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Evaluation Question 1 : By Daniel Morton

1) How does your media product use, develop and challenge the conventions of real media products?

In comparison to other real media products, our Music video both develops and challenges the ideal conventions. This is because, despite only being 8 principles as suggested in Goodwin’s Theory, music videos heavily vary dependant on genre and the style of artist within them.
Not all of the points proposed in Goodwin’s theory were relevant, and therefore not used, during the production of our music video.
However we did attempt to use some of them to help with the process, the key points we focussed on included:

- The Link Between the lyrics and visuals, we did this by :

• Using specific shots where people held up placards with the lyrics written on them.

- The Link Between the music and the visuals, we did this by:

• Making sure that the band shots fitted with the music as it was playing in the background.

- Genre characteristics, we did this by:

• Making sure that the shots we filmed would fit in with the general conventions of a pop/punk music video. This ensured that the video looked more official.

- Narrative based, concept based or performance based music videos, we did this by:

• We mainly used performance based shots, which included many different shots taken of the band playing the song. This was done because it is more conventional with this genre/style of music. However we also used some concept based shots with the placards.

We stuck to these key conventions because it helped make the video more official looking and therefore maybe recognisable as a real media product. We developed an idea used by The American Rejects song “Dirty Little Secret” which has shots of different people holding up placards with their supposed secrets on. We liked this idea and therefore chose to use it in our own way, however instead of the secrets written on them we chose to place important lyrics from the song. We then edited these shots in time with the music so that the people holding the placards were shown in time with music so that people could read the lyrics as they were sung. This therefore linked the lyrics with the visuals, which is one of Goodwin’s points.
Other similar conventions used in pop/punk music videos would include the shot types, and very often within band performance videos, many close ups of the band playing their separate instruments are used, to collaborate with and develop this idea we used a wide variety of different close ups. This included shots of the singer at the microphone, the guitars during the solo, and the drums during key parts in the song.

We focussed heavily on the genre characteristics of the artist so that we could incorporate similar ideas into our music video. After doing research into other real media products we noticed that similar pop/punk artists used a mixture of both narrative and band performance shots. Therefore we had planned to use a similar mixture within our own video. However due to complications we were unable to film any narrative parts and therefore our video ended up having to be solely performance based. We took into consideration that having a completely performance based video would get tedious for the audience watching and therefore added some concept based shots, the placards.

Also we noticed how similar artists had very fast cuts in between different shots and to make our own video effective we had to do the same, because at first with slow longer shots of the band the video seemed really boring and took forever to get interesting, we had to change this.

Evaluation Question 2 : By Daniel Morton

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

Our ancillary task was to create a Digi-pack to go with our music video. The Digi-pack included:

- A 4 panel CD cover

- A poster or a magazine advert.

Our main product was the music video, for this we decided to use a college band called “Kids From The Summer” who fit into the pop/punk genre. For the digi-pack we chose to do the 4 panel CD cover and the poster rather the magazine advert, the digi-pack had to compliment the music video we created because the idea was that people would be able to recognise that the two were linked due to similar conventions from each.
To ensure that this was the case we attempted to keep similar themes within both products, to do this we played upon the styles of the artists and how the pop/punk scene seemed to fit in with lots of bright colours. As shown in their current logo for the band image:

Ways in which we made the digi-pack link with our music video included how we used similar images that were shown in the music video. The Poster and front cover of our CD artwork showed an image of the lead signers tattoo’s which say “Love” and “Lust” on his wrists. This directly links with the song title “Love or Lust” and also the tattoos can be seen during the video when the singer is holding the microphone:

Also on the digi-pack we tried to copy the style of writing used in the singers tattoo’s which wasn’t easy and trying to find a font in Photoshop took time. Eventually we found and chose to use a font which was similar to the tattoos.
However we only used this font on the back page of our CD artwork, as we believed that the font didn’t really fit in with the bands style, instead for the rest of the Digi-pack we used a font called “Sketchblock” which suited the band more. This was used on both the poster and album artwork.

Here is the poster:

Due to using the image of the singers tattoo’s in both parts of the digi-pack, a strong link between the ancillary task and music video has been made, as the audience will be able to identify that the two products are related.

Therefore I feel that both the digi-pack and music video both effectively work well together as they represent the bands style. This means that the products would efficiently reach the pop/punk audience members, due to the use of bright colours and performance based shots within the video.

Evaluation Question 3 : By Daniel Morton

3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In order to get audience feedback, we showed our finished products to other members within our media group along with other people including teachers and our families to gain a large range of views on the video. This made the feedback received more varied as we made sure not just to ask people who knew who the band were or liked that style of music.
However we did ask some people who followed either Kids From The Summer, or similar artists to make sure we received their opinions on whether we had targeted the video correctly and that it appealed to the correct audience.

Some Positive feedback we received included:

- “Good band shots”
- “Effective setting that suited the style of the music”
- “I like the placards with the words”
- “Quick editing was effective for the pace of the music”
- “Simplicity was effective”
- “Quick cuts in the time with the music worked well”

Some Negative feedback included:

- “Repeating shots too much”
- “Using the same person with the cards was noticeable”
- “The placards looked like you were filling space”

This feedback has shown us what was good and bad about our video, and therefore reflecting on the feedback as a group we were able to pinpoint what things we would consider changing or removing if we were to re-make our music video.
Some things we said we do differently included:

- Following the storyboard more and re-doing it again if our plan needs changing. This will prevent us having to fill in gaps in the video last minute.

- Making sure we film more than enough footage, so we have a wider variety of shots to choose from and won’t necessarily have to repeat certain shots again.

- Making sure we don’t re-use the same shot more than once, or include shots that look too similar, because the feedback shows that the audience clearly noticed that we had used the same shots more than once.

- Practicing using effects and different camera skills beforehand which will both enhance the overall videos quality. But also allow us to change the effects during editing much faster giving us more time to perfect the video, because we won’t be trying to learn how to do them.

Evaluation Question 4 : By Daniel Morton

4) Have you used new media technologies?

Throughout the production of my music video I have used many new media technologies, for all aspects of my A2 coursework piece.

- Research
- Filming
- Editing


Research

During the start of my production we researched into various other artists’ music videos, to gain ideas and find out what sort of conventions we would need/want to use in our own video. To find these videos we used a mixture of both:


www.youtube.com
www.myspace.com


We then logged the research done onto our blog site, which is a new technology to me because last year a majority of my work had to be hand written. Using Blogger we were able to keep all our research and ideas well organised and also allowed easy access to it all at any time, so we were able to look back at any of our work and reflect/ change our ideas later on. On the blog we were able to upload videos and images which is a large improvement on written notes, because having the video/ image in front of you whilst reading the analysis makes it a lot easier to remember why we were looking at those ideas.


Filming

When filming the video this year we had access to new HD cameras with SD cards in rather than recording using cameras with tape. This made the whole process of filming and editing a lot easier. Also because the cameras were HD the video quality was a lot higher than it would have been if we had used the older cameras.


Editing


Editing was a lot different this year due to the use of different software for myself, last year at college I used Adobe’s Premier pro, while this year for editing purposes I have used both Final Cut Pro for the video footage and also Photoshop for a lot of the Digi-pack.
Although Final Cut was a new program to me the basics of the program were fairly similar in how it worked and I was able to work it all out fairly swiftly.


In final cut we had to capture the footage we had filmed beforehand, and also add in the music from the song “Love or Lust”. We then chose the shots we wanted to use and spent time aligning them with the correct parts of the music so that it looked in place and you could see that the singer was singing during the right parts, or the guitar being played was the same, this got fairly intricate when our shots started becoming shorter and faster cuts in between.


Whilst editing the video we tried using a few different visual effects to give it a different feel, one of these was a black and white effect, which was initially within our storyboard. However after placing it on the video we decided it looked better without it. Also because some of the things we wanted to do with the video were too hard, we decided it would be more time efficient to leave them out, these included such effects as having specific parts of the shot in colour e.g. an instrument.


When it came to editing and creating our Digi-Pack we used Photoshop, with this we were able to edit the photos we had taken of the band. We were able to use different effects and techniques to get the look we wanted, which involved taking the image of the tattoos and having everything but the words on the tattoos in black and white. The original colour of the tattoos were just black however after we edited the image they were a bright red, which is more conventional for the style of music.
Here is the image:

Evaluation Questions - Alex Jones

1) How does your media product use, and challenge the conventions of real media products?

Challenging conventions of a music videos can be a very hazy affair due to the very non linear conventions contained within a music video. Genre and Style are critical elements that constitute towards a music video and the conventions fall in around these two necessities depending on what they are and how they are portrayed in the music. Goodwin’s theory lays out the 8 major principles that are universally applicable to any music video.
Our video stayed true to Goodwin’s theory and his principles in order to ascertain a higher quality real media product that would appeal to the target audience and enhance the viewing experience. We put a high focus on using typical conventions from our genre of music "Pop/punk" this allowed to make an appealing video that would represent the bands image and personal identity and allow the audience to get to grips with the band and the music.
Goodwin’s first theory of “links between music and lyrics” was incorporated in a very predominant style. The lyrics "love" and "lust" are repeated throughout the course of the song, so we utilized this idea of music and lyrics and drew up placards with these 2 words on them and had people hold them up in time with the music. We garnered this idea from, we garnered this idea from the All American Rejects video "Dirty Little Secret" who are a famous pop punk band that use this convention. This also allowed us to incorporate the bands fan base into our video, by using various people that had suited image and musical preference towards the bands own style and genre allowing audiences to relate back to the type audience that may engage with this style of music. This is often done in various real media texts by pop punk bands (such as All Time Low and Boys Like Girls) where these bands are seen playing live to their stereotypical target audience. We needed to film the piece in the style the music would play best to. Our song was fast paced meaning we would need quick cuts and snappy shots. We noticed this was a typical convention in many existing media texts so were keen to incorporate this into our own video. It worked well and allowed the music video to flow and tie in with the genre of music.
We used the convention of "genre characteristics" by rep resenting the band in their typical pop punk attire (bright coloured clothing, skinny jeans, long hair) that represented the bands image. These aesthetics played a key role and really allowed the audience to engage with the band and their genre of music as they had a physical representation of it due to the bands style.
We used lengthy shots of the lead singer so the audience could "get to know" the band and the person fronting it. Many real media texts use this as conventions pop punk bands such as Weezer use timely shots to capture the lead singer and therefore gain an understanding for who is who.
We wanted to incorporate the bands live energy. We saw many real media texts use both narrative and performance based footage together as a convention. We intercut

footage of the placards with the band playing live to utilize this convention and capture the bands energy. This also tied in with principal 8 of Goodwin’s theory "performance based, narrative based or concept based videos"
We also used the convention of links between music and visuals by having close ups of guitars at parts when they suited the music, such as solos and riffs.
Our music video failed to challenge conventions more or less however we did vary certain things such as having the band play to empty space (Ie: no audience was present)

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

We followed the brief as strictly as possible, it outlined that we had to make a music video combined with a digi pack and promotional material. So we put this brief into motion. Our video was for the song "Love or Lust" by Kids from the Summer, we felt that this was the best song they had written and were keen to help them promote it. We combined this video with a digi pack they included 4 CD panels and a promotional poster.

We had running themes throughout the two products. This meant that the target audience could relate one to the other and see the link between them. This worked effectively and people said to us they could see the link between our video and digi p ack. We needed to incorporate the bands style and genre into both products. We put the individual band members on each of the panels with their name, this let the audience get to know the band and find out who was who. This linked back to our music video as we had them in the same clothing they had on in the video and digi pack. This ensured the audience could see who was who in both the digi pack and video; the two complimented each other nicely. The photos of the band displayed them doing funny poses with colour backdrops and their instruments, this allowed the style of the band to come across in the digi pack. It showed the bands energy and portrayed them as fun and energetic which we felt really suited their music and how they played during the video.

We wanted to show continuity between the video and text in the digi pack. We did this by using a photo of the lead singer’s tattoos (Love and Lust on each wrist) and attempted to mirror this on the back of the CD which also used a swirly style of font. Colouring was an issue for us during the process of the front cover. At first we used very dark colours (predominantly black) to surround the singer’s wrist and bright red for the font of the tattoos. We felt this did not represent how the band were in the video and made their genre seem more "Gothic" and "Emo" so we toned the black down and made it more of a blue colour and the red less intense to portray the band in a more light hearted way that represented their genre. For the poster we used a slightly different font to as we felt the curly, swirly font did not represent the band quite how we wanted we used the font "Sketchbook" which we put in colourful style and slanted positions to further emphasise the bands energy they showed in the video

Here is the singers tattoo as featured in the video:

Here is the redraft of the singers tatooe we edited in Photoshop, once we had taken a picture of it:





The blue in much more predominant the image represents the song well as it contains it primary links, it worked efftively as the tatooe is seen in both the video and the digi pack making a clear link between the two. Here is our poster depicting the font:


As you can see the poster heavily features orange, purple and yellows as a predominat font colour, we got inspiration of this from a previous font the band had used on an EP they had released a while back:
Ti imporve continuity we could have incoperated more of the features of the video. These include the placards and the fanbase, we could have had a different fan on each pannel holding up a placard with one of the band members names one, or have multiple placrds with different lyrics from the song on as the front cover. Altogether I feel we did a good job at making a clear link between our digi pack and our video, the bands style was seen in both as was the running theme of font, the use of colours (As seen on the placards and the font in the digi pack) and the enery the band have (in the video playing live and on the still photos of them doing funny poses)

3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

To assess the effectiveness of our media product we needed to gather an adequate range of opinions on our music video, both positive and negative in order to evaluate the quality of our product. We did this by showing people the music video and getting them to write down things they liked and things they didn't like. This way we could see the pros and cons of our product, what we did well and how we could improve in future tasks. We asked many different people: students from our media class, some of our peers around the college, the teachers, family and finally people we thought would like the type of music the band played or similar artists to them. This we could gather different perspectives from different typed of people to get an unbiased and reliable set of opinions.
Here is some of the positive feedback we ascertained:

• Good band shots
• Effective setting that suited the style of the music
• I like the placards with the words
• Quick editing was effective for the pace of the music
• Simplicity was effective

From this feedback we can see the shots we used were effective; we used a wide range of shots in the video (High angle, low angle, close ups, mid shots, tracking shots) these shots combined with the quick cuts (which was another positive from our feedback) paced the music out well and allowed the music video to come to life and feel energetic and lively. For our setting we chose to film the bands performance on Worle schools stage. This was the perfect setting for a performance, the stage added realism to the live action, and it was a believable setting and contributed a concert like atmosphere to the bands performance. It also had a colourful backdrop that we felt added colour to the performance and made it look more aesthetically pleasing. The use of placards was also complimented on, we thought these would be a good opportunity to introduce the bands fan base and allow the lyrics to link in with the music, this also kept the video simple and people could relate to it and understand what was happening (as said in the feedback)

Here is some of the negative feedback we ascertained:

• Repeating shots too much
• Using the same person with the cards was noticeable
• Placards looked as though you were filling space

This feedback has shown what we can improve on if we ever do a similar project. Narrowing down the number of similar shots will add more variety to our project and keep the audience more interested; in future sticking to our storyboard and hot list will provide us with important shots we can use to get different aspects of the band onto camera. We should have also improved out editing techniques and taken better advantages of the technology at our disposal to make shots with the same person in look less duplicated and add an effect or something to differentiate to two. We should have also filmed more footage so we wouldn't have to use the same shot twice. In order to address the "filling space" feedback, we felt we shouldn't have rushed the video as much and taken more time and care over it, we had to ditch the original idea on our storyboard due to time constraints. Making sure we are on track to reach the deadline at all times will prove beneficial in garnering the required end project we want to achieve.

4) Have you used new media technologies?

We used a variety of different programmes and web based engines to create our media product, these enhanced the quality of our media product and allowed us to do thing that would not be possible in reality.

Blogger:
The first piece of technology we really utilised was "Blogger" this is a web based blog programme that allows you to record all the work you've done towards you project in one place that you can look back at and present your work on. This was particularly beneficial during the research as we could embed videos and refer back to them whilst making our video. The technology also allowed us to present images and stills of idea we liked or screens from our music video we could then write about why we had chosen these shots which was very helpful towards making our project.

We could display information in different ways on the blog a popular way of doing this was using the website "Wordle" to create a mind map like display of ideas and relative words about our music video, this made recording data more interesting for people reading the blog and added colour to the site.

Filming Equipment:

We had a wide range of technology as our disposal for filming, we had HD cameras that displayed high quality footage and allowed us to film with much better resolutions. The camera also contained different effects we could use and built in options to enhance filming. The cameras contained micro SD cards; this was a far more efficient way of capturing footage and was easy to upload onto the Macs via Final Cut Pro's log and transfer method. We could also take still images using this camera which was ideal for taking shots of our location shoot. We also had brand new tripods which allowed us to get various angled sots and keep the camera steady whilst we could be checking up on other things whilst the camera would continue to film in the required position. On the day we had access to large sound system to play the music through and allow the band to mime to the music video easier, this made the video more realistic and believable. The stage also contained high tech lighting which really enhanced the quality of our footage and made it look very professional.

Editing technology:

Final Cut Pro was a crucial part of our editing. It allowed us to upload all of our footage onto the programme and place in the order it should assemble in. We could put a layer of audio into the programme, we utilised this by putting our song into the programme and syncing the shots in time we our music. The programme was very useful when shortening the length of the song; we could cut parts out and add linking bits in to make the song shorter, yet keeping the editing seamless. The effects allowed us to fade out the song so it would not end abruptly and also allowed us to put light filters and colour enhancers onto the footage to make it seem more professional.

Here is a typical display of Final cut pro, here you can see the use of the fade out and the layering between the image and the audio, we could also determine the length of each shot on this programme and could place them into position.

When filming the placards we noticed various things could be seen on the walls where we had filmed, this detracted quality from the video so we used Final Cuts crop tool makes the shots slimmer and cut anything out of the shot that took away from it.

Here is the before and after of this:



As you can see the shot is a lot more streamlined and much more asthticaly pleasing.

We had also planned on useing Final Cut Pros use of effects to add colour accents to the video, but ditched this idea due to time constraints.


Digi Pack and Poster:


We predominantly used Photoshop in making the digi-pack. It allowed us to enhance the look of photos and create different styles to display them in. We were able to add a panelled to display to our CD casing and filter certain colours to enhance the look of the back of the CD. We also used Photoshop with the front cover. It allowed us to de-saturate the colour of the Lead Singers tattoos and add in a newly coloured background. We could also change the colour of the Tattoos font, this would not have been possible without Photoshop. We garnered the fonts used in our dig pack from the website "Dafont" we could save the fonts we liked and import them into Fontbook, this way they were useable on Photoshop. The fonts we chose reflected the bands style and the genre of their music and worked effectively with the digi-pack