In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge of real media products?

Prior to creating our music videos, we did a lot of research into music genres and conventions, enabling us to associate certain themes, colours and styles with a particular genre. We were then given a list of songs in which we had to choose one, create an idea for  music video and then pitch it to our teacher and class; we chose My Little Haunting by UK band 'Hot Club De Paris' with our simplistic idea of having a group of masked people chasing and 'haunting' our lead singer -which would be played by Matt- with performance shots of the band intertwined and were awarded the right to create a music video for it as a part of our A2 coursework.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGmv4c6CNjg
This is the original music video which Hot Club De Paris created for their song; we felt that though it was quirky, it wasn't a very effective product as it only consisted of one scene of a ouija board. We wanted to create a music video with the same feel but decided to do it in a different way with more movement and pace to fit the song better.
It is evident that this song as regarded as 'indie' due to the nature of the guitars, the vocals and the light hearted nature; we decided to conform to these conventions and make the genre obvious from the music video.
We managed to do this through:
*Costume: Making the characters who were gong to appear in the music video wear stereotypically indie clothes, such as browns, knitwear, denim and quirky accessories such as bow ties. This enabled the target audience (indie people) to relate to the band as they were dressed similarly and acted in a similar manner.

* Mise En Scene: using quirky props such as masks to give the video a light hearted and humorous feel to the video as they were chasing the lead singer throughout; also relating the product to the song as it's called 'My Little Haunting'.

* Lighting: Using motivated lighting to give the video a low-budget 'indie' effect such as the day light we used and the fairy lights. The lighting also made it humorous as it was apparent that it wasn't suppose to be a scary video just because it used scary masked, so we juxtaposed the day light with the props to give it this effect.

 

* Location: Using natural and normal looking settings like a kitchen, garage, the woods and the park to again add to the fact that this is a low-budget music video; also again creating a humour as it's obvious that the concept is unrealistic and how the characters are just annoying to Matt, rather than scary, both of these ideas link to the 'indie' genre.

We decided to conform to the 'indie' genre in order for our music video to be an effective product as we wanted it to be comparable to a real media product : other indie music videos, whilst also attracting a typical target audience that Hot Club De Paris would have. In using all of this mise en scene, along a variation of bright colours with wide camera shots to show the importance of the band and close ups of the instruments to show the saliency of the music, I feel we were able to create an effective final product which represented the 'indie' genre well. 

Poster

My images for my digi-pak

3/12/2011

Today we went to Matt's house where we filmed the performance shots so that we could all take photos that we need for our digi-paks and posters. Because we all had similar ideas, we were able to stay in the same location and just take photos in the garden and in his garage where all of the instruments are and where we filmed.
I got photos of the whole band and singular band members both with and without their masks, along with a mask with the corresponding instrument the band member was playing while wearing that specific mask.
We were all able to obtain many interesting photos which met the criteria for our individual ancillary tasks; the only challenge was the the cold weather as we had to stand outside in the clothes we wore in the music video and it was freezing!

Ancillary Task

For our A2 coursework we were put into groups and given the task of making a music video for the song 'My Little Haunting' by the UK band Hot Club De Paris. As a part of this project we have to prepare an ancillary project in which we have to design a digi-pak for our single, a corresponding poster and an evaluation.

Digi-Pak
We have been instructed to create 4 images and a spine for our digi-pak either on the computer or done by hand. I have decided that I will take photos myself and use photoshop in order to edit these images and make them relate to our song, music video and genre. I plan to have images of:
-the band with and without their masks
-instruments with the same mask by it that the band member was wearing
-the fairy lights

Poster
I plan to use one of the band images that I take with my digi-pak photos and, using photoshop, add some text over it to make it appear more like a promotional poster for a 2012 tour and the promotion of the single.


Evaluation
For our evaluation we have to answer these preliminary questions:
-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge of real media products?
-How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
-What have you learned form your audience feed back?
-How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

These questions have to be answered with a written response of 500-1000 words though we are encouraged to use alternative ways of answering them, so I have decided that I am going to select some volunteers and film their response and get some views and opinions on our music video.