WEB2.0:
When planning for my product I needed to find the codes and
conventions of dubstep music videos, digipaks and promotional posters. As
dubstep is a relatively new music genre it was quite hard to find any articles
online to lay out the codes and conventions however I found a SlideShare which
outlined them for me. After using this to get started, I looked further online
to find more in depth information about the codes and conventions. I found a
web forum specifically for dubstep, called dubstepforum.com. This was very
useful as it gave me a chance to see what real dubstep fan likes, dislike and
want to see in new music videos and albums. I found that the colour scheme I
used is very popular among dubstep fans. I created a Prezi to show my research
into the history of music videos, which allowed me to further understand the
codes and conventions of music videos as I had a better knowledge of how the
form had changed throughout history in order to get to the 21st
Century. For my product I decided to break the conventions associated with
stereotypes such as Richard Dyer’s stereotypes theory as in my story a male
character is seen as weak and is killed by a female character, which is the
opposite to most narratives of this kind. I used social media such as Facebook
and Instagram to show my products to the public and get constructive criticism in
order to make further edits and that way improve my products to make them more
appealing to my audience. I used YouTube to look at existing music videos of
the same genre that I am focusing on and created LIIAR analyses of them to see
what my product should look like and helped me to shape my final product to
make it look professional. I used amazon.co.uk to purchase all of my costumes
and props, which allowed me to create my music video and ancillary texts
cheaply and quickly as it meant that I didn’t need to go to several different
shops to try to find the things that I wanted to use. I also used YouTube to
upload my music video. This allowed my audience to comment on my video so I
know what they liked and disliked in order to make changes and allowed me to
share my video online easily using the URL or the Embeded link to allow me to
put my video onto my blog. My blog helped me to create an online portfolio for
my coursework which made an easy way to communicate with my audience as Blogger
is owned by Google so it is compatible with all other Google owned websites and
also allows comments to be made. I used the website fontspace.com to find a
font that fitted the conventions of my chosen genre. I decided to look for a graffiti
font and eventually decided on Feathergraphy
Decoration Regular.
Hardware:
For my music video and ancillary texts I used my Nikon D5200
camera, which allowed me to get a crisp, high definition image. To edit my music
video I used Final Cut Pro X, which I found quite easy as it is a very simple
video editing software programme. I used the Luma Keyer effect to make the
footage darker and gave a slight vignette to give my product a horror film
aesthetic, which I wanted to create. I think that the combination of these two
effects worked well to create this look. Due to the pace of my song, I needed
to use lots of fast paced shots which I did not consider fully when planning so
I had fewer shots than I required and they were all longer in length than were
required so I needed to use the blade tool in Final Cut Pro X to cut the song
down. I cut some parts out of the song and blended them back together to make
the cutting seamless. For my ancillary texts I used the same camera to shoot
the images as it has a 21.5MP CMOS sensor which made the images clearer and
better quality. To edit the images, I used Photoshop CC, 2014, which is the
latest edition of Adobes creative cloud Photoshop to allow me to use the best
tools available. For my digipak, I selected the background with the Magnetic
Lasso Tool (L) and filled in the skyline with neon green, added some blue
clouds and pink and yellow lightning bolts to give the effect of a dystopian
universe, which fits in with the conventions of the dubstep genre. I used the
Feathergraphy Decorative font for the artist’s logo as a house style throughout
both of my ancillary texts to create continuity.