For my advanced portfolio in media I have been asked to create a main text and two ancillary texts. I chose to create a music video along with a website and digipak to support this. Firstly I chose a genre and research music videos that fit that genre. I chose Alternative Rock combined with Folk rock and Indie Rock. These genres includes aspects from both the indie and other alternative genres and so I chose this as I thought I would be able to work with a wide range of conventions. For example, artists usually create music that is in the style perceived of Indie/ Alternative music. Their music videos usually include narrative and performance however, abstract narratives are sometimes used.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
MUSIC VIDEO
Abstract narrartives are a common convention for alternative rock music videos so I decided to use a lot of abstract shots in my video. These shots didnt take a lot of editinfg as they were all done in camera. This is because of using software like Adobe AfterEffects to warp the footage or create an enigma through changing the narrative structure, I simply took shots of places that would fit the visual style of my video such as flags and a pub sign blowing in the wind.
Performance and lip syncing is a big aspect of any genre for music videos including alternative rock. In my research of existing music videos, I found that most of the videos that I had looked at contained some performance however the dominant form was narrative or abstract with aspects of performance mixed in. Because of this I had a seperate shoot with Tom to get the performance aspects that I needed for the video. I experimented with the Jig in the green room to see what effects I could get by moving the camera up and down and closer and further away from him. It helped me to get a good artistic closing shot for the video. There was a computer screen at the side of one opf the shots so I had to put on a vignette to cover it. I decided that it would look out of place if I only had it in omne shot so I applied it to all of the performance shots. A lot of existing alternative rock videos feature shots with vignettes such as Ed Sheeran's A-Team.
I chose the locations for my shots based on the lyrics analysis for my song as they were about pessimism so I decided to choose an area that looked dark and had a sense of deadness. This is conventional of my genre as a lot of alternative rock videos are set in similar settings, like Arctin Monkeys - Leave before the lights come on. I also chose to shoot parts of my video on the pier that overlooks the river Humber and have Tom look across, however, I thought this was a bit too cliched and overdone so I decided to focus more on the alley.
I used a variety of shots including a range of different angles and types. I used mainly mid shots and close ups to show that artists face which is conventional of my genre. I also used main straight shots with not high or low angles however I dud use some low angle shots and high angle shots to show that the artist is dominant or inferior in certain shots. The high anle shots are through bars which assist in giving these meanings and the low angle shots make Tom take up most of the space in the shot which makes him look bigger and also aid this purpose.
I used Extreme close ups of Toms fingers on the guitar and the guitar on its own to show the performance aspect which helps to convey the genre of alternative rock. These types of shots are used a lot in most existing alternative rock music videos. I also used long shots and extreme long shots of the artist as it made him look smaller which helps to portray the theme
of optimism clashing with pessimism.
To make the Video more abstract, I thought of using some close up, slow motion shots of things as my camera has the capacity to shoot at 60fps so with Final Cut I could slow down the footage and not lose any of the quality. I test my idea first by filming candle smoke and slowing it down however, it didn't work as well as I had hoped so I decided not to use it in my video.
Ancillary texts
For my ancillary texts I decided to create a Digipak and a Website. For the DigiPak, I decided to use nature related shots as many alternative rock bands use similar shots such as Kodaline's self titled debut EP. The front and the back cover images for my Digipak were the same image - I used a panoramic style shot that stretched over the two to create one large shot as That is a convention of alternative rock music albums. The shots that I used are not of the same style of my music video which is unconventional of promotional campaigns however, I feel that The different styles of images work well because they fit the genre of alternative rock well and also cross in with folk rock which is what the hybribized genre of my chosen song was. The song names that I used were inspired by or pastiched song names from artists of the alternative rock genre. I used several real song names from City and Colour (the band that sings my chosen song, Grand Optimist). A lot of alternative rock bands use images shot on 30mm style cameras. I didn't have access to a 30mm camera so I experimented with photoshop to create a 30mm style photo. I had seen an online article saying that to create a 30mm image, put a cyan layer over the image and reduce the fill to 60%. I tried this but I found that the image became blue and looked wrong so I tried it with a white layer and decided that I liked that more so I did this for all of the images on the digipak. The ofnt and text style I used on the front cover was inspired by Biffy Clyro's Puzzle album as they use simplistic fonts to create amazing album covers. The double slash (//) is used to separate the bands name and the album name which is used in a lot of alternative rock music videos.
WEBSITE
For my website I looked at existing alternative rock artists websites and found that most of them were set out in the style of a blog. This could be because their primary audience is teens and young adults who probably use or are familiar with blogs. I decided to use Weebly.com to create my website as I used Wix.com for my AS Media coursework, last year and found that they had limited design layouts and wanted to try something new. I put a link to the Grand Optimist video which I created at the top of my website as I found that existing websites contain a "Featured Video" section with the artists current single. I also used a tour poster which I created for the promotional campaign. I didn't have to create this however, I misunderstood when I was asked to create a promotional poster. I looked into existing tour posters for alternative rock music artists and found that they are usually quite plain and dont feature an image of the artist. My tour poster was an image of a stair case That I found in a forrest that had been over-grown. I used the 30mm effect that I had used for my Digipak to create a visual link between my products. I used a promotional poster as well which I created to promote the digipak release. I used Weebly to create links to the bands social media sites such as facebook and twitter. This is conventional of most music genres now because this is how they share their music and videos which as I learned last year, leads to viral advertising. On the promotional poster, I placed a QR code, which can be scanned by fans of the artist to get a link to the album to possibly stream. I also used a screen shot from the video for the main image of my promotional poster to show the link between all of my products. The image used fr the front/ back cover of my digipak is also the header for my website for this reason too.
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