SURAJ MANANDHAR, NORIK LALA & MASUM AHMAD http://noriklala.blogspot.co.

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In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video is similar, innovative yet different in its own concept compared to existing music videos. As a group, we intended to produce a music video which would be innovative but simultaneously professional like existing music videos regardless of the cost-effective camera equipment we used. We researched into the song Overload by Dot Rotten and attempted to master what shots we could include that would correspond with the beat of the song bearing in mind what shots would go where and what locations would be appropriate with the sound of the beat. We included several long shots, medium shots, close ups and POV shots which are typical in most music videos. We explored many existing music videos such as Titanium by David Guetta, Drake Marvins Room which were not relevant to our genre and this allo wed us to experience and understand how the song and music video correlate to develop a media product which would be appropriate and purposeful for the audience which is imperative when creating a media product. Before exploring other music videos, we had to consider the existing music video for the song we chose as this would be more effective in how the media product enticed the audience by analysing the video such as the camera shot, angles, movements and editing techniques. When creating our music video, we took into account the use of various different camera angles, shots and movements as well as editing techniques. We discussed amongst each other what we could include for our narrative and what elements would be ideal for our media product. At first, we agreed that the narrative of the music video would start with a short flashback of the events that occurred the previous night in the artists life and where the artist overdoses on drugs as he drops, the song would start and throughout the music video, it wo uld show the events that occurred such as him arguing with a girl and getting into fights causing the artist to overdose. However, once we gathered the footage we filmed, this narrative slightly changed as we felt that young people already got looked at as bad people who look to always fight so we wanted to make a change to show the audience that young people just want to go out and have fun and don't always get into fights and cause trouble. We also decided to not have a short flashback at the start of the music video as we thought it would be best to just keep a sequence of the artist going out then just coming home to overdosing. This meant that we had to change a few scenes such as cutting out Hyde park and just keeping our local park instead as Hyde park is quite big and we had no lighting on our camera so we thought it would be best to do it during the day and keep it as a sequence instead of recording it as a flashback of artist going home during the evening. Our music video follows the forms and conventions of real media products by using various different camera shots such as close ups and long shots. This allows the music video to enforce emphasis on the artists emotions as well as the location which helps attract o ur target audience similar to other existing music videos. Our media product predominantly focuses on typical conventions of other music videos including the props, actors and locations. When editing our music video, we used smooth transitioning where a shot smoothly changes rather than jump cutting to another shot in a sequence, fast-paced editing where a shot was a few seconds longer than 1-3 seconds. Existing music videos contain fast-paced jump cuts and transitions to portray that all the shots follow a sequence and the duration of the music videos are not prolonged which was what we intended to do with our music video by providing it with the same professional impression. As our song was Dubstep and this genre of music tends to be very fast paced by the build-up to the drop of the beat, the shots and what was happening in the shots had to directly followed the beat of the song as we timed when the beat would drop which is why this was relevant that our music video was fastpaced and upbeat.

We were determined to produce a music video which was very versatile as we were able to adapt to the ideal lyrics which forms a successful video and narrative. We also chose a song which follows a narrative which we ourselves could relate to with our own initiative. By producing this music video, the audience will embark on a journey in what occurs in the life of the younger generation. This was imperative as the original video for the song is lyrically communicating mixed impressions about how teenagers are portrayed in the media and how their lives are really meant to be as well as how they should be treated and this is majorly emphasised throughout the song. The lyrics such as They've got us in this prison, Were programmed to obey and Were programmed to listen shows that people believe that teenagers should be locked up in prison due to their actions and they should not have freedom of choice but only listen and take orders. We intended to change this judgement in two manners. Firstly, how the media portrays teenagers as we felt like young people already got looked at as bad people who look to always fight so we wanted to make a change to show the audience that young people just want to go out and have fun and don't always get into fights and cause trouble. Secondly, by our video being based on a character overdosing over some drugs as he had a rough time with his social life and feels he needs to give up with his life and take his life. The video sends out a message that young people should not overdose whatever situation theyre in. It sends an emotional message of the consequences that could occur if you do take drugs. A lot of young people do experiment with drugs but don't know the effects the drugs actually have so this video will make the viewers think twice about what theyre doing and the risk of their health. It also shows that you don't need drugs to have a good time and it could take a turn for the worse by tarnishing all the fun and you ending up in hospital or at deaths door. Andrew Goodwins theory of the relationship between lyrics and visuals applies distinctively to our music video. The lyrics Overload and Head spinning is recurring throughout the song and the shots portray exactly what happens when a person is overdosed and their head is spinning when they are clubbing hence the flashing lights. This theory enables the audience to truly understand and consume the message that the song is conveying resulting in the audience to reflect before making judgements about the younger generation. The ways that our media product challenges the forms and conventions of real music videos is the cost-effective camera equipment. It is believed that expensive cameras and software is required to produce a music video. We intended to show that with a simple Flipcam and iMovie software, a amateur video can be provided with a professional impression but this will only be a success if there is a balanced use of camera angles, shots and movements as well as the editing techniques. They are the elements which are absolutely imperative to create a professionally made music video.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of our main product (music video) and ancillary texts was essential as we intended to demonstrate the similarities to the existing music video and our video. In our video, you can see the life of a average teenager and what they get up to which defines them for who they are. We intended to create our magazine advert and Digipak established on the lifestyle of a young person through the types and variations of the fonts, colours, images and slogans. We intended to create a magazine advert and Digipak which both compliment each other and is straightforward for the audience to familiarise themselves with which is why we didnt approach them differently or contrast them from each other in terms of fonts, images etc. We intended to entice the audience for our main product through simplicity yet an effective manner. The age group for our media product was 15-19 who were teenagers/young adults and this audience will not be the kind to read which is why it was essential to have limited text throughout the magazine advert by having a neutral background and the artist wearing trendy clothing as well as a large title without the bold text. We compensated for this by using a black shape to make the text more prominent. After carrying out a short research task, we realised that the best approach in enticing our audience is by including minimal text, basic images, fonts and colours. As many teenagers and young adults use smart phones for interactivity and sociality, they can also scan the QR code located on the magazine advert which will direct them to our blog enabling them to subscribe or get an insight of what the album or song may include, watch the music video as well as enabling them to consume it before making a purchase. We also included the website address for the song and a Twitter account name as teenagers interact and socialise through social networking sites. The use of the QR code is a portable way of viewing whats online and to keep the audience updated with whats available in terms of merchandise and marketing as well as watching the music video. This was imperative as modern technology has become so advanced and several young people have the use of smart phones which enables them to view anything anytime.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As this entire project had a purpose of enticing a target audience and the production of the music video and ancillary texts was intended for that specific audience as they are the people who will be consuming our media product, we had to consume constructive criticism from both the good points and bad points of our ancillary texts. For this project, audience feedback was imperative as it allowed us to reflect on the good and bad points about the ancillary texts. We also wanted to see how effective the ancillary texts are at enticing the audience by knowing what was good and bad about it as well as what is required to improve it. To truly understand and consume the constructive criticism, we had to put ourselves in our audiences shoes so we created a fan page of our project on the social networking site Facebook. Through our research, we found that Facebook is one of the social networking sites in social media which is used to promote projects, events etc. We took complete advantage of this which enabled us to promote our ancillary texts through our friends and they would share the project to their friends making this a successful marketing distribution. We received feedback which was both good and bad so we responded to the criticism as we were producing the ancillary tasks and music video. There were some comments below which relates to the digipak where we were criticised by how we used a black text box behind the track list to emphasise the text much more. We researched around this and the criticism bended predominantly towards keeping the digipak the same as how it was produced as other people felt this managed to work with the whole ancillary text so we decided to keep it all the same. Below is the audience feedback we received from our magazine advert, Digipak and music video.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Media technologies were essential and imperative in order for us to produce a music video. We had to start from the bottom by researching the different genres of music as we were unsure what song to choose to create a music video of. YouTube was one media technology which allowed us to browse through various music videos and really consume the music videos by focusing on the editing, camera shots etc. This also helped us choose the suitable music video to construct into our own. Roughly, we looked at about 30-40 different music videos which helped us to explore other genres to come to a genre we were interested in and is very widespread as well as to gain inspiration from. Another media technology which helped us was the search engine Google as we were able to easily search for the lyrics of our chosen song but this wasnt needed as our artist had familiarised themselves with our chosen song beforehand. Google also enabled to research essential media theories that we applied to our coursework. A theory that we applied to our project was the Narrative theory by Tzvetan Todorov. This means how the narrative is constructed in the music video so we had to ensure that our narrative matched the lyrics being spoken about in the music video. In this theory, Todorov suggested that most narratives start with a state of equilibrium then moves to disequilibrium and new equilibrium. He also suggests how the protagonists life is normal and happy. We challenged this theory and from the start we balanced the dilemma. The narrative portrayed how the artist started off with a happy day where he meets with his friends and is enjoying himself (equilibrium) then he has too much fun and gets drunk then ends up overdosing (disequilibrium).

Blogger was the essential phase of this project as this was where we recorded the progression of our music video. It enabled us to access our blog anywhere at anytime where any of us could post aspects of the coursework and edit them whenever required. Our blog shows the progression from researching, planning and constructing. It enabled us to upload videos and images as well as posts of the coursework criteria to show the production of the music video to the audience. Blogger also helped us as a group to keep track of work that is pending and complete it as it was easily accessible. To film the footage for our music video, we used a Flipcam HD which was simple to use, very portable so we could hold it wherever we wanted too. It was also easy to import our videos onto our Apple Macs as a USB port was built-in the Flipcam. The quality wasn't as good as we had expected it to be even though it is a HD camera as when we imported it onto the Apple Macs, it wasn't great quality. Also we had no lighting equipment as the camera didn't have a light on it so it would of been better if we had a better camera to make our music video look more professional and make the quality of the video look better. Regardless of the issues we had with the camera, we still managed to work around these issues and overall our music video came out looking good and professional. We also used a Sony digital camera to take pictures for our ancillary texts.

The initial production of our music video was the complicated phase of the project as we intended to use Adobe Aftereffects but we had some technical difficulties with this software. We managed to get across this problem and instead we used iMovie which was pre-installed on the Apple Macbook. At the start, it was hard to use as in GCSE we had experience using iMovie HD which was much more simplified and easy to understand but again we managed to apply this experience upon iMovie and get around this issue. The issue with Adobe Aftereffects was resolved and we used this software to edit our music video by adding transitions and effects to the framing of the shots. For our magazine advert and digipak, we used Adobe Photoshop to include the background colours, fonts, text, images etc. This software was the most simple to use as we had previous experience in GCSE and AS so we were able to complete the ancillary tasks without difficulty. Lastly, we used the Free QR Generator website to create our QR code and this QR code was linked to redirect to our blog.