk music video. I wanted to involve a narrative in which featured abstract forms and one which features the artist performing on the conventional guitar. The location of the music video is very conventional to the genre as it features iconographic shots of woodland and forest areas, at the beginning of the video we used established shots of these iconographic shots to set the scene and represent the chosen genre. All music videos are post modern, borrowing ideas from other music videos. My music video is no different, I used ideas from the videos I analysed on my blogger. The first from ‘Bat for lashes- What’s a girl to do’ as we used the idea of the artist riding the bike with the animal masks making it an abstract form, in my video I used the idea of surreal animal masks and the conventional woodland setting. The other ideas we got from our research was from ‘Boy& Bear- Rabbit song’ we liked the idea of the main subject being in a surreal dream which had a narrative within it and no performance, we liked the costume mise en scene and the use of props and used the ideas in our own film by making ours an abstract form with a narrative and very little performance, unconventional to the genre.
However my digi-pak and magazine advertisement both follow the conventions of the genre. My front cover captures my artist on his bike in the middle of a corn field, looking in to the distance. The mise en scene captures the artist in his conventional relaxed folk clothing and also captures the iconographic shot of him in a corn field, conventional to the folk genre. The artist title is a large font so the audience can focus on the artist’s name (Jakob Bjorn). The cover is in black and white to connote darkness to the album and the artist title in red to represent love and lust. It has the conventional artist image, which represents his style and the genre and the artist title but not the album title, I decided against the album title as I wanted to keep the cover as basic as possible and allow the image which the conventional iconographic shots to stand out. The back cover image was chosen to keep continuity with the front cover as they feature the same setting and mise en scene as well as the artist looking the same way. It features the conventions of a digi-pak of the song titles with song timings as well as the essential bar code at the bottom of the page. The song titles were done in a dark red colour to stand out against the sky and also connote love. The song list doesn’t follow the conventional straight down list; instead I decided to put the titles at the top of the cover to make the font stand out against the sky. The spine features the artist’s title and an image of the artist, both conventions of a digi-pak. The iconographic shot of the artist walking through nature is conventional to the folk genre. It’s in black and white with the artist’s second name in red to keep colour motif continuity with the whole of the digi-pak. The image came from a photograph I took whilst filming and I cropped it down to fit in to the spine size. Both inside covers are in black and white to keep the colour motif continuity and both feature iconographic shots that represent the genre of folk. The first inside cover is of him walking through the woodland with his guitar, both conventions of the genre. The second image’s mise en scene features his guitar on it's own on the ground in the woodlands, both the guitar and the woodlands are iconographic shots and both are conventional within the genre. Both the discs are done in black and white to keep continuity with the colour motif. Both discs feature similar mise en scene which has conventional iconographic shots of trees and nature. I didn’t put the conventional title of the artist on the disc as I though the iconographic shots of the trees were enough to keep it conventional.
Furthermore for my magazine advertisement the artist is wearing conventional folk clothing with the red chequered shirt which connotes love and the tweed blazer which gives his image a unique identity. The clothes he wears represents his image and his target audience as his audience will want to dress like him and be like him. The mise en scene features conventional iconographic shots of trees within woodland, you see nature involved the majority of time within folk music and I kept to the conventions for my advertisement. The advertisement features the conventional album title, artist title, release date and artist website. All the writing is in capital letters making the information easier to read, the largest font size is the artists name, so the audience know who he is. The album title is in big as well as ‘Debut album’ letting the audience know he’s a new up and coming musician. The release date it below the artist name and gives a specific date of release. There is a website link at the bottom of the page in a small font for more information on the artists and merchandise and ticket sales. I had put coloured borders around the fonts to make them stand out against the drained background. I edited the initial image by cropping the side and the top off. I also drained the colour from the image giving it an old style look to fit more to the conventions. After completing the poster I applied it to billboards and uncut magazine (Acoustic folk magazine) to advertise my digi-pak.
I believe the combination of my main product and ancillary texts are effective as a combination. My video, digi-pak and advertisement represent the genre of folk by using conventional forms such as iconographic shots of nature. The video follows the conventions to an extent but does have abstract forms in it, whereas the ancillary texts are very conventional with the use of mise en scene and folk conventions. The locations of all three products are similar featuring the mise en scene of woodlands and forest areas, iconographic shots of the genre folk. The artist in each product is wearing similar clothing that represents the genre and represents his style, working effectively alongside one another. Each work together to promote the artist and each use the same conventions to appeal to the niche audience.
Getting audience feedback throughout the production and after the production was very important. I asked for feedback from my audience as they are the ones consuming the products. Knowing my target audience would be niche because of the genre, I was able to shape the questions around them and find out what they wanted. I made polls available to the general public, I asked my classmates and friends to answer honestly and also put links to my blogger on the social network sites www.Facebook.com and www.Twitter.com to receive a variety of votes from a variety of different people who have different views. I asked five questions that I thought would help us work out our target audience and to work out what they wanted to see. The questions were “What social group do you belong to?" in which the most votes were for social categories E, that being students and this allowed us to know our target audience were young. "What subjects do you study?" Most votes were for the creative subjects. This provides me with the answer that our target audience will be creative students that are interested in artistic and abstract features rather then the conventional performance form. "What type of music video do you prefer?" Although narrative received the most votes and abstract came second, I believe abstract form with aspects of narrative will appeal more to our target audience because the majority are young creative art students. “What age group do you belong to? I wanted to appeal to a young audience who were students and in social category E, so were relieved that the majority voted for the '16-19' category. “What is your Gender?” I didn't know what to expect for this answer because Folk is popular with both genders but the polls say males preferred it. The final question "what music video form do you prefer?" I wanted to appeal to a young audience who were students and in social category E, so were relieved that the majority voted for the '16-19' category. From the analysis of my polls I have managed to recognise my specific target audience. I now know what the audience will want to see in my production pieces and what will appeal to the majority of them. The polls told me that the social class of my target audience will be those from Category E; these are students and graduates that are still in education. This also gave me evidence that my target audience will be young, the majority of the respondents were 16-19 years old, those who are in individual and have developed a sense of what they like in music and interested in the music scene. From my social class poll and age poll, I realised that my target audience were young and set up a poll to determine what courses they studied. Most respondents studied creative art subjects and this steered me towards the next question in my poll which was to find what style of music video they preferred because their opinions matter given this is their field and there creative people with creative minds. The majority chose the conventional folk video style narrative but in second came abstract which is unconventional for the folk genre. My target audience is balanced between male and female which is good as it makes the audience vaster and appeals to a wider audience. So my audience will be students of both genders who have a creative side and like a story with some intelligence behind it and appreciate diversity and a non conventional approach.
After the music video was completed, we wrote down some questions on Microsoft Word and printed ten sheets out, five each for boys and girls aged 16-19. We asked “Did you enjoy the music video” and all said yes as it fitted with the specific genre. We then asked “What did you like about it?” and had a mix of feedback, some said the location and the vintage feel, some liked how it fitted with the genre and how relaxing it was and others liked the effects used. As the video was an abstract narrative video we wanted to know if the audience understood what it was about “Did you understand the music video?” The majority understood it but a small amount understood but not as much as they would have liked. The final question was “What could have been improved” Most thought it was good and didn’t need improving but others said that we had issues with the compressed framing problems and others said we could have made the narrative more clearer.
Like my foundation year I stored all my coursework, pre-production, production and post production on www.blogger.com which is website run by www.google.com . Blogger is easy to use and free and really useful when it comes down to publishing posts. Blogger allowed me to organise my work and put it in order, making it easier for me to keep work safe and for it not to be misplaced or lost. I have previously lost a lot of work on other digital technology like memory sticks so blogger came in handy saving my work. Blogger allowed me to upload photos from www.google.com/images in which I use for my digipak front cover analysis and let me upload videos from my music video and videos from www.youtube.com to analyse.
For my research, planning and evaluation stages I used new technology to help me progress and develop my certain products and used it to further my final research analysis, planning and evaluation stages. For my pre production I relied on the use of web 2.0 to find out information about my artist using www.wikepedia.com which is an Internet-based encyclopedia but is known for having unreliable sources, so I had to check other sources to check the reliability of the information and possibly change it to make my text more professional. Another web 2.0 site that helped me was www.youtube.com, it helped me in my music video research as I could easily watch any video I wanted and made it easier to choose and analyse. I copied my chosen videos HTML code and paste them on to my blog to analyse and be viewable to my audience. This made it easier for me to analyse the video as I could easily access it.
During my pre-production of my production work, I drew up a drawn storyboard of my music video as well as the drafts for my ancillary texts. I used the traditional pen and paper to draw up my storyboards and used a scanner which saved the images as a jpg file, which made it easier for me to then upload the images to blogger. My drawings were done in pencil and were too light and not visible, so I opened them on Photoshop and increased the contrast making it easier to see. The use of new technology allowed me to improve my light drawings and my overall production. The next step was to take pictures of each separate storyboard square and upload them on to the laptops to create an animatic. I used my own camera, a Canon 350d and uploaded the images on to Adobe premier pro CS3 in which I applied to the time line, we then imported our chosen song and put the photos together creating our eventual animatic.
I used Adobe Photoshop for create my ancillary texts, the digipak and the magazine advertisement. I was comfortable using Photoshop as I’ve had experience with it in my first year of media and with my other A-level photography. The dimensions of A4 paper, which my magazine advert would be printed on is already set up on Photoshop and this made it easier for me to start with the production. I edited the image by draining the colour from the image giving it an old style look to fit more to the conventions. I applied coloured borders around the fonts to make them stand out against the drained background and edited the initial image by cropping the side and the top off. Again I used Photoshop for my digipak, creating my front, back and inside covers as well as my disc covers and spine. Once my images were edited, I went on the college moodle which gave me a link to www.discwizards.com a website in which I could upload a digipak template for my images to be placed upon. Once I placed my images on to the template, I used the college colour printer to print the template out on to A3 paper, so it would fit in to an actual digipak for me to take pictures of and give evidence that I completed it.
Overall the products were in our opinion a success and we were happy with the outcomes. We did the correct research and planning towards the genre to find the conventions and apply it to our products. We found our target audience by the use of polls on our blogger and made our products consumable to the niche audience. We used and applied the conventions of the genre to our products but also challenged them in some forms. We made our main product and ancillary texts combine together to work effectively and also used new technology to our own advantage to help develop our progress and make our products look more professional.
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