Letter to Moderator.

Mr/Mrs Moderator

Thank you for visiting my blog. To view my research and planning blog posts, please see September to November 2012. For the production of my music video see blog posts from December 2012 to February 2013. For my evaluation posts see March 2013.

Thank you for reading my blog,

Mark Prince

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

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

I am not great at interviews at all and often loose everything I want to say when I get a camera put in my face, however I hope that this interview gives an idea as to how my music video uses, develops and challenges conventions of real media products. Both the digipak and advert also use, develop and challenge conventions of real media products.

Firstly both the advert and the digipak, use the conventions of a country genre because they use the same colour schemes, and imagery to promote the package of a country genre piece of music. The imagery includes, trees, outdoors, sun, red skies and long grass. These are some of the conventions that are used widely across the genre.

The way both of these challenge the conventions of real media texts are that, both have urban logos. The name is Superman which is automatically seen as quite a urban idea. The audience would see it as a man in a cloak, who can, fly saving people in a city, however this changes the whole meaning of it. I have redesigned the logo of the superhero and added some grass silhouettes to the logo. The typeface is another example as to how I have challenged the genres conventions. Most of the music in the genre use older style typefaces with serifs, and decorative styles however I have used quite a bold, urban type.

Developing from what is seen as normal to the genre, I have used quite a dull colour scheme, which has enabled me to follow the right conventions but have saturated the colours more giving me a development from other texts. The digipak is quite simple compared to some of the more detailed, designs of others in the genre. Where I have referred to images from other texts, some examples are posted in question two of my evaluation.

Evaluation question 3: What have you learnt from you audience feedback?

My audience feedback has been detailed, with good technical feedback but also the meaning of the video. In the video, I got some positives and negatives.

In the interview, Bill did not understand the chair being used in the video and didn't understand the meaning. He read it as being quite entropic and out of the ordinary. He thought it didn't belong in the video and that the meaning should be clearer. I wanted this to happen because, you can read meanings into the video, through quite a lot of different things but when it comes to the chair, it doesn't really have one. I wanted people to stop and wonder what it meant, but I have learnt that it may be a negative and need to link it in a more obvious way in future.

Leanne said she thought that the whole video needed a stronger narrative and it didn't seem that obvious as to what it was about, and linking it to the lyrics. I agree with this, I found it very hard to come up with something that wouldn't be too redundant and obvious, linking the video to Superman as a superhero character. The lyrics are hard to go by because it is about something seen to be quite urban, but is performed in a very country, rural way.

Beth, said that she wanted to see more of the scenery around Josh singing and less of the close ups of him singing. She thinks also that the video needed more of a narrative and that the scenery, or more of the conventions would explain the text more. I agree with this also, that it video needs more explanation as to what is going on. It is evident that the audience can't see what is going on and that the visuals don't link too well to the text.

However this is not just about the video itself but also about the advert and digipak.
Leanne commented that both the digipak and advert were coherent and that they were easy to see that they belonged together as part of the same pack, she said that the advert and digipak represented the video well.

Bill thought that some of the font choices could have been better and that he didn't read into how the font has anything to do with the video style.

Beth agreed with Bill in saying that the font could have matched the style more like some other bands and products that are  in the genre.

I have learnt a lot from my audience, because they have told me what they thought of the video through general feedback like what was good and back etc. This has helped me because all of the feedback was from their on point of view and most of the packages features, met their likes and what they like in a video. However some of the feedback has shown me that maybe I need to concentrate on a narrative and that I have got that mixed up with the advert/digipak and video.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

My advert, digipak and music video are all part of the same package. The idea behind the project was to create something coherent, with a 'house style' that attracts my specific target audience. The digipak and advert were designed to attract consumers to the main product and be a push to persuade the audience to buy it. This question is asking how much all three products linked together to create a professional looking package.

Here is my Digipak. It has been made with the same colour scheme, using photos from one specific shoot. The colours are to reflect the genre but in a more vibrant way than other artists in the genre have used. The country, indie genre, referring to research, uses very desaturated colours. Most of the music in the genre is very outdoors based and so concentrates on outdoors colours. They stick to blues, greens and browns. Some videos in the genre also use sepia tones to roughen up the look of the song, creating something to look more upmarket, not using cheap bright colours or lights. However, in my video I have decided to go against the genre in a way and saturate the colours, increasing the contrast and dramatizing the front to pull the audience to something different. I have tried to keep the same colours throughout the Digipak.

Here are a few covers to similar artists tracks around the indie/folk/country genre. The colours are desaturated, and stick to a similar scheme, however are not as saturated as the cover I have produced which is against the genre.

The name superman, automatically, made me think, Urban, cities, sky scrapers, a man in a cloak and I wondered how I could link the name into something completely out of its comfort zone. I decided to redesign the official Superman logo into something more country looking.

 Here is the original Superman Logo. On my version, I have changed the shape of the badge, however, kept the 's' in the middle. I have included some small blades of grass to give it more of a countryside look and reversing the original. I think that the logo is good and is the same through both the digipak and advert, but there is no reference to it in the video.






The font throughout the package was a font that I thought looked like the type you would find in a comic book or a front cover of one. I thought I would play with the meaning and add the comic book/ urban meaning to the song too so people can have their own interpretation on it. I thought that the continuous use of it looked professional, however I could have used it in the video for an introduction of some credits.

The style of imagery in the video is one thing that is very similar to the front cover of the digipak and advert.
The CD in the digipak has the long grass, bright colours and the sky is red, dramatic light and saturated tones. Here are some images of the digipak and the video next to each other to show some of the similarities.

This video is also used in question three but I have placed it here to refer to how my video, advert and digipak is seen to be coherent across the package. The second half of the video talks more on this.

Final Music Video

Shoot 3

Another shoot today, and the original plans went horribly wrong. I had planned to shoot outside but unfortunately, it decided to snow again. A friend of mine kindly gave us his conservatory to turn into a studio for getting the same natural light. The shoot went really well and I am proud of the results.