In what ways does your

media products use,

develop or challenge

forms and conventions of

real media products?

Where have your idea’s come from?

My group and I decided we were going to use the song ‘Cala Cola’ by The Miracles. The band’s song provided us with an relaxed and chilled indie beat which as a group we liked. As the band’s hadn’t created a music video for the song it allowed us as a group to interpret the song ourselves. Once selecting the song we individually looked at examples of existing professionally made indie genre products such as music videos, digipaks and adverts. I analyzed subjects such as entropy and redundancy, entropy consists of the idea of unpredictability and the media product displaying concepts that do not follow what is predicted of the genre. Redundancy is when the media product complies with the convention of the genre.

After looking into the indie genre I realised that most themes within the genre are typically redundant and feature throughout many other similar media products. Examples of this I looked at were in Noah and the Whale’s music video for the song ‘Waiting For My Chance To Come’.

Where have your idea’s come from?

Typical features that I noticed within this video were the use of vintage styled props and camera equipment to make the video seem much older than it is. This same feature was used with The Vaccines video: All In White. Both videos are musically part of the indie genre and feature the vintage filters and video effects. Because it’s a generic feature of the genre we felt it was important to include as its such a dominant feature. The same features of the indie genre I discovered in my research I have included in all my media products such as my music video, digipak and print advert. We discovered that the beach was a common location seen within the indie genre. After much deliberation we decided it was a difficult location to films and was not easily accessible to re film elements if we needed to. This problem got resolved when we discovered Noah and the Whale’s promotion video for ‘The First Day’s Of Spring’.

A short film called ‘The First Days Of Spring’ featured as a promotional video for Noah And The Whale’s album. It shows a road trip and exploration of a young man in a new area he has never explored. The aspect of travel and exploration is also seen in various indie genre art pieces, so this served as inspiration for our road trip concept. This was our main influence on our work as we liked the idea of a sense of freedom young people can embark on. In the video we discovered filming in a forest is also another popular location seen within the indie genre. So we decided to use this location in our own work. Carly Rae Jepson and Owl City’s ‘Good Time’ music video inspired us to include the camping aspect. This is because in their video they included the same concept and it successfully showed a group of friends having a good time and spending time together, which we wanted to emulate in our own work.

Where have your idea’s come from?

Once we discovered the concept we put all our ideas about props, costume, location and other influences into the pitch presentation so that it served as a hub for all our ideas so we could develop them into a video.

How did your audience research direct your creativity?

Audience research has played an important element throughout each stage of my project. I organized frequent audience research in order for me to collect opinions and ideas on my media products such as improvements on the music video or design elements to suit their preference. Our audience helped us identify the problems associated with the beach location and helped us acquire a new location which still fitted with the convections of the genre. I used a variety of different formats to gather my feedback, one being setting up a group on a ‘Facebook’ and posting my media products allowing my audience to comment. Another being direct feedback and capturing it on video.

Audience feedback allowed us to achieve a professional looking music video as they pointed out the lip syncing was out of time and also said we needed a new and fresh location for the performance. We acted upon this by re-filming our performance in a studio in order for our video to have a set location for the performance concept. Our performers performed the song to a high standard which enabled us to sync the words and match the music to the visuals so its flows much better than before.

I used the audience feedback for developing my print work as well as my music video. They helped me establish which fonts and colour schemes I should use from a selection I submitted for their feedback. They also helped me make necessary changes to different drafts of my print work and digipak so I will have a finished product that suits the genre.

How different are your products to ‘real’ media products?

Due to the lack of technology available to us our music video lacked professional quality, which makes our project different to real media products. Our resources were limited to, , a basic Sony video camera, Final Cut and a very small budget. Our music video experienced problems whilst editing because of our lack of knowledge with the professional software we used to edit it with. This lead to making the video look not as high quality compared to different to real music videos.

By using the Ludlow college drama studio it helped our music video look very professional when we were filming the performance elements of the video. This is because the studio we used was created specifically for professional performances. Because our video lacks professionalism it reflects homemade qualities and originality and does not have a manufactured look. These concepts are a common element seen within the indie genre.

At the start of filming the music video we had a low quality camera but towards the end of production we had a much higher quality camera to work with. This was noticeable in the final product and made the attention to detail look shoddy and unprofessional

As I had previous knowledge of Photoshop I was able to make a much higher quality print products that looked professional and much like the real thing. I was able to use many different fonts and apply many different effects to the images I had used to suit the genre and specifications required. As I have used the same fonts, filters and colours throughout my work it gives it a house style. This creates continuity throughout my pieces and mirrors methods used in the industry for real.

To what extent have you been original?

In our video I feel that we show predominantly redundant features as we tried to include as many different aspects of the indie genre as possible so it looked professional and matched real music videos. The different uses of the filters and the props we used are all from our re-search into the theme and genre. This is also apparent of our road trip theme and the concept of friends spending time together and camping. We tried to be original in or methods when re-creating the aspects, for example; when we wanted to show the road trip we tired to make it seem unique to our surroundings where we lived as we utilized the local forests and surrounding areas.

Another way we have tried to be original, is via the performance element. it is rare in an indie video to have just the artist in a dark room with studio lights, when the rest of the video shows a different narrative. usually the performance is mixed in with the narrative, but we have broken this convention and tried a different method.