Dear Moderator

Dear Moderator,

This is my A2 level blog, which contains coursework for the task G324 Advanced. For this task, I was asked to create a main media product and two ancillary products. The main media product was creating a music video and the ancillary tasks were creating a digipak album and creating an advert.

I completed this project by collaborating with fellow college student, Kaye Robertson. For the music video, we chose to use the song 'Sad Eyes' by Canadian Electronic duo, Crystal Castles. We started research on this task in September 2013, and completed our coursework in February 2014.

To take a look at the blog posts I posted and my media products, please use the page tabs located at the top of the blog to help you navigate through my work.

I hope you find my work of a high satisfactory level, find it interesting to read and see it as a successful piece of portfolio for my A2 coursework.

Kind regards,
Shaun Alan Anderson

Question 4

This is question 4 for my evaluation. It is seen on Kaye Robertson's (my partner) wix account. Click image to view.

Question 3

Question 2

Question 1

This is question 1 for my g324 evaluation. The question is "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

Question 1 - Preparation

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

 - Discuss research that went in to what is usually seen in an indie/electronica music video. Then discuss how I took some of these conventions and put them into my music video.
- Discuss how ideas of my own went in to the video or usual conventions from other genres went in to my music video, challenging the forms and conventions of the media product.
- Discuss music video theories which include what is expected to be seen in a music video depending on the genre, e.g. Andrew Goodwin.
- Discuss why I decided to challenge certain aspects of my chosen genre, maybe I wanted my music video to stand out or have some unique features.
- Discuss how conventions were used in my music video, what I did to make people sure of what genre of music they were listening to just by watching the music video.

 Influences for setting of video: - Friends - I'm His Girl
Natural environment, vintage video effects, female vocalist is main focus of the music video, no narrative, primarily performance, unusual mise-en-scene.


- Grimes - Genesis
Focus on make-up used, colourful video, natural environment, odd clothing, colourful hair.

FINAL CUT

This is the final cut to mine and Kaye's music video for Sad Eyes by Crystal Castles.

Vintage Video Effect test

This video shows the vintage video effect we wanted to apply to our music video, to make it look more like an electronica music video. I think it was executed well as it makes the visual very colourful and following conventions of the electronica genre.

Magazine Advert final

Audience Research Profile

This is Jack Magill an 18 year old young male, I asked him the following questions in order to gather research on his opinions and interests affiliated with the electronic genre in particular. These were the following answers to each of the 6 questions asked:

·                Do you like the electronic genre? If so who are your favorite electronic artists?

Yes I do like the electronic genre my favorite artists that are a part of this genre are; Tom Vekk and Drums of Death.

·                What would you usually see in an electronic music video?

I would usually see strobe lights and fluidity in the video, the fluidity being based around lighting or camera shots.

·                What are your favorite electronic music videos and why?

Klaxons - Magick: It's visually different which makes it stand out more and makes the music more enjoyable.

XX Teens - Darlin': It's long and obscure, it again makes a statement and appears to be more artistic in appearance.

Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow: It looks like it hasn't had a great budget and this gives it a simplistic appearance which I like to see in most electronic videos.

·                What costume would you expect to see worn in an electronic music video?

I'd expect to see vintage clothing because a lot of people who are featured in the electronic genre seem to wear vintage clothes which adds more of an artistic appearance towards the artists themselves.

·                What locations would you expect to see in an electronic music video?

A plain room that's all white and a mock live performance.

·                Do you prefer performance or narrative?

Narrative, it adds more depth towards the video and music itself.

Magazine Advert - Final

This is the final edit of our magazine advert, which was created by my partner, Kaye. After researching adverts from indie/electronica artists, we decided the advert should be more simplistic. The advert shows the artist in the centre, but her eyes have been censored by a black line with the title of the song "Sad Eyes" seen in the middle in simple white writing. This is where our advert becomes more unique, as when we saw adverts for artists like Daft Punk and The XX, they were very different because the advert contained something unusual in it, so we did likewise.

Another notable thing about the advert is (with the exception of the URL to websites in the corner), the name of the artist is not featured on the advert. This again is another unique convention we have went with as artists like Daft Punk did not feature their name on their advert. We did this because, to follow the conventions of our individualised and unpopular genre, we decided to make the advert more artistic, rather than feature the artists name on the advert, so audience would know who it is.

Digipak final

ROUGH CUT 2