Component 2

Creative Critical Reflection 2

Standard

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

Task:

  • Video directors commentary on all three products with particular reference to star image & brand values.

You are working in your production group to prepare the video for this but you must contribute equally to the voice over and introduce yourself when speaking. You make some bullet point prompts together, but you must be able to verbalise and explain these concepts & how they apply yourself!

Preparing the video for the commentary.

  1. Create a new Premiere project and import the .mp4 file you exported as your final draft for your music video.
  2. Drop the video into ‘sequence one’ timeline, ‘Unlink’ the sound (A1) from the  video (V1)
    1. You will either delete the sound channel completely or…
    2. …fade the music in and out over the commentary.
  3. Record a commentary explaining the brand image you have communicated in your video, digipack and website.
    1. The emphasis in this voiceover should be how the three products are…visually, thematically, aesthetically, generically, institutionally & ideologically linked into your BRAND or STAR IMAGE!
  4. You must use media terminology to describe production techniques and you used and should also use some terms relevant theory / concepts that you have learnt during the course; e.g:
    • Theory of the Active Audience: preferred / negotiated / oppositional reading (Hall)
    • Stars Image, Ideology & the Metanarrative (Dyer)
    • Semiotics & Structuralism (Barthes)
    • Narrative: Structure, themes, chronology, positioning: (Propp / Todorov, Strauss)
    • Genre: conventions (blueprint), predictable pleasure (contract) & marketing (label) (Altman)
  5. Drop in a jpeg of each pane of your digipack and screen grabs from your web site in place of, (or over) the existing footage.
    1. This means you might have a full screen image or you might layer up the images over the video in V2. This is will be where you are discussing those the specific links between the products and what you were trying to achieve.

Guidance

Please answer the following questions in your voice-over:

  1. How do the products reflect the star image & ideology of the artist?
    • Theorist – Dyer
    • Terms: Star image, Brand, Meta-narrative.
  2. How are the products designed to create a coherent brand identity?
    • Theorist – Blumler & Katz
      • Terms: Social Interaction, Information, Personal Identity & Entertainment
    • Theorist – Hall 
      • Terms: Active audience, preferred reading, ideology
  3. How does design of the digipack and website fit with the video?
    • Theorist Barthes
      • Terms: Signifies, encode, decode, cultural, symbolic, semic…code
  4. What are the institutional/business purposes behind the 3 products?
    • Theorist – Altman
      • Terms: Predictable pleasure, contract. Similar different. Marketing. Fans. Call to Action.

You may, of course, discuss other links and relationships; you should however try to show how there is a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship between the three products and how this is achieved. 

Whilst your DP and Advert will not be directly linked to the actual song in the music video, you must focus on the links between them regarding visual style, genre, star image, representation, ideology and brand packaging of the performer, which will be the same.

Notes for Directors Commentary

Structure of the commentary: Timeline Map

Essential theories – recap:

You will need to plan some bullet points for a script of this voiceover, but you must not read it out word for word! It feel like a well informed discussion between you and your partner/s.  Plan the script first and then divide it up between the group – ensuring you have covered the main theorists and links to be discussed (see above). Once you have the script, you can think about the visuals that you need.

Examples:

 

Examiners hints from the last few years:

Creative Critical Reflection 3 – The Vlog

Standard

How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

After you have completed your reading and research and compiled some good ideas about audience engagement and distribution, respond directly to the following questions in your vlog:

Part 1 – Target Audience

  • Who are your target audience?
    • What are their ideologies? (demographics, psychographics, audience segmentation eg tribe wired etc)
  • What is your brand identity / missions statement? (genre, star image)
  • How does the design / content of your three products fulfil your audience’s uses and gratification (Blumler and Katz but you don’t need to reference them directly – just use the terms)?
  • How do the products speak to the audience and try to create a relationship with them? (AIDA, B + K, genre, star image, Hall)

Theory / terminology:

  • Hall (audience – encode, decode, ideology, demographics, psychographics, preferred reading, negotiated reading, oppositional reading)
  • Dyer (star image – metanarrative, ordinary, paradox of the star, extraordinary, present, absent)
  • Blumler + Katz (personal identity, social interaction, information, entertainment)
  • Lacey (predictable pleasure, repertoire of elements, contract, blueprint, label, conventions)

Distribution and Marketing

  • Which record label would suit your star / brand?
  • What marketing strategies would you use to create buzz around your album launch?
  • How would you reach your target audience?
  • How are you likely to make your star / album profitable?

Theory / terminology:

  • target audience, budget, distribution, marketing, social media, download, streaming, guerilla marketing, personal appearances, live performance, festivals, press releases, advertising, online, viral marketing, profile, independent, major record label. Read the blog posts to get some ideas.

USE THE FOLLOWING CLIPS TO INTRODUCE YOUR VLOG and EDIT ON WEVIDEO

  • APPRENTICE INTRO AT THE START AND CUT TO YOUR VLOG.
  • APPRENTICE OUTRO AT THE END OF YOUR VLOG.

CCR 3 – Background research (DISTRIBUTION)

Standard

Read the attached articles:  re distribution and marketing.

  • Take some ideas from these articles and use them to respond to the questions.
  • Why not create your own ideas too?
  • We are presuming you have already found a record label who has taken the performer on to their books.
  • Now you adopt the identity of distributors & marketers, and have to get the record out to the target audience. How will you do this?

Distribution is the way that recorded music gets into the hands of consumers. Traditionally, distribution companies sign deals with record labels which give them the right to sell that label’s products. The distributor takes a cut of income from each unit sold and then pays the label the remaining balance.

Digital distribution is a service by which music and/or video content is being distributed via the Internet in digital format to various online music services (download stores and streaming services) which then exploit downloads and/or streams of this music for any sort of portable music devices and computer used by consumers. Where a traditional physical distributor would ship out your physical albums to stores, EPM Music distributes digital copies of your music to various music services such as iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Zune, LastFM, Spotify, etc.

Please note certain major online music services such as iTunes, Play.com and Spotify require artists and labels to use a digital distributor such as EPM Music to make their music and video available in their stores.

Remember, the real money now lies in live performance – the revenue in streaming is usually not sufficient to keep a band afloat – it needs to be performing to raise revenue from tickets sales and merchandise.

Some of the first avenues you should consider are:

  • Order CDs.
  • Distribute album to online stores and streaming services.
  • Sign up for any/all social media accounts.
  • Tell everyone you know and submit for airplay.

ARTICLES AND WEBSITES TO READ

Independent distributors who will get my music out there on Spotify?

How to find a record label?

What is music distribution and how has the traditional distribution model been disrupted by technology?

A new online technology that might disrupt music production (mastering)

Some surprising ways in which music is distributed in order to create buzz online

Free music distribution…?

 

 

Creative Critical Reflection 1

Standard

How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?

Task: Prezi (Individual Task)

You should describe and analyse your three products with reference to specific examples and use terminology to describe how those conventional features have been used, developed, challenged (designed) by you to construct/represent a specific set of ideas, which is: your brand or mission statement! 

You must then go on to say how your representation (ideology) of your star and issues raised in video were shaped by you.

  • The conventional design features in your video, include examples such as lighting, framing & composition, camera movement  mise-en-scene, editing styles, filters, effects and rhythmic editing…
  • Conventional print design in your digipack: images, filters, adjustments, graphics, colour palette, typeface, stroke, fill, gradients, arrangement (Bring Forward, Back)…
  • Conventional web design: call to action, hero shot, social media tours, interactivity, merch links…

 

Example Prezi

Select images from professional examples and your own texts. Remember you should be able to compare or contrast the examples.

There should be five examples from your music video and three each for digipack and website.

In the video you should consider…

  • images that shows a link between themes in the music and how they are amplified / illustrated in the narrative
  • generically (un)conventional star image
  • images that demonstrates conventional use of camera
  • images that demonstrates conventional use of lighting / colour
  • images that demonstrates (un)conventional mise-en-scene
  • images that show an (un)conventional use of narrative
  • images that show you’ve drawn  inspiration from other music videos & media texts
  • FORMS (technical conventions) of lip syncing, editing to the beat, repeatability, narrative/performance ratio/ type of narrative

In the digipack you should consider…

  • how do the images scheme reflect the genre of music?
    • conventions of photo composition
    • filters / images adjustment
    • colour scheme
    • design of mise-en-scene / art work
  • how is the layout / DTP conventional for digipacks and adverts?
    • typeface selection & size
    • graphics
    • typeface size and selection
    • spacing
    • relationship between image and copy
    • FORMS (technical conventions) i.e. tracks, publisher, copy, album name, performer name, image, advert image from DP.

In the website you should consider…

  • Pages
  • Content (videos, music, album art, merchandise…)
  • Social media links
  • Design & brand
  • Fonts & colours
  • Backgrounds
  • Images

 Examples from previous students:

SASHA BELFORD

HOLLY BROWN

TERMS

Some of the concept / micro terms you should include…remember to use the terms related to Genre:

…conventional, generic, typical, usual, frequent, unusual, subvert, unconventional, challenged, used, applied, developed, manipulated, exaggerated, amplified, increased, augmented,  + repertoire of elements, genre, blueprint, contract, ingredients, star image, audience expectations, paradox of the star, ordinary, extraordinary, semic codes, cultural codes, symbolic codes, mise-en-scene, camera, lighting, font, integration of copy and images, shot distances, composition, editing, camera movement, narrative structure, disjunctive/amplified narratives, character types…

You should also regularly use ‘analysis words’ such as: represents, implies, suggests, connotes, reflects, signifies, emphasises, highlights, underlines, illustrates, shows, contributes to.

And always explain how your have…applied, developed, challenged convention. Also synonyms such as extend, subvert, amplify, exaggerate, increase, improve, extend, copy, contrast, contradict are useful alternatives.  MAKE SURE YOU HIGHLIGHT THESE KEY TERMS/WORDS AND THEN YOU KNOW YOU HAVE ADDRESSED THE QUESTION.

Your Media Exams

Standard

Your Exams

Component 2 – Key Media Concepts (Exam)

  • Textual analysis of an unseen TV Drama Sequence (50%)
  • Essay on the Music Industry (50%)

Component 4 – Critical Perspectives in Media (Exam)

  • Evaluate your media production skills development
  • Analyse your own media products using key concepts.
  • Explore postmodern media.

“Hang on we haven’t finished, or indeed started, the evaluation questions yet! Just forget the exam for now Mr G & Mrs C,” I hear you implore!

“Ah ha!” we reply. “We had a plan all along!”

We have chosen all the briefs you have done this year to focus you on the music industry. Which is the topic in the second half of question 2 in Component 2 (Key Media Concepts).

Furthermore, we have already taught you everything you need to know to complete the first half of the final media exam, also known as Component 4 (Critical Perspectives). 

So, when you are doing the Critical Creative Reflections you are also preparing for your exam! To prepare you for all this, throughout Year 12 & 13, we made you complete blog posts on:

  • Media Language
  • Representation / Star Image
  • Genre
  • Audience
  • Narrative

…because, these concepts all appear in the exams!

We have made you do a range of  tasks geared to help you understand and learn about media skills:

  •  use of digital technology
    •    creativity
    •    research and planning
    •    using conventions from real media texts.

All of these are skills that will come up in the exam

50% of Component 4 is about your ability to tell stories about your skill development and analyse your own production work as if it were a professional text!

‘Wax on, Wax off. Daniel-son’

…and when Mr Miaki says, “Look eye! Always look I.” He means, “IDEOLOGY” – YEAH BABY!

Coz that’s what Media Studies is about!

Go on, explain if you can…

Editing in TV Drama

Standard

The four areas which you need to understand to complete a textual analysis of a sequence from TV or Film are:

Collectively called ‘micro features’ and are

  • Camera
  • Mise-en-Scene
  • Editing
  • Sound

You are also going to making a music video soon and editing is an important skill to learn to communicate meaning and help represent narrative and characters.

Here is a handout on editing terms and definitions.

Slideshow on Editing:

Practice Sequence

Identify and analyse the editing techniques in this sequence.

A template for completion is attached here (Mr Gregson’s make a copy) or is in classroom (Mrs Cobb).

Mise-en-Scene & Camera Analysis

Standard

Task 1

Review these two slide shows on

1. Mise-en-Scene

2. Camera

Practice Textual Analysis

Analyse the following TV Drama clip in class and discussing how the mise-en-scene & camera communicates meaning. First of all after watching it, summarise what the clip is mainly focused on in terms of what themes, issues, social groups are represented.

In pairs, you should aim to find 3 moments when camera is used to represent a theme, issue, social group and 3 moments when MES is used to represent a theme, issue, social group.

Here are links to useful resources

Camera terms

MES terms

Synonyms for Represent

Full Page Adverts

Standard

In order to make the presentation of your pages aesthetically pleasing with the programme ISSUU, you need another page.

Whilst, you won’t be assessed or moderated for this page, it will fit well with evidencing how well you understand your target audience – an advertiser will not advertise in a magazine if the target audience would not be the kind of consumers for their product.

Have a look for an appropriate advert (make sure the resolution is good so that it doesn’t come out pixelated) that might appear on your inside cover of your magazine.  Look for other products, other than music related products (albums, tours, concerts etc).  You can also find a music album, tour or music related advert that fits with your genre for the back page so that your ISSUU presentation is a completely mini magazine.

Here is a slideshow with a couple of ideas.

 

 

You should then make sure in the post on the blog that outlines your choice of advert that ‘you appreciate this isn’t going to be marked but for the purposes of presentation, having an extra page in the magazine helped make the ISSUU platform work better.  However, it was an interesting exercise in reaffirming that you knew who exactly your target audience were i.e. young teens and you can then outline briefly their demographics and psychographics (remember yougov research) and explain why the advert would fit in your magazine.

 

Representation and The Star

Standard

A key concept in Media Studies is Representation and Ideology.

TASK 1 – WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE! 

  • The Star Image game.

TASK 2 – The Theory. 

  • This slideshow below tries to explain what representation means and how we can use music star image to illustrate the concept. Also this will act as research into the design of your own star, which you will be photographing in the weeks beginning 13th & 20th November.

TASK 3

Explore the Representation of a given music star as it is constructed in their  META-NARRATIVE

  • Choose ONE music star who would feature in your genre of magazine.
  • Create a slideshow
  • Find examples from a range of texts surrounding your star (their meta-narrative). See the slide show for ideas on evidence meta narrative
  • For each of your images include a description of how they are represented through the image or the tweet or the article.  You should have around 10 images and examples.
  • Summarise in 50 words the representation of the star – what are the ideologies surrounding your star?
  • On the final slide, include images of costume, hair and make up (Mise En Scene) that you will try and style your front cover model in next week.  Include adjectives for how you want them to be represented, portrayed etc.