EVALUATION: QUESTION

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

For my A2 coursework, my main focus was on the music industry. I looked at different musical genres to make a music
video on a chosen by me. My final decision on the genre was something new and not popular in the United Kingdom. The
song I chose can be separated into two very radical and cultural genres such as PUNK and SKA. Once I finalize my
decision on the song I started planning my three main products- digipak, poster and a music video.

The Beginning
When I started my research and planning of the three products, I chose to have 5 main bands from which I
will get ideas of the construction of my products. These bands are Dubioza Kolektiv, S.A.R.S., Gogol Bordello,
Control and Hypodil. The first thing I started to research was the poster. What I noticed was that every band
has its own visual style of communicating with the audience. For instance, Dubioza Kolektivs products use
many bright colors such as red, yellow, orange and black. Whereas in the Control posters the same colors
are used, however, they are faded and darker compered to Dubioza Kolektivs one.
Another thing that I noticed was that some of the bands has its own logo. S.A.R.S., for instance, their logo is a
chopped hand and Hypodils logo is a Thracian coin. Moreover, the posters of the bands always have their
members on them. One of the posters of Dubioza Kolektiv has all of the bands members dressed as a pirates
and on Gogol Bordellos poster can be seen again the members of the band where the lead singer is in the
middle.

Creating My Poster!

Such conventions were used in my poster as well. The first thing I did was to make different photos of all the
members of the band where there are dressed in a special working class people. The reason to do that was
because the song I am using for my music video (U.S.A. by Dubioza Kolektiv) focuses on idea of living the
dream life in America. That is why my actors had to look poor, drunk and dirty.

Creating My Poster!

Another reason is the fact that this music is popular in Eastern Europe, not in Western Europe. That is why I
used different stereotypes of the Eastern World created by the people living in the west. Once I chose the
photo I wanted to use as my product, I started playing with the Photoshop. The first thing I did was to crop to
photo to look as a poster (Landscape). When I finish cropping the photo, I focused on editing/fixing the
colors of the photos.

The main colors I used were Red, Yellow and Blue. The final result looked as an old Polaroid Photo which
was exactly what I wanted. Then my focus moved to the fonts and the Masthead. I looked at different fonts
and the one I choose was the Collaged font. I added the name of the band (Dubioza Kolektiv) and the name
of the album (Balkanjada) and I made every letter have its own color. In the end it looked colorful and a
little bit messy which are the conventions of the punk genre.

And the final thing was to create the Logo. The Logo I created was a red star with black shadow which
symbolizes the time when many Balkan countries were under a Communist regime. Once I added the star
my poster was ready to be posted, but before that I added some logos of the big musical institutions such as
Columbia Records and Songkick.

The Digipak
After completing the poster, I moved to research and plan my Digipak. What I found interesting
was how different the bands were in terms of styling their Digipak. Some of the bands were
focusing on the dark colors, dark shadows where the audience could see only the shape of
peoples body like S.A.R.S. first album cover. Others focused on animating their digipack, for
example, Controls digipak has a punk-man who is drawing graffiti on a wall. And others, focused
on a sunny, colorful album covers like Gogol Bordello and Dubioza Kolektiv. Again, most of the
digipack has the members of the band on it with their logo.

Step by Step
Once I finish making my poster, the first thing I started to consider
was the styling the digipak. At the beginning I thought to use a
childrens drawing as my cover but I changed my mind once I saw
how it will look. The reason to change the cover was because it
looked more as a modern Hip-Hop album cover. Therefore, I
designed the background to be dark and the letters to be
different colored.
However, compared to the poster I used different letters cut from
different magazines. It looked as something untraditional but
original for the genre. Once I added the name of the band and the
album cover, I created a polaroid photos of each of the members
of the band. Under the photos I added their names to give idea to
the audience that the band is Eastern European. The names Emil,
Dimitar, Ilia, Konstantin and Milen are often used in Eastern
European culture.

Step by Step
When I add the photos, I placed the logo of the band in seven
places with different colors so that the digipak looked colorful.
Then I added 12 songs using the same font as the posterCollaged. I used again different color for each letter and I added
some shadow so that easier for the audience to understand what is
written.
The last thing I added was some graffiti photos, a punk-man and a
rock gesture with the hand photo. Then, I moved to the inside of
the digipack where I added the photo I used for my poster. But on
the left side I added the name of the band and the album, together
with their logo in the middle.

EDITING MY MUSIC VIDEO!

Once I finished making the digipak I started editing my music video. I did the filming part
the day when I did the shooting of the poster. The idea of the story was to build focus on the
lyrics. Because, the song is sung with a strong eastern European accent, I made the video to
help the audience to understand the song.
The video concentrates on the members of the band who live in a small village in the
Balkans and they dream to move and work in America where Dreams come true.
However, once they get drunk, a ferry comes to one of the members and sends him in New
York. Once he see how populated and busy is the city he dreams to return to his homeland.
The idea of the video clip is to send a message to the audience that there is no better place
than home.

 When I started editing my video, I used Adobe Premiere Pro

CC. I began my video by representing the beauty of the
Eastern European nature and representing the members of
the band. Moreover, I added the title of the song so that it
could look more as a professional music video. The colors of
the title are similar to the one I used to create the background
of my poster.

After that I notice that the beginning scene is shaking so I

added an effect called warp stabilizer to fix that. It made the
image look more stabilized and better looking. Then, I moved
to the part where I had to synchronize all the music
instruments with the music. In some places I had to change
the speed duration so that it look professionally made.

 Once I finished constructing the beginning I focused on the scenes

where my actors look as a traditional villagers who dream to leave
their homeland and move to America. There, I added some special
effects created in Adobe After Effects CC 2015. The effect I made is
a simple speech bubble that looks like someone has been drawn.
That contributed to the creation of the feeling that the music video
is untraditional and therefore could be applied to the punk genre.
Moreover, the use of ferry could be also linked to that.

To make understandable for the audience that Its a ferry I used a

special wings as a prop and I have added special spotlight effect to
make the image bright which will give a sense that the sleeping
man is dreaming. The last focus was the scenes in New York where I
used some images taken from YouTube. At this part the only effect I
had to use was changing the colors of the screen. The reason to
make them dark is to represent to the audience that something
unusual has happened.

Conclusion
Overall, my three products has used successfully generic conventions which could suggest what the genre
is with the use of different signs and symbols (semiotics). Examples for that are the different fonts and
colors of my product, the untraditional and messy digipak and others. Moreover, my products has been
created with professional softwares such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere CC and After Effect CC. With
Photoshop I manage to form and construct my digipak and poster. Premier Pro help me edit my music
video and After Effects contributed to the creation of few effects which were used in my music video.