Media A2 Music Coursework

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

We started this course by looking into different music genres we could study and then potentially make a music video from the genre. We had to settle on metal core genre because one member in the group knew a band that could let use their music for free. Some metal core bands we looked at were ‘Bullet for My Valentine’, ‘Blessthefall’, ‘All that remains’ and Underoath’. However, we didn’t anticipate how generic this genre is because none of us in our group had actually listened to this genre until then. The metal core is a genre of music consisting of heavy metal and hard core punk. The conventions of this genre are very important to both the audience and artist. There are many generic conventions involved in the metal core music video including;

The use of zoom-in shots of the artist faces when they are performing live to emphasis the lyrics when the artist is screaming.
Narrative and performance in the video which is used to make the audience follow the lyrics of the song
Mise-En-Scene elements of underexposed lighting, gives the music an already sad interpretation without the lyrics to emphasis what the song is about. Some bands in this genre sometimes use vintage footage in their video to maintain their originality.
Other Mise-En-Scene element, dull and dark colours which is usually exhibited in their clothing is used to emphasis the mood in their lyrics.
Other generic conventions in the metal core life style includes, heavy head banging when performing live, heavy tattoo and piercing which is usually seen in both the fans and artist of this genre. Carefree and rebellious attitude.

After learning the conventions, we have observed, developed and challenged some. Most of our music video involves initial ideas of the metal core genre. We found that artist in the metal core genre always express emotions through zoom-in shots when they are singing or screaming their lyrics; for example, in ‘The calling’ by All that remains, they use zoom in shots on some of the band members and the actor in the song when they sing a lyrics that directly relates to his character or is emotional. We used some zoom-in shots in our video when Edward screams he’s lyrics to demonstrate the pain and emotion of his lyrics. We used the zoom-in shots in particular scenes to make it cohesive to lyrics such as ‘my head is a f**king mess’ and James’s lyrics ‘torn from those memory’.

Close-up shot are used in metal-core videos to show emotion. Right is Edward from Remember the Ruined and left is Philip from "All that Remains".

Another conventions that is enthusiastically used in the metal core genre is head-banging among members in the band and sometimes, and I notice that some fans do it as well in gigs when we went to watch Remember the ruined perform in the Fleece Bristol. Head-banging is part of the metal core lifestyle, and is nearly always used in their videos.

Our video also uses this convention as it was inevitable when it comes to the band members performing; as it is an act that almost comes natural to the band members. We used head-banging shots mostly in Edward’s lyrics, when the song becomes faster and the screaming becomes louder.

The above images are headbanging shots; Left are band members from 'blessthefall' and right are band members from 'Remember the Ruined'

There is always a variation of basis the metal core video uses in the music video; live footage, narrative or conceptual and performance base. From the video I watched and analysed, most of the bands used a performance or narrative base. For example, in ‘4 word by Bullet for My Valentine’, the band only used footage of themselves performing to their fans live on stage. Other bands for example ‘The Calling by All that Remains’ uses performance, conceptual and narrative base. Narrative base music videos are used to make the audience have an understanding of the lyrics and the idea behind the song.

We decided to use narrative and life performance base because it will be easier for our audience to follow and understand the song. The idea of the lyrics is love and heart-break which is an ideal convention in the metal-core video, and we use love and break-up as the narrative idea for our music video. Even though our initial idea was about Robynne having an affair with James; we added a few different ideas when it came to filming, and so our narrative did not turned out as first planned at the end. We weren’t too worried because we felt that it was similar to what we wanted, and even has generic ideas (such as breakup/romance) of the metal-core convention. As we went to watch ‘Remember the Ruined’ perform at the Fleece, we thought it will also be a good idea to film them perform, so we could use the footage for our narrative as we found that gig performances is also very important in this genre from our questionnaire feedback.

Narrative shot from actors in Waking the Demon by Bullet for My Valentine

Narrative shot of Ian's and Robynne's break-up

Performance Dimension of 'Waking the Demon

An important aspect in all music videos, and not only in mental-core or hip-hop, is the use of Male Gaze. Unlike R &B or Pop music that uses the male gaze, it is not an important conventional element in the metal-core genre and from analysing some videos in this genre, I found that there was no use of the male gaze. Originally, after learning the male gaze in class, we thought it will be a good idea to use it as it is used in R &B music videos such as 'Hard' by Rihanna and hip hop videos such as ‘Nuting to do’ by Bad meets evil. However, we later decided against using the male gaze because it is not very commonly used in our genre as for example, artist are mostly always male and the narrative is sometimes not direct. In our music video, audience are made to see the video from a man’s perspective, (not particularly a heterosexual man) because Ian is almost made the victim of their breakup.

An example of Male Gaze: Rihanna on the front cover for her single Hard

Our front does not have images of people as we decided not to use the Male Gaze.

Another generic convention that is usually seen in this genre is the use of Mise-En -Scene, costume. Band members mostly always wear black clothing and tight jeans, which for example can be seen on the videos worn by band members Parkway Drive. We incorporated this idea as some members in ‘Remember the Ruined’ wears black and skinny jeans, for example James the lead guitarist.

Finally, another aspect of metal-core convention we used was making our video choppier to match the pace of the music. This is because we wanted visuals to match the sound so that the audience can easily get into the mood of the music.

Costume worn by members of Parkway drive

How James from Remember the Ruined dresses

However, we didn’t solely use ideas from the metal-core genre as we decided to develop some ideas we saw in some music videos. The idea of vintage footage wasn’t used in a lot of videos we watched, however, it was well used on ‘what’s left of me’ by Blessthefall, and so we decided to add an element of vintage in our video. The element of vintage we develop in our video was the use of vintage paper and Rebecca made it for the video by pouring hot coffee on normal white A4 paper. We then wrote the lyrics of the song on the papers and burn them to give an idea of a love letter being burnt up, which signifies the end of a relationship.

We developed the idea of including an aspect of vintage in our music video from watching 'What's left of me' by Blessthefall. The start of their video has an idea of vintage as it used black and white footage.

Another element we developed was the idea of monotone colour scheme and we used it in particular scenes in the video to show the mood change and melancholy of characters. We thought using different colour saturation will be clearer for our audience to understand the narrative like for example; we used different colour saturation when Ian (band member) walks away from the bench, we changed the saturation to 55% so that it gives the clip a duller and sadder view. We also changed the saturation of the clip in the scene where Robynne was sat on the bench smoking on her own. This is because from changing the saturation on Ian’s clip, the passive viewers might only sympathise with him, so we wanted both Robynne and Ian to be viewed the same because they were both affected by the break up, so we changed the saturation from 51% to make it darker, 49%.

We changed the saturation for several shot to make it

Finally, we developed the idea of juxtapose editing which is rarely used in the metal-core genre music videos. We developed the juxtaposing idea in our video by using a break up scene of Ian and Robynne against a getting together scene of Robynne and James. By placing two contradicting clips next to each other, the idea of a broken relationship is more emphasised and our audience become passive viewers as they are likely to take the intended reading in the narrative.

We used two contradicting images; of Ian walking away and Robynne and James walking together.

Furthermore, we challenged some of the generic conventions of the metal-core genre by using fire instead of water. Our original idea was to use water at the end of our video when Robynne has an affair with James, and then she runs off in the rain and water in this instance will signifies new beginnings as she runs to James. This idea was changed and we challenged it by using fire to burnt up the lyrics, and fire represents danger and rebellion which comes from the idea that Robynne just break off from a relationship and is about to start another one immediately.

We also challenged the idea of using one picture for an album cover which is a generic convention for the metal-core genre. Album cover images are always easy to identify or understand the indented meaning. We decided to challenge this idea by using an abstract picture of both the fire and the word 'F**K' written on the arm because after creating several pictures for the album cover we asked some feedback from our audience, what they thought will be more suitable for the album cover, and hypothetically speaking will grab audiences' attention if it was put in the market. Most of our audience liked both the images of fire and “F**K”, so we thought it will be a good idea to use both images together.

We challenged the convention of not using images on album cover by including an image of a hand with 'F**K' written on it.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

By looking at other videos and ancillary text from the metal-core genre, we found that they were very cohesive for example 'Fever' by Bullet for My Valentine. They used the same image of a girl standing almost nude for both their album cover and and magazine advertisement. Cohesion in this case is using similar images or ideas from the main product in the ancillary text. I think that our ancillary text links very well to our main product as our print work was developed from the main product. The images we used for our ancillary text, for the album include a merged of the fire, and the word ‘F**K’ written on the arm for the front cover while the back cover is of James and Robynne walking away from the camera. Both images are used in our video.

Album- front cover

Album- back cover

We also used images of the band members performing on stage for our digital pack, and images of the band standing individually after their performance; alongside that, we wrote some biography of each of the band members so that as they are a new band, their audience /fans can get to know them a bit more. We used this to have a cross media synergy so that our audience are familiar with our band members as some of the band members are the actors for the music video and also use them on digital pack.

Member of the band

We found that a lot of artist and some bands use cohesive images for their music video and ancillary text. An example of an artist that uses cohesive image is, Eminem in his album ‘Recovery’, and reflects an idea of finding yourself and starting over in a new direction. These ideas are seen on the song ‘Not Afraid’.
The music video is cohesive to the album cover as throughout the video, it has tall building and it shows empty streets; a similar image of him walking on an empty road with tall building was used on the album cover. By using cohesive images for our main product and ancillary texts, we hope that it will stand out in the retail market as items in the video will be recognised on the album cover by the audience.

The elements of 'Recovery' is reflected in this video.

Cohesive album cover Cohesive as we have both images in our video

We also used consistent cohesive font throughout the ancillary text to make it look original and almost stand out as the band’s logo. When analysing album covers from this genre, we found that some bands tend to use the same cohesive text when writing the title of the album or the name of their band. For example, metal core band ‘Underoath’ uses the same font to write their name on all the print work which is easily recognised by their fans. They also have a cross over the 'o' in the name which makes that their logo.

Underoath has a line over the 'o' as their logo.

We wanted to incorporate an idea of our band having a logo so they might be easily recognised by their audience through that. The font we used to write the band’s name was “Handwriting, Lakota” which almost looks like one of the band members wrote it themselves and so reflects their age group, and almost give them a sense of laid back attitude.

Handwriting Lakota font

We decided to use cohesive images for our main text and ancillary images so that it is easily recognisable, and can be identified by the audience.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback was critical during the production of our music video as we constantly changing our initial ideas to make our audience understand the narrative of the music video. Our audience feedback involved three stages; at the start of the filming, during editing and after our completed film and ancillary work.

At the very start, after we looked into the metal-core genre and started thinking about our initial ideas of what could be included in the music video, we thought it would be a good idea to get some audience feedback on what they thought about the metal-core genre and what could be involved in the video and an album cover. As you can see, the metal-core genre involves it’s own lifestyle that needs dedication, and not a lot of people in our school and people we know of listen to this music genre, however, we went forward and ask people who are not into the metal-core genre to watch some videos such as 'Waking the Demon' Bullet for My Valentine and Reinventing Your Exit by Underoath, and give us feedback on what they thought about the video such as the relationship between the lyrics and the visual, if they though the music was emotive, and whether there is particular emphasis on the lyrics or music video.

Reinventing Your Exit- Underoath

We found that our target audience wanted to see emotion, and relationship between the lyrics and visuals. From looking at the first part of our audience feedback, I think that we incorporated most of the ideas from the audience feedback into our work when planning our initial ideas such as including live footage and having particular emphasis on both the lyrics and the music video.

Audience feedback- Completed questionnaire

We did the second part of our audience feedback half way through editing our music video, and during this time we started developing ideas of what we could use for our ancillary task. We decided to get our second feedback from our class mates because some of them some of them knew the song, and the narrative of the music video. I thought that the feedback during this time of our work was very critical because we did a lot of changes to our work after the feedback. We asked four questions to our audience after they watched our video.We found that people who liked and listen to metal-core understood the narrative of the music video, while people who don't listen to metal-core found it confusing. Our target audience gave is the following feedback;

How do you think our video reflects the metal-core genre?

With me, live footage and dark colours
Live footage
Imagery/motifs reflects genre and target audience fire, writing on arm, live gig
It’s wild + emo, I’m sure these correlate.

2. What do you like/dislike about the video?

I like the way the storyline is reflected like the pace of the editing with the music
I don’t like the song- it scares me. The storyline is definitely there

3. How do you think the editing works with the visuals?

It shows the story and reflects the metal-core genre
A story going on in between shots of live performance works well.
I don’t actually know what the song is saying.

4. How can we improve the video?

Develop story-line in the background so it makes sense.
The camera being steadier.

We focused more on the negative aspects of our audience feedback. We felt that we could not really do anything about some of the comments for example, ‘I don’t like the song because it scare me’. This is because we tried to include ideas of what is usually involved in a metal-core music video and by not using the ideas of a metal-core music video; we are not reflecting the generic conventions of this genre. We felt that with more time, we could have filmed the video again, and this times use a better tripod to make the video steadier.

‘Develop story-line in the background so it makes sense’. From this feedback, we thought that we might have muddled up the narrative of the music video, so we decided to develop it by changing some footage. Firstly, we thought that the audience might be confused between the two male actors; James and Ian as they wore similar black cloths. We decided that instead of using shots that had their back to the camera, we changed it so that the audience is able to see their faces. We thought that the confusion might have come in the scene were Ian walks away from Robynne and the next shot is of Robynne and James walking away together. We felt that this clips might have been confusing because the audience might think they are the same people. Instead of having a shot of Robynne and James walking away from the camera, we changed it for a shot of them walking towards the camera so that the audience is able to differentiate between James and Ian. We decided to keep the same shot of Ian walking away from the camera because it reflects the lyrics of the song at that time.

We also had feedback from the audience on our ancillary task. Throughout this course, I think that the ancillary task has been the most stressful part of the work because we had the highest disagreements working as a group, but from our audience feedback, we came to a solution. At the start of our ancillary task, we were indecisive of what images we could use for our front and back cover; some of our ideas were live footage of the band members, Robynne and James walking away from the camera, ‘FUCK’ on the arm and lyrics burning. However, after getting the audience feedback, we found that the majority of our audience particularly liked the lyrics burning and ‘F**k’ on the arm.

The target audience liked these images the most.

From this, Rebecca came up with an idea of merging together both images on Photoshop so we could use it for our album cover. When Rebecca showed our audience some of the other ancillary work, they thought that it will be a good idea if we used the live footage shot as a gig poster. Our audience also wanted to see more images and know more about the band members, so we decided to make a collage of live footage of the band members, and also write a bit about the band members which are the panes inside the album.

Finally we had our last feedback was after our completed music video and ancillary task. We tried to get audience feedback from a wider population of people rather than just people from school, so Rebecca added a link of the ancillary task on Facebook. From these comments, I have learned that the use of text/font is very important in the ancillary text. We had a lot of positive feedback from both the Facebook audience and from Tom and Joe. However, some of our audience thought that we would have used a different font style and bolder colours to make the name of the album stand out from the rest of the poster. Our audience picked up on the use of fire, with someone saying they like the idea of using the fire to split up the life-footage, however, they felt we used the fire a little too much.

Facebook feedback

We also received a video feedback from Joe and Tom. This was because they are the only two people in school we know of who listen to metal-core music.

I have learned that audience feedback is an important part of any media product, and it is essential as the audience will be the people to purchase this product when it goes on the market. By getting feedback through each stage of the work, I have learned to communicate directly with the audience and focus on what they like and want to see on the video and ancillary work.

I have also learned how important the narrative concept is in a music video- to make the audience understand the song.
The importance of the link between edit and pace of the song; and in our case, choppier edit to match the fast sound.
How important it is for the album cover to stand out in a competitive business.

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

Throughout this task, technology has been very useful for both our music video and ancillary task. The use of technology has helped us as a group to develop our ideas and understanding of the metal core genre, and for me personally, I have gain and develop my text and research of how the metal-core genre is different in terms of life style and culture; and stands out in the retail market. Our initial use of technology was for ‘blogging’ our work after each lesson. Other technologies we used include; iMac, YouTube, Google, Word, scanner, camera.

Technology	Pros	Cons

Google	A lot of our research on the band members and other aspects of the metal-core genre were done on Google. For example we used the internet to research the metal-core lifestyle. We also used Google for access to our blogger both in school and at home.	Some websites are blocked so we don’t always have access to more information about the metal-core genre. Sometimes, the internet just shuts down when you are in the middle of doing your research which is disappointing if I didn't had not save the website.
YouTube	YouTube is a quick, free and easy way we used to watch metal-core videos. We watched metal-core videos which helped us gain idea of generic convention of metal-core music videos. We also used it to transfer videos on to our blog to analyse them. It was also useful to upload our videos before uploading it on our blog.	We could not always find all the videos we wanted to use on YouTube. It relies on the internet for it to work, so when the internet was down, I could not watch or continue my work if I needed to finish a work that required YouTube.
Blogger	Use to record our practical work and allows me see my monthly progress. It is easy to write on, and download pictures and videos. Automatic spelling check when you write anything, which is really helpful for grammatical errors.	When writings, the layout do not always comes out as I want, and so my work is sometimes not in the correct form. For example, sometimes, the font doesn't comes out in a linearly, but rather fills up the page in a random order. There is also always the problem of font colour. Sometimes, when I publish a post, it comes up in a different colour, and so blends in with the background, and so I am unable to read what I wrote. Hence, I enter my blog with a different font colour every time. There is also a limited range of font size or font which is hard when it comes to differentiating aspects in your work to make it stand out.
Word	I used Microsoft word, which was very useful because it spell checks, and unlike blogger, it also checks grammar and punctuation if I needed it. After writing my piece of work on word, I then posted it on blogger.	A problem could occur which closes down word and lead to you losing your work.
iMac	We used iMac to edit our music video. It is easy to upload a video on iMac. It is also very easy to download a video or change any element such as saturation.	When editing our video, we found that some parts of the video will freeze or stop at the end of the clip before it continues again. We were unsure what to do especially after editing it several times.
Soundcloud	We used soundcloud to download the song ‘Stubborn Memories’.	We had to pay before using some songs on soundcloud.
iTunes	iTunes was useful to download the ‘Stubborn Memories’ from the internet on to.	We found the there was a recording error, of someone talking on record towards the end to the song. So we wanted to cut the man’s voice out of the song but found it very difficult and at the end, we had to re-edit the whole of our music video as the visuals was not synchronised with the lyrics.
iMovie	After filming, we had to edit and put the footage together to create our music video. The software we used for editing was iMovie. All of us were familiar with this software as we used it last year. iMovie provided us with different effects such as transitions and saturation which were included on some of the footage on our video. Saturation was particular prominent because as our music video was strongly based on emotions, we added saturation that will reflect the mood of the lyrics. We used two saturation in particular, contrast of light and dark saturation; a light saturation was to shimmer the atmosphere of the footage while a dark saturation was to glum the footage.	When we started editing, we discovered that some of the footage freezes, every time a new footage is about to start, which puts the lyrics out of synchronise with some of the visuals. I found this very frustrating as even after editing the clips many time, and sometimes even taking the footage out of the song, it continued to freeze.
Photoshop	Photoshop was prominent for our ancillary task as it has several elements that we used to make our albums and posters more effective for example merging two pictures together. We also used Photoshop to change the colour of the album cover, and included the font ‘Handwriting’ Dakota and used to crop out any objects that was not needed on the picture, for example, when I was doing the gig album on Photoshop, the camera was in focus on the stage rather than the band members, so I decided to crop out a bit of the stage so that the band members became the object of the picture.	When cropping an image, I needed to be precise so that I don’t cut out essential parts of the picture such as a guitar, or cut out one of the band member.
Video camera	From our experience from last year’s coursework, we did not have many difficulties when it came to manipulating and setting up the camera. I used my camera, Sony video camera to film the live footage when we went to watch ‘Remember the Ruined’ perform at the Fleece Bristol.	When filming, the tripod I was using was broken, so the camera kept moving, and so most of the shots I took were hand-held footage which is seen on the music video. We went to watch the ‘Remember the Ruined’ perform in-doors at night, and during the performance, the lights were turn off except the stage lights. I didn't know if the camera had eternal lighting, and so some footage were very dark.
Scanner	Throughout my work, I did research on other metal-core videos, which involve me to print album covers and annotating them. Every time I annotated, I had to scan it and paste it on my blog. This was very useful as I didn't have to try and write on word before adding the image on my blog, and by writing directly on the paper, I use arrows to demonstrate what I am describing.	Sometimes, when I scan the item for example, ‘Poison’ by ‘Bullet for My Valentine’, on to the computer, the same colour does not show. The original colour of the album is ‘red’, but the colour that comes up looks a mixed colour of purple and red.
Paint	Blogger does not allow you to copy an image and paste it straight on, so I had to paste every picture I needed on to paint before opening it on blog. This was very useful as I could crop an image on paint if I didn't want the full picture before uploading it on to my blog, which came in handy when I wanted to crop angles of Bullet for My Valentine album cover before analysing it.	Sometimes, the page does not open as I want, as for example, when I open an image on paint, the image does not some times open fully, and so some pictures do not open up on blog fully.
Facebook	We used Facebook to meet a wider target audience for our music video. We posted questions on Facebook so that our friends and mutual friends can watch the video and give us feedback. This was very useful when we finished our work as we were able to get additional feedback from Facebook.	Unfortunately, even though there is potential that a lot of people might watch the video, there is no guarantee that they will bother to give us any feedback which would help us improve our next task.

Media A2 Music Coursework

Thursday 6 December 2012

Finished Music Video

Sunday 2 December 2012

Final print work

Thursday 29 November 2012

Evaluation Questions