JTS Productions

Sunday, 2 February 2014

Evaluation Activity 1 - Tanaka Bonde

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

Throughout the production of the music video, we wanted to conform to the conventions of two different genres to satisfy both audiences and create an image and video for a band that is unique and quite unconventional. Though mostly a rock song and a rock band, their appearance is more towards the mainstream and we made such adjustments in order to satisfy an audience that likes traditional pop bands while keeping to those that like independent rock bands, the following is how we made adjustments in the video to cater to both audiences.

The Relationship of Lyrics to Narrative and Visuals

At this point in the song, the line "drove my parents to despair," is said and we show him making a public post to Facebook, this closely relates the lyrics to the visuals without being too direct. This is also shown in Coldplay's video for Paradise, where the character holds the lyrics, "When she was just a girl," on display in a similar way to give the audience interaction with the video through lyrics. for our video, showing the parents would have gone against the audience expectation of keeping the cast strictly to young people, this way we were able to show the same situation while satisfying one of the requests from our target audience. As the visuals stay close to the narrative, it also conforms to one of Goodwin's rules of music videos, which is that there is always a close relationship between lyrics and visuals.

The Relationship of Music to Narrative

The instrumental itself is closely linked to the visuals, not only the performance but also the narrative, as the main character repeatedly plays imaginary instruments (air guitar) in tune to the music of the song. This appears twice again in the video as a recurring semiotic and as a symbol also shown in the ancillary tasks (front cover) were he plays guitar as a child. This relates to the theme of dreams and dreaming also shown in the ancillary tasks.

Representation of Artist

Though the focus is the main character in the video, the Record label, "Brit Isle records," is about presenting them as a close, cohesive group while making it clear who the star is. As an unconventional band, their clothing and image is supposed to be casual but unbranded, which reduces the inter-textual references that are conventional of rock bands but establishes the band better. This representation of a group instead of a main star is shown in the ancillary tasks and is very conventional of rock bands such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who's video of Carlifornication is widely used as a representation of similarities between style but different personal traits while prioritizing the lead, though not the same theme as our own video they have a similar appearance in that video.

Setting and Location: The setting we chose was one of the few things we did not take from our audience expectations and appeals more to the pop band side than the rock, a school is not rebellious or urban and does not have the spectacle to be used for performance. However, because of this, a school is a place of order and discipline, a rebellious youth in this environment would be interesting, thus the use of full classrooms (above) and annoyed teachers and pupils. Our video took most of its inspiration from Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag, especially the setting and how they made school a place of abuse and loneliness for the character, though we portray our character as defiant rather than weak. This defies the conventions and takes it further by making use of the setting to emphasise the character's rebelliousness.

Camerawork and Lighting

Camerawork was important in making the mise-en-scene clear and easy to understand. The majority of shots are the traditional mid-long shots as we were cutting shots in order to maintain the pace, furthermore, these shots were all filmed during the sunniest parts of the day, with the glare of the sun present in some shots. As a result, most of the shots are clear but lack interesting angles, and even the female love interest is not used as spectacle, which defies Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze and we took this further by having shots and angles were her face is not visible as the main character seeks her attention and thus has great respect for her, objectification of her would contradict this. The lighting is however, conventional of pop music though they tend to change their lighting through mise-en-scene as the song progresses.

Editing

The editing of this music video mainly compromised of quick cuts between scenes in order to create humour, and greatly increasing the speed of scenes in order to quickly move to the next scene, mainly because we would sometimes have multiple scenarios playing out at once. This would create confusion and make the audience want to re-watch the video in order to peace it together. We would alternate between a scene of him acting intolerable and immature to a more mature version of him in the performance, cutting between these two shots shows the difference in character and conforms to Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposites to create contrast. Though it is an obvious narrative feature for someone to become a better person within the 4 minutes, showing the two so direct is quite unconventional for both music genres and disrupts Todorov's theory of a beginning, middle and conclusion.

Mise-en-scene

This shot tells a lot about the music video. As mentioned earlier, the girl's face cannot be seen but we cannot see the main character's face either, yet the teacher, in the background, can be seen clearly. This separates the two groups and shows how their actions are hidden from her view. Unlike other shots, this one has a clear separation of foreground, middle and background, which further shows the separation and disconnection of the three in the shot and how the main character is actually a recluse even as he throws her the note.

Saturday, 1 February 2014

Evaluation Activity 2 - Tanaka Bonde 9226

Evaluation Activity 2 - How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary tasks?

We had certain ideas and themes that we wanted present throughout the music video and the ancillary tasks, and these themes affected the art style and appearance of the album cover or the way certain scenes are edited together in the narrative of the music video. These themes were the idea of a personal journey, childish dreams and hopes becoming a reality and isolation, the following shows how these themes were present in our ancillary tasks.

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Evaluation Activity 3 - Tanaka Bonde 9226

Evaluation Activity 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For the production of this music video, we targeted males of an adolescent age and above with an interest in independent, rock music but with the look of a more mainstream band, this was to get a larger audience as the traditional look of a rock band would discourage people with interest in more mainstream bands thus the band's appearance is a combination of the two. We chose this audience because after first listening to the song, we realised that the disconnection of the song is common amongst many teenagers and is something many young people must face, thus we could achieve an even greater audience.
To get an idea of what this audience would expect from the video, we simply asked people our age to listen to the song and give us some of the words that came to mind as they visualize the song in their minds. We then created the Wordle shown below from this information.

It is clear in the final music video that we incorporated some of the features from the Wordle;

The performance aspect of the video was the first thing that we filmed, we immediately performed the song multiple times from various angles so we could go back to it in-between narrative scenes to allow the narrative to flow better. The high request for performance was a result of the strong use of instruments in the song, the catchy tune was apparently more memorable than the lyrics and thus we showed this a lot in the video, even having the band members pretend to play closely in tune to the song.
We combined the funny, carefree and youthful parts of the song and put them in middle of the song, showing the character "pranking" classmates when he was still very young, shown by the uniform before changing to the older more tolerable version of him.
Though we understand the request of a retro mise-en-scene, we could not add this because it would contradict the approachable, mainstream look we were going for that could appeal to more people, and even though both were equally suggested, we went for the school setting to better target our audience.
The theme of love and relationships was touched upon early in the video with the character's brother and showing how close they were, then showing him going after the girl he likes later in the video, constantly pursuing her with the words, "let's stay together."

Trying to satisfy the audience using these words was difficult as some are so contradicting due to the many possible themes of the song, our first attempt was darker and more obscure than funny and ironic as we had someone of a different race play the brother and had fewer cuts, resulting in a slower pace and filtering it to reduce the brightness and lighting. We also had more scenes of the character brooding and walking to emphasize his loneliness, however, looking back at our original Wordle made us realise we were straying away from a band that could appeal to people with interest in more mainstream bands and more to the conventions of rock music with the additions suggested above, thus we removed certain scenes and maintained colour to produce the final version.

Audience Interviews

Another way we were able to get audience feedback prior to filming was through interviews which we filmed, both interviewees are 18, Joshua Esselen and Jeremy Tang. Though the Wordle was much more general and vague about audience expectations, personal interviews are more accurate as they can say exactly what they expect, and as a video that is supposed to appeal to multiple audiences of young people, we did not defy these expectations much so we could satisfy this audience.

The interviews show that they both had very similar expectations for the video. Both expected the band members to look casually dressed, they also wanted a fast pace and quick cuts between narrative and performance, both expected humour. The first interview specifically requested we have young people throughout the song, to not only relate to the target audience but to also keep the idea of youth and recklessness.
We did not at all defy these expectations and they are clearly present in the video, all scenes that would normally have adults shows adults either unaware or removed from the shot.

The majority of the scenes in the video are filmed to be funny, even the scenes that are supposed to create sympathy for the character are either ironic or turned into jokes, this was our way of maintaining the mood requested in the interviews without ruining the slight impact of these situations. The verse about the older brother is written so that we feel sorry for the character's brother, who's life is in danger as he has "joined the army and they said he might get shot." Instead, we showed him playing violent shooters with his brother, a controversial issue for soldiers in order to make the situation ironic.

The appearance of the band was also taken from these interviews, the "casual" look requested perfectly fit our target audience. The main band member would wear dark clothing when he was younger, all conventions of the rock music genre. Even when he is older and in the performance aspect of the song, a band-mate wears a dark brown shirt and black trousers while the other has the iconic long dark hair. also conventional of the rock music genre. The lead singer, however, wears a red checkered shirt and jeans, which clashes with the conventional clothing of rock music and our way of making the band more casual and seem approachable. As a result, the band's look overall makes them look like members of both a rock band and a normal mainstream band. This is how significant these interviews were to our final music video to satisfy our target audience.

Survey Monkey

To further understand the target audience, we used "SurveyMonkey" and "Scribd" to put together the following graphs from audience feedback we'd collected after allowing people to hear the song without any idea of the video.

The graph shows that the most popular location suggested for the music video was a rooftop or any other urban environment, one of the few audience suggestions that we did not follow in our final video. The use of a school made much more sense for the story of the song as a school is a more appropriate environment for handling social issues than an isolated urban environment.

A more appropriate way to have incorporated the requested environment is if it had been in the performance, separated from the narrative and would make sense as a place the character goes after struggling at school. An abandoned field does not represent rock music as well as an urban environment and if we were to ever repeat this to correct mistakes, we would use a different location for the performance but keep the narrative at the school. This way we could have maintained the natural flow of the narrative with a more interesting performance beside it, however, finding an isolated urban area would have been difficult.

Feedback after Final Music Video

Once we had finished the video, we had our classmates, also producing their own music video, give us feedback and criticism on the video in a free-form discussion. Having them review the video was better criticism than having a general audience criticize us because they have been through similar issues and appreciate our successes better but can spot mistakes better than the general audience, resulting in more accurate criticism.

From their reactions in the video, the music video was overall successful but there were some issues they pointed out. The parts in which we were successful were;

Editing the scenes together with fast cuts to allow the narrative to flow.

The lighting and cinematography is placed to make the video crisp, clear and easy to understand.

The character in the video is easy to understand and it's clear hi's funny.

The performance parts of the video are in tune with the song

The attempts to make it funny suited the song.

The development and arc of the main character is not clear in the music video

There is no clear conclusion for the relationship between the character and the girl.

There were not enough variation of shots, simply medium to long shots.

The short verse about the hoodlums attacking his parents' house was rushed.

However, some parts of the video were not successful;

The development and arc of the main character is not clear in the music video

There is no clear conclusion for the relationship between the character and the girl.

There were not enough variation of shot types and angles, simply medium to long shots.
The short verse about the hoodlums attacking his parents' house was rushed

Conclusion

The reason we did not have more interesting cinematography was because of the pace of the song, having different non-traditional angles in-between such short scenes would make it difficult for the audience to understand some of the scenes. We should have found a way to use more interesting cinematography to really emphasize the character's isolation, recklessness and humor without sacrificing how clear the story is.
We also should have made it clear how the story ended, as a traditional narrative driven music video, Todorov's equilibrium theory should have been clear, there is an equilibrium then a disruption (the character's brother leaves to join the army and he attempts to pursue the girl he likes) but there is no resolution to this, though it is mildly implied she has no interest in him it is not enough. As a result, the character's arc is not complete, which was mentioned in the discussion and if we had another chance, we would simply add a scene where she kindly puts him down and he accepts it, then a transition to the more mature, tolerable version of him in the performance. this would have concluded the story nicely and better connect the performance to the narrative.

Monday, 27 January 2014

Evaluation Activity 4 - Tanaka Bonde

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

The following is an evaluation of each media technology used throughout this project, from Wordle to the actual hardware we used, such as the Apple Macs and even the camrea.
Evaluation Activity 4 Prezi

Thursday, 23 January 2014

Completed media products

Here are our completed media products - the music video, and the ancillary texts to go with it.

So, here's our complete music video:

And the following are the associated ancillary products - each side of the digipack, and the magazine advert. Each one's included as an image, but they'll also be put into PDFs embedded using scribd: