Monday, 30 November 2009
Friday, 27 November 2009
Evaluation
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We have tried in various ways to gather our audience research. We started off by writing a Questionnaire, then we decided to set up a Facebook group for a new way of gathering information and we also decided to film people telling us their personal views on MUSE (see attached video).
Our feedback was really rather insightful into the different opinions on our band and the extremes and similarities of peoples thoughts and views on Rock music as a whole.
Here are some quotes from our Facebook group:
Ellie Rushtont: Time is running out has an good video
id suggest if ur looking at muse, try out something that builds an atmosphere rather than a literal translation of the lyrics
some of the best music videos are barely linked to the lyrics, the audience make the connection themselves, you just need to create the right atmosphere or environment
this song seems pretty ironic, they dont seem to be 'feeling good' the way they sing it.
Im thinking subvert that and show people going through something tragic???
and slow motion at some point. it always makes stuff look more dramatic and the tempo is perfect in this song.
have a look at 'one last chance' by bloc party. not a massive fan of the song but the videos pretty powerful. Check out the girl who has like a fit in slow mo, pretty atmospheric.
hope this helped some. :)
James Oliver: Ellie makes some good points about music videos in general. This period of Muse's career was, in my opinion, their best. Since then I think they've got a bit self-indulgent, particularly the newest album; they seem to spend too much time trying to be orchestral and strange like late '70s Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody etc.)
Alexandra Ricci-Hart: I really like the cover of feeling good, love the fact that its the only rock cover thats been made. Although I'll always prefer the Michael Buble version. Muse did freshen it up though.
The people we asked in the video responses said the improvements we could make are:
-It could have a stronger story line.
-It could have more bad scenarios in for the characters to face.
-It could have some more humour included in it.
They also said the things they enjoyed most about our video were:
-It was a good story choice with the ironic moments in it.
-The humour as it adds another level to the piece.
-The story line and surreal qualities of the different scenes.
I believe this shows that our video was effective in the sense that people enjoyed the special effects and humour we put in, but, it has also shown that perhaps in some parts it was not as effective for example the story wasn’t coming across as strongly as we had hoped.
We have also had interesting and positive feedback from other Youtube users where our video has been posted.
coolcaz198: I like this, although the title is 'feeling good', the muse version is really quite dark, this "de constructured" atmosphere reflects it with guitar riffs times well to the track.
deadmanwalking2006: I really like this video... It's a bit patchy in places but overall... I like it. It has a light sense of continuity...
How did you use media technologies in the construction & research, planning & evaluation stages?
For the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of our work we listened to the opinions of our fellow students to guide us in the right direction of what they would want to see in a MUSE video or one like it. We also depended heavily on the computers for creating our Blogs and gaining research about our chosen band and genre of music. We also used magazine articles, past and present, to compare and contrast the different approach and lasting effect MUSE has had on the music industry.
Image from Google.
We obviously used cameras and tripods when shooting the video and this proved to be easier then I first thought. I had the privilege of shooting quite a few scenes and this gave me more confidence with using the equipment which I was perhaps slightly lacking in at the beginning.
While we edited and created the digipak we used Adobe Photoshop and Premier. I thought that the editing was easier to do then I first anticipated. The technology was not as complex or worrying as I had thought and I was pleasantly surprised. They all linked in with on another very nicely and showed good examples of convergence.
As a majority of our work was done via a computer this, I believe, is one of the best examples of convergence in all modern day technology.
All of the above helped us communicate our message in different way, as all had very different things to offer. The research into the magazine articles and the opinions from the people we asked in our audience research helped us get a steady grounding about what we wanted to portray in our video and also the articles and research we did on the band helped us gain an understanding of what MUSE videos are all about. The camera equipment helped us capture the essence of our video, the raw ideas and images, to which we added our own spin and took hold of our artistic licence and chopped and changed scenes, and added effects when we thought would be effective. This I believe shows how all of the different media technologies really have helped us come out with, not just our work, but a deeper understanding of creative media as a whole.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We used many media forms and conventions in our work, for example, in the editing we decided to use a special effect for a few of Lewis’ scenes as we wanted to keep in with the theme of slightly surreal that MUSE so often use in their videos. We also used black and white and slow motion to create a dramatic effect in the scene were Vicky drops her handbag and her things tumble out of it. This more simple approach, we believe, challenged MUSE’s normal style of extravagant budgets and special effects.
Also for our performance elements we added in a band sequence of someone playing guitar, this is almost always seen in MUSE videos and also videos of other bands in the alternative rock genre. We did not have a full band but we used a location which had graffiti in the background on the walls; this shows the rebellious rock side to MUSE.
We used mise-en-scene effectively with the mobile phone scene when Lewis gets dumped because this shows teenage culture and also it’s a stereotypical teenage thing to do, dump someone by text. Also we wanted to keep it quite natural so we all wore our own everyday clothing and used everyday props, which we bought before filming, like a ball to play catch with; nothing over the top.
Our narrative structure I believe challenges normal ‘Alternative Rock’ videos in the sense that we don’t have an extravagant storyline. We have something which has slight deliberate in continuities in and some special effects but it is, as we intended it to be, a normal day with normal people. This again is were is differs and quite dramatically from many MUSE videos; we don’t have any real obvious surreal qualities in so much as overly ambitious special effects. We wanted to keep it simple and we did, but in a way in which we still kept the mysterious elements (for example in our video the unconnected walking shot), that MUSE so often include.
Our camera angles were originally going to be mainly low angles as we wanted to show a sense of status about our characters after they have smiled and moved on with the scene, but, we found in most cases this was not possible. We also tried to use a variety of distance shots, this is different to to many of the Muse videos as they tend to use a lot of close up shots on the band and characters which we didnt particularly want to do.
The imagery of our product we have tried to keep continual throughout and our theme is nature. For example we have the song ‘Feeling Good’ which is very nature orientated and so we wanted to film in the Museum Gardens to keep this theme of being surrounded by nature.
This then leads us on to our Digipak and Advert. We have designed them both to include trees to again, re-enforce this idea of nature throughout the song. We also picked the film ‘New Moon’ to style it round. Muse is inface the favourite band of the author of the 'Twilight' series and they are featured in the film itself so we thought it a good idea to include this film into our Digipak. This theme we believe is effective but perhaps not challenging to any existing media products as like our Digipak the films advertisements are also rather dark.
However our Digipak is challenging in one way and that's because we do not use a picture of the bands featured on the CD which is really rather unusual. We have meerly used this simple yet effective image to re-enforce the mysterious feel we are aiming for, which also fits in the genre of music on the CD.
I have also compared our magazine advert to one which I found in a KERRANG magazine. One thing which i noticed stood out was the name MUSE and the logo, these play a major part in the advert showing the importance of the band and it also shows them as a selling point. Another the important point is the image of the album. This immediately shows the reader what company is selling.
So as I have pointed out both products use images as a strong selling focus point. The existing product (MUSE’s new album) has the image of the album cover as the background to the advert. Ours on the other hand has the image of the product itself, this I believe does challenge this certain MUSE advert but in a positive way. One significant difference as well is the fact that the existing product could not get any brighter whereas ours uses mysterious, darker colours which is more like MUSE’s first album cover then their latest and this is another reason why I believe it challenges the product.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think the combination of our media video and the ancillary texts the digipak and magazine advert, are rather complement each other somewhat. They both display a slight subdued yet mysterious element about them. This I believe would attract a reader or potential buyer instead of repelling them with some overly busy and rather manic product. The video is show an ordinary day life but with unfortunate bad luck befalling our characters. I also believe that because the pace of the video itself is not manic and the story really takes its time in a subtle way to unfold; this matched the sereneness of the trees on the cover on the digipak which makes it rather more effective.
I believe our target audience were pleased with the outcome when we showed them the video and digipak together for the first time. As i have mentioned in the comments in my previous question. Also because the film is very popular with people of the same as our target audience (teenagers/young adults) I think this would bring people in as well as they would be interested as its linked to the film directly. This shows a form of convergence.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Written Questionnaire
1.How old are you?
2.What sort of things would you expect in an average rock video in terms of:
Theme
Costume
Location/Sets
3.What is your favorate muse video?
4.What sort of music would you exect from muse?
5.What do you would you expect from a muse video in terms of:
Theme
Costume
Answers:
1)We got a variety of ages but the average age was 17.
2a)We got a range of answers which included: Lost love, Life in general, Misery and depression.
2b)We recieved answers like 'just casual stuff', 'weird costumes' and ' black cloths'.
2d)We gathered quite a few different results including: Graveyards, Surreal destinations, On stage or back stage at a performance but the most popular answer was in a studio.
3)For this we gathered a wide range of answer, this is obviously due to the fact that it is up to personal preference:
A very small majority 10% said that supermassive black hole was their favorate muse video.
The majority (50%) however decided that their favourite MUSE video was Invincible.
4)The answers for this question were more or less the same. The majority (80%) of people said that they expected something along the lines of alternative rock.
5a)The theme's which are most popular were: Love-past and present, Loss and Surreal with perhaps a slightly out of this world feel to it.
5b)Again the answers to this question did not really differ from one another. We got black clothing, perhaps shirt and ties, but most definatly something slightly odd but in a effective way.
Our Shooting Schedual
9:00- Meet in town (buy props).
9:30- Go to Lewis' house film first verse (Lewis' scenes).
12:00- Break for lunch.
1:00- Go to museum gardens and film Amy's shots.
3:00- Return camera and tripod to college.
20th Oct
9:00- Meet in town and go to museum gardens.
9:15- Set up equiptment.
9:30- Film Emi's scenes.
11:30- Film transition shots.
12:00- Break for lunch.
1:00- Film Vicky's shots.
3:00- Return camera and tripod to college.
5th Nov
9:00 - 10:00 Film extra walking shots.
Digi pak
Our Digipak is composed of mainly dark colours, this is to represent the mood of the music that is featured in the Digipak and it also fits in with the genre of music Muse is often seen to fit in to, 'Alternative rock'.
We have also included a track list and bar code to make out Digipak as realistic as possible and it is also something it has in commen with other Digipak's on the market.
Digipak
Advert
Here is an example of another Digipak i found:
As you can see this also uses very dark colours, mainly reds and blacks to convey the mood of the music. Also we can see on the CD itself a smattering of blood which again re-enforces the genre of music the band fits into.
There are also advertisments for the bands other music/dvd Digipaks on the opposite page along with track lyrics etc.. On the opposing side which is not visible in this picture, there is also a track list and more pictures of the band. This band (My Chemical Romance) have said in many magazine interviews that they have taken inspiration from Muse.
Image from Google.
Audience Research
We found everyone very helpful and more then willing to talk with us about MUSE. We also found out just how popular MUSE are, as everyone we asked to answer the questions knew something about them; this was a major help. We would like to Thanks everyone who gave up their time to talk to us.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Shot list and Story boards
1)Long shot of horizon.
2)Medium long shot of girl on bench (Zoom in on girl) to a medium close up.
3)Medium close up on the phone she is holding.
4)Close up of mobile phone receieving a text.
5)Medium shot of guy rolling over to look at text.
6)Close up of message.
7)Close up of reaction shot guy smiling.
8)Medium shot of guy getting out of bed.
9)Tracking shot of guy going down stairs.
10)Long shot of guy walking out of the front door.
11)Tracking shot of guy walking down the street.
12)Tracking shot of bike running into guy.
13)Medium shot of guy reacting.
14)Tracking shot of guy walking along another street.
15)Close up of eyeline match between guy and Girl 1.
16)Hopefully band shots/masked singer.
17)Tracking shots of Girl 1 walking.
18)Close up of Girl 1's feet tripping.
19)Medium close up of Girl 1's items in her bag going all over the floor.
20)Medium shot and Tracking as Girl 2 helps pick up items.
21)Medium shot of Girl 1's reaction.
22)Tracking shot of Girl 2.
23)Hopefully band shots/ masked singer shots.
24)Long shot of Girl 1 meeting Girl 3.
25)Tracking shot of Girl 1 and Girl 3 walking.
26)Tracking shot of Girl 1 and Girl 3 walking.
27)Tracking shot of Girl 2, stops on step.
28)Close up of bird poo landing on Girl 2.
29)Close up of reaction.
30)Long shot of Girl 1 and Girl 3 playing ball as Girl 2 walks past.
31)Close up of Girl 2 as ball hits her.
32)Close up reaction shot of Girl 2.
33)Hopefully band shots/ masked singer shots.
34)Tracking shot of Girl 3 walking.
35)Tracking shot of Girl 3 walking.
36)Long shot of Girl 3 eyeing up Guy 2.
37)Long shot of Girl 3 falling over a tree root.
38)Close up of Girl 3 finding money.
39)Long shot of horizon
We also wrote an e-mail to Muse's record lable (Warner Bros) asking if it would be possible to use their song for our coursework.
Dear Sir/Madam
My media group and I are making a music video for our coursework, and, we chose Muse as our inspiration and would like to use their song 'Feeling Good' for our video.
We are writing to ask you permission if we can use said song as it would be greatly apreciated.
We would like to thank you for your time.
Yours faithfully
Emi, Vicky, Amy and Lewis
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Our video information.
Our idea is to convey a variety of annoying situations which would defiantly not make anyone feel good, but the irony of our video is that everyone smiles after the bad scenarios happen to them. We have also decided to include in our video various scenes of the band at the chorus of the song. This shows that the band is still pinnacle to the music behind the video. Although unfortunately due to the fact that none of our group could get hold of the appropriate instruments we decided to just make it one boy with his guitar.
Some ideas for the situations in the video include; Someone tripping and spilling everything from their bad; a bike hitting someone on the path, a girl falling over after seeing a boy she liked and so on.
We have also tried to include a sense of misdirection in the video, a slight in continuity. We got our inspiration for this from the MUSE video Hysteria. It tells a story which is easily understood but it is not in the chronological order in which the events should have happened.
Ours is not as extreme as theirs, but, we have tried to change a few scenes so they perhaps aren’t quite in the same place, and we have shot a few scenes of us walking in different locations to also create this sense of misdirection.
Despite deciding it would be interesting to make the characters smile we did want to have different people portraying different reactions. For example, when Vicky and I walk through the gardens we don't smile; even when Amy helps Vicky pick up her things from the floor she doesn't acknowledge her. This is another way in which we decided to mix up the the song, locations, plot and subplot of our peice.
Also we wanted to shoot the video in the local gardens; this is because we know the songs continual theme is nature. This we thought could be a good way of keeping some of the continuity from the song, but in a different sense. Instead of keeping it in the scenes or locations we thought the lyrics would be more effective and show a deeper side to our video.
Here is the link to the MUSE Hysteria video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7la0SndoCI
This is our video.
About our Audience research.
Muse Facebook Group.
We have set up a group on Facebook in the hope of getting opinions on the existing video and other MUSE videos. Myself and Amy have both been active members in this group and have posted comments and links for the members to look at and comment on. We have sent out e-mails requesting people to join in with the gourp and give us their views.
We set up the Facebook Group for our audience research as we wanted to do something different to just doing a questionnaire. We also thought that as most of our friends have an account with Facebook it would a quick and helpful way of gathering information, as well as appealing to poeple on a more personal level.
This is the link to our Facebook Group:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=photos&ref=sgm&id=1225817588#/group.php?gid=126893427167
Related MUSE video links.
The videos I have chosen all have something which adds a weird edge to them. Granted MUSE videos in general always seem to have something different about them, that is why they are so well known and eagerly anticipated throughout the music world.
Our group decided to do something a little different to the obvious artistic and surreal videos that MUSE release. We wanted it to be very much like an average day, no amazing special effects or millions of extras. We did keep in that certain surreal quality though, not to the extent that MUSE do, but a hint of it none the less. This is apparent in our in continuity of the locations; not enough so it looks like obvious carelessness but an adequate amount so it can be seen as an obvious mistake.
Feeling Good (Live at Wembley Stadium):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PN6egPgazA
Invincible (Music Video):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_5V8We3hgg
Starlight (Music Video):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgum6OT_VH8
Knights of Cydonia (Music Video):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sBOsh-vyI
I have also found some different versions of the song "Feeling Good" being performed by other artist.
Nina Simone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tuTSi6Sck&feature=related
Michale Buble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edwsf-8F3sI
Videos from: Youtube.
Muse Information.
Band Members: Matthew Bellamy Chris Wolstenholme Dominic Howard
Formed: Teignmouth, Devon in 1994
Genre: Alternative Rock (a fusion of progressive rock, classical and electronica)
Performance Style: Energetic and ExtravagantAlbums:
Showbiz (1999),
Origin of Symmetry (2001),
Absolution (2003),
Black Holes and Revelations (2006),
which earned the band a Mercury Prize nomination and 3rd place in NME Albums of the Year 2006.
The Resistance (2009)
Music Awards: In total they have received 24 awards out of 60 nominations including 5 MTV Europe Music Awards, 5 Q Awards, 6 NME Awards, 2 Brit Awards and 4 Kerrang!
AwardsPhases: Formation and Early Years (1992 - 1997),
First Extended Plays (EP's) and Showbiz (1998 - 2000),
Origin of Symmetry (2001 - 2002),
Absolution (2003 - 2005),
Black Holes and Revelations and HAARP, one of Muse's live album and video recordings (2006 - 2008),
The Resistance (2009 - Present day)
Achievements: Muscle Museum, their second EP reached No. 3 in indie singles chart. The album Origin of Symmetry was given 9 out of 10 by NME.
It was also placed 74th in 100 Greatest Albums Ever in Q Magazine.
Absolution went Gold in the United States. Black Holes and Revelations charted No. 1 in the UK, most of Europe and Australia.
In the United States it also reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart.
Knights of Cydonia was voted No. 1 in Triple J Hottest 100 for 2007.
Source of Research: Wikipedia