Tuesday 8 December 2009

Evaluation draft

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

1. Our music video uses a blend of traditional conventions of a pop/indie rock music video to create a colourful vibrant atmosphere. The feature video is heavily performance based this is expected of this particular genre of music. We have also chosen to include a narrative that runs throughout the whole video. This is used to keep up the fast pace of the video, from transition to transition, and to also give the audience something else to follow. We chose to stick with many of the main conventions of our specific genre of music, sticking with a vibrant location and even mix of narrative and performance. We also included one main performance location to repeatedly link back to throughout the video giving the video a much better sense of cohesion. The locations used depict an upbeat colourful atmosphere, this links back to the genre of pop. However we also used some video filters on certain pieces of footage to take the colour from the shots, this represents the jump from past to present, and also shows the darkened mood of the two characters. This counteracts the pop genre however one would argue it fits in perfectly with the sub genre of rock. Whilst producing the music video we took the time to develop the conventions for our specific genre, an example of this would be the singing in the car. Adding shots like this also helped us to add elements of comedy to the video which is never a bad thing when done correctly and in the right taste. We challenged the conventions of general music video's in different ways, one being adding stills to our video. When watched closely allot of our shots are actually stills, the occasions on which they are used are opportunities to cut to the beat. We really liked the idea of the characters moving up and down a park bench, we used a collection of different 5 second clips to put together and cut away to create a sequence of jumps, we then timed the shots correctly to create the cut to the beat. Our music video tends to stick to the very colourful pop/indie rock conventions. It uses the combination of brightly lighted locations and a fast frame rate to keep with a upbeat atmosphere. This music video was much different than anything we had looked at before not due to the generic characteristics. But the actual song was much more underground so a mainstream video would not of suited it and we tried to play on the fact that the song could of been classed as an indie rock video. This gave us a whole new set of conventions to play with. You can see these in the form of darker filters hence the black and white argument and the darker performance shots. Throughout most of our music video you can see the clear visual relationship between the music and videos one of theses is when the artist sings; "That i need to stay awake," he is drinking a cup of coffee in a cafe. these relationships are necessary in keeping with Goodwins characteristics of a music video. The ancillary products tended to stick with the generic conventions of the genre as they included bright colours and a main picture of the artist on both the magazine advert and digipak as a focal point. They also included necessary institutional information and the 'Pink Spiders' band logo.

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

2. The combination of our main task and ancillary tasks i believe works well, there is a very obvious visual relationship between the two ancillary tasks, this being the affect that is used on the background. We chose this particular affect as it brought out the very strong colours of the trees in the background. However if the image was just left naturally this could of also been done but not to the same affect, because as well as bringing through the colours from the tree's it also darkens everything else around them. We have left the artists face unaffected in both ancillary tasks, this is to create the link back to the feature video. We chose the image of the artist to connect with the video, as he is heavily illustrated in the video and is the main focal point. In doing this we ensure that our products sell as a group and are easily recognisable as a particular brand name (The Pink Spiders). The artist is represented as a confident singer and exciting performer. At first the footage we had was boring and very static, however after we discovered this problem we went out and filmed allot more performance based footage, except this time the artist looked allot more convincing and performed for the camera more. With this new improved footage including some more close ups we managed to include many more examples of the notion of looking and direct gaze. The three tasks also share a consistent theme; this includes Institutional information, bold text, and the original Pink Spiders logo. We created our graphics to relate to our genre of pop/indie rock, we used photo shop to mould and shape the affects into the most colourful and vibrant that we could achieve. The collection of all three products are effective and i believe could be used to launch a successful campaign for the artist.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

3. We have continually received feedback from different resources on our products and have tried very hard to take everything said on board. We also used this feedback to edit our products in the most efficient way. Most of the feedback we have received is verbal feedback from impartial sources. However our blogs are also available for anyone to view and comment on at any time. We received a comment from one source informing us that the pink spiders where no longer a band and therefore we needed to seek permission to use there song from Matt Friction who owns all publishing rights, unfortunately after following this up and trying to find the facebook page that we were given to contact him on we discovered that it was not possible to message him. We also received some feedback from our particular media class, basing them as the audience. From this we discovered that some of our shots where very static and therefore not synthetically pleasing, after receiving this feedback however we made an obvious decision to scrap allot of the footage that we had started with and to go back and film more interesting performance based shots. Thanks to all the different types of feedback we received we discovered the key to creating a truly great music video is diversity, the video must use a huge range of different shot types, locations, props, and affects. The footage used also needs to be diverse and quick to change to keep the audience interested and engaged. The feedback given from the audience regarding the music video however was generally positive, they were able to quickly identify the genre and noted that the range of shots and stills added a positive element.

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

4. The media technology available made it possible to create our video, however without one of the many programs that we used to research, create, film and edit our music video with this project would not of been possible. We used the Internet to research our products, finding different designs for our ancillary tasks on the web helped us to design our own. Without YouTube we would not of been able to research other videos in the same genre, this would mean we would be working blind and i am sure our final product would have been no where near as successful. In the construction stages we used programs such as 'Final Cut Express' and 'Photo Shop' to make our products look proffesioanl. We also used final cut to create a storyboard, this is very important to the whole project as it allowed us to see our plan of our video in video, not just written up in words on the blog. We used the website www.blogger.com to record all our planning and research for our main video and two ancillary tasks, this was another important program in the success of our project. Final Cut Express allowed us to edit our test footage which again helped the construction of the feature video as it meant that we did not make any foolish errors when filming for the real thing. However final cut helped us to construct a successful music video by allowing us to add filters on to our existing footage, and to also cut and change the clips we had with great ease. This added diversity to our video, and a good pace of transisions, it also allowed us to cut to the beat. When creating our ancillary tasks we used a mix of photoshop to construct the actual tasks and the internet to research and find institutional information. Photoshop greatly enhanced the possibilities available to us when creating the two ancillary tasks as it gave the options of different texts, affects, and colour schemes.

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