Evaluation

Here is my evalution for the Music video task.

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

For our media product which was a music video, we tried to use the conventions from a real music video of the Indie Genre but at the same time challenge the forms and conventions. we decided to keep it random, like other Indie music videos but also challenge other video's in general by not having the popular choice of a story/narrative. Our group identified what the lyrics were and we filmed a documentary type film of everyday life, for example eating breakfast, so the audience can make up there own mind of what the lyrics mean to them so a narrative type film did not distort what the song meant, if we had filmed a funeral scene, the audience may have associated the song with a loved one who had passed. But by filming a random blank documentary type video, they can associate the lyrics “Save me, I am swallowed by the guilt of this You're gone, sleeping in the dust We will not let time erase us” to anything that the audience wanted to relate them too as it could mean a lot of different things depending on a situation someone is in. We chose to film with a hand held camera to give it a more realistic point of view as it would be shown from looking out of the main persons eye in the video, basically what they were seeing. In the mise-en-scene we didn't use one of Goodwins points - music and visuals, such as lip syncing, which we couldn't as we were filming from someone's point of view, it would be quite difficult to do. We also did not have a relationship between music and visuals as such, for example we didn't have people breathing cold air as the lyrics “our breath rose in the cold” This was because we wanted the audience to make up there own mind about what the lyrics meant. Another one of Goodwins point's 'Promoting the artist' was another hard thing to include in our music video as our group wanted to promote the music as a whole rather than one artist or a group, in a way we did promote the style of the music by being documented and this is identified on our Digi pack. There is a lot of voyeurism in our music video, as we are filming from the main characters point of view, we are able to look out of their eye and the whole audience is in disguise because of this, we are watching the character eating breakfast and when they enter a busy city centre we are able to watch everyone else go about their normal day behind these eyes, and in disguise as the main character in the music video. This is different to other types of voyeurism for example in R&B music videos they use voyeurism a lot in a sexual way towards men and women, the audience gets pleasure out of looking at these people in the music video without being there themselves, they are behind closed doors and in the privacy of there own home if you like. Lily Allens video 'LDN', there are two videos for this, one where she is biking through the streets of London, and another where she is walking though the streets but everything negative gets changed into something positive. For our original idea we were going to try and follow this idea, but unfortunately I wasn't there for this part of the filming therefore Holly and Pia had to think on there feet and decided to film through town, which kind of fit the other type of “LDN” video. I re-searched a video i new that fit our type of filming which was “All falls down” by Kanye West, this is also filmed from his point of view and through his eyes. Our video is like this for example, locking up bike and eating breakfast etc. Although in Kanye west's video they still are promoting the Artist (Kanye West) by editing the video and making it look like when Kanye looked in the mirror it showed his reflection, this was too difficult for us to do whilst making it look professional so we left it out, otherwise we would have been able to include lyrics and visuals. The video is effective because it is not distracting the audience from the lyrics and music. I suppose our video attracts our target it audience by the video being 'random' if we included a lot of 'bling' jewellery i don't think the target it audience would of continued to listen or watch the video. Our location was not very conventional which is a good thing i think, it's different and we used the City centre of Cambridge which i think has a good variety of buildings all in one location, you have the old college type buildings for example 'Lloyds TSB' bank, which is included in our video, and opposite this building we have a new modern type building where 'Boots' is located. This gives us a good variety of architecture without having to change location. A more Conventional location for this particular genre would be maybe inside a club whilst the artists are performing.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The ancillary texts meaning digipack and the music video are quite effective. The DVD cover and magazine advert are the same style and picture so the buyer will be able to identify the two together which makes it easy to identify the music and band due to the continuity of the images used. Seeing as we didn't have a main character in the video, we chose not to put one on the DVD cover and the magazine advert so the audience wouldn't be confused because in our video the artist is not sold or promoted, therefore the audience would not be able to identify who the person or people were on the front if we chose to show one or 3 people on them. We did however choose to have a picture of a normal street on the front of the DVD cover and Magazine advert to elaborate on the documentary type video. This would be effective as it's the same type image being shown as there is in the video, this is something the audience can identify together. Our magazine advert contains a 'NME' which stands for national music express which is a popular music magazine, people that buy this magazine and enjoy this type of genre can relate to this music group and it may interest them even more. It also contains the music groups website so people would be able to re search the music group in their own time if they would like to know more about them. We have an 'Indie Uprising' logo which people who like the Indie genre of music can recognise and know it's an official Indie genre music group and that they have been recognised so that's a sort of guarantee that they must be good, otherwise 'Indie Uprising' would not be helping to promote them. We have a quote on the front of the magazine advert to show that other people are enjoying the music and are encouraging you to buy it. The advert also promotes the DVD, although it doesn't have a date it states that it is now available to download and on DVD. Also shown on the Magazine advert we had the 'HMV' logo which is a very popular music shop telling the audience where the DVD is available to buy. The DVD cover has all of these aspects, but also shows a 'dvd' sign stating it's a dvd and a bar code obviously, so it is able to be bought, this gives it a realistic effect. All three products represents the genre successfully, through the images the music used.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
For our original edited music video, we had an effect which distorted the faces of people in the video it was quite bright and quick, with our class feedback we learnt that this confused the audience and they didn't enjoy watching the video. Our group removed this effect to make it more pleasurable for the audience to watch. Our target audience for our music video was 15 plus, this was to make sure that they were capable of understanding the lyrics. It was good getting feedback from a range of students so that we got feedback from people that have different interests in music and genre not just an indie audience this would make it bias so we wouldn't get an open honest opinion. This video would more likely be played on a Indie music channel, for example MTV has now been divided up into different channels by what genre the music is, for example MTV base is for more R&B and hip hop music. We also learnt from our original pitch feedback that maybe we could of included more footage of a main artist or character, this was so we would be able to promote the artist more, it was difficult to do this seeing as we didn't have any close up and facial footage of anyone. But this also leads to a type of mysterious sense, and the audience could be left puzzled wanting to see more of the groups music videos to find out who she or he is.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For our re search and planning we used the internet on the mac computers which was very helpful for us to research similar music videos to our idea we used websites such a 'You Tube' (www.youtube.com) And 'Google Images' (www.images.google.com) We also used a website called blogger (www.blogger.com) which allowed us to update any of our plans and ideas and it allowed our media group to view and give feedback on work we had been doing. For our actual filming we used a camera from college and we then uploaded our filming on a programme for final cut, this programme allowed us to add the audio from our song and put it together with the video, we were able to cut the video and stretch it to match what bit of audio we want it to match up with, we also were able to add text or different types of effects to our video. Since last year, there has been much improvements since the preliminary task music video, we have edited in debt, using the cut tool on final cut, cutting in particular places of the filming to match specific bit of music. Where we want the video to fit the beat we were able to cut using the 'razor blade' and give it a more choppy effect instead of fading each section we wanted in. I was able to transfer the music video into a Quicktime format and change the quality of the video making it into high or low quality. This was to upload it onto the blog (www.blogger.com) and youtube (www.youtube.com). Obviously we had more time in this task than the preliminary task from last year and we new we were going to be marked on it so we made a lot more effort on final cut. I also advanced my use of technology by learning to use the time remapping tool, speeding up our video at the chorus (in the rough cut) and slowing it down during the verses. Last year during the preliminary task last year we didn't really focus on these tools in the final video, we were mainly experimenting so we could use them in this years task. Photo shop was a very good programme to use for the Digipack (DVD cover and Magazine advert), we were able to print screen a picture from our video, and use this image for both the dvd cover and magazine advert, we were also able to save pictures we used as our logos for example the 'NME' and 'HMV' logo and drag them into place where we wanted them. We also were able to write our own text on the image, giving it the realistic effect, writing the name of the band and the title of there album, also writing the track list on the back view, and a bonus view for whoever is going to buy this and watch it, therefore they would feel they got something extra for their money, making it more appealing. We also were able to use effects such as the 'negative' effect for the DVD and magazine advert. These new technologies were helpful to maintain our genre with ordinary pictures that we used and filming that we filmed.