Combination of Video and Ancillaries.

One of my main aims when creating both the Poster and the Digipak AKA CD case, was to make sure that they fell in line with the style set by my video. Overall I feel that I have achieved that quite well.

Firstly the genre had to match that of the video; Britpop is all about being grounded, humble and in touch with regular people. My video is set primarily on the streets; this created the foundation for my gritty style. I stuck with this when creating both my Digipak and poster in order to create a solid and memorable style.

The colours stay consistent across my range of products, mainly sticking to greys, blues and other muted realistic colours. This is a big part of the Britpop style, a lot of videos even go so far as to use only greyscale. This colour scheme represents the lack of glamour and shine that is central to the Britpop style. It is designed to look as ordinary as possible to give the message that the performers are just regular people, on the audience’s level, and that they are humble. Despite the fact that this may not be true with many Britpop performers, it is what the genre stands for. As you can see from the picture above, there are variations of colour but it always gives way to the main colours of the piece, blue and grey. the picture below is comprised almost entirely of these two colours.

I still feel that there is some difference of style between my video and the ancillary task in that the ancillaries are more heavily edited and put together than the video. This is mostly undetectable though, the main difference between them is that the ancillaries focus more on the setting than the performers as with the video. they still share the same essential style though which gives me my solid style I was aiming for.

As shown, the poster here has no representation of the main characters at all, this was done to achieve my desired style and I feel that it works quite well. There are quite a few limitations though, mainly that there are fewer ways to get across the britpop style with no way of showing costuming or the attitudes/styles off the performers

As we can see in this picture to the left, both costumes used in the video are quite dark, and more importantly very ordinary, this plays into what I talked about in relation to the colour scheme. The idea of the performers being just like regular people, staying humble and not showing off with fancy sets and out of the ordinary clothing. You can see this same style in Britpop bands such as U2 shown below. The essential style here is dark and ordinary. the attitude is also important, the band members here have almost no expression on their faces whatsoever. They are not purposely looking angry like rock stars, nor are they pulling any silly faces like traditional pop stars. It is a lack of expression that says "yeah we make music, so what?".


true to the genre, nothing in my video is oversexed or obscene. Representations of both men and women in Britpop are treated the same as the styling; they must be ordinary. eg everyone is fully clothed and acting as they most likely would in real life.

Audience Feedback

With my final video, completed, I showed t to several people and asked them a series of prepared questions as shown below. I have also sent these question out to many more people using Survey monkey, a website that lets you design send and collect surveys. hopefully this will come back with some additional, if less detailed, feedback.

Survey Questions

1. Did you enjoy the video?

2. would you say that this video sticks well to Britpop conventions? As in is it reminiscent of the old       90's Britpop music videos from Pulp, Blur, or Oasis?

3. Did you understand the Narrative?

4. do you think that this video was an accurate depiction of the narrative told by the song's lyrics

5. would you have preferred a greater focus on narrative and less attention given to the performance       shots?

6. do you feel that the style of the video fits well with the style of it's ancillaries?
Below are some of the

At present, I have received nine responses from my online survey. Survey Monkey has collated all of the information into a series of bar graphs which I have displayed below. there seems to be mixed reaction to my product.

The first question seems to have returned a mostly positive response with the majority enjoying the video. I am happy with this response as entertaining an audience is the overall purpose of all media.

A mostly satisfactory result here as with the first question. We can see that some people are still not associating this work with the classic genre. this may show that I did not apply my research as much as I should have.

Most people here, did not fully understand the narrative, this may suggest that I did not focus on the narrative as much as I should have or that I have just not made what is there clear. the majority of people at least had a good grip on what was happening though so not a complete disaster then.

It is quite a spread of results here, although the pattern does show that the story of the video did not equal that of the song. it was not always my intention to perfectly re-produce the story of the video though, I did purposely change a few aspects.

We see a pretty even split on this point with a slight lean towards the yes for an increase of narrative shots. This definitely shows that I should have focused even a little bit more on the narrative rather that the performance.

Here we see that the absolute majority believed that the ancillaries fit with the video, I am pleased with this result despite the resistance that is there.











two of the surveys returned also included additional comments on the video and it's ancillaries

The first comment here makes a very valid point about the repeated images in the ancillaries, I had originally tried to create a solid style that could be recognised across all of the products, it is true though that it dies seem quite repetitive

The second comment is on something that I had not actually considered when watching the video back, it talks about the lighting on the performance shots. Watching the video back now it is quite apparent that the lighting on the performance shots would need to be improved.

Media Technologies in the research, planning, construction stages.

I have had to use a range of different technologies throughout the course of this project. from the cameras and equipment that I used to create the film, to the editing software I used to put the video and the ancillaries together.


The Video

One  of the most important pieces of technology that I used in this project was the camera that I used to film my video. it did not have a great amount of features and settings for me to work with so the main technique that I had to focus on was getting interesting angles and finding a way to move the camera along for more interesting moving shots. One way that I achieved this was with my variable height tripod which I used to the best of my ability to attempt more interesting shots.

One problem that I faced is that I had planned out a few moving shots which were quite key to the video. I realised later though that I didn't have access to a dolly and obviously lacked the budget to set up a track or use an expensive Steadicam. I got around this limitation by rigging the camera and it's tripod to a supermarket trolley and using that the get the shots. This did then mean that I could only film these moving shots inside the supermarket as the outdoor ones proved too shaky to use.

the second most important piece of technology that I used was the editing software (Adobe Premiere Pro) that I used to cut up, shorten, and alter all of my footage. I did not use a great amount of effects or special editing techniques in my A2 piece as the genre did not permit it. One thing that I both came up with and was able to achieve in post production was increasing the speed of some of my clips. Watching the footage through, it was clear that some of the moving shots were not up to the pace of the song and of the rest of the video. to fix this, I decided to double the speed of the clips rather than re-shoot them. this not only fit in well with the music, but created an interesting style that I later built on by changing some of the editing on other bits of footage.

The Ancillaries

I took the photographs for my ancillary tasks with the same camera that I used for my video. being primarily a photography camera I had a few more options than when I took the video, I experimented with higher and lower depths of field but decided not to use that technique in the end as it did not fit with the genre. I did though lower the ISO on the camera to get a darker image, that's how I was able to capture the deep colours in my poster shot.

I needed the use of another Adobe program to help edit my Ancillary pictures as well as to add the text and logos. I had planned to complete everything in this one program but as I started to create the back and inside faces of the CD case (Digipak), I started to fill in elements using basic Microsoft Paint. A large amount was still done in Photoshop, I simply created the base of each of the faces, added some text and then shipped it over to Photoshop.

Research, Planning and Evaluation

the first piece of media technology was what you are reading right now. This is a simple but effective website which allows me to format text and images as a basic word processor would do, following this though, it allows me to publicly display what I've written up so that it can be seen by anyone.

The second piece of online media technology is a website called Prezi. in the same way that Blogger is an online counterpart for Word, Prezi is an online counterpart for PowerPoint, allowing me to create sideshows that combine text and images though. the big difference is that Prezi allows you many different ways of presenting and transitioning the slides. it also allows me to display these slides publicly as with Blogger.

Conventions of media products

The Video

one way that I followed the conventions of my genre is with the moving shots of environment. these shots give a sort of handheld effect which I especially liked when researching for my video.

[picture supermarket]

I also tried to keep the costuming as conventional as possible, using dark colors to create a casual look. I did deviate from my initial design to produce a darker look.

[picture outfit/ any shot of me from the video]

another big convention of the genre is the setting, I followed this by setting my video in equal parts housing estate and supermarket. the idea of this within the genre is to choose ordinary locations to make the stories seem real and down on the audiences level.

[picture opening shot]

I have challenged the traditions of the genre on a couple of points as well though. As a genre, Britpop is quite humble, this is reflected in the style of any media product produced within the genre. in the majority of videos produced by Pulp, the band are almost never seen and are certainly not the main focus of the video. I have put a bit more of an emphasis on performance in my video as I believed it was necessary for defining my own style within the genre.

[performance shot]

another way that I have challenged convention is something that is done in the very first shot. we are brought above the world and are made to look down upon in. this may seem like a very small thing, being a 4 second shot, but it does go against the central theme of the genre of staying on level with the audience and staying grounded.

The Digipak

I have tried to stay  as conventional as possible with the Digipak as I think that it is a very interesting style and one that perfectly represents what the genre stands for.

the first decision I made was on the colour scheme. As you will be able to see from my posts, I have chosen a dark blue colour scheme. this fits with the tone of the video as although gritty and real, it is not too dark or giving any indications of violence which a black colouring may have done.

also true to the theme of the genre, I have included no pictures of myself or of the other star of my video. This I believe is very important for the genre, it adds to the theme of being grounded and lacking ego.

The poster

I have stayed relatively conventional with the poster as well, using an ordinary everyday scene opposed anything flashy or effects heavy designed purely to catch the eye.

Display of range of media products (update)

I have reviewed my media products, collected feedback and made some major improvements on all fronts. my new range of media products is displayed below.

Display of range of media products

I have taken a couple of screenshots of my video and have pulled together what I have done so far with the two ancillaries in order to compare the three.

Timeline of Music

This is my basic timing plan of the music video, obviously it will not pan out the same in practice but I will attempt to use this a s a rough plan.

00:05 - establishing shots begin changing with the beat

00:11 - cut to the introduction of the woman scene

00:12 - woman turns around/ switches to mid-shot

00:18 - man is introduced with mid-shot/close up

00:40 - cut to performance shot

00:55 - cut back to the action

1:00 - cut to Supermarket scene

1:31 - cut to performance shot

1:45 - back to supermarket scene

1:53 - cut back to performance shot

2:37 - cut to bench scene

3:08 - cut back to performance shot

4:13 - fade to black