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

For our project we used many different technologies for all aspects of the work, to enhance and improve it. We had some trouble with the different technologies we used mostly as what we used was mostly new too us for example the apple MAC computers, however this being said once we figured out the best ways to use these technologies i feel it enhanced our work.

One of the ways we used the technologies to offer was for our planning and research. Through the computers we found it was a much easier way to keep in touch to other members of the group through email and social network sites. This allowed us to work outside the restraints of a classroom and keep in contact almost 24/7. Another way we used the computers in a way where we could work outside the classroom is through the use of this blog. This allowed us to work in different places for whatever reasons. It also allowed us to be more creative with our work as we can reference music videos and other content on the blog which is only a click away.

The computers and Apple Macs were hugely important when it came to the research and planning stages of the course. It allowed us to use the internet too look at a vast amount of resources, such as existing music videos, music posters, album covers and different opinions on what people thought the song "Close to Me" actually meant, in terms of lyrics and hidden meanings. For the planning of our music video we had lots of material to view on the internet for inspiration and ideas which we then would try and feature in our music video.

The main way we as group would say we used media technologies would be in the production stage of the project. For the production of our products (music video, album artwork and poster) we used a variety of different applications on the Apple Macs such as Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. For our digipack we used Photoshop to edit the photos to create this black and white look, this fits into our house style which we chose from the beginning. For the poster we had the challenge as two of us were going to be in the photo and the other two group members were unavailable of taking two separate photos of Paige and Tom, then making it look like it was one original photo. We used a tool called "rubber stamp" on Photoshop to make the brickwork at the back match up on the two photos.

We used technology in our music video production in the form of FCP (Final Cut Pro) which is a editing application. For some of us in our group this was our first experience with any editing programme but we feel we all contributed and picked up the techniques to use it. We all contributed our own ideas for the music video. One of the things we used on for our music video is this idea of 4 screens showing all of the band sleeping on screen at once, we done this by layering and resizing each image and playing them together side by side by side on screen. Another major aspect into what made our video what it is, is the use of effects on our video. We added this "sepia" look to the whole image which we felt made it look older, as the 80's style was what we were going for. At some points we used a different effect called "bad film" this gave the image a grainy look like a old film, we reference this and the ending where it says "fin" to cinema verite. Cinema verite is referenced as this handheld documentary style, which was something we was aiming for when we said we wanted our music video was to look home made.

We also used the FCP for simple editing task such as trimming different videos and cutting them together to make the final piece. We also added the music to the video on here. We shortened the track as there was a lot of instrumental towards the end of the song which we felt we didn't need we did this by adding fade out to the track. We also feature another fade on the image as it moves to the shot in the dark, we did this as we felt it made the transition look smoother, we used this technique for the end of the music video aswell.

Overall we have used many different technologies in our music video which we feel have contributed massively to the end product, without the help of these technologies what we have created now would never have been possible.

Digipack

This is our digipack for our music video project on The Cure, "Close to Me" music video

Below is our poster designed, this fits in with conventional 80's posters and The Cures own original poster due to its dark black and white nature. We also used the two band members on the poster to create a star image, similar to what other artists such as The Cure and David Bowie do to sell there music.

Below you can see our album cover which we designed. The first picture is the front cover and the second picture is the back of the album. As you can see we stuck with the theme of black and white. The album title is "Head On The Door" so we stuck with a meaningful album cover of having one of the band members looking through the key hole. This in its self has a meaning of looking into the unknown and mystery, not knowing what you will find on the other side. This sticks with The Cures genre of music as it is sometimes referred to as quite fantastical so the idea of the unknown on the other side of the door fits well.

On the album cover the only thing not in black and white is the band name "THE CURE". We used red for this as it attracts the audience and we wanted the main focus of the album cover to sell the band.

For the back of the album cover we created "the other side" of the door, with the eye looking through the keyhole. Its almost as if its the other side. We also added a barcode and a made up record company "Penguin Records" to fit with regular conventions of albums.

This is the inside leaflets front and back cover. The front cover is just 4 stills from our music video. We didn't use the black and white theme for these leaflet covers as we wanted to capture the audiences attention, we wanted it to be something more interesting to look at rather than just attract a audience to buy a product. We have the band members on this leaflet cover as to attract the spectator, it's almost a extra you would get for buying the CD.

This is the back cover of the inside leaflet. Here we simply wrote down the track names, rather scruffily. This is almost a homage to the original artwork from The Cure, where it simply consists of sketches and scribbles upon a page. The idea of this track list was supposed to look like a set list as in what the band would use during a gig to know what song they are doing. This fits with our music video itself as the original idea was we would be getting ready before a set on "Top of the Pops"

Audience Feedback

Name: Rachel
What you thought of the video: I thought that the video was good, it was very fun and lively and it made me feel happy when watching it, I also like the fact you have a girl singing a boys parts as you don't see that very often and it was nice to see, i also found that many of the parts were like an old 80's videos, previously the group had shown me another video of the cure and this relates a lot to the other videos, so automatically you know it is that band. Some of the scenes are short and choppy for example the piano scenes they didn't last to long this made it look better as it would start to get boring if they went on for a long time. I also liked the penguin scene however I didn't understand why it is there, this could be mislead as something else and other people may find this weird that it is just suddenly there. This is a bad point to the video, the penguin just suddenly appeared and then it was gone until near the end, I also didn't understand the fin at the end, the group later told me that it means finished and it is keeping in sync with the start of the countdown. Points you think we should change : I think you should change some of the effects on the normal screens some of them look to sepia and out of colour and the effects for the four screen was a sudden change, there was no clue that it was going to happen, although it suited the video. (To Rachel’s criticism we have later changed the colouring on the video to make it less dark and lighter) Another critism is that one of the piano sequences is out of sync this could be portrayed as not playing the instruments properly and not following the time, however it suits the mood of the video as it is lively the way the instruments are played is very lively.

What you learned from your audience feedback?

We have learnt that we need to change some of the colourings on the video, we have then found that the video looks better with the colours toned down, this then gave our video a more of an 80's feel with not too much colouring. We have also learnt that we need to keep in time to the music on our instrument solo's as some may have come out of sync when editing and we know that some problems have arisen when doing this so we have tried our best to put it all back to normal but some may have been shorted in that process leaving them to be out of time. However from some of our good critisims we have learned that our video may not have a storyline and may be misleading into this, our storyline is that we are getting ready for a concert having been at another the night before hence the bottles and clothes and shoes all over the floor, we have used the penguin to give more of an happy friendly feel as we want our video to be suitable for all ages, we also want the audience to watch and watch again by placing this hidden meaning in the video. However our older viewers will appreciate that we have tried to stick to The Cure's conventions by keep the 80's feel and not tried to make it any different. We have also learnt to be more careful with planning as our first idea didn't work and we had to keep changing it, this is maybe why some of the storyline is misunderstanding for other people to watch. We have tried to keep consistency throughout and if we had to do this again I think we would make the storyline clearer so that everybody can understand and not just the people who made it.

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

The whole idea of our project was to have it to be themed on the 80’s as the song itself is from that era, for our video we wanted to capture a element of fun. We decided to do this with having this perceived sense of anarchy and spontaneous nature to it. Overall throughout the project i feel we have done what we set out to achieve.

When it came to creating our digipack for our project which includes the poster and album artwork we decided to use the existing artwork from "The Cure" as inspiration. From there work we decided that our digipack should be quite dark focusing on the stars of the band to sell the product. We see this from the "Boys Dont Cry" poster. (see below)

As you can see the poster is black and white. It also involved the lead singer/star from The Cure, Robert Smith. This uses this idea of star image to sell and publicise the band. We tried to capture this in our poster. (see below)

I feel in terms of sticking to the same genre and style of the cure we have done well in the poster. We decided in our poster we should stick mainly with the black and white theme much as The Cure do in their poster. The only time we break this rule of black and white is too announce the single release, we chose to do this as the main idea of the poster is too sell the record. So in terms of our poster we feel we have done well.

As for our video we originally set out to create a video which was true to The Cures original works, video and the 80's in general. One of the main ways i feel we achieved this was due to the handheld nature of the film and the effects we put on all of the video afterwards.

We decided to have the video to have a almost deliberate home made feel as if it was made by the band, therefore we didn't want the video to look too professional, although we had to keep it professional in reality as in the end of the day we had to make a good creditable music video. In terms of creating this fun music video but still keeping a professional element we believe we had done well, we also got encouragement from our audience feedback from different groups and friends.

To help create this 80's feel to the whole video we mainly relied upon our costume, mise en scene and the effects we put on the video. For our costume we agreed to have denim and dark as the two main themes. We did this as it was a style prominent with The Cure but also as we look more of a band when we are on screen as we are all wearing similar outfits, this is effective as it makes the video seem more genuine. As for the mise en scene for the room we had this idea that we should make the room look trashed, as if we had been out partying the night before, then we were in a rush to get ready. We did this by basically trashing the room. We also scattered items from the 80's around the room including video tapes and CD cassettes, this helped towards the 80's look.

Overall we wanted to create a 80's feel towards the video paying homage to the original works of The Cure and of the decade. We set out to create this fun video as we hoped it would catch the viewers attention and hopefully they would enjoy it. The digipack for us was all about selling a product, we used to "star image" to try and do this. Overall i think we have achieved what we originally set out to do.

storyboard.

This is our second draft from the storyboard and it has changed dramatically, in the first storyboard we wanted us getting into a taxi to go to our concert but as we progressed we realised that our idea for the taxi wasn't going to work, as we would have to have all of the equipment that a band would have and that is very hard to get hold of, so we changed our idea so that it was just us running out of the house this was a better idea, we also found that including some of the instruments would break up the conventions of a normal cure video, as none of them actually focus on the instruments themselves. We used close up shots of the 'singers' , we used a girl singer to sing male parts as we thought that she most represented Robert and the way he looks, as he is very 80's and wears make up. So we decided to break conventions by doing this as there isnt very many music videos with girls singing boys parts and vice versa.

Research into CD covers and magazine adverts.

This is for the album the cure this was released in the year 2004, so this is a recent album cover from the cure, this was one of there many album covers that didnt related to any of the songs on the album, although many of the single covers did relate, for example in the cures close to me single it relates to the video in the theme of fishes, they kept with the theme of the video.

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

Our video was inspired by many other 80's artists for example "David Bowie", "The Smiths", and Wham!". We also took inspiration from other cure video's for example "Friday I’m in love" and "Love Cats". These videos follow a more common day indie style, even though back in the "80's" what they were doing would not have been called "indie". We see in many modern indie videos a homage to the "80's" style seen in some of "The Enemy's" videos such as "Away From Here" (see video below and analysis).

The conformity that it isn't like any other indie/rock video by using some of our ideas of a penguin we have used other cure videos as an example of animals for example the original Close to me there is an animated octopus, although the idea of the original video was about being claustrophobic we have changed it so that we are happy and free, we have put this across by making our video look fun, and made it documentary style video by nothing matching up and making sense leaving the viewer wanting to watch it again to see if they can work out what was happening, we are hoping that when people watch this they will feel happy and smiley and not sad like in the original Cure video.

Our video broke away from the conventions of other music videos by making it lively and fun, our video doesn’t actually have a storyline there is a hidden meaning to what was happening, the hidden meaning is portrayed by using the different band members doing different things throughout, for example, Tom (the drummer) is getting dressed in a scene of the video to show that he is changing to get ready for a concert, this is portrayed as we wanted the music video to be watched over and over again so that people in the end would understand what it was about. We have also broke away from conventions by using a girl to sing a male role we have done this as the girl had more of an 80’s look and as Robert Smith looked girly we thought it would be good to have her singing instead of a boy and to make people think that anything is possible. This is also a positive as many other bands will not use a girl to sing boys parts as they think its not normal, and as we have tried to we have made our video look as 80’s and happy as possible and seeing a girl singing a boys part will make people think, that’s a good idea we will try that. However there are many music videos where boys will sing the girls parts and vice versa but not many seem to do it.

For the Friday I’m in love video there was different backgrounds but the band staying stationary we wanted to do the opposite, keep the background stationary and the characters moving by placing different costumes of the characters it shows that there is a different variety, the penguin represents being close to somebody, and it also shows that we have a fun side and that our video will bring this out, we have added FIN at the end as a representation of cinema veritie, this is a documentary style film which has no meaning(or is hidden) and makes the audience wanting more. We also feel that our video breaks away from normal conventions by having a penguin, we have done this to make people think why is that penguin there and to keep watching so that they will finally understand after watching it many times.

We were inspired by many other great artists to do our music video and we have tried to use many different elements from each so the audience think oh that’s from that video and there is the other video they have taken ideas from.