Digipak

This is our digipak; a digipak is a patened style of CD or DVD packaging. They typically consist of a gatefold paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. The design for a digipak was created to connect with the video and poster, we used a colour scheme of black and red, to symbolise darkness and death, to also give it a sexy edge. As you can see this style is very similar to our poster, so they all therefore connect.

Task 3- Audience Feedback

We gdot an audience of a young generation to watch our video and answer to pre-prepared questions: Does it fit the brief? Why? Most of our audience believed that the use of special effects while inputting a Sin City cityscape and having a narrative and performance element made the cideo fit the brief. What type of genre does this fit into to? The outcome of the aanswer fit our expectations where they thought that the video fit into the genre of rock/indie/aternative rock. Digipak and Poster. Does it fit into the video? How? They thought that the dark and red colours fit into the theme of the video which they stated was danger and sex. Would you buy it? Why? All of our viewers stated that they would have bought the song 'Demon Cleaner' after have had seen our music video. Who is the target audience meant to be from what have you seem? We were aiming to a unisex audience and this was the answer we recieved from our viewers who said that our video is meant for both female and male audiences because of the sensual narrative element and the subverse performance element. What did you most like about it? Why? Our viewers mostly liked the idea of the universalization of women seeing that we have female members of the band and a female murderer. What did you least like about it? Why? Most viwers thought that the blood was too excess and graphic for the music video and made it look like a James Bond opening sequence. Do you think that the idea of having a female rock band was necessary? Why? All of our viewers thought that the idea of a female rock band was sub verse from that of having a typcial boy band and though that it brought sex appeal to the video. From our answers we can see thaat most of our viewers enjoyed the video and thought that it fit into the music and its genre..

Task 1 - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The well known media theorist Keith Negus talked about specific conventions in music videos. Keith Negus said some acts are organic, organic acts follow these conventions: A naturalisric approach to artists The seeds of success are within the artists, who have to be nurtured by the record company. The artist is given time to evolve and progress through their career Emphasis is given to album sales and the contruction of a successful back catalogue Often aimed at older or more sophisticated consumers. Profits generated by this kind of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record company Keith Negus also reffered to synthetic acts that followed these conventions. A combinatiorial approach to artists and material Executives attempt to construct successful acts out og the artists and the songs at their disposal The image of the arist is often constructed by the record company The artist will be given a short time to prove their success before other combinations will be tired out Emphasis is given to single sales and to promoting first albums Often aimed at younger, less sophisticated audiences Profits generated by this kind of arist tend to be part of an immediate, short term strategy by the record company

Our group researched and analysed the major conventions of music videos with Beyonce music videos because she is a very popular music artist so follows a generic approach to her videos, although I would consider Beyonce quite organic because she is a raw talent it is arguable that she is a synthetic act because she came from a girl group called destiny's child.
Destiny's child would be considered a synthetic group and was one of the worlds best selling girl groups of all time, but it is arguable that once destiny's child split up and Beyonce went solo she was an organic act because she had such talent that her record companies saw her as a long term investment rather than a short term one such as a act like sugar babes, or Hannah Montana. For this reason Beyonce is still a very popular music artist 6 years after going solo in 2005. This according to Keith Negus would cattogarise beyonce as a organic act because one convention of the organic act was “profits generated by this kind of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record company”.

Still images from our music video This still from our video is used to make a unrealistic world a reality using special effects, in some ways it follows the existing forms and conventions of music videos because the special effects are used to make the narrative of the video more exciting and for that reason alone, it is conventional for music videos to have a narrative that is there to keep the audience intrested. However it might be possible to argue that this image challanges conventions as it uses special effects to create the scene and this is not considerd common in music videos as more often then not the narrative will not be special effects.

Poster

Task 2 - How effective is he combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Demon cleaner poster

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Demon Cleaner Commentary

Demon Cleaner Commentary 1

Task 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used many differnet types of media technologies extensively through out the five stages of production.

In our research and development our group used the internet a lot. The internet enabled us to use websites such as youtube, where we were able to watch music videos that could inspire us and give us ideas this was very useful as our group lacked knowledge on the heavy metal genre so we were able to discover the generic approach music videos had to heavy metal. Online music browsing websites such as Itunes helped our group decide upon a song to use in the music video the availability of music over the internet made this a far easier job for us, as sampling music is cheaper and easier online than through CDs and other previous methods used to distribute music. Google made the research far easier by pooling information together where we would previously had to use books to research informatition, particularly google maps for browzing possible locations for the shoot.



In the planning phase of our project we used PowerPoint presentation as a method of sharing our ideas with the class this is very useful software as it is very good at showing simple presentations to a group of people using images and text through slides shows.. We could also then put our presentations online using a website called “slide share” this is a PowerPoint presentation sharing website that we used to make our completed presentations available online and also in order to attach them to our blogs. Our blogs were the method we choose to use to report everything that we did and evaluate it, this method is far more visual and expressive than a formal essay.



On the actual shoot day we used a digital camera, the Sony Z1 and DSR 570, which are very mobile and this allowed us to vary our shots and therefore have a bigger variety to choose from when it came to editing. We used green screen a lot in our video because what we wanted to achieve could not be done on location or created in the studio so the best alternative was to use the green screen the use of the new media technology enabled us to achieve the unique visuals in our video



Due to new media technologies editing was made a lot easier as we were able to view the footage very easily on Final Cut Pro which has a relatively user friendly interface making it far more simple for us, as relatively inexperienced editors. After Effects which play a huge part in our project and are becoming more and more realistic as technologies advance played a huge part in our video and we would never have managed the complex after effect without having a program that manages to simplify them for us.



The back drops for the green screen were created on after effects. These programs made it easier for the synthetics in our video to be achieved when working with a small budget size that we had, no longer do media products need huge budgets to achieve the realistic after effects. It also meant that we didn’t have to waste time on our shoot day travelling to do a location shot.



Before the video finishes we will quickly talk about the distribution of our product.

New media technologies played a huge part in our distribution, video sharing website YouTube was supposed to be the main method of distribution however due to copyright laws it has been an issue and our video was removed by WMG from YouTube so it has been an unsuccessful method for distribution in our case. DVD is also being used as distribution as it is now easier to upload footage onto this format but it is more expensive to distribute via DVD than online however DVD is significantly more cost effective and efficient than VHS due to smaller packaging and less raw materials needed so we decided DVD would be a better format than VHS.. Thanks for taking time to watch our video commentary.