Top Trump cards - David Gauntlett

Media Theorists - David Gauntlett Top Trump Card from flowerpoolamp

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

Evaluation part four : What did you learn from your audience feedback?

Evaluation part three : How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

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

Evaluation part one : The Brief

What brief were you working to?

A picture of the brief that was given to us on our first lesson.

Our task was to create a music video to a song of our choice that was royalty free. In this music video we needed to represent a music artist that we created that fitted the conventions of the genre of music the song was in, for example, our song was an indie song so we created an indie artist.To further promote our music artist, we needed to also create ancillary print work (a magazine ad and a digipak) that would act as a piece of synergy to sell our artist in the music video and show a clear representation of the genre of music video we were creating. I worked with Simran and Paman and we had decided to go for Simran’s music video narrative and song choice. Her narrative included animation, which is something I had not tried before. You can watch her pitch and Q&A below where she explains her ideas in detail.

Who was the artist? How did you find them? How did you seek permission?

The artist we worked with is an ex-student from our school called Robert Staines. He has a YouTube channel where he posts covers and sometimes original songs. The song we chose of his is an original called ‘Sea Kelp and Cigarettes’. (Click here to view it.)

Simran told us she found the song quite interesting because people could interpret different meanings.From the video, the actual artist is represented as being quite indie, this is connoted from his shirt which is quite different and unusual. Most indie artists like to be different and original. Denoted in this video is him playing the piano in what looks like his own home. This connotes how he’s quite grounded and he wouldn’t let fame get to his head. He’s not using an extravagant room with a massive grand piano or huge recording equipment. He just has his Mac, a microphone and the piano. Also, the fact that you can see him playing the piano, connotes how he writes his own music and has talents other than just singing, he’s versatile.

Simran also contacted the artist himself, asking for permission to use his song. A screenshot for this is provided below :

                     

      

We was pleased to know he was happy for us to use his song, ‘Sea Kelp and Cigarettes’.

Explain the music genre and what attracted you to the artist?

Indie music videos tend to illustrate interesting narratives that are more in touch to realistic issues and human empathy compared to pop music videos that are focused on materialism. This genre attracted me because I wanted to create an interesting narrative that would fit a soft melody with deep lyrics, rather than something generic like Britney Spears. After learning that Robert Staines created his own music, I listened to his tracks and chose one that would fit our narrative perfectly. Our song ‘Sea Kelp and Cigarettes’ deals with issues such as loneliness and being homeless. The mise-en-scene of indie music videos tend to be set in realistic earthy places such as forests that are easily accessible and are low budget, compared to expensive studios, hence why I found an indie music video easier to film practically.

The artist himself interested me because his personality and fashion style connoted an indie artist excellently as he tends to wear casual shirts and jeans and plays instruments. He was also someone we was familiar with because he came to our school, allowing us to know he was a reliable source for our music rather than contacting a complete stranger that could potentially be unreliable. I wanted to use an artist who established this genre well through his own current representation of his personality and style and Robert is an embodiment of indie!

His songs fit the genre perfectly and I also believed this was an opportunity to showcase his music as it will hopefully help him gather more recognition.

Blog Reflection // Week 13