prentice johnson a2 media evaluation

A 2 M E D I A E VA LU AT I O N

PRENTICE JOHNSON

IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS OF EXISTING MEDIA PRODUCTS?

• In my initial research I found music videos seem to have typical guide lines to follow were they use one or combine multiple styles, these are known as narrative, performance, hybrid/cameo, animation and in some cases animation and the actor or performance in one video simultaneously.

• Many of the videos I looked into where abstract and had a ominous tone to the video and attempted to trigger some sort of emotion to the reader. I researched a very wide variety of music due to the music video I was creating was for a form of hip hop that has been developed and inspired from many other genres and has characteristics of the videos I researched and wanted to capture a similar stylized video to future funk/vaporwave as the artist I created the music video for finds a lot of inspiration from this genre.

• To get to this understanding I had to think about who my target audience where. The genre can be classed as a derivative of hiphop but the jazzy ambiance and the looping does class it as a form of vaporwave/hiphop which is an extremely niche audience. Due to this factor I firstly decided to have skateboarding due to the genre to fit into that category, after experimenting with this I was able to see the footage didn’t work as it was hard to portray the message within and it felt like two different music videos clashing into one. I then decided to get into contact with artist and film him along with the people in the scene of this music at a demo and have more dance footage along with displaying the deconstruction in the tenants of capitalism. This message was easier to display and relate to the audience more so and ran more chronologically with the music.

• This within it self allowed me to challenge a lot of codes and conventions and I had a CCTV stylized edit to accompany the visuals to further put forwards this message, this allowed my video to feel less superficial but at the same time create a paradoxal type effect and a loss of reality or in this case connection with western society.

IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR PRODUCTION USE, CHALLENGE OR DEVELOP ONTO REAL MEDIA TEXTS?

• My product challenges real media texts due to the fact most real media texts if not all are heavily scripted. Whereas mine was more from an artistic approach. The dancing visuals and shots in McDonald's where all spontaneous and was meant to be able to display real life and a flow. It was genuinely footage of some one buying McDonalds and eating it where as in real media texts they would have had actors as the seller and the buyer of the product. Although my video may be perceived as more of an artistic response it does develop on traditional codes and conventions such as the use of Chroma key seen in videos such as “talking heads – once in a lifetime” where the singer is seen lying down with the green screen and behind him is colours and vhs style visuals much like I used to create the green wall of the stair case transition over to the McDonald's store as a smooth yet glitch vhs stylized cctv type effect. This also creates a feel of simulation along with the fact the previous short edit in the opening of the music video being a boot up screen on an N64 to trigger a sense of simulation and the build up of persona through your inner child and nostalgic factors.

• Another way I challenged conventions was the fact most clips where filmed on miniDV with the exception of a few. This was to create the VHS style footage more manually with the help of Adobe after effects. This created a vintage/nostalgic aesthetic more commonly seen in vaporwave that is a genre that usually fully breaks all codes and conventions and uses unoriginal footage edited in a way to be so postmodern its ironic and creates a joke out of society in some instances showing the digital era in a satire way. I was happy with the way the effects came out and I feel it really worked well with the music and created the effects of memories with the intercutting of the high street and the “club”.

HOW DID I DEVELOP AND CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS?

• Another way I have challenged conventions is the use of bricolage. This has been used by remixing external footage. I did this to reference the meat industry and how fast food meat is produced, with a large amount of people, especially in teens, with little knowledge on what actually goes in the process of the food. I had this on the back of my footage and by using Chroma key technology and cutting up the clip in synchronization with the music I was able to create the effect.

• I challenged the codes and conventions of a narrative by having the opening shot as an N64 to show simulation of the following events. Having a pov type effect of a CCTV camera to show the views of an observer and not a character (with no character development). This is usually fundamental in a narrative, however I excluded this to create the aesthetics, through my visual imagery to raise a series of questions instead of offering answers or any conclusive statement creating my video to be the extreme of a postmodern piece.

IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS OF EXISTING MEDIA

PRODUCTS

• Although my poster breaks a lot of traditional codes and conventions by having a somewhat clustered, abstract portrayal of a poster the information that is used is of a minimalistic approach which is typical in a music poster although the composition is different. This type of abstract poster are being seen a lot in newer music productions such as The Weekend who used a similar layout. Due to my artists name being Sensei I decided to use a Japanese style composition as reference to this creating my poster to be postmodern, In Japanese music posters they have a very similar composition from a more abstract approach much like mine. I feel as if I accurately portrayed this style within my response.

• Most of the posters I looked at had psychedelic influences. I wanted to show this within mine but from a modern aspect. I did this by using past technologies melting and morphing like stereotypical psychedelic art has. This also helped me helped me display a representation of a “digital river” which is a producer who's working on the album.

• I created this image with Photoshop and the disk and melting effects manually on a scanner which is explained within my blog post.

IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS OF EXISTING MEDIA PRODUCTS

In my digipack I mixed photos of urban street shots with a psychedelic ‘glitch art’ effect on inspired from vaporwave I had researched in my blog previously. This stylized composition and effects where also influenced by talking heads video once in a life time where very early experimentation with glitch art where introduced. The vhs look was also something I wanted to portray due to show a cctv effect to symbolize the society we live in today and the technology that surrounds us and how the lines between reality and fiction are becoming blurred due to the world around us evolving at such a fast paste its hard to understand what it all means. I also used these images to show how people are influenced by what they are shown on there computer screens and what they have grown up playing digitally. We begin to question authority and structures of our ‘reality(s)’ and thus are broken down and analyzed from a skeptic view.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

• Within my main and ancillary tasks I wanted to create a urban feel to synergize with the hip hop influence within my music genre chosen so it would be a stereotypical aesthetic automatically related to the artist hence the street shots. I also wanted to include a futuristic, psychedelic, digital era feel to connect to the vaporwave side of the style of music within the genre. One of the ways I did this was through using after effects and Photoshop to create glitches within my images. I created this feel by using DV tape to create a CCTV feel due to DV having a warmer older feel to it in comparison to HD footage with the use of some HD time lapses to be used as filler transitions to diplay progression.

MINI DV

HD

• Looking at my final poster and my final digipak they work well and suit the style of my main text. The use of glitch art, graining footage and the use of an RBG split/psychedelic colours to be prominent creates my 3 texts to link and have a connection in the composition. I believe they tie in to each other with the abstract concepts and have a “vaporwave” feel to the to them.

• I think there could be some slight changes in the poster due to negative space but over all I am happy with the outcome of the texts as they all have connection with a similar aesthetic and the iconic effects that are present in this style of work.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

• My survey starts off my asking the age and gender of who is taking part to see who my video appealed to. I was mostly aiming at teens from London due to the icons and message involved with the visuals and the genre of a newer developed hybrid of a genre which is aimed at the teenage generation of this era. From doing this feed back I can see I was success full in achieving to draw in the audience I wanted, I believe this is to the style and composition of my music video and has a aesthetic that’s target at teens. I found out a fairly even portion of females and males took part in the survey and I will have a non bias view point from gender. The only issue with mostly teens answering my feedback is the fact I wont get a universal response from all ages due to very little being in the upper and lower age brackets. I believe this is due to my distribution of questionnaires due to very little being handed out physically and most being posted on social networking sires, where the majority of the people who would see the link would be my age.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

• The following questions where about the classification of the text and to see if the audience understood my edit, if it made sense to them and I accurately created a fitting visual to the hybrid genre I was shooting for, I started of basic by asking if they enjoyed the music video, I only asked to explain why if they said no,if they say yes they don’t have to state a reason, maybe I could have bettered this by asking so. The next question was about if they where able to classify the video into a genre. Most guessed correctly with hip hop and vapor wave as it was a combination of the two with a few others saying rap, electronic and dance which is understandable why they may have thought this as rap in very similar to hip hop and electronic/dance are former pioneers to an extent of vaporwave. I could have bettered this question by maybe a wider variety of genre choices to see if it may have been confused with other genres due to my portray of the music through the visuals and possibly with a hybrid option as I am unable to see who ticket both hip hop and vaporwave.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

• The next two question where about genre and the visual effects. Here I was trying to find out if my audience and viewers found be breaking so many codes and conventions due to the stylized footage work to create this hybrid of music video. I found out from this all of the candidates asked said it did work in its favor. From reading the comments I can see most believe this to be so due to edginess of the edited footage and the use of tape creating a digital, “trippy” effect which create a intriguing/philosophical aspect with arisen questions due to the merged ideas of existing products to create this style.

• The following question after this was to see if the actual editing and effects of the clip created enjoyment due to the glitch art style. Again all candidates asked said yes. Most of the responses on this say its due to the innovative stylization of the editing and the questions raised on the meat industry with the McDonalds burger chroma key along with the synchronization of the music with the visuals to portray and style the message in a new way for hip hop due to its hybridization of genre.

RESPONSES

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

• The next question to follow on my questionnaire where asking if the music video was something that seemed professional looking, most people said yes. Interestingly the comments on this say the use of breaking the codes and conventions of traditional hip hop videos is what does this. The presentation creates it to fit more so and created a feel of synchronization with the beat and lyrics but in a abstract way. This is exactly what I was aiming to accomplish and im overwhelmed that my ideas and style is valued and seen in the same light I view it. Although my question does state see from a signed artist within this genre, this is limiting my audience and asking them to only compare with this genre, maybe a wider array of comparisons may have given me different results.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

• The next question asked was to see if the viewers found my music video engaging. 100% of the viewers said yes. I had no gave them no more ot elaborate on and I wish I had of included an extra box to ask why they found it engaging to see what points created them to be drawn in and if similar views could be linked. After this I asked how it made the viewer feel. I wanted to create a sense on nostalgia and a eerie tone but raising socio-political questions while leaving them unanswered for the reader to dwell on/research into. I found most where able to see and got the nostalgia part and simulation ideas and many agreeing it made them think of the fast food industry in a different way but not many picked up on socio-political idea although a few did and only three people where able to see the questions raised by my production. This has proven to me that maybe I may have lost the messages being produced through the aesthetic creating nostalgic feelings and trippy effects and I didn't’t have a even enough ratio. This is helpful to me to understand not all viewers will see first time watching which maybe isn't a bad thing and could make viewers watch the video twice due to not being able to grasp the message correctly first time around.

• The images to this answer will be included on the next slide:

RESPONSES FOR LAST QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTION

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

• To conclude on my audience survey. I have learned that you can indeed challenge codes and conventions to create a production that still is enjoyable and pleasing to the audience. With that in mind some audiences may be confused by the visuals and idea raised through the continuity of the text.

• I included both female and males in my production to have equality on gender so I could have non bias responses and to draw in both genre from this age group and community due to there being no segregation of genre in this group of people but I believe a narrative in my production could have created more so a sense of understanding for other age groups and minds alike.

• Although I feel confident that most of the people watching felt the style and composition I have done worked well and created the message I wanted to put across. I feel that my ancillary tasks also fit well and match my video and I am happy with the responses I got.

• I am happy with the ratio of stylization and message but I do believe that maybe it began to become more superficial during the ending of the production and a lack of me myself, during post production, understanding how to display these ideologies to someone who has no idea what it is trying to display and have to decode it through the audio and visuals but as I a whole I am happy with the turn out of my final text.

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING

AND EVALUATION STAGES?

• I used blogger to keep track of my work and upload research for me to go back to so I could apply new styles and inspirations to my piece. This site I used in AS and is a fairly simple blog to use. It was also an area I was able to upload my analysis’ of music videos for me to go back to quickly and with ease for me to look over and revisit.



• Throughout my development I checked YouTube for old and new music videos within the genre of hip hop and vaporwave to find new inspiration, from this I came across multiple new inspirations from old and new styles of music that are linked into the genre of my artist.

• The main issue I had with this was the fact I was limiting my self to one site. For a wider variety and new pieces of inspiration I could have found I could have improved this by using sites such as Vimeo to find a wider variety of music videos. Another site I used to help me was social networks sites. I mainly used Facebook as it was easy to create a group chat and find events to film at, we did trips out to film on location and went to events to film the dance shots in sensei's’ demo.



• Google docs was another site I used to help me not only in my research but also within my evaluation. This site helped me due to the fact I was able to create questionnaires within the site and distribute them to the public to gather responses on the questions given. This was beneficial to me as I was able to choose exactly what I wanted to ask and see the opinions and views of others and have a wider understanding of what the audience want and not just my ideas on what's good. Through this I could see a non bias views on certain ideologies and could plan my video with more accuracy and ease with an open view. From the results I could see them in forms of graphs and charts to compare and contrast people opinions and ideas. This also helped me with my evaluation due to me being able to gather in-depth responses about my music video and to see if the purpose of the video worked and how well it do so.



• Photoshop and scanners.I used Photoshop to create my ancillary texts. I t was used in the construction of my poster, my album cover and my digipak. I'm familiar with Photoshop and use it a lot so creating these products where fun to do and using previous techniques learnt from AS where brought across. I also used manual photo manipulation by creating the melting effects of my pictures but wiggling them about in a scanner. I was so pleased with the out come of these and believe the effect worked really well. With the use of liquefy on Photoshop allowed me to clean up the scanned images and create more of a melting glitched effect to the pictures.



• Use of MiniDV.

The use of mini dv allowed me to create a grainy, old school, retro effect but still with the a digital futuristic aspect without it looking like bad quality footage and keeping a professional looking edge. I also used MiniDV as it has a certain feel to it that lack in HD. I felt by using this I was able to create the nostalgic emotion more so and having being able to display chiaroscuro within my footage with DV created an ominous mysterious tone within my media text

Another aspect of miniDV that worked well in my footage is the fact I wanted a CCTV look to my clips and by using dv it was made possible to create this effect and effectivly create a good looking RGB splits and glitchy effects that would look to clean if I used HD.



• Use of fisheye and long lens.

Within my media text I used a combination of long lens and fisheye. The reason for this is with a fish eye you can get up close to the subject without chopping heads or missing out parts of the shot. It gives a wider degree of view compared to long lens. With this lens also created a sense of distortion and helped me show simulation within my production.

The use of long lens (not using a lens) was for me to collect my other angles and camera techniques. I am happy with the overall out come of my fisheye shots and believe it helped create the emotion within my text and showed a more of a POV style footage to display the observer.



• The use of LED lights.

Due to a large percentage of my footage being shot within night time I needed to use an LED light to pick up the subject I was filming. My first attempts of filming I did not use an LED light and the footage was too grainy to the point of it looking drained out with a too high exposer. This allowed me to get light of the subject and let me lower my exposer so the footage didn't’t become lacking of colour.



• The use of HD (DSLR).The main reason of using HD footage in my music video was purely for the time lapses as Mini DV can be quite expensive and time lapses take up a lot of time of tape. Also on MiniDV time lapses seem to loose quality where with using HD the footage stays crisp and looks a lot smoother.With some colour correction on premiere and the use of after effects I was able to match the colours of the HD clips with the SD but a difference is spotted

I believe this is something that could have been executed better if I had the funding to do so but overall I was happy with the look of the footage used.



• The use of editing software

I used many parts of Adobe Creative suite within my coursework and for editing my final text I used premiere to cut edit and colour correct my footage and added simple effects such as text and time lapses and some harder effects such as chroma key. I used after effects to create more complex effects such as the RGB splits and shakes within my edit, the glitching out of the clips and the glitched transitions from clip to clip.

Using this software I believe to be my strong points within the construction of my media products. I enjoyed using the software and experimenting with different effects and accurately getting the colours correct. I show how I used these techinques in more detail in the editing pages within my blog.

DID I USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES EFFECTIVELY?

• I believe all in all I have used media technologies effectively within my media texts. I feel as if I used media technologies to the best of my abilities in a practical sense. Not only do I feel this is my strength I enjoy this area of work the most and had fun creating my pieces and I am pleased with the our comes. If I was given the option to redo my project I would change little apart from a few small changes to format of cameras and my poster.

• I could have also improved the theory side of this in the way I distributed my surveys as social networks are very limiting audience wise.

• To conclude I feel as if the music video production I created displays a multitude of examples breaking, developing and using codes and conventions to create a stylized piece of work with its own edge and synergy within the audio and visuals. All of this required me to develop on my AS skills by experimenting with new formats of film. Using lighting, new area of adobe creative suite such and After Effects and the use of lens’. This learning experience has benefited me in many way and I feel a lot more confident in creating my own media texts.

prentice johnson a2 media evaluation

Education

different music videos

similar stylized video

product use

real life

wide variety of music

ua t i o n prentice

production use

mcdonalds store