Nikki Evaluation.

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

Before we shot our video we had to think about conventions and what makes different videos. as our genre was rock there were certain convention we had to apply although a few we adapted to make it our own and some that we challenged. we researched several videos an similar styles of videos to the idea we wanted so we could work out the typical convention we needed to include.
the main theme we carried on with was black and white alot of rock videos especially backstage/tour style videos like ours are shot in black an white for arty effect aswell as giving that vintage look
by shooting a backstage style video it invites the audience and our fans to see us as just regular people and giving them that little bit more it also gives us the chance to reach out a little more to our fans.
one more convention we carried on with was the theme of live performance although we didnt have an actual live performance we had band rehearsals and the guys playing with their instruments thus maintaining the live performance feel. this links in with horton and wohls parasocial theory where there is a one sided relationship usually between the audience and celebrities where one knows more about the other such as fans knowing more about celebs then they do of the audience.
one other well known video that uses this is Bon Jovi - Living on a Prayer.






one convention we adapted was the idea of band rehersal we normally see the band practising just playing instruments where as we have our band practising signalling to the sound tech guys to change the volume/pitch taking it that little bit further we also took the idea of promoting there merchandise within the video blink 182 wear alot of there own brands such as travis barker wears famous stars an straps we take it one step further by andy wearing a tshirt that says the croft thus promoting official merchandise.

one idea we challenged would be our ending the last shot is of the band walking towards the camera in a way pretty standard although we have a slightly more controversial scene as they walk towards the camera will lights up a cigarette and andy flips his finger at the camera giving an 'i dont care we break the rules' image. although alot of rock bands give off this image aswell we take it further by swearing at the camera to reiterate that point. people expect celebrities and famous people to have a holesome image and to be role models but within the rock industry its slightly different they set out to break the rules and push the boundaries.

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





How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts



what have you learned from your audience feedback?

COMPLETED DIGIPACK & WEBSITE

DIGIPACK

At long last we have finished our digipack. Will made the back cover, and half the front cover, and Jack finished the front cover and made the inlay. This was all done using Photoshop.

Front Cover:

Back cover:

Opened up inlay:

Back of inlay:

WEBSITE

Here is our website located at http://www.thecroft.co.cc

The domain is blocked on our school network, so if it doesn't work, here are shots of the website:

MASSIVE UPDATE PART 2 - 11/11

This post will be about what we achieved today on the 11th November.

Firstly at 9am we borrowed equipment and set up our band on the stage in the hall. We borrowed a drum kit and a bass guitar from the music suite and spent the entirety of first period filming performance from various angles and catching different bits of playing. This was to be the live performance part of our film, although we no longer intend to convey the impression of performing to an actual audience. The video is pretty much strictly rehearsals and band shenanigans. The few hours after this was spent putting the footage from the two cameras we used up onto the MAC and deciding which of it could actually be used to a practical degree. After chopping down our footage we put together our clips and edited our piece. Much of the editing we've been doing has involved making sure that a majority of the camera cuts are on the beat, syncing lyrics and instrumental shots to the music and making sure that we didn't re-use footage inappropriately. We also added transitions to subtly link/join clips however we didn't use them too much, as we feel it will make the video repetitive. The most recent decision we made was to put the entire video in black and white to give it a more authentic feel. Research has proven that a lot of band montages, tour videos and backstage logs are filmed in black and white according to the band's artistic preferences.

MASSIVE UPDATE PART 1

Where do we start. The blogging we haven't done has left a huge whole in our blog, and what we're doing now/have done is very different to what our blog suggests.

Band

We've converted the band to a 3 piece band consisting of Andy as the lead singer and guitarist, Will as the drummer and Jack as the bassist. This is because we had troubles securing externals to be in our band. This made things easier as we are all reliable and were able to succesfully film with no "hiccups".

Narrative

Our music video is now based on a "behind-the-scenes-band-on-tour" theme inviting viewers backstage seeing what the band members get up to and see them pre-performance and also rehearse. The video introduces the band members one by one, and also shows clips of us altogether. It works up to the live rehearsal. Before you see the band behind the stage, briefly practising and generally mucking about as you'd expect a rock band to do. Then you follow them up to the stage where you see them perform a rehearsal of the song.

Okay, So...

We had the hall booked, but we weren't allowed in because apparently the lights were being fixed and as such we werent' allowed in for the entire day, as well as omnday and tuesday.  As such, we've had to COMPLETELY re-do our piece and cut out most live performance footage.  Instead we are now aiming for the "band on tour" look, with the video playing over the music

Costume for filming

The band

Andy is going to be the guitarist and lead singer
Will Shaw is going to be the drummer and Will Mannings is going to help us out and play guitar.

Costume

Jack is going to go and buy some Tattoo sleeves that Andy and Will are going to wear during the performance.

Andy - Black tank top, Standard dark grey jeans, slip ons.
Will - Slightly rolled up blue skinny jeans, Vintage levi shirt, slip ons

Dominated.

We finally have the hall booked for friday, 2nd and 3d period. Filming shall commence then, and then the narrative will be done on sunday.

Filming

i know we have had issues getting a location/venue but i think we should film the narrative or atleast as much as we can this week so we know we have some of it sorted i dont think its realistic to get everything we need in one day narrative and live performance so i think we should think about filming parts this week.

Storyboard issues

as i drew this up an then listened to the song after the video doesnt actually really fit to the music the intro is longer than i thought so ive swapped a few bits round to make it fit better im gonna redraw it out an listen through to make it fit better.

Audience feedback about the song

a while ago i asked a group of people aged between roughly 15 to 30 years old that fitted what would be our target audience aswell as a few that didnt via facebook if they could listen to our song on myspace an give some feedback.
as we had our mind pretty set from the beginning which song we were going to use this was a good way to see what people thought of it.
from the people that responded most of them liked the song an thought it had a good layout but the bass and vocals seemed a little drowned however andy has said he has a better quality version of this.
a few people also said that they felt the band seemed to be more for a specific fanbase and if they were to be signed and make it big they would need to make it a bit more mainstream and commercialise themselves more.
this was very helpful as its always good to know what people think and what needs improving.
i will do the same for the storyboard when its uploaded ill send it to a few people to see what they think.

Filming

We may have to film when we go back to school on monday.
we will co-ordinate our frees lunch and afterschools to get the live performance filmed asap as we will be playing catch up if we havent got all our footage by the end of half term.
we need to ask if its possible to use the drama studio or the school hall to film.
this is the one major problem we have and should have sorted out weeks ago.
we werent very organised at the end of term an didnt set definate dates times and location and trying to organise now is proving difficult. however if we all agree to give up as much free time a possible i think we can get back on track very quickly.

Weather forecast

ive added a side bar that shows the weather forecast for the next few days if its worked (Y)
i created it by going on design and clicking on html/javascript an pasting the embed code.
this can also help us as its a quick link to bbc weather so we can see what the weathers doing and can co-ordinate filming.

Storyboard

unfortunately as you can see i haven't managed to upload the storyboard yet
it will be up asap!

we have tried to arrange filming this week unfortunately we were hoping to have our location sorted by now which we dont however we can still film the narrative.
we were trying to arrange to film tomorrow (wednesday) although we havent been very organised
and i looked up the weather forecast it doesn't look to nice its supposed to be raining most of the day. it isnt essential to have a sunny day we would rather film on a dry day than raining.
as jack has the camera we are going to see if the weather is dry enough to film part of the narrative an do some test shots of the narrative if we cannot film the whole thing.
we havent managed to get hold of andy or will.
but it isnt essential for them to be there tomorow if they cant make it.
if we cannot film tomorow because of weather conditions we will postpone until the weather improves.
we shall keep this updated.

story board

im not in today guys sorry.
but i will finish drawing out the storyboard an film an upload it by tomorow.
ill take a photo of the a3 sheet we did of the storyboard and upload that today.
if one of you guys can message me whats happening next week with filming where when and what time i need to be there that would be great
i cant film monday or tuesday though.
thanks

Group Meeting - 20/10/2010

Group discussion about Album name

Group Meeting

Today we had a group meeting to talk about the digipack and the album name.
we recorded this conversation on wills blackberry and it will be uploaded asap
in the end after much discussion we have decided on "adherence"
it means 'adhere - stand by: be loyal to;'
which carries the theme of loyalty and such which feature within quite a few of the songs aswell as the song we have chosen for the video.

Band Members

after debating and having issues with getting the original band to star in the video we have decided to use our group but we are hoping to keep the lead singer matt.
andy will play drums as he does in the actual band will and jack will play guitar and bass.
we also have a few issues with filming in a pub so i think we decided to film in the drama studio we need to book it out and kit it out but ill keep the blog updated on that and post some location shots an if we find any other possible locations we will take photos an blog.

Fan Pages

On Friday i created the bands 'official' fan page on facebook so people can hear and see our sound an keep updated with our band.
i got quite a good response an the fan page already has quite a few followers
i also created a twitter account that links to the facebook page for the band to get as much acknowledgement as possible.
we need to upload a photo of our 'band' and will eventually upload the video and songs when they are finished this will help get audience feedback about the band and our video which we can use in our evaluation.

Audience Feedback about the song

i thought id do some audience feedback as thats the one major thing we seemed to have missed during our planning stage
ive posted links to the blog aswell as a link to the bands myspace profile [that has the song we have chosen on] to my personal facebook profile aswell as my twitter account so that our potential audience and friends and family can give me some feedback an thoughts on what they think of the song once we have a storyboard thats pretty much set in stone i will do the same thing and post back with general comments or ideas from people

Twitter Account.
.http://twitter.com/#!/NickieJAM

tonight

Nikki will now write up all ideas in the oder that they're going to happen between the narrative and the live performance.  Andy will talk to the band and find out when they are free to film.  Will is going to write up his ideas and see when the drama studio is available.  Jack is going to make our blog look a bit more up to scratch, as well as uploading the song to the blog, along with the lyrics.