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Evaluation

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

From existing music videos we can see that the forms and conventions used within them vary greatly. Therefore by challenging one aspect of a particular video we will unavoidably conform to that of another.

Our previous work for our foundation portfolio provided us with valuable skills in identifying forms and conventions within a genre and how we could apply them to our own production. We gained an insight into conventions of this particular genre in a similar way to our foundation work; by watching and analysing existing products.

Traditional conventions of the music video genre is the obvious use of a music track and visual representations of this music. It is most common to see the use of actors or the musicians themselves within the video; this can be seen in Paramore’s video for their single ‘Misery Business’ and also Brand New’s video for ‘The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows’, which both use the band and other actors to present their stories. As we do not have access to use the band of our chosen song in our production we have had to challenge this particular convention and have used actors only. However, actors were featured in place of the band in Death Cab For Cutie’s ‘What Sarah Said’ video, and so we are still able to present content conventions of certain music videos despite restrictions. Other forms used in music videos include animated characters, such as those seen in the videos for the band Gorillaz, however this is not a employable technique for our production due to equipment and time restraints.

Our foundation portfolio allowed us to become aware and accustomed to the restrictions in time, budget and equipment that would affect our planning in regards to location, actors and props. This allowed in us being able to more efficiently plan our advanced production accordingly. These restrictions inevitably resulted in us challenging the often clean-cut and professional conventional appearances of the music videos we are regularly exposed to, due to having to create our own props and use friends as actors. However i feel our awareness of these limitations was applied effectively and also worked suitably in our favour; handmade props allowed us to create a fantastical and ‘cartoon’ atmosphere as part of our fairytale theme for the video, and our choice of actors are within the age group of our target audience which would hopefully allow them to relate more to the video.

I feel the content of the story presented within our video is conventional in the sense that it is relative to the audience we would target. The representations of boy/girl relationships we used and the idea of an escape from the 'real world' is consistent with the interests of our target audience. Also, our use of teenagers to act within our video, although practically a matter of convenience and necessity, also allows for a higher potential positive feedback from our audience as they are of the same age group and therefore could be related to.

Within some music videos, techniques other than straight film can be seen. For example, in Oren Lavie’s video for ‘Her Morning Elegance’ is constructed entirely from the stop motion technique; a technique we have incorporated into our production in small clips but not throughout. Paramore’s ‘Hallelujah’ used photographs as well as video clips, forms we too have included in our production. This highlights the wide variety of techniques and conventions that are available and acceptable within the music video genre, which we have taken advantage of to present the production we had already envisioned in conjunction with the song when we had heard it.

The editing of our video is conventional to existing products within the genre as it matches the pace of the song itself and the atmosphere plot that is featured within the story; techniques that are used in editing for music videos and almost all moving image products.

We will be challenging the conventions of Paramore’s existing music videos, as our production will not feature the band themselves. However, we will mirror the song’s lyrics in our story – a form that is evident to some extent in all their videos.

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

Having to create ancillary products provided an added challenge that wasn't present within our foundation portfolio, and so the employment of effective time management was vital in order to finish these ancillary texts as well as our main product.

I feel the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is effective as we have strong, recognisable links through all of them.

The main product itself contains the music track itself which already has the recognisable style of the band, and we have attempted to literally translate the track's lyrics into a visual accompaniment. We have established the presentation of fantasy and storytelling as well as relationships within our video, which we maintain throughout our ancillary texts.

Our CD/DVD Digipak design features the storybook introduced within the music video, which establishes a link between the disk and the music video/song of it's contents. We have used a polaroid image of a heart for the disc face, which relates back to the relationship presentation within the video. The font for the title, tracks and the details on the insert are the same fonts used in official products released by the band, and so maintains their previously established theme.

Our magazine advert also features the same established fonts, and also relates back to our main product and Digipak design with the image references to fantasy and the story of the lyrics; butterfly, castle and flower. These images are edited to produced the idea that they are polaroid images; another theme we have continued throughout our main product and then Digipak design. The colour of these images are produced with digitally edited photographs of the band, grouped together and digitally created to fill the images. This is an obvious link to the band themselves.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To gain audience feedback we used the platform of instant messaging in order to receive opinions from people we have showed our main product and ancillary texts to.

"The video fits with the song and i love how you have put those tiny little details there and it looks like you guys have done a lot of work to make this video =)i love how it looks a bit "amateurish" cause it makes it look real. it doesn't look like Hollywood special effects x 1000 you know and that's why i like it. i think it's cool that you guys made this, and i really like it and i think you had cool effects there like those bricks in the "badababadababada" part."

This is positive feedback, suggesting the viewer enjoyed our product. The reference to the use of stop motion within our production is encouraging as initially we were unsure if our idea would translate into visual presentation successfully, but we feel it was indeed a success.

"Yeah i liked it! Some cool ideas going on there, I thought your mate looked like she was going to burst out laughing at the start though. I really like your advert, looks pretty well done to me, not so sure about the digi-pack covers though, you could maybe try out some different colours"

The criticism of the beginning shots featuring the 'princess' is something we have picked up on ourselves, as I feel it diminishes the overall professionalism of our product. However, the time restrictions (and the weather) meant we could not re-shoot these scenes and could only edit these particular shots to the best of our ability in an attempt to cut out these mistakes.

The comment on the Digipak is noted and I perhaps agree, however as we were trying to stay within the previous themes the band had already established within their official products (previously released singles from the same album featured a similar colour style) this might not have been able to be avoided. In hindsight, I would have perhaps used a different main image for the cover, however time constraints meant that this was not possible.

"as far as the shots go i think they were pretty good.... the first "head in the clouds" shot was weird because it was a little dark.... probably because you were shooting into the sun. i really like the whole idea especially the picture concept and the end"

Due to the weather and equipment we had to work with when shooting, the varying levels of brightness in the shots was almost unavoidable. We do note that the darkness of the particular clip referenced in this feedback is perhaps out of place, yet even with digital editing of the colours and contrast within the clip we could not match this shot with the rest of the video. I feel, however, that the occasional use of darker clips within the video highlight the plot as the 'princess' finds herself slipping out of her fantastical world.

"I like the whole concept of this with the photos and bricks and prince, and the stop motion parts are done really well. i thought the girl was going to start laughing most of the time and i didn't really like her facial expressions as i think she should have told the story more as the main character... but overall very creative"

This is another reference to the expression of our 'princess' in the opening shots, and we can see that this is the weakest point of our video. However, I do feel the shots were necessary in order to establish an idea of the scene and atmosphere of our video, it is just a negative point we could not re-shoot in time for our deadline.

"I might just not "get it" but about 1:14, was she reading the book back to front?"

This is a mistake that was not noticed at the point of filming, and once again we could not re-shoot once it was brought to our attention. We attempted to reverse the clip when editing, but this was not an effective solution and so we decided to include the clip regardless.

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

We used a variety of media technologies throughout the course of this production.

The internet was an important part in the research stage of our production. Youtube was used in order to research a wide range of pre-existing music videos in order to gain an idea on how we should present our production and also to inspire the story of our video. This was a useful resource as it is free and offers such a large variety of videos to see. We also researched existing Digipak and advertisement designs in order to plan our ancillary texts, and used our featured band's official website to gain insight on previously established themes of their existing products.

The filming of our main product was achieved with the use of video cameras and also a digital stills camera. These are now widely available to us at a reasonably cheap cost, whereas a few years ago it would have been difficult to produce our product on such a low budget. The techniques of filming with this equipment and the effects different shot and angle types have on the atmosphere of the product was much more familiar to us within this production, as we were able to build upon the basics we had learned within our foundation portfolio.

To edit our main product we used Mac computers and the iMovie software to capture the footage and the cut the clips and the music. We used the same technology within our foundation production; this previous experience allowed for a progression in awareness and efficiency in editing as we knew the limitations of the equipment and the effect they would have on our finished product. For example, in our foundation production we altered the colours of some of our clips; however this significantly reduced the quality of the clips in question, so for our advanced portfolio we were aware not to use the same effect. For our ancillary texts we used Photoshop to edit the images used on both our magazine advert and Digipak design, and then Serif Photoplus to construct the final designs; software we had not used in our foundation portfolio and so these were new skills we had to acquire to create our desired designs.