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ABSYNTH ONE MORE TIME OFFICIAL VIDEO


ABSYNTH - FREEWIRED ALBUM COVER

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Thursday 15 December 2011

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To answer this question, we decided to put together a video of a group discussion, where we spoke about how we applied the theories we learnt in class (Goodwin and Vernallis) and what influences we drew upon from the music industry in order to produce the final music video and the ancillary texts. The answer is broken down into four videos, the first two being about the music video and the last two concerning the website and album cover.

Music Video Evaluation Question 1 Part 1


Music Video Evaluation Question 1 Part 2


Website Evaluation Question 1


Album Cover Evaluation Question 1


Music Video

One of the most common conventions we noticed throughout the dance DJ genre for music videos was that the DJ does not appear in the video, or at least does not a large amount of screen time. Therefore we decided that ABSYNTH would not appear in her music videos. The inspiration for what to replace her with came from a few places, including the director Spike Jonze and the Coldplay's 'Paradise' (released in 2011), as we went on to use a panda costume.

Da Funk - Daft Punk (Video Directed by Spike Jonze)





In the evaluation videos we discuss Goodwin's and Vernallis' theories, below are some further illustrations of what we were discussing.

We reference Goodwin's theory of the notion of looking throughout the entire video because we don't have any shots involving direct address until the very end. This meant that we could allow the audience to feel as if they were walking along side the panda and experiencing the action firsthand. I also think that the idea of the audience being in the panda's world and he is not playing up for the cameras, makes it even funnier.

When looking at our music video and analysing it according to the theory of Carol Vernallis, we can see how we followed conventions and also challenged them according to the four different categories she broke the theory down into:  Narrative, Editing, Camera Movement/Framing and Diegesis.

  • Narrative
    • The progression of the video is driven through a combination of the track and the narrative, however the narrative plays a much bigger role in demonstrating the journey as the music is very repetitive for the majority of the song. One of the things she claims music videos do, is raise questions but never answer them, which is what happens in our video due to the existence of the fictional panda in the real world.
  • Editing
    • We have followed conventions by cutting to the beat through most of the video and there are quite a few jump cuts that occur, such as during the train sequence and bus stop scene. These were effective as they displayed something different to the filmic narrative that had been set up prior to those shots and made sure that it was a music video and not just a short film to music. However, naturally the video does consist of some match on match action particularly during the bike scene and the group dance routine, which is because it is very narrative based and required an element of match on match action.
  • Camera Movement and Framing
    • We used alot of variation in the framing of our shots, i.e. ranging from CUs to Wide Shots
    • We did not use a tripod at all during the filming for the music video as we didn't want the scenarios to look forced or deliberate
Website
Below is a quick video I put together to act as a virtual tour guide of the website, to give an overview of the site/highlight its main features.



Due to the fact that the music video is quite unconventional for an artist's debut video, we decided that in order to sell the artist it would be crucial to have a very conventional website that 'followed all the rules'. We have done this through the layout, general content and opportunities that the site offers.

Layout

While there are many ways in which a website can be displayed, there are certain features that are seen on nearly any website, regardless of what industry they are in, these are:
  • Navigation Bar
  • Social Networking Links
  • Institutional Information
  • Imagery
  • Website Name
We took alot of our inspiration from existing websites for other DJ's, particularly Nero and DJ Shortee (who has actually been one of the few female DJs for the last 15 years, see blog post here).

Influences....DJ Shortee's Homepage

Influenced in particular by featured news bar....Nero's homepage
Content
After considering the idea that the website would have to be the central place for the audience to learn about ABSYNTH and have a deeper understanding of who she is, we decided that it should act as a reward to the audience member, in the sense that we have everything they would want to know all under one website.

For Dance DJs it is common to find the following sections:
  • Biography
  • News Feed
  • Tour Information
Comparison between Nero's website and Absynth's website
Opportunities
The main opportunities that the website offers are: Interactivity, Purchasing and Personalisation. During the construction process we made sure that all features of the website were interactive, with virtually everything leading to another part of the site. For example, each news story on the featured news bar on the homepage leads the audience somewhere else on the site.

Interactive Opportunities
No matter what website you visit, the development of Web 2.0 has meant that it is expected for a website to be fully interactive and provide social media links. Without these essentials, the website gives an unprofessional portrayal of the artist which we wanted to completely avoid. Therefore we ensured that everything on the website had a link to take the audience somewhere and everything was provided in one place.

Interactive opportunities around the website
Purchasing Opportunities
The store is a vital part of any artist's website especially a DJ because the website acts as another platform for the label to sell their music and merchandise. This is why in our store we made sure to include a wide range of products and because our target audience was both male and female, we had products that would appeal to them both. We also have a music store within the store where the audience can purhcase the physical album/single or digitally download them via iTunes.


We realised that this was one page in particular where easy navigation is essential, because on the websites we researched such as DJ Shortee, they have all of the products broken down into categories, so it is easy to find for the individual. Not only is this giving them a more pleasurable experience on the website but it also means that selling the artist and their merchandise will be easier. We applied this convention by having subcategories, like the example I mentioned before of the music store.

Personalisation
Most artist's websites regardless of what genre they are in, offer their target audience the ability to keep up with the latest news by signing up for newsletters or registering with the website. They allow the individual to almost make the website their own in some way and build a personal connection on some level with the artist. This is what we set out to achieve by including the following:
  • Personalisation of merchandise
    • By enabling them to create their own version of the merchandise available they can put their own stamp on it, and feel like they are all unique to ABSYNTH, rather than just part of a large crowd.
  • Various Competitions
    • Competitions are another form of interactivity on the website, however the prizes they could win, such as spending a day with ABSYNTH in her studio are much more personal. It forms that bond between them and her. 
  • Fan Page
    • Being able to leave comments and messages for an artist may be a very small feature but it can help that individual fan feel like they have a direct line of communication with ABSYNTH and therefore build fan loyalty
Album Cover
Once again, we knew that we would be selling the artist through the album cover and it would be critical for her to appear on all sides of the cover. The diagram below is my annotations of the album cover demonstrating how we have applied the conventions of album covers we discovered from class discussions and drawing inspirations from real life media texts in the dance genre.

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