1b Representation

I am going to look at representation in relation to my advanced portfolio for which I created a music video for using Jack Johnson’s acoustic rock song ‘Better Together'. However we renamed our artist as Nathan Vega who is of Asian ethnicity. 

One way we used representation in our video was in the way that we portrayed our artist. We did this by looking at similar rock artists and their conventions such as playing a guitar and dressing casually with a laid back attitude. We applied these conventions to our artist and dressed him casually with accessories such as a hat and sunglasses. We also dressed him in this costume to give off a positive attitude and show that he is not consumed by fame. When creating a digipak and magazine advert we made sure that the guitar was main thing we would focus within the images to hint the genre to the audience. Our artist represented the genre of acoustic/folk rock well through his costume and props. 

However one way in which we challenged simplistic representation of ethnicity in our genre, by using an artist from an Asian ethnicity, which is contrasting from all the other artists that are signed to the record company. This enables our artist to reach out to a wider audience and different people from ethnicities. Representations can become familiar through constant re-use which means that audiences of this record label/genre may find it new to listen to and watch an artist who is slightly different.

We also challenged representations of a male artist by creating an artist that is laid back and not as dominating as a stereotypical male. He is casual and playful which is shown through various shots of the artist laughing and just generally having fun. Our behind the scene shots and some of the close-ups of the artist were able to portray his humorous character away from acting out the song. This may attract a feminist audience as he does not fit the stereotype of a normal male artist and is more sympathetic and loving. He doesn’t take things too seriously either which may increase his appeal. On the other hand the male audience may not accept this character as he is not as masculine and serious about things. For example a distinctive artist to ours, but from a similar genre would be Michael Bublé who is more masculine, attractive and charming, fitting more to a stereotype of a male artist. 

However our female character does not challenge representations of females so much as we still see her depending on him for her happiness. This is seen through shots of her gazing at photographs of the male artist. This is an example of John Berger’s theory of ‘Men act, Women appear’, with the male acting away and the girl just appearing at the end of the video to make it all better. 

Representations in music video are often made simplistic to enable audiences to understand the texts and make sense of them. We have done this successfully in our music video by using certain representations that would relate our artist to the particular genre, as well as challenge certain representations such as male stereotypes.

1b Audience

I am going to discuss the concept of audience in relation to my advanced portfolio, for which we created a music video for Jack Johnson’s acoustic rock song ‘Better Together’. We decided our target our music video for both genders between the ages of 18-28. This target audience was identified after researching the artist and going onto his official website. 

We wanted to attract a folk rock audience as the artist and song were from that genre. Therefore we looked at similar artists and their products to get an idea of the main conventions they had which established the genre successfully. Examples of artists we looked at were James Morrison, John Mayer and James Blunt. Some of their main conventions were that they performed with a guitar throughout their videos, many close-ups were used on the artist performing and each video has some sort of simple narrative in it. 

We also had to consider how the audience would read and react to our music video. When researching the artist we found that the artist is has a laid back character and enjoys his music and playing his instruments. He is also environmentally friendly, which we found when visiting his website. He minimalised the environmental impacts of his ‘To the Sea’ tour, by doing various activities such as selling eco-friendly merchandise and reducing the use of single plastic bottles used backstage while on his tour. Therefore we decided to encode messages of eco-friendliness in our video through the artist and mise-en-scene. This supports the theorist Stuart Hall who believes products can encode messages for the audience to decode in their own way. Messages we encoded were that the artist is not consumed by fame, which is a positive factor. We set our video in a natural environment, where the artist freely wanders around playing his guitar showing he is friendly toward the environment. 

However audiences have many ways of decoding messages, depending on how they read the text. This links to Denis McQuail’s ‘Uses and Gratifications’ theory, which states that audiences have many different ways of using texts whether it be for entertainment or whether they feel the text actually relates to them. Some of our audiences may have selected the messages of caring for the environment and not being consumed by fame and popularity. However viewers who have an oppositional reading may have just gained entertainment from watching the video or happiness from the meaning of the lyrics.

To conclude, we were able to create a music video for an active audience and would not have been able to do so without having researched the artist and the genre’s main conventions.

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

I am going to discuss how my skills in using digital technology contributed to my process of creative decision making from my foundation portfolio to my advanced portfolio.

In my foundation portfolio we created a thriller film opening in which we shot in two different locations. As we hadn’t yet edited sequences we felt that Final Cut Express would be a basic and suitable program to use, therefore my skills in Final Cut express were rudimentary as the program was new too me at this stage. After experimenting with different tools we learnt how to put the footage together, cut sequences and fade and tone down the soundtrack to fit in with the action in the frames. We also used a program called Adobe Aftereffects to create the titles in the opening. My group and I had a little difficulty using it as  we had never used it before and it was quite complex.

Therefore for my advanced portfolio, me and my partner chose to stick to using Final Cut and expand our knowledge on the program and learn more effects and ways of making our product more marketable. In this project we had to create a music video for a song of any genre, for which we did one for Jack Johnson’s songs ‘Better Together’. I knew my skills of using Final Cut were lacking and so in my spare time I decided to explore the range of tools on the program and practice putting footage together.  I learnt how to sync the footage with the music, layer and fade shots together using the ‘pen tool’, add transitions between the frames and play around with colour levels to ensure each shot was clear and professional. This shows how I have developed my skills in terms of Final Cut in both my foundation and advanced portfolio. I took the initiative to learn how to use the program, something I would not have done in my foundation portfolio, which helped me become more confident and enable me to produce a more polished product. 

Another program I used in my advanced portfolio was Adobe Photoshop. I was very familiar with the many tools and effects it provided as I use it frequently and so did not have any problems editing the images for our album covers and magazine adverts.  Creating these required use to take photographs, for which we used a HD 12 pixel camera. This gave us clear photographs which were then easier to edit as it was able to capture the light well. In contrast to our foundation portfolio we used more advanced and a better quality HD video camera which was able to pick up the sound and lighting impressively. Whereas in our foundation portfolio we used a canon HD camera which wasn’t as successful as most of our footage in our opening was blurry. 

To plan and market our products we used Web 2.0. In my foundation portfolio I created a very basic blog on which we displayed our production process. This process of blogging meant that me and my group were able to work more effectively. We used YouTube to watch thriller openings and upload our opening to gain feedback. However in our advanced portfolio we widened our use of Web 2.0 by not only using YouTube but using Facebook as well to share our products. Facebook enabled us to gain positive and negative feedback which would help us in improving and amending our product to be its best. 

 

In conclusion I feel that I have developed many skills from AS to A2 to make better creative decisions. I have developed these skills by expanding my knowledge in software’s to create better effects and using more advanced technology to capture better quality footage to create an overall more professional and marketable final product.