Evaluation

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video was influenced by Example's 'Kickstarts' and The Script's 'The Man Who Cant Be Moved'. The editing from videos were what inspired us to use split screens and the speeding up of clips in our music video. We thought that it would work well with our chosen song, because the split screening would go well with the snappy beat, and the slow mellow part of the song could be sped up on screen to suit the rest of the song.

  

Our music video does not follow all of the conventions for the genre 'Indie', because our song was a remix, and comes under  'Alternative Indie'. A Conventional Indie music video usually has the whole band involved in the video i.e. singer, drummer, guitar player etc, but our video only had the two singers. This was because we wanted Grace to be a solo artist, featuring a male singer, rather than a whole band. Conventions we have followed, have been the mise-en scene, and the typical personas of indie artists. Grace is dressed in clothes people associate with indie artists, and we have purposely shot some clips of Grace facing away from the camera, which is very typical of female indie artists in their videos and album covers.

Alternative Indie bands create music for a very small audience, and usually do not produce music videos to go with their songs. The XX have a few music videos, and by looking at them, we could see that their videos were done on a low budget, and this is probably because of their small market.



We noticed that the band did not make much connection with their audience, and are quite still in their music videos. This made us think about what our artists would be doing on camera,  and we decided not to make our artists move too much on the screen, and to try create movement by changing the camera angles instead.

My digipak design was influenced by the Green Day and the XX's album covers. I wanted to create something similar to these because they had very simple but strong graphic design.

The XX were the band on our song and their album cover did not have any photos of them, so I decided not to use a photo of Grace. My idea for using plant shapes in the background came from the Green Day album cover. I used the plant shapes to create a link to our music video (Shot of the leaves and trees), just like in the Green Day music videos with the hand.

My digipak follows the 'Digipak' conventions, but not all of the conventions for an 'Indie' digipak. A Indie album cover will usually have a photo of the artist/band or an image of something iconic to the genre i.e. a guitar. My digipak does not use any photos because I wanted to produce a digipak that was graphics based. This is not very conventional of Indie Digipaks, but the song was not completely Indie and was Alternative Pop/Indie so I thought that this style would suit it. My reason for making the 'A' larger than the rest of Grace's name on the digipak, was because I wanted to make the digipak more distinctive, so that people could recognise it easily and see the connection between the digpak and advertisement straight away. My digipak follows all of the other conventions of digipaks, and has; the artist name larger than the album title, the necessary logos/symbols, copyright information, track listing, websites, and a title on the spine.

Veruca Salt and Kislorod are two example's of Alternative Indie/Rock bands who have used graphics based album covers.

To link my digipak and music video to my advertisement, I made sure that I carried the design style of my digipak over to the advertisement. I kept the same colour scheme (Red, Grey,White), the same fonts, and used the exact same title/name design from the digipak to my advertisement. My digipak follows most of the conventions of an advertisement for a album, and has; the name/title, an image of the album cover, the same colours, the same fonts, logos of places to buy the album, out now or release date, and reviews/quotes from magazines.

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Q2) How effective is the combination of your main product (Video) and the ancillary texts (Digipak & Advertisement)?

There is not a clear visual link between the music video, digipak, and advertisement, but there is a subtle theme throughout the three. Our music video had a lot of shots of the outdoor (City, Sky, Trees, Leaves) and I carried this theme onto the digipak and advertisement, by using plant shapes/patterns in the background of my digipak and advertisement. My digipak and advertisement design was influenced by The XX's and Green Day's album covers, and was what inspired me to use the plant shapes to create the connection to the music video, and to not use any photos of Grace.

Alternative bands usually have album covers and advertisements that do not look very typical of the genre. This is because alternative artists/bands target small audiences, and try to show that they are 'Alternative' by being visually different to the typical genre. For example, Gorillaz are an alternative Hip-Hop band, but their album cover does not look like anything you would find in the Hip-Hop section of a shop, and looks more like a punk/rock cover.

Overall, I think that my digipak and advertisement design does look like it's from the Alternative genre, because it looks very different from other indie album covers/advertisement and does not fit clearly fit into a genre. I think that I could have made a stronger link between the three by maybe using a photo of Grace or an image of a particular shot in our music video.

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Q3) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout this project, I have used a variety of different media technologies to produce our music video, digipak and advertisement, including research, planning, and evaluation.

Media Technologies used:

Blogger

Blogger was used to do our blogging tasks, and was great for helping us organise our research and planning into separate posts on the blog. The tagging feature on Blogger also helped to organise our individual work, and saved us time looking through the entire blog.

Video Camera

A Video camera was used to record our footage and took a while before we got use to it. To develop our skills in using the video camera, we did a lip syncing practice, where we had a go at shooting a variety of shots (Tracking, Panning, Lengths, Angles). After figuring out how to use the camera, we were able to shoot our music video with our shots properly lit and in focus. On most occasions we also use a Tripod with the camera to keep a stable shot.

 Still Camera

A still camera was used to take photos of our filming sessions, and was also used to take photos of our paper storyboards, which were later on used to create our animatic storyboard.

Internet

The internet was used to do our research and planning, such as; watching music videos on youtube for inspiration, looking at exisitng advertisements/digipaks/album covers, researching our genre/song/artist, creating our mood board, and using wordle for the audience profile.

Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro was used to edit our footage and we used a variety of tools in Final Cut Pro, including; the razor blade to cut clips, tiling filters to create 9 panels of the same shot, speed adjustments to speed up a clip, transition effects to fade between shots, and markers to make sure that our audio was in sync with our video. Our animatic storyboard was also created in Final Cut Pro. We used the photos we took from the paper storyboards and imported them into the timeline with the soundtrack. 

Memory Cards

Memory cards were used to store our footage from filming sessions, and were used to import our clips into Final Cut Pro.

Photoshop

Photoshop was used to produce the main parts of my digipak and advertisement. All of the patterns/shapes, logos/symbols, and the main album title was created in photoshop. Photoshop is better for creating images and manipulating photos i.e. filters and effects, but is a bit fiddly when it comes to text.

Quark

Instead of using Photoshop to add text to my digipak and advertisment, I used Quark, because it was easier to put text on top of images without having to move layers, and saved a lot of hassle and time.

After getting use to using the different programs and equipment, I feel that I have learnt a lot on how to use them, and have seen a definite improvement from last year.

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Q4) What have you learned from your audience feedback


Music video responses:


'I liked the speeding up'

'Some shots were too dark'

'Some shots were a bit random'

'Good range of shots'

'I liked the split screen'

'It was hard to make out what the leaves said'

From the responses received in class, I have learnt that planning and attention to detail can really affect the the final outcome. Our first shots of Grace were filmed in a dimly lit room, and this affected the rest of our music video, because we had to keep the lighting consistent throughout. This meant that the shots of the male singer had to also be dimly lit and made the whole video dark. This has showed me that how you start your video will determine how the rest will turn out, so planning locations and making sure that shots are properly lit are really important.

The storyline of the music video can also affect how effective the video is at illustrating the song. A comment we received was 'Some shots were a bit random', and this made we think about wether some shots were actually relevant to the rest of the video. We wanted to show a boy and girl meeting up outdoors, and going off somewhere together, but the speeding up shots of the streets/roads confused people because the characters were not in the shots. From this piece of feedback, I have learnt that planning a properly structured storyline and the mise en scene, will improve how the song is portrayed visually to the audience.

Keeping ideas and camera shots simple will also help to illustrate the song. One comment we received was 'It was hard to make out what the leaves said', and this was because we used a low camera angle, which did not clearly show the letters that were further away. From this feedback, I have learnt that planning camera shots and how we would achieve them will affect what people see on screen. We had the ideas and how we wanted them to look, but did not think about if it was actually possible to film. We should of realised that it couldn't of been possible to film the leaves from a high angle because we were in the middle of the park without anything high to film from.

Overall, I have learnt that planning is very crucial when it comes to producing a music video, and paying close attention to small details can really make a difference between a good and bad music video.