Evaluation

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

To research our genre, we used TV and youtube to research videos within the same genre including the music video that the band themselves made on youtube (The official 'Dr King' video by the Wall Street Riots), we did this so we could get shots and technique ideas for our own music video as we wanted to give it a professional feel when the audience watches it, which i think we succeeded in doing in our final piece as we used the rule of thirds and used other shots that made it seem quite professional. We also used youtube and google to look up our genre and our target audience, we used it to find out our audience profile and expectations of what a typical inde/rock band would be. We also went on to using Myspace to contact the band so we could get the permission to use their song, and they were very happy to let us use it for our coursework.

We then used photoshop to construct an album cover for our band, but the first attempt we did we didn't think was good enough as it didn't seem to link with our band genre, so we thought about how we could challenge conventions, we thought we could use the picture to the right as the photo was taken on location, but we decided not to use it because the lighting in the picture isn't very good quality. We ended up using the guitar picture below that we took when we were filming the live performance of our music video, which we also used for the poster.

We were happy with the second attempt of the album cover as it wasn't a typical shot of the band leaning against a wall, and it also gives the connotations of what the music will be like, while also giving a sense of mystery for new fans as they don't know what the band look like until they watch the music video.

The image to the left is the image we used for our album cover and poster, my group chose this image over the album cover we had before because we thought it linked to our genre more, and it's not like the album covers of other bands in the same genre as they tend to have a picture of the band against a wall or someone smoking or drinking. we thought it may be best like this as it makes our target audience remember our band more as it changes the connotations that the band portrays.

When constructing our music video we had to change cameras, we had to do this because the footage we had was pretty blurry when we uploaded it to the computer. We then switched to the HD camera which was slightly better, but we realized that it was blurry because the tunnel we were using didn't have enough lighting for the camera to pick up.

In the clip below, we used Final Cut Express to create sudden jump cuts, then with 'Stephanie' looking at the camera. For this shot I edited Colin's idea of having the lead character sitting on the curb, so the lead would lip sync the lyrics of the song, this was pretty hard to do as we had lip syncing problems so when Adam lip synced to certain part of the song it was out of time, so when it came to editing it into the video I had to place some footage over the parts where he was out of time. The bits that are left aren't as obvious to the audience watching the video as they didn't recognize the problems we had. Then when we finished editing our music video together, we used Photoshop to create a poster, the album cover, the back of the album cover, and the inserts for the album.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback we found that the results split mainly into male and female response categories. Our feedback confirmed what our research told us before we started making our music video.

We found that the females looked mainly at aspects of the band, like their costume. And the males looked at the mise en scene of the tunnel that the live performance is set in. This picture to the right shows us that the mise en scene that we chose for that section of the video as the different elements gave a sense of voyeurism within the video as our audience seemed to enjoy the different visual aspects of the video. Our group seemed to be successful when we tried to add an urban feel to the video by placing the live performance section in a tunnel which is lit by cars as the car headlights behind the drums seemed to emphasize the urban feel while helping the lighting in this shot.

Everyone who was included in the audience feedback could understand the narrative side of the video, but we found that the females had a better understanding of what was going on as they knew exactly what was going on, and the males just had a vague idea of what was happening.

This shows us that we made our narrative section better by making it black and white (shown to the left), as the audience could easily determine the narrative from the live performance and they said that our narrative section flowed well within the music video itself. Also, the audience liked the video and thought the narrative and live performance worked well together. Only one person noticed the problem we had with the lip syncing, but they realized that it was nothing major and there was nothing we could do about it as it was due to odd jaw movements.

We found that everyone said that they thought our video would appear on the music channels FME, Kerrang and MTV2. This shows that we managed to add synathesia into the video, as we portrayed the band's image and genre through the video as a whole. The audience also said that they felt that there was a connection between the lead singer's situation and emotions. The audience said that they felt that they had been in his social situation before and that made it more realistic for them.

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

When we were editing our video, I edited the footage that's shown above together the shots that go together towards the end where the song goes 'She doesn't like the gifts that I'm offering...' In this shot, the lead role goes towards this girl to give her some gifts and she literally pushes him away, making him almost stagger backwards. This was hard for me to edit together as I was trying to get the girl to push him away at the same time when the singer says the line 'she pushes me away', which I think went well as the end product looked really good. This develops conventions as in music videos of this genre, the guy either gets the girl somewhere within the video or he's simply chasing after her. Our video shows how he struggles to get her to even talk to him, making the audience sympathize and create an emotional link with him while following this story of how he wants her to see him.

I edited the shot of the guitarist so this shot, which is shown above in a still and the video clip. This shot appears at different times in the video. This was used to almost create a sense of voyeurism as it seemed like he didn't know he was being watched and it make the audience feel more aware of the video as it makes the video seem like the live performance goes in a bit of a circle. So then the audience feel that they are part of this video as they know when it comes into the video. We got the idea of having the band seem like they're unaware of being watched in certain shots from the video 'Who Can Say' by The Horrors, we also used this shot because we wanted the audience to feel part of this performance so they have more of an interest in the band and video.

The canted angle that is used in the first clip below, was the idea of me and Sophie. I found that editing this together pretty hard as we needed to get the actions of the band and the beat to match as closely as possible which I think we have managed to do. But we placed this canted angle into our video as in the music videos we saw, they all had a variety of shots, mainly with zooms and push ins. Using this, we used media conventions by adding voyeurism to our video as all the video isn't filmed upright and filming it at an angle makes it seem more interesting, especially as it isn't a sill shot. Also, when we used the 360 shot of the drums, we had to split the 360 shot up otherwise it would've been too long and the audience would've got bored of the video pretty quickly. We got the idea of the 360 shot from the song 'All The Small Things' by Blink 182, which had many shots and technique ideas that we wanted to use but we could only use a couple of these ideas as it would have seemed odd when watching the video.

The first shot above is the end shot, where I edited Colin's idea of the lead walking down the street with jumps so it jumped to certain jumps in the song, I made this more effective because now it seems more related to the song as before it randomly cutted to the singer walking a little further up the path without any link to the song. The group felt that it was effective as it's almost as if the singer has given up trying to chase 'Stephanie', it also creates an emotional bond between the character and the lead singer as the audience will sympathize with him as more people have been in his situation.

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

In the ancillary tasks we researched what our

target audience would prefer to see in a music video. As our target audience would be from the ages sixteen to twenty, we noted what our target audience preferred and looked for in music videos, then we went on to making our band's album cover. Our first attempt had a picture of our original band with a purple sky behind them, with a butterfly on the CD name. We had made it like this so it would challenge conventions and then make our target audience remember our band more. But then we decided it wasn't good enough so we re did the album cover so that the band didn't appear on the cover. The cover we went with was the second attempt which has a picture of a guitar against a wall. We went with this as we thought it represented our genre more and it was easier on the eye when you looked at it, which made it seem more professional.

We then went on to do a T-shirt with the original band logo to include in out video (left). This was Adam's idea to make and include this as it would visually give something to the audience which they will gain pleasure from when they see it on the main singer. This was originally linked with the first draft of the album cover where it had a hurricane logo as the dot for the i in the band name. We thought we would include voyeurism as it would link the album cover and the video together. It also goes by McKee's theory as it gives the audience something they want but not in the way they think they'll get it as they probably don't realize they'll get something out of recognizing this t-shirt. We decided not to go to with the logo idea as we thought it would be too much for the album cover, even though it would have been a good idea to link them together.

Then when we began with our main product, we had to start with thinking about what connotations that the band should convey to the audience. We chose to have them dressed in dull, dark colours to emphasize and go with the urban feel that we chose to have within the video. We then went on to think of the lighting that we could use and all of our group were happy and pretty enthusiastic when we came up with using the car headlights in the band as we thought it was the best choice, as other types of back lighting wouldn't have looked as good and it wouldn't have portrayed the right connotations. But post production, we came across a couple of videos that used the idea for car headlights, some were professional and some were amateur videos, which shows how this idea is effective with the genre we used. We followed Goodwin's theory when we filmed the music video as it goes 'the lights, her face, the beat...' we use the footage to illustrate the lyrics. We got the jump cuts from an amateur video we saw on youtube that was made to the song we used ourselves but it's the FrankMusik remix. Where the jump cuts are used to fasten the pace and emphasize the lyrics in certain points in the video.

Then we went onto making the poster and CD inserts for the album. For the poster, we used the same kind of picture as we did for the album cover, creating a link between the two. This makes a constant link between all our products, making the audience think of the music video, the band and the album cover when they see any of the products we made. This gives certain connotations of the band themselves as they don't constantly change their image or music style. The CD inserts were of one pictures we took on location when filming the music video