Where have your Ideas come from?
Altogether as a group we decided to choose the song ‘Cala Cola’ by The Miracles. We chose this song as we felt it suited our genre, which is Indie. This song had a happy, upbeat indie feel to it. Once we had listened to other music videos by famous bands such as ‘Vampire Weekend’ and ‘Noah and the Whale’ we found that their videos were set in similar locations such as sunny bright happy places. We wanted to use this element in our video so we originally decided to set our video on the beach. So we decided to plan our music video and set our video on the beach with a road trip facing problems on the way. However this did not go to plan as we found that by setting out music video on the beach would be unreliable with the weather and wouldn’t be very feasible to get there and back. We then decided to change our location to a forest from which we decided to set up a tent to look like we have been camping. We chose this idea because we felt that it related to the Indie genre and was found in similar music videos like Noah and the Whale and Carly Rae Jepsens and Owl City’s music videos. We originally brainstormed our ideas on a Prezi and presented it to our group. From doing this we were able to get feedback from the class to help us improve our idea. The main comments that we got were about going to beach, which we listened too and helped us decide that we needed to change our idea. Apart from that our idea was successful.
For my Digipak and print advert I looked at other indie digipaks and print adverts to help me with what conventions to include and how to relate it to the indie genre. In many indie print works I found that they related their digipak and print advert with their music video, which I used in my print work.
How did your audience research direct your creativity?
Audience research directed my creativity to help me identify the possible improvements that I could make to improve my work. By listening to audience feedback it allows me to improve my work to make it more professional which would attract the indie genre. I used audience research when we decided to change our idea from using the beach to the forest in our music video as we felt that it was easier and would relate to our genre better. We also used to identify the problems within our music video such as the lip-syncing when we then went on to improving. Furthermore we changed our performance location as we felt that it was more professional and helped us improve the lip-syncing problem that we faced. For the print work I gathered feedback to help me improve both the digipak and the print advert to make it link more to the target audience and to make it more professional.
How different are your products to ‘Real’ media products?
Our music video is different from those that are professional, as we didn’t have the proper camera equipment or the budget to produce a music video that was of high standard. By not having a budget we were not able to have professional actors or proper equipment. On the other hand we were able to use appropriate camera angles and shots to improve the video. We were also able to edit the video to improve the quality and standard to make it look more professional. For the print work I also faced the problems of not having the right equipment such as the software or the budget to create a professional or ‘real’ media product. However from researching existing print work I was able to use the conventions such as the layout, colour schemes, text and filters to help make my work look more professional.
To what extent have you been original?
The majority our music video is predominantly redundant, as we have used elements from other music videos of the same genre such as the concept of the video and the costume and the props that we chose. By doing this it has shown that our music video relates to our target audience and will be more appealing to the indie genre. The idea of having a road trip and being with friends also is a redundant element as we have noticed that many indie music videos use these ideas in their music videos. However we used original ideas by using locations that are local to us and unique by the surroundings. In many indie music videos the performance is linked in with the narrative but we decided to be slightly different and do the performance separately in a different location and using lighting to help make our location more effective.
