Stock Footage Music Video / Purity Ring - Fineshrine

‘Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time’

Real media texts have helped me greatly in the creation of both my final media pieces. I was both inspired and influenced by these existing products and used elements of them in my own media piece.

For the creation of my first creative media piece which was a music magazine the first thing I did was look at and research existing magazines. To begin with I wasn't too sure on how to create a magazine so by looking at existing magazines I was able to build up an understanding on what goes into the creation of a magazine and what sorts of design elements I should include. The first magazine I looked at was 'NME'. This magazine was we're I gained most of my knowledge from and what influenced my own magazine the most. The main element of the magazine that inspired me was the colour scheme which was red, white and black. I decided I would use this colour scheme as I knew that because a successful magazine like NME used it I would be guaranteed a professional looking an d successful colour scheme. NME also covered the same genre of music I did so I knew. It would fit well with the genre. The second existing media text I looked at was 'Q' magazine. Although Q focuses more on mainstream music rather than my chosen genre I felt the layout of the magazine could work very well in my magazine so I took element of this layout and used them in both my contents page and double page spread. This included things such as where the text is laid out on the page , the placement of the images and the red banner idea at the top of the pages.

For the creation of my A2 pieces which where a music video, poster and album digipak I again began by looking a existing media texts. For this task my genre was 'heavy rock' which was something that I was fairly new to so looking at existing media prices in the genre was vital to give me an understanding in what the genre involved. To start with I looked at music videos in our chosen genre, as a group we decided our music video would be to the song 'Zzzonked' by the band 'Enter Shikari' so to start with I looked T music videos from this band. I noticed that live performances where a very common dependent in almost all of they're videos and in other bands videos so we decided we would also do this as we wanted to keep to the common element of the rock genre. By looking at existing videos I also noticed that dark/black and white effects were used on the videos to give them a lot more of a gritty feel to them. As a result of this we also opted to do the same as we wanted our video to have as many elements from existing videos as we could to make it look like a video you would expect from the heavy rock genre. One problem we did face however was making our video look like a live performance like in the real videos. We overcame this problem by coming u it's the idea of the camera constantly moving to make the environment in the video very busy and energetic to make it feel as though you were in a crowd.

To create the digipak and posted I was a lot broader with my research and looked at. Existing media products from many different genres as I wanted to combine elements to create something fairly original looking however as you will know this Ida very difficult thing to a achieve. One of the things I noticed is that minimalistic style poster and album covers where very popular and successful so I decided this would be the stating point for my own product. I then noticed that the use of a triangle shape was very common a lot of album covers this was used on album covers from bands such as: Alt-J, Bastille and Enter Shikari. To try and put my own creative spin on this I made the triangle upside down and made the cover image go inside the triangle to make the rest of the cover blank and minimalistic. For the poster I then used the same image as this was again a very popular thing to do as many real poster just used a larger version of the album cover.

To conclude I feel that real media products have helped me greatly in the creation of my products. Without them I would be very unsure on what sort of elements to use in my own products and be unaware of what makes a product successful. Existing texts helped me create what I feel are very professional looking products which would appeal to my target audiences and leave me with a successful product.

'Uncool' Playlist

1.) Phoenix - Fences
2.) Sleigh Bells - Demons
3.) Grimes - Oblivion
4.) Everything Everything - Cough Cough
5.) Friendly Fires - Hurting
6.) Crystal Castles - Intimate
7.) Purity Ring - Fineshrine
8.) SBTRKT - Wildfire
9.) Crystal Fighters - Champion Sound
10.) One Night Only - Hide

Post-Modernism in Music

Post Modernism in Music Research

Crystal Castles:
Crystal Castles are an experimental electronic duo,they are wellknown for creating experimental sounding music. To acheive this they use many different samples from other music.

Here are the samples from the first album:

Samples:

"Untrust Us" samples the Death From Above 1979 song "Dead Womb".

"Crimewave" samples the Health song "Crimewave".

"Air War" samples the reading of a passage of Luciano Berio's "Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)"

"Magic Spells" samples the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five song "The Message" as well as a quote from the 1983 science fiction miniseries V.

"Courtship Dating" samples the Health song "Courtship".

"Good Time" samples the Drinking Electricity track "Good Times (Dance Mix)".

"Vanished" samples the Van She song "Sex City".

"Love and Caring," "Alice Practice," and "XXZXCUZX Me" sample the kick and snare from "Sunday" by Covox.

These are some of the samples from the second album:

Samples:

"Year of Silence" samples the vocal track from the Sigur Rós song entitled "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur"

Both "Violent Dreams" and "Vietnam" contain samples of the song "A Walk In The Park" by Stina Nordenstam

Band Name

The band's name is a copy of an old 80's video game called "Crystal Castles".

Merchandise & Artwork

Crystal Castles came under copyright threats at the start of their career for creating merchandise and album artwork out of an image they had copied from artist Trever Brown. The band then bought the rights to the image off of the artist so they could continue to use it.

This is the artwork they used:

"Not In Love" Single

In 2010 CC released their single "not in love" which was a remix of their own song. The difference on this version is that they had Robert Smith of the band "The Cure" to sing the lyrics, they also alter some of the music. The song itself is also a sample/cover of "Not in Love" by 80's Canadian new wave band "Platinum Blonde". This could be considored a sample more than a cover as they alter the lyrics and change the whole genre of the song giving it much more dark and electronic vibe to it. This CC version of the song was then rimixed and sample again by South Koreon actor and artist "Lee Min-Ki"  

Post-Modernism Essay

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of post-modern media

Post-modern media is a very broad term used to describe a media text that goes against the usual conventions of a media text. This could be through things such as referencing existing texts, 'remixing' other texts and adding things that are generally considered different or against the normal conventions of a type of text. In theoretical terms post-modernism can never progress as it is consistently re-uses old and existing media texts.

The main and biggest reason people may not be convinced by post-modern media is because they feel it is just copying and takes away the originality from media texts meaning media texts will never progress and constantly be unoriginal but is this true? For example Hollywood film director 'Quentin Tarantino' is well known for a being a post-modernist as all of his films in some shape or form will use conventions of post-modernism. For example Tarantino's World War 2 film 'Inglorious Basterds' uses many elements of post-modernism. The film constantly references old and existing films that may not even be from the same genre of film. A good example of this would be the introduction to the film which is almost identical to the introduction of the spaghetti-western film 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly'. Many viewers of the film will not even notice the similarities between the two films and the fact that he has been able to use the same conventions of an existing film into a different context in itself could go against the claims that post-modernism is unoriginal.

'Kirby Ferguson' who created an online video series around the subject claims that “everything is a remix”. He says that almost all of today’s media is a reference to an already existing text which is then altered. Ferguson's rule is that texts are either 'copied, transformed or combined'. An example of where this rule is apparent is American rapper 'Kanye West's song 'Gold Digger'. The song features heavy references and sampling of the song 'I Got a Woman' by 'Ray Charles' which is in itself a copy of the song 'It Must Be Jesus' by 'The Southern Tones'. As you can see this is an instance of a media text being copied and transformed. The original song by 'The Southern Tones' was a song about the acts of Jesus and praising him this was then transformed into a song about a woman in 'Ray Charles' song and then transformed once again into a song about a woman who is after mens money. So again does this show the creativity of Kanye West in that he can change a songs meaning completely into something new or does it mean he has been unoriginal and not creative at all?

There are however extreme uses of post-modernism which use that many references and copies of existing texts that it becomes almost a joke. An example of this is the film 'Hobo With a Shotgun' which used so many references that it took all of the seriousness away from the film and made it a joke. The film is almost a parody of post-modernism by referencing everything that was bad about existing films changing the context of it and making it even worse. This type of film could be a reason why some people may not be convinced by post-modernism.

'Frederic Jameson' is against the idea of post-modern media and thinks that post-modernism is vacuous and trapped in circular references stating that post-modern media is “Nothing more that a series of self referential 'jokes' which have no deeper meaning or purpose.” Whilst some people will see this as a reason to not be convinced by post-modern media a post-modernist may argue that that is the whole purpose of post-modern media.

To conclude I feel that 'Frederic Jameson' has a point in what he is stating however I also feel that the idea of post-modern media is in fact a creative process as it means existing texts are constantly being re-used and transformed into something completely new.

How did the conventions of real media texts inspire you to use new media technology to create the style of product you achieved?

How did the conventions of real media texts inspire you to use new media technology to create the style of product you achieved?

For the creation of my final media product real media texts inspired and influenced me greatly. Almost all of the ideas implemented into my products were influenced by a real life media text in some way or another. The main reason for doing this was because I knew it would be successful as if real media texts are doing it then my product should also succeed like they have.

For my first media piece which was a music magazine I looked at many different types of magazine styles ranging across all different genres. Researching these magazines was very easy due to many new media technologies. This was because I could just search ‘Google’ or the magazine’s website to find examples of covers, contents pages etc. rather than buying the magazine from a shop. As my magazine was to be an indie rock and electronic magazine I began to focus more on magazine that specialise in these genres such as ‘NME’, ‘Q’, ‘The Fly’ and ‘Dazed & Confused’.  After looking at these magazines I noticed they all have a slightly minimalistic theme with a small set of colours. The main colour that I noticed were used was red, black and white. As a result of this I too decided for that colour scheme as I knew it would look good and professional plus all the colours complimented each other well. I also looked at the layout of the pages across these magazines and implemented this into my magazine such as the large masthead used in ‘The Fly’ and the double page spread layout of ‘Q’.

For my second media product which was a music video for the song ‘Zzzonked’ by ‘Enter Shikari’ I again had to look at existing products. This was easily done due to new media technology such as ‘YouTube’ which allowed me to watch many different video’s with ease. After watching various different videos we decided that we would go for the common techniques that are used in the rock genre such as performance, black and white effects and fast paced editing. This was because similar to my magazine we knew it would be successful. All of these effects combined made our video look very professional and look like a real rock video which portrayed the energy of the music which is what we hoped to do. Once we had finished our video we used new media technology such as ‘Blogger’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’ and ‘YouTube’ to give and receive feedback from our peers. This worked very well as we did this for our draft video and gained a lot of feedback both positive and negative. The negative feedback we received enabled us to make appropriate changes to our video and improve it.

To conclude I think the use of new media technology has enabled me to create two media products to the best of my ability, by giving me the ability to do research with ease and receive a lot of feedback without having to round and ask individually so this saved a lot of time and ultimately enable me to create to two great products.