Evaluation By Tabby Jones

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

Music videos have very vague conventions in which they should include which meant we could not really challenge any conventions as such. Different genres of music video contain convention typical to that style of music but overall, music videos can include anything the producers wants to. However, Goodwin proposed the theory that music videos should contain these 8 basic principles:

1) Link between the lyrics and visuals

2) Link between the music and visuals

3) Genre characteristics

4) Intertextual references

5) Notions of looking (objectification of women)

6) Voyeurism (direct gaze, other people looking at the artists, insights into the artists life, screens and mirrors)

7) Demands of the record label (representation of the artist)

8) Narrative based, concept based or performance based music videos

We tried to stick to these conventions in order to make our music video more successful as a real media product. We incorporated some of the basic principles but focused mainly on creating a music video that used conventions from the specific genre of pop/punk. We linked the lyrics into the video narrative with the use of placards containing key words from the lyrics. Different people were filmed holding the different placards.

We mirrored the use of placards from The American Rejects video for their song "Dirty Little Secrets" in our music video. They had secrets written on placards held up by different people so we adapted this idea to show the key parts of the lyrics. We also linked the music to the visuals by using quick cuts to show each placard in time with when the word is sung. The genre of our music video is pop/punk so we used the conventions typical of that style of music to make our video appealing to its target audience. Half the video was quick cut shots of a live band performance which is often used for this style. The shots were intercut with the footage of the placards. The quick cut pace worked well with the upbeat style of the band. We used close ups of the singer or other band members instruments to establish a visual comparison to key parts of the music, for example, when the lead guitarist plays the solo. We also used the convention of using genre characteristics through the bands fashion and we continue this into the digi pack, to link the two products together. The band members wore bright t-shirts with skinny jeans which is typical for the audience who listen to pop/punk music. The use of bright colours in the digi pack also ties into the fashion style which would make the package overall more appealing to its target audience.

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

Our main product was a music video for a pop/punk band Kids From The Summer. We chose their song Love or Lust to create the music video for. To compliment this we also created a digi pack which included four CD panels and an advertisement poster for the music video we created and the release of the album.

To ensure that our digi pack, the four panels and poster, and the main product, music video, worked well together we had to keep running themes and styles throughout. This will make it clear to the target audience at a glance that the two products are combined.

We had difficulty with creating the desired effect for the music video because we were unable to film the narrative how we intended. This meant we had to change the design of the narrative section of our music video which resulted in us having to change the overall look of the digi pack in order to keep them consistent with one another.

The text of the digi pack and poster had to link to ensure the continuity of the two products, however this was a difficult task as the front cover of the digi pack is a photo of a tattoo with the words Love and Lust. Because the image is of a tattoo this meant replicating the font was a challenge. The back cover has the most similar swirly font to the tattoo we could find to make the product look more proffessional with the continuity. We did not stick with this font throughout the whole digi pack because the swirly font did not represent the bands style very well. Instead we chose to use a font, Sketchblock, that went well with the pop/punk genre on the inside panels.

On the poster we used the same Sketchblock font to show a clear link and used bright neon colours to make the poster represent the lively personality the band members and their music. The colours will also make the poster more appealing for the fan base as they are mainly following the pop/punk fashion which involves a lot of bright colours.

We then used the image of the tattoos from the front panel of the digi pack as the centre image for the poster. The image, alongside the matching font, with make sure that those interested in buying the album would easily recognise it from the advertisement poster if it was sold in store.

The image on the front cover of the album artwork is a photo of the lead singers tattoos. The tattoos are of the title of the song and can also be seen during the music video, they can easily be connected with the lead singer as a traidmark to him. By using the tattoos as the main image we linked the video and the band to the digi pack. Also because this is a promotional pack that is advertising a new band the branding of the tattoo can make the audience and fans relate to the lead singer and follow his style. Below is a screen shot from our music video where the tattoo is visable.

Once we had changed the narrative from a running story to quick cut shots of placards that showed the lyrics and song title, the digi pack did not link with the video. In order to keep this continuity between the two products we should have incorporated the placards within the digi pack to make the product as a whole more effective.

Both the video and the dig pack are representative of the band and the genre of music. This means both the products will be suited for the target audience, as the fan base is mainly of the same pop/punk style. The bright colours of the digi pack, funny pictures of the band members and quick cutting shots in the video all link into the style we were trying to portray.

3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We showed our final copy of our Love or Lust music video to other media student, teachers and families to get a wide range of opinions on the final product as a whole. We also made sure we asked people who follow bands with a similar style to Kids From The Summer to see if we were successful in creating a music video that appealed to the right target audience. This is some of the positive and negative feedback we recieved:

1) Good band shots

2) Effective setting that suited the style of the music

3) I like the placards with the words

4) Quick editing was effective for the pace of the music

5) Simplicity was effective

6) Quick cuts in time with the music worked well

7) Repeating shots too long

8) Using the same person with the cards was noticeable

9) Placards looked as though you were filling space

Our audience feedback has taught us a lot about what works well and what is not so effective when creating a music video, especially in the style of punk/pop. Here is what we would consider editing, cutting or changing if we were to re-create our music video:

1) Follow the storyboard more and if the storyboard has to change we should re-draft it because it will give us a sense of direction and structure and we will know exactly what shots are needed

2) Film more footage so we have more options and a variety of shots

3) Practice with the effects beforehand with test footage as the effects would have enhanced the style of our video. Especially the colour accents as vibrant colours are shown throughout the digi pack and are traditionally related to the target audience

4) Make sure we do not use the same shot twice or shots that are too similar because it is very noticeable when watching back the final product. Once the audience notice this they are then distracted from the video itself

4) Have you used new media technologies?

Research and Planning:

We logged all of our research and planning onto Blogger which allowed easy access to all the information we had gathered. It meant we were able to look back and reflect on our research and this in turn made the creativity of our music video easier to achieve. This was because we were able to upload existing music videos so in the end we could collaborate all the ideas we liked from the blog and create our own music video.

Blogger also acted as a diary for us where as a group we could record what we had achieved in the lessons and what our aims and objectives were for future lessons. We could also set mini deadlines of what we needed to achieve and for when, and schedules so every member of the group knew what was going on.

We worked on presenting our information on Blogger in different ways. The technology allows us to embed videos from YouTube which meant we could have specific examples from existing media products that influenced our work on the blog. We could also include images from the internet which made the posts easier to follow because less words and more visuals made our planning clearer.

We used the site Wordle as a way to show some of our ideas. By adding in key words we were able to create a bubble or mind map of different ideas which we could later work with. This not only allowed us to show our ideas in innovative ways but made it clearer for us as a group to understand when it came to establishing our ideas.

Filming:

During this project we had new HD cameras available for us to use. This enhanced picture quality and also made the editing stage easier for us. The cameras use SD cards which makes the capturing of the footage quicker. In Final Cut Pro we had to Log and Transfer the files instead of Log and Capture. Log and Transfer enabled us to capture individual clips instead of the whole sequence of footage. We were able to film short sections of footage which meant each shot was easier to work with instead of having to cut the whole sequence into short sections.

Editing:

We used Final Cut Pro for the editing of the footage. The programme allows us to cut shots to the length we want and order them into a sequence. By using layering we had the shots over the soundtrack to make sure the visuals were cut in time to the music. We cut out parts of the music and added in other sections to make the editing sound seamless. We also cut the repeated choruses at the end of the song out to make the song a more appropriate time length to work with. Final Cut Pro allowed us to fade out the song when we wanted to. This meant it was not noticeable to the audience that we edited the end of it and made sure the song did not end abruptly (see image below).

We used the crop tool on Final Cut Pro to edit the shots including the placards. We filmed the shots around college and outside distractions could be seen, like posters etc. The crop tool allowed us to remove all of these and make each shot the same size, this meant the attention was kept completely focused on the person and the placard and gave an overall more proffessional look to the footage.

We added a black and white effect to the video but decided that it took away the liveliness of the video and the colour kept the personality of the band and target audience. We were planning on adding colour accents to the video, however, due to time constraints and lack of knowledge with Final Cut Pro in creating the effect we decided the footage, even though it was left without any effects, looked more effective and less tacky.

Digi Pack:

For the digi pack we used Photoshop to edit the photos we took on the day of filming. Photoshop allowed us to use a wide range of effects to create the look we wanted from just an ordinary photo. The front cover is a photo of the lead singers arms with the tattoos of Love and Lust. We used various colour tools to create the effect we wanted. The writing on the tattoo was originally plain black but we used the colour filter to remove the dark colours and replace them with shades of red. The red tied in to the bright colours that is traditional to the genre of the music. We also changed the contrast to make the hands a bright white colour. This worked well with the bright red of the tattoo.

The font we used was downloaded from a website called Dafont. We chose a font called SkeychBlock from a wide range of different style fonts. The site gave us the chance to find a font which best suited the bands personality and the genre of the music. Once we chose the font we imported it into Font Book which meant it was available to use in Photoshop.