Emily Thomas discusses her group's media production of a music video for the song "Dog Days" by Florence and the Machine. She also produced two ancillary tasks: a magazine advertisement and a digipack. She analyzes how their production uses conventions of real media products through similarities in style, camerawork, editing techniques, and intertextuality. Feedback from the target audience was positive overall but pointed out some areas for improvement, such as clarifying the storyline. A variety of media technologies were used in the construction, research, planning and evaluation of the project, including blogs, YouTube, Google, magazines, video cameras, and Adobe Premiere editing software.

1. Emily Thomas Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. Within my group we created a music video to the Florence and the Machine song ‘Dog Days’ and also produced two ancillary tasks – a digipack and a magazine advert. A lot of our production work and advertisement ideas are linked to indie music culture, and there are a lot of comparisons that can be drawn. I think that our production has managed to send the right message to it’s target audience of indie music listeners. The outfits, location and actress chosen all link within one another and the theme of the music video fits well within our criteria.

3. Similarities to forms and conventions of real media products The most obvious similarity to real media product was our look and style. Florence and the Machine have a distinct image that is iconic, romantic and vintage. Our Product Original Media The long, red, curly hair in both images automatically sets the theme and shows the public what kind of style this artist has. Another important thing to look at is the type of pose that the artist is doing, in both photographs they are either looking down or gazing thoughtlessly.

5. Slow Motion

6. Cross Fading

7. Montage of shots

8. Fast paced cutsCross Fade Slow Motion Fade to White

9. Intertextuality The theory of intertextuality states that all media texts are interrelated and can only be defined by their relationship with others. Throughout our video there is a strong sense of intertextuality, which is very noticeable. We focused on the film Pans Labrynthfor our inspiration, and I feel that there is a big link with the location and theme. I think our production shows this particular shot in a different style, but still links with the setting and theme.

10. Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

11. Production Magazine Advert When looking at our main production and both ancillary tasks, it is easy to see the relation and understand the link between them. I think, like all indie advertisements our magazine advert is small and understated, simplicity is the key to our design as it leaves more to the imagination. As you can see, in our production our actress wore along flowing dress, all in white colours – which looked casual and bohemian. Her hair was straight and make up was natural which we thought was necessary. In the Magazine advert our actress (posing as the lead singer) dresses much more glamorously, with lots more make up and curled hair. Her dress is more elegant and eye catching – we thought this was relevant for advertisement purposes.

12. Album Cover Cross Fades Cross fades were a big thing for me and my group to try and incorporate as much of into our ancillary and main production task. I think the relevance to our overall genre and theme that cross fades have is very significant, as they show a softer flow to the shots and make them seem easier to watch. Production We decided to use the same kind of technique in our ancillary task for the front cover of our digipack, which works well with the flowers merging softly to the contours of our actress’ face. This would be the kind of technique that Florence and machine would use in thier media texts.

13. The constant use of nature throughout our video and ancillary tasks is a big feature of our theme and target audience. This media products are targeted at indie music lovers and festival goers. This type of look appeals to them mostly and is one in which Florence and the Machine use a lot in their styling and media products. Also, the action of our actress when she is looking down is used a lot in our media production and ancillary tasks. I think that the general ‘look down’ pose portrays a moody effect that could possibly mask a hidden meaning, much like our music video does.

14. Florence and the Machine Digipack Digipack When comparing our digipack to the original Florence and the Machine digipack, there are a lot of similarities and it is easy to see where we have drawn inspiration from. Both poses are similar from the lead singers, which is appealing to the indie music audience. Also, the combination of flowers with the photography is something we Incorporated specifically to link to our song and genre choice. The back of the digipack are very different from one another as we decided to go for more neutral colours and for the album cover to look vintage by using ripped paper of various patterns and colours. Our Production Digipack

15. Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

16. Receiving Feedback from our Piers For us, receiving feedback was very important for a number of reasons: To see if our product appealed to our target audience Whether we had followed our guidelines correctly To receive positive criticism so that we could understand which areas we can improve on. Tells us what is good and bad about our main production and ancillary tasks

17. Our Target Audience Our target audience for our media production is teenagers and young adults. Lovers of indie culture, fashion and romanticism. Ages range from 15-25. Our music video is aimed at both sexes, but may only reach out to females as the main character is a young woman which is someone they can relate to. Even though our magazine advert and digipack is particularly girly, I believe that males will also be attracted to the lead singer which may then lead them to buy the single.

18. Analysis of Production Feedback I asked three people from our target audience age range what their views of our main production were. All comments were positive, but there were some views that implied room for improvement in our production. One member of the focus group mentioned; ‘’I was unsure on the story that was being told’’ – Which we thought to be a significant downfall in our feedback, and a downfall in our production. By creating our ancillary task in the same kind of theme and including prominent lyrics in our digipack booklet, we feel we have tried to prevent our target audience from not understanding the concept and storyline that we are trying to portray.

19. Did we target the right audience? One of the most prominent things that we learnt from our audience feedback was that we definitely did choose the right target audience. With a few exceptions with gender, and how that effects the audiences view. I think that overall our information learned was successful and we have used it to the best of our ability. We have understood and taken into account people’s criticisms and definitely noted how we can improve and please our audience.

21. Beautiful photograph for front cover

22. Glamorous hair and make-up

25. We have used many different media technologies in our project, some new and old. New media - Blog We each have individual blogs that we post everything to do with our production on. Any inspiration we find or ideas that we have, we post them onto the blog along with a diary of posts throughout our production time to keep a track of what problems we faced and how we resolved them.

26. New Media – Youtube When drawing up ideas we looked at various indie music videos online, the main website that we used to view and share videos was Youtube. The option to pause, play and stop the video at any time made it easier to use to professionally analyse the original ‘Dog Days’ video and use it to our own advantage.

27. New Media – Google.com Me and my group mainly used google to search everything to do with our production. From record labels to styling outfits for our actress, google was a real help and is one of the most popular search engines. We also used the Florence and the machine website: http://florenceandthemachine.net/ to gather information on their overall branding, look and sound.

28. Old Media – Magazines To gather inspiration for our production and ancillary tasks we used various different music magazines and made mood boards to create a vivid depiction of what we wanted to create.

29. Cameras We used handheld video camera’s to film our production, these cameras filmed onto tapes which we then uploaded to the computer to edit. The cameras we used were of a reasonable quality and allowed us to change the scenes for day and night, which is what we used for the latter part of our production. Our video camera also allowed us to zoom into certain parts of the landscape for our montage shots and extreme close ups.

30. Editing Software To edit our production we used ‘Adobe Premiere’ which enabled us to be more adventurous with our editing techniques. For example, it made it possible to add a light flair in some of the shots of our actress running. There were many transitions to choose from and Adobe Premiere allows you to change the colour theme of some shots.