Enes' Evaluation

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

The poll which helped me decide on a hybrid genre

My media product, in many ways, uses, develops and challenges the forms and conventions of real media products. We chose our genre after making a poll on our blog, to see what kind of video the majority of the audience wanted us to make, and also gave out a questionnaire to different age groups within our school. The results were very mixed, so we opted to create a hybrid genre that would Hip-Hop, Pop, and Punk together in one track. Eventually we found a video by OPM titled ‘Heaven is a Halfpipe’ which met our criteria.

Me interviewing a skateboarder in Southbank

Within the ancillary tasks, including the actual video itself, it was crucial to carry out the necessary amount of research to make our video as powerful as possible. I interviewed skateboarders and graffiti artists from the area in which we shot most of our footage (Ladbroke Grove Station) to ask them about the problems they face and how members of the public perceive them. I was also able to speak to some of the general public and ask them their own opinions of the skateboarding culture. I learnt that graffiti and skateboarding go hand in hand together so I wanted to show a clear link of this within most, if not all my media texts. Skateboarding and graffiti are forms and ways of going against what is being asked of you and not conforming to what is expected of you. I use these conventions in my own texts as well as some of the negative stereotypes of skateboarders. By this, I’m referring to the scene where the lady is disgusted at the skateboarders and the text alongside her reads ‘Waste of space, Disrespectful, Violent and Aggressive’ which were some of the words given to us by people of the general public. Obviously not everything was negative, but we agreed that the negative press would make for a more powerful and controversial music video.

Having discovered graffiti was a big part of the skateboarding
movement I decided it should have an influential position
within all my created texts.

The band name itself, OPM, stands for Opening People’s Minds which is what we wanted to achieve in the video where the skateboarder gets hurt, and the same lady comes down to help. The skateboarder simply gets up and dusts himself down which shows a sense of courage, determination and resilience as he does not stay down after every knock he takes but instead, gets back up to show his strength. Using real skateboarders gave the music video an air of realism as we were able to direct exactly what we wanted the skateboarders to do, or where to skate in the park at any given time. This achieved more for us than if we simply came to the park and filmed the skaters skating around aimlessly. We perhaps did develop the use of graffiti within a Skate punk music video, because graffiti wasn’t referenced as much in other music videos of a similar genre, for example Blink 182’s ‘All The Small Things’ music video. 

This image shows the the band name 'OPM' being repeated in our music video, as well as our ancillary tasks to further promote the band.

 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of my music video, CD covers and magazine poster really complement each other, as they share the same purpose and goal. They all promote the artist through the skateboarding cultures main features which are; skateboarding and graffiti. By keeping the same themes within all of the texts, the message becomes more powerful and promotion becomes more effective. The music video shows the same elements as the ancillary tasks which makes each individual text automatically identifiable as a group collection. The band's name OPM, was frequently being promoted in the music video through graffiti and it is also on each of the CD covers and magazine image.

This is the front of the CD cover. As you can tell, it displays the band name in the top left corner and the album name in the top right corner. The artist is positioned in the centre to further promote the artist himself. The location shows a clear degree of graffiti which conforms to the conventions of the skateboarding culture.

This is the back cover. The back cover gives you a detailed track listing complete with the length of every song including the interludes/skits and the track number. The image is of the BaySixty6 skatepark and it shows two different realms. The dark side of skateboarding, and the other brighter path. This is mocking of the stereotypes some people have that skateboarders are all vicious and violent creatures.

This is the magazine advertisement. This promotional pice of material states the band name, the name of the single and reminds the target audience that they can download the song from iTunes today. Once again the element of graffiti is present to keep a sense of realism. The artist is also in the same clothing and similar setting because the idea is to transfer data to the audience's short term-memory so they can store it in the long-term memory through repetition.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

For the distribution of our music video and ancillary tasks, I used the internet to post it on popular sites such as, Facebook and our blog; I also provided several screenings at my house for friends and family. Generally, everyone was really pleased with the video and enjoyed watching it almost as much as I enjoyed making it. Twitter also helped me promote the link and I received many positive comments from people all across the globe. I also had people from Manchester and Nottingham asking for collaborations!

i decided to post my video up on Facebook instead of YouTube for several reasons. I didn't wan to infringe and copy right acts and also I have many close friends on Facebook who were willing to share and post the video on other people's walls without me even having to ask. This meant my video could quickly spread and be seen by a lot of different people.

These are some of the comments I received on the day I posted up the video. Positive comments are always helpful in making your video feel accomplished and that is what these comments have helped me achieve.

Obviously though, constructive comments are the most helpful as they help you to see areas you have missed out yourself that you could improve on in the future. I was asking for honest opinions and people mentioned that the lip synching could have been tighter as there were some parts of the video where it didn’t look like the artist was mouthing the right words. Apart from that aesthetical issue, everything else seemed to work. My audience could easily pick up on the fact that the video was essentially made to portray skateboarders in London and how they are perceived. It all became clear with the addition of the scene where the young girl looked particularly disgusted as the skater was skating. I was told the text helped to clear up exactly what the girl was thinking.

Audience feedback also helped me with my ancillary tasks. My first magazine poster used a filter that made it hard to read some of the writing on the poster itself. Also, people told me that there wasn’t any information about the artist or when the single was coming out. I decided to change it and opted for a clearer and sleeker design, which was easily read and had more information than the previous poster.

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

Throughout all of the stages new media technology was constantly in use. Obviously the research had a lot of reliance on the internet, and in particular, websites such as Facebook and YouTube. YouTube helped us to research music videos, look at the different forms and conventions for various different genres and give us ideas for our own music video. Facebook helped us more with the distribution of our music video as many people were able to access it online. We also used Twitter as a tool to further advertise our blog and invite more people to follow us and share their views on our progress. Our own personal blog allowed people to interact with us personally and give us their own opinions on our blog or contribute to our poll which in the end helped us decide what genre to use. The planning stage also required me to use new media as I had to scan images that I had drawn out for my storyboard onto paper. After scanning the images onto the computer, I had to animate the images, on Windows Live Movie Maker. I then brought in text and transitions to explain the video.

The magazine advertisement in construction

The main interface for iMovie

For the construction of our music video, we used the Mac computers and programmes such as iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD. We first had to
import our footage that we filmed onto iPhoto and then drag it onto iMovie. We then edited the footage including the addition of different transistions and the option to add text to the video. The footage we did film was filmed using the Fujifilm FinePix AV120, which had a 12 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom. It also allowed us to film in High definition giving our final music video a clearer image. The camera itself was fairly small so mobility was not a problem and it sat firmly in the tripod we used to keep the footage steady. We then needed to burn the information onto a disc using iDVD. For the ancillary texts, the use of Adobe Photoshop CS5 was extremely influential for the design of our CD covers and also the magazine advert. Tools such as vivd light and colour burn were used to get the desired amount of lighting in my images and I also used a filter for the CD cover which I think worked really well with the different colours of the graffiti in the background.