Comentary draft

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

When creating our music video, a lot of the conventions we used came from real shopping channels, this is due to the fact that the main narrative of our music video consists of a shopping channel/channels spoof, so many of the forms and conventions were accociated with real ones. The basic narrative of our music video was; a typical, modern day, slob is sitting about watching shopping channels, he see's a band for sale on one of them and orders them by phone, they then turn up at his appartment and begin to play, putting a surreal twist into the video. The band performance segments of the video used a lot of the forms and conventions of other indie/rock style bands, as did the dvd cover.

The mise en scene used in the video is conventional of that seen in shopping channels and other music videos. The TV presenters are dressed in shirts as typically seen on shopping channels, they are holding up the kind of useless items you would accociate with these channels, this is all used, not only to stay within the conventions of a shopping channel, but also to exagurate them to make the video more spoof like. The band are wearing normal, indie looking clothing and playing instruments so you can clearly distingish them as the band, they are also all seen performing together and standing together on the dvd cover.

The editing perhaps played the biggest part in using and developing forms and conventions of real media products. During the shopping channel parts of our video, graphic overlays were used like those seen on real shopping channels. The graphic overlays which our group created often used bright, clashing colours, and contained lots of relavent jokes in the text, the purpose of this being to satirize the real thing. The "price earthquake" scene was again, to make fun of the real thing, mocking the false enthusyasm and sensory overload you somtimes get on these channels.

The camera work differed between each part of the video to follow the usual forms and conventions of other media products, the shopping channel parts were mainly filmed in a still shot, with close ups on the products like you would see on a real shopping channel. The band and appartment scenes were filmed with a range of shots, in the early scenes before the band arrive at the appartment, all the shots are still conventional shots following the basic rules of filming and editing like the 180 degree rule. All the band scenes used less conventional editing though, with shots at differont angles and moving "handheld" shots with zooms, as you might see in simelar music videos.

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

I think the combination of our video, digipack and magazine advert worked quite well, as they all tied in with one another. Obviously the video was the main product which the other two had to tie in with, which I think we achieved quite well. The dvd case features a picture of the band, wearing the same outfit as they were seen in during the music video as well as screenshots of the video on the back. The poster ties in with both the video and dvd cover, featuring a design simelar to the graphic overlay seen in the music video, and a picture of the dvd cover as a completed dvd.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback was big part of the creating process, it helped us plan what needed to be done and to see what kind of an impact our video was having on people. The feedback recieved on the rough cut was mainly positive except for the comments saying it was hard to follow/understand without the missing footage which at the time, we compensated for with text, explaining what would be happening in the scene. We responded to this by filming all the necicery footage, and putting it into our video at the right place.

The feedback recieved on the final video was all relativly positive which we were quite pleased with, people were saying that the ideas and humor worked well, the only real negative comment was that it looked slightly amateur/tacky, however this was a success in itself to us as we had been trying to simulate the tacky nature of shopping channels and incorperate it into our video.

The feedback on the dvd cover and advert was all pretty positive which we were quite pleased with and fealt like we chose a good design.

Group Commentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqjYAp2GiwY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsHDc_J_btg

Group Commentary Script

QUESTION 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We used graphics created on photoshop, and appropriate mise en scene to create the shopping channel effect. While we were making fun of and spoofing the genre using jokes in text on the graphics and a tacky appearance, we always remained faithful to the conventions of shopping channels.

The band appearance and performance follow the conventions of typical rock/indie bands, but in shopping channel scenario, as reflected by the camera work and editing.

QUESTION 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?

The Digipack is very conventional of indie bands as we based the design on some of the bands previous artwork, we did the same for the photo of the band, using the cartoon/painted style.

The magazine advert takes elements of both of the music video and the digipack. The image on the back cover of the digipack, the front cover of the digipack and the graphics/font all link in with the music video.

QUESTION 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The feedback we received on the rough cut commented on the missing footage (mostly of the band performance), and on the video being hard to follow. We responded by filming the band shots, and other shots to make the narrative part of the video flow and make sense.

The feedback we got on the final version of the video was generally positive, praising the surreal look and feel, the fact the humour worked well and that the tacky shopping channel look worked well.

QUESTION 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used youtube and google in the initial research stages to look up the shopping channel effect/style and also to look at previously created spoofs and actual footage of shopping channels. We used the internet to search for existing logos and previous covers and adverts. We used photostop to make all the graphic designs for the shopping channel scenes in the video, as well as using it to create the advert and dvd cover. Other uses of photoshop were creating moodboards to help the creative process. We also used the internet to email the band to tell them that we used their song.

Dvd cover final

This is the final design for our dvd cover, in the end we decided to change the design from the rough draft version we had planned. We have still included the picture of the band striking a pose and the white denim logo however we edited the logo in photoshop so that only the text remained on our new background.

Feedback

we think this is very good, we like the way the image carries on over both sides of the box, the editing is very good

Like the way it looks complete with a theme not so happy with the picture on the back I think takes away from the over all look

DVD ad

This was the blank dvd case picture we found on google images which we used in our magazine ad. Using photoshop we changed the dimensions of the dvd cover to make it fit over the blank case.

Band logo

For the band logo with have decided to use the official logo as we believe it will fit perfectly into the style of dvd we are hoping to produce.
However we have made a couple of tweaks, these being stitches above and below the logo to make it go with the image of white denim.


The original

The tweaked logo

DVD cover design

The below picture will be the design for our dvd cover, the image of the band will be replaced by a picture of our band in a similar pose.

These two pictures are example of the bands previous artwork.

Definition of digi pack

From wikipedia

Digipak is a patented style of compact disc or DVD packaging, and is a registered trademark of AGI Media, a MeadWestvaco, Inc. resource, which acquired the original trademark holder, IMPAC Group, Inc., in 2000. MeadWestvaco licensed the name and designs to manufacturers around the world.


Conventions of a Rock genre digi pack


Typical conventions

• Band name in bold at top
• Picture and images of band
• A lot of dark areas apart from the images which stand out on the black background

We plan to take our dvd cover in a different direction due to the difference in the genre and styles. As opposed to a dark background, our dvd cover will have a white background which goes with the bands image.

Music video final

Feedback

Video was surreal however too hard to understand at times,

Had a range of good shots,

Humor worked well,

Visuals matched the music well,

Good ideas,

Similar style to foo fighters videos,

Some parts looked amateur/tacky however it worked well with the theme of a tacky shopping channel

review of editing

The editing went well considering the lack of footage of the band playing, we replaced the missing footage with text and pictures explaining what will be included in the missing scenes. The graphics included worked well and turned out to be simpler to apply than we had imagined and gave the desired impression of a shopping channel.

Equipment list

Equipment needed in the video

Filming 1: Shopping Channel
shopping channel products/items i.e. Duster, watch, sudoku cube and drum

backdrop and table with cloth.

Smart clothing

Filming 2: Lounge

Lounge setup which included chair, table, scattered rubbish, a TV, a box and a clipboard and pen.

Production meeting log

After a production meeting with Emma we have now finalized all the important decisions. The days on which we will be filming are Thursday 15th and Friday 16th of October. All filming will be done in and around the college site, in the staff room and music rehearsal room.

Most of the large props we need for the music video will be available from the college such as a chair or sofa and an old TV which we will be borrowing from the media department. The rest of the small props and costumes, we will bring.

Animatic

Dvd Cover Design Ideas

For our dvd cover we are going to use white demin (the material) as the main theme. For instance the front of the dvd cover will have white denim on it which is rather ironic as the bands name is also white denim.

The sort of look of white denim is shown below.

Or we could use a picture like the one shown below of a conventional piece of denim and adapt it in photo shop so that the denim goes from black/blue to white

Autuer Research

U1 Autuer Project

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U1 Auteur Tcomplete

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U1 Presentation Jonathan Glazer

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Intertextual references

The video will be full of references to shopping channels, the point of this is to poke fun at the genre. This includes a range of useless and poorly made products, a large amount of channels that all look the same, graphics and text which sarcastically mimic the originals, an over-enthusiastic presenter and a tacky set

The text which scrolls at the bottom of the screen will be made up of several jokes and gags, for instance "triple call rates apply in Yorkshire" and the mention of several other ridiculous products such as "glow in the dark tents" etc.

Initial ideas

The music video will begin with a shot of a person watching TV, he picks up a remote and flicks on the shopping channel. The video will then zoom in on the TV and cut to a short spoof of a shopping channel which we will record. The music ties in with the video when it is introduced by the shopping channel, the person watching TV orders the music/band from the shopping channel which then arrives at his home almost instantly, they open the box and the band/music begins to play. The rest of the video then consists of shots of various shopping channel spoofs and out-takes, broken up by shots of the person changing channel and shots of the band playing. The video ends with a clip of a shopping channel and something going badly wrong.

inspirations for the music video

White Denim Let's Talk about it

This is the song that our group has chosen to make a music video for.
When brainstorming ideas Our group came up with the idea of a Shopping channel video involving spoofing the genre of the shopping channel.

To help in developing of our ideas, we watched clips of shopping channels. These are a couple of examples: