DIGITISATION: fan footage 4 Pantera vid

Look at http://panteramusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/ and you'll see a form asking for fans of the band Pantera to submit footage of themselves moshing to Pantera for possible inclusion in a new Pantera vid.
The line between UGC (user-generated content, aka fan-made videos) and official but crowd-sourced (think of how Radiohead got fans to submit their footage of a Prague gig which was then edited into an official full-length concert DVD) is getting razor thin...

DIGITISATION Slash webisodes

Vodcast-style webisodes used adroitly by Slash to market his forthcoming new album: http://loudwire.com/slash-releases-final-apocalyptic-love-webisode/

final VINYL: Record Store Day 2012

full list of Record Store Day releases

By louderthanwar on Mar 21, 2012 in Blogs

Here it is the full list of releases for Record Store day.
There are some big names in there including Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Bloc party, Kasabian, The Clash and Two Door Cinema Club, Marilyn Manson, Bombay Bicycle Club, Garbage, Noah And The Whale, A$AP Rocky, Bat For Lashes, Belle & Sebastian, The Cure, as well as our own Membranes who release their first single for 22 years.
Arctic Monkeys will release their new single ‘R U Mine?’ on special purple vinyl, with a brand new B-side ‘Electricity’ accompanying the release. Kasabian meanwhile will release their covers of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ and Gwen Stefani’s ‘Sweet Escape’ on 7” vinyl. The Clash will release a newly digitally remastered version of ‘London Calling’ on vinyl.
The full list is here follow the link

Biggest Brit in US in 2011?

Intriguing top 40 list of top-earning music artists in US last year, which highlights the importance of concert/touring/merchandise revenues over music sales, and the prominence of many older acts (Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block?!?!).
Great to see a genuine talent being the highest ranking Brit entry (ie, not Adele...), though there was of course an even higher-ranked Irish act!
Read more here. Useful data for many of you.

DIGITISATION from Napster to Spotify

Below is a small fragment of a useful graphic feature on the changing face of digitisation in the music industry, and the current shift of emphasis (gradually) away from piracy/threat to opportunities through legal paid-for streaming ... the end of physical media?
See https://www.gplus.com/infographic/43161for the full feature

 

March 2012 Top10 update

10 days in and exactly 1,000 views as of now - not bad!

No.1 currently is ... me!
Two Girls Aloud rough cuts in there ... and two Lonely Island edits, seem to be pulling in the fans quite steadily many months on. A 2011 AS prelim (seemingly down to SamB reminiscing on FB with hyperlinks!), the 2010 Britney, and a current AS rough cut (Sam/Dillon's) are also amongst the current Top10; I'll publish the final chart just before we break up for Easter!

PollDaddy

Just testing to see how inter-operable Wordpress is, but PollDaddy (which I looked at as part of this) seems a useful site - you can create polls which aren't confined to your blog but which can be pushed on FB etc too
Vote on the one below then have a look at creating your own

IGSMediaStudies channel hits 20,000 views!

The race is on for the March Top Ten (if I ever get all the AS idents in, a new comp of those could be a late contender alongside current leader ... the DB3 lip dub guide!), but in the meantime we passed 20,000 views a few hours ago!

Is your coursework breaking the law?

Read http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/08/sexist-comments-to-become-criminal-offence to see what I'm getting at! (and its not the copyright issue: that you can't include copyright material in your coursework)

FEMINISM/Annie Lennox

I've briefly posted on AL before; her 80s vids for Eurythmics caused a national outcry when she played with gender expectations by dressing as a man (theory ref: Judith Butler - gender as performativity; also Chomsky's propaganda model as the 'flak' she received was designed to filter such counter-hegemonic thinking out of mainstream media and therefore public consciousness)

Fascinating article here (from the Guardian) in which she discusses this past and her efforts today to use music for feminist ends, including launching a new pressure group

DIGITISATION: Kurt Cobain resurrected

2 egs of how Nirvana continue to be virally marketed (even if unintentionally), and continue to find new audiences..
Kurt Cobain the iPad graphic novel
Cobain's vocal track, isolated from the music, has gone viral (have a listen below, 1 of 4 embedded with the article, its quite spooky, and really quite brilliant)
Your music vids are intended to be means of keeping interest alive in and generating new sales of existing tracks - all part of the upside of digitisation which the record co's seem to largely ignore while they incessantly moan about piracy

DIGITISATION: MOCKBUSTERS...

Thanks to Simon, Helpdesk Technician, for bringing this to my attention (also featured in this month's Total Film magazine): The Asylum are an example of a production company who make straight-to-video blockbuster rip-offs, generally on sub-$10k budgets! See http://www.theasylum.cc/

Its almost as if the spoof Jack Black productions in Be Kind, Rewind, which launched the concept of 'sweding', leeched out into the real world...

Top 10 ... of YOUR vids!

Whilst trying to figure out why the channel page was saying 18,971 views for 3 straight days, I took a look at the analytics (which inform me that its now 19,341 views!); thought you might be interested in the all-time top 10 and current (Feb) top 10. These reflect the role of tags, which I generally take the time to do (and you can edit in even after uploading): without these its unlikely your own uploads will be found. As AS coursework is centred on new films, they're never likely to reach the same audience, though it was interesting to see a swede (the harry potter tag obviously being key) and compilation of idents (maybe through in-school promotion as well as Media students/teachers searching 'company ident'?) well up there.

So, here's the all-time and the Feb 2012 Top 10 IGSMediaStudies hits!
(Will the LipDub vid, silly ident and all, make it into March's top 10? Will Sunburnt in December counter all expectations of metalcore and trump over the girlband giants?! Will an imminent new compilation of AS company idents prove a fresh hit? I'll try to update these next month...)

Remember too, an event to celebrate the achievements of those of you who will have completed your 2-year Media journey has been mooted: its up to yourselves now to think about this, consult with parents and think about suitable venues - which doesn't have to be school.

The Alice Cooper vid's still hanging in there! A new one remains in the pipeline...

Other than class exercises/BritVid, the excellent Joy Division vid remains the all-time coursework champ. Could that face a new challenger?

RickRolling hits YouTube

80,000 have joined me in a moment of irritation at clicking through for a supposed new Depeche Mode track ... only to find Rick Astley's dulcet voice booming out. I knew this was very common on filesharing sites, wasn't aware this was also happening on YouTube (and could live without it!).

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wn0q9caXaU&feature=related (if you want to fuel the ego of the pest who did this)

LipDubs: a DB guide

They're another good example of digitisation as a democratising tool; music vids (which ultimately is what lip dubs are) created by schools, unis etc attracting huge audiences online, without any paid-for advertising campaign.
Here's a guide I've prepared in my limited spare time:

If you've any other good egs of lip dubs, add brief info + a URL as a comment

We'll shortly be getting a steadicam rig for the shooting of this; there's a job there for someone - and these rigs take some practice to get used to, to get the balance set right

Record Store Day 2012/Metallica vinyl

I blogged on this last year ... 'Record Store Day' is imminent! Metallica are celebrating by releasing a limited edition silver vinyl EP, yet more evidence of the re-emergence of vinyl.
See previous posts and http://loudwire.com/metallica-beyond-magnetic-ep-to-be-issued-on-silver-vinyl/

DIGITISATION: self-published short film

Across these blogs I'll keep returning to the concept of digitisation, the ongoing process of change and transformation of our media, a key element of which is the opening up of opportunities for micro-budget media producers to (occasionally!) attract large audiences and even make some money...

We mustn't forget that giant global conglomerates remain utterly dominant, but the possibilities for someone with a digital camera and a Mac are infinitely higher now than 10, 20 years ago. There have always been amateur/debut film-makers somehow bringing together feature films on infinitesimally small budgets, from Wes Craven's Last House on the Left and John Carpenter's Halloween, through Alex Cox's Repo Man (see his superb book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, there's a copy in Lib/F6), Kevin Smith's Clerks and closer to home the rather more dubious Colin!

Here's an interesting example of a horror buff with her own successful blog, Final Girl, who made a short film ... and monetised it through this blog, charging $5 for a DVD of the 10min short film! The short is a postmodern lesbian vampire skit using knock-off Barbie dolls, reflecting the filmmaker's feminist sensibilities. If you do watch it, remember its NOT a feature film - shorts can be rather quirkier. It is, whatever you make of the film itself (the sound is nicely done and the mise-en-scene well handled given the size of the characters!), a great example of how digitisation has expanded the possibilities for enthusiastic amateur filmmakers and media producers generally to go ahead and create, distribute and exhibit work without having to sign deals with larger media firms.

Taste of Flesh, Taste of Fear - watch more funny videos     

'Final Girl' runs a monthly slasher film club; check it out and if you blog on it she may add a link to your blog on hers!

There is of course another example of a self-publishing filmmaker closer to home, and we will be looking at a trailer for his latest production in Friday's lessons, and with a bit of luck hearing a little from the filmmaker himself on how he went about it, and his plans for this new opus...
We'll also have a look at the film Monsters, a good example of how digitisation has opened up possibilities for filmmakers to produce slick work on very limited money and with a crew barely bigger than a Media coursework group; I have previously blogged on this and various other examples of digitisation, plus analyses, in a wide range of posts you should be looking over whether for AS/A2 exam or AS/A2 coursework (especially Evaluation)...