Explain where your
ideas came from and how you were creative in the process of completing the
task.
Creativity can be defined as the use of imagination or
original ideas to create something. Alternatively, some may define creativity as
‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’ implying that an idea that is taken
from a source and then changed to fit one’s own idea. When making both my music
magazine and music video, I took references from other magazines as well as
intertextual references for my video and manipulated them into creating my own
idea. However, I recognise that within the brief, I had to create a video and
magazine, therefore, I did follow typical conventions of the products. I also
followed the standard rules of digipaks and magazines when I created my own, as
I did not want to deviant from the norms of the products so it was clear what I
had made.
The process of making my music magazine began with deciding
on the genre and style, I decided to make it typical of the punk rock genre and
then began my creating my ideas. For example, I made my own style from existing
sell line placements on the front cover, and I took ideas from other contents
pages to help form my own layout, For example, the main sell line of my
magazine with the artists name ‘Izzy Spyrou’ was a mixture of my own style and
that of another magazine, however, I then made a sell line for my featured
artists using fonts I had found and then adjusting it to fit the front cover as
I wanted.
Once I have decided on the style for my As music magazine,
which I did find challenging, as I was not very familiar with how music
magazines were laid out. So once I had done research into them I took images
for magazine, using a pop punk exiting style and created my own look for the
artists featured in my magazine. I used props such as guitars and styled the
people in a way that fit the genre, for example, their clothes matched the red,
black and white colour scheme of the magazine, as they wore black clothing and
heavy makeup, as I tried to resemble existing artists within the punk rock
genre.
However, I acknowledge that my magazine included
bricolage/empty borrowing to an extent, as the layout of my magazine was
unoriginal, as I followed codes and conventions and produced a magazine that
was typical of the punk rock magazine style and colours, such as the use of
scheme red, white and black is quite common. Although, the colours were voted
for by people on my survey as others thought it was the best colour scheme to
go for. Despite the bricolage within my magazine, I could not drift too far
from conventions as then it would not fit the brief of a magazine, so I did
have to follow codes and rules to produce my brief.
Another creative process for my magazine was through using software
such as InDesign and Photoshop to edit my music magazine, which was created on InDesign.
I had never used the software before, so I watched tutorials on what to do and
how to use it and tried to develop my skills as I went along. Photoshop was
also new to me and I struggled to understand how to use the software and therefore,
how to shoe my creative potential as I did not manipulate my images that much,
so I hoped to develop this skill as I progress.
As for my A2 music video, the process of creating it was
slightly different, and I think slightly easier as I found it quicker to come
up with an idea. Although, the first decision was to choose the song, and I immediately
decided on ‘Youth’ by Daughter, the song choice is actually an intertextual
reference from the film ‘A Long Way Down’ as the film includes the song ‘Youth’
in an emotional scene on the beach, which is where I got the inspiration to use
Brighton beach and my own ideas and creativity stemmed from that. Moreover, I thought
about going to London and Brighton as they reflect the emotional state of the
character as London is busy and the beach is calming, the creative process to
decide where to shoot consisted of thinking of places that show progression and
juxtapose each other.
Once the song was chosen I then started to form my idea, and
immediately I thought of a mask that I owned, which then became the backbone of
my idea. However, I had then then figure out how to integrate the mask into the
narrative, so I used the prop to represent the characters hiding herself from
society. The mask also has a very distinctive look and is red/purple in colour
with gold patterns, I utilised the colours to make the video more dramatic,
although it also allowed me to have a running colour scheme and general look through
my digipak and advert. The use of colour in my video was a very important
aspect that I wanted to constantly play with as I edited. The video is in black
and white with flickers of red and then ends in colour with sepia flashbacks. This
creative use of colour manipulation was done to build depth and form different
aspects to the video. For example, the sepia tones made the flashbacks obvious
and separate from the current narrative, whilst the flashes of the red, such as
he dress, door and box make the video more powerful and dramatic, as it was
important to reflect the tone of the song with the visuals.
As a whole I think my video does challenge codes and
conventions of music videos, as it does not follow certain theory of music
videos, it has no lip syncing or set of universal character traits and there is
no binary oppositions between characters, like good vs evil as proposed by
Claude Levi-Straus. Although, this allowed me creative freedom to create what I
wanted too, as I was unknowingly not conforming to all hegemonic norms of music
video, and instead went with the ideas that I came up with.
There were additional ancillary tasks along with my video, I
had to make a digipak and a magazine advert. My initial thought was that I
wanted to create 3 products that tied into one another to promote the album ‘If
You Leave’ by Daughter. I took pictures for my advert and digipak, and then
used Photoshop to manipulate my images. As I previously struggled to use Photoshop
effectively, I made a strong effort to understand the software and play around
with my images until I had a style that I was pleased with. I believe I
displayed my progress when using Photoshop as I played around with effects and
got creative on the image to see what worked best with the product. InDesign
was also used to actually build the advert and digipak one my images were done
in Photoshop. My advert did have a more rigid brief, so I felt I had less
creative control as I had to meet specific targets, such as including reviews,
and institutional information on my poster, so the font, placement of info and
the image were the parts I continuously messed with to make the advert. I encountered
problems with my advert as I was not happy with it and kept changing the image
until I was satisfied with the finished product. The didgipak was also problematic
for me, and I found creating a unique product was difficult and I did not know
what to include on two of the six panels. It meant I had to take more images
and get imaginative with the images, and this was when the interesting look of
the mask was most helpful to help form the idea and look of my digipak.
Overall, creating my As and A2 products has their difficulties.
I found it harder to initially come up with a style and layout for my music
magazine, and easier to construct the idea for my video, however, the ancillary
tasks also proved to be challenging. Creativity is both being imaginative which
I think I have shown especially in my video through the use of elements such as
the colour. Although creativity is also taking empty borrowing and manipulating
existing ideas to form your own product which I did for my advert, digigpak and
magazine as I followed conventions such as sell line placement and relevant institutional
information, but in my own way to form my own products.
