Evaluation- Amy Thrush

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

There are many conventions of music videos which we needed to consider when producing our music video such as camera shots, movements, mise-en-scene and editing. In particular with music videos for indie music, they use a wide range of camera shots mainly close ups, long shots and mid shots.

We used a wide range of shots in our music video such as close ups, mid shots, long shots and over the shoulder shots. We used a wide range of shots in order to show the audience what is going on around them and also to create emphasis on different parts of the song. Close ups are also a good way of showing the different emotions which are being portrayed through the song lyrics and also a good way of showing lip syncing from the singer. These are some examples of a range of close up shots we used throughout our music video. This close up of the girl was a great and effective way of portraying the emotions on the girls face. This is a crucial part of our music video, due to the fact that she walks into her house and realises than the band members had followed her and now in her house. Therefore you can clearly tell by her face that she is confused by this when at the end of our music video, the band is there, she looks away and then they have disappeared.   

Generally indie music videos are very simplistic; therefore we only used a few camera movements such as zooms and pans. In our music video we used one zoom and a few pans. I think the zoom we used was very effective of showing good camera skills and also adding emphasis to the narrative part of our music video. When the boy is following and sits down on the bench next to her, the camera then zooms up onto both of them as the girl gets up to walk away. When the audience are watching this clip they are drawn to the fact that the girl is ignoring the boy and the fact that she is walking away from him, which is giving the audience good knowledge on the narrative.

Costume was a very important part of our music video. In our narrative part we support the theory of the male gaze, in the clip where the guitarist is flirting with another girl, the girl is blonde haired and is wearing black and red. The male gaze theory suggests that blonde women are more attractive and the colour red has connotations of seduction and lust. When his girlfriend enters the park to see the guitarist flirting with another girl, she is wearing green. Green connotes jealousy, which is the mood that this girl is feeling in this clip. We decided to do this in order to make the audience feel more involved in the music video and to understand the emotions and feelings the actors are having. In the performance aspect of our video we chose to have all the band members wearing smart clothing, all wearing dull dark colours such as grey and black. In result of this the audience will focus purely on the music and not the band members.

Our editing was included quick cuts all the way through, because we think made our music video reflect our genre of indie the best. By using quick cuts creates tension and suspense to the audience, which fits right in with our narrative part of our video. When looking at existing videos, they seem to use very limited transitions in their music videos and tend to look more relaxed. In contrast to pop music videos which are extremely eccentric and colourful. When editing our video we decided after putting all the clips onto the timeline that in fact the music video flowed well without adding transitions and gave it a more ‘individual’ edge to it. The song ‘Footsteps’ is mainly the same tone all the way through, therefore by having quick cuts and short clips keeps our audiences attention by having a lot going out which will persuade out audience to carry on watching the music video.   

We however broke the 180 degree rule in our music video, where the girls back was to the camera. This was in the narrative part of our music video when the girl opens the door to see the band. This rule is rarely broken in any types of media, however we came to the conclusion that our music video still worked well even though we broke this rule.

When looking at the conventions of a digipak under the indie genre are yet again very plain and simplistic. Digipaks roughly six to eight sides to a digipak, they include a recognisable  font, name of the band/artist, name of the album, list of songs, price, barcode, record label, song lyrics, images of the band/artist, history of the band/artist and thank yous from the band/artist.  After researching into existing digipaks from the indie genre from bands such as Kasabian and The Black Keys, we realised that they lack vibrancy and colour. This is why we came to the conclusion of using black and white as our overall theme. Indie music digipaks lack much further information from the band; therefore we only included the name of the band, the album of the band, list of the songs, barcode, barcode, record label and song lyrics for one song. The images we used on our digipak reflected the conventions used in an indie digipak, by the images not showing the band members faces, this reflects the genre of indie as they believe the music is more important than the fame and image of the band. Indie bands generally are selling their music and not themselves. After researching further into indie digipaks, we decided we would not include any information on the history of the band and did not include any thank yous from the band. The reason we did not include these is because indie bands tend to focus more so on the music, rather than giving their fans information on themselves. If we were producing a digipak for a different genre such as pop music, we would have included much more information, however we thought by not including this information it reflected the genre of indie much more.

We investigated into the conventions of real magazine adverts then main ones include, recognisable font, name of the band/artist, name of the album, when the album is being released, website address, where you can buy their album, feedback and ratings from local businesses and tour dates. When planning our magazine advert and researching further into the adverts used by existing indie bands we came to the conclusion that we were only going to include a select few of the conventions. We included the name of the band, name of the album, the date the album is being released, their website and feedbacks and ratings. We included the same font as we included in our digipak, this will be a recognisable font to our target audience and this font will be automatically associated with the band.

When looking into existing indie band adverts it gave to our attention that very few actually had images with the bands faces showing, we liked this idea as it would fit right in with the theme of our digipak and also the genre of indie. The lighting in this image is one of my favourite parts of our magazine advert, I like how the shadows of the band members are visible which I think fits perfectly with the genre of indie as indie music is very edgy and mysterious which are connotations of shadows.  From our research we discovered that indie genre likes their advertisements to be plain and simple, which I think we gained our inspiration from for both our ancillary tasks. We included feedback from Q magazine, NME and The Daily Mail; we chose these three as they are all going to be opinions from different perspectives- NME being the main critic of bands particularly from the indie genre. Originally we produced two plans for our magazine adverts, one including the tour dates and one without. After gaining more feedback from out target audience it seemed that they preferred the advert that did not include the tour dates. Therefore when selecting our final magazine advert we took this into consideration and the fact that the poster including the tour dates looked more compact and untidy, making the poster less effective on the audience to draw them in to read the advert.

Our use of conventions on our music video and both our ancillary tasks will appeal to our target audience. Our target audience will be people who are already interested in indie music; by not have the band members showing I think will attract more of the female audience due to the fact that the band members are teenage boys. The link between the footsteps image and the name of the album which is ‘Footsteps’ will help greatly in attracting our audience in due to the fact that this will be easily recognisable for the audience.

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

Having ‘brand identity’ and a ‘house style’ is important when creating multiple media products so that the band/artist can easily be recognised by their audience. When producing out music video and both our ancillary tasks we made sure they all linked in some way. We have created brand identity by linking the image of footsteps with the name of the album; we then used this same image in our magazine advert. We also used the same fonts throughout the digipak and magazine advert; these will then be recognised by their audiences and will automatically be associated with the band ‘The Jefferson Brick’. Our theme throughout our music video, digipak and magazine advert was black and white, with exception to the narrative part of the music video which is bright and in colour in order to differentiate between the performance and narrative aspects of the video. The style of our music video and both ancillary tasks are all very simplistic and dark, both of the backgrounds of the digipak and magazine advert are black. This is suggesting straight away to the audience that the genre of the music is indie, which is backed up by the images on both the digipak and magazine advert where none of the band members faces are visible.

I think our digipak design will sell our song due to the fact that the images on the front cover is an image of footsteps which relates well back to the name of the album ‘Footsteps’. When our audience looks at the front cover they will instantly know that the image of footsteps is something to do with the band, which will draw them in to find out about the album. Indie music will already appeal to our target audience, which is why having the theme of black and white will draw our audience in as these colours are usually associated with indie music. By using the theme of black and white is suggesting to the audience that the band are not bothered about the publicity and fame therefore their advertisements and merchandise are simple and straight to the point. The colour black is also suggesting to the audience that there is a hint of mystery involved in the band, which will draw the audience in to wanting to listen to their album.

The images uses throughout the digipak and magazine advert are all in black and white. By having the band members facing the back on an image used on both the digipak and the advert is suggesting to the audience to listen to the music and t go and see the band perform. As the bad are facing the back suggesting that the audience should follow them and open the digipak to listen to their music. By having ‘brand identity’ and linking both our digipak and magazine advert they will help sell each other to our audience. By using the same images on the both the ancillary tasks, they will be more likely to be recognisable to the audience. I think our advert will help to sell our digipak due to the fact that it has limited information on the advert, therefore the audience will want to find out more about the album.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Feedback Prezi

After hearing the feed back, if I was going to produce this music video again I would change the lighting slightly on some aspects of the performance part. The lead singers face was slightly washed out by the bright lights on his face. I think also due to people having confusion with the narrative aspect of the music video, I would add more narrative to the video, to explain it further. Due to the fact you are able to see the signs and posters in the background of some clips, if I was to improve this video I would zoom up on the images which had the posters in as I think it looked unprofessional. 

The process of producing and editing my music video I've been taught that it is a very time consuming process and particularly when filming you need to have good story boards with timings on into order to get the correct clips to fit with the lyrics. Also when filming you need to play the music in the back ground in order for the singer to mime in time, so that when we put it on the timeline it will be in sync with the music. 

From our feedback our performance aspect was the most popular, majority of people liked the short clips and quick cuts. The variety of shots was also a positive from most people about our music video which kept the audience involved and interested in the music video. 

When first editing out music video we found that due to the fact that the song was very repetitive and all in the same tone, that the longer clip we used just dragged on a bit. We came to the conclusion that the audience would get bored and uninterested in the music video if we had long clips, therefore we overcome this by using smaller clips and quick cuts. Which when we got feedback from our target audience we realised this was the right thing to do in order to make the audience feel more involved and interested when watching the music video.

We also originally produced two magazine adverts, but after getting feedback from our target audience we decided to use the one with less information as it seemed to be the most popular and linked better with our genre of indie.

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

When working on our construction and research, planning and evaluation of our work I used a variety of media technologies. Blogger was one of the main website which we used throughout our work. Blogger helped me to plan my timing s of when I am going to do certain aspects of my work and also prepared me by blogging and researching further into music videos, theories and the indie genre as a whole. Blogger was very easy to use and was a good way of posting blogs as I went along and whilst filming, editing and producing my ancillary tasks.

Prezzi was another different form of media technology which I used when writing blogs, it was a more fun and exciting approach than simply writing my blogs in huge paragraphs. It was a more visual way where I was able to add images to the prezzi presentation and made it much easier to analyse existing music videos, digipaks and magazine adverts. I found prezi difficult to use as I didn’t quite understand the different paths you created, but once I played it back it all seemed clear to me.

On the Apple macs we were able to edit, research and blog on them which was a huge help to our work. Apple Macs were a main technology that we used particularly in our production of our music video and editing our music video. Final cut on the apple macs are very detailed and you can do so many different things to edit our footage which we filmed. The benefits of this was that we were able to change and manipulate the shots and clips we had taken, to make it fit better with the song once we put the filming on the timeline. We had difficulty trying to figure out how to add font to the beginning of our music video stating the name of the band and the name of the song. We did not realise that you had to drag the font actually onto the timeline, in order to show over the top of the clip. Final cut helped us to produce a much more professional music video by being apple to edit our work on the timeline with the song on the timeline as well, which made it much easier when trying to lip sync.

When filming our music video and taking images for our ancillary tasks we used my SLR Nikon camera. This was a great camera which was able to film as well as take image, which was also compatible with the school tripods. The video footage was able to be played and edited on final cut in order for us to edit the footage with ease. One problem we did have with the camera is that when zooming on the camera, you can sometimes accidently move the other camera lens out of focus, which we soon noticed when watching our practice performance which we produced prior to our final video.

Photoshop was used in the production of our digipak and magazine advert. This was very beneficial to us when changing the images to black and white to give the images more of an indie feel. The main image we used Photoshop for was the image I drew in chalk on the black paper. I edited this image on Photoshop in order for the footsteps drawn out in white to be highlighted above the black paper. We managed to add a higher impact on the image by having a bigger contrast between the black and white of the footsteps, with the help of Photoshop. Photoshop has helped us to create the right style and colours of the images which we produced and gave the images more of a professional look to them.

I also used many internet sites such as Google where I researched the theories to find out more information on them. This helped me when planning and storyboarding our music video as we were able to decide which theories we wanted to support when producing our music video and which theories were not. When planning and producing our digipak we used a website called ‘Da font’ this was where you can search through a range of different style fonts, by doing this it gave us more inspiration on which style of fonts we would like to use for out digipak and advert. 

YouTube was also used for when we were planning our music video; we filmed a practice performance which we then uploaded to YouTube and also onto our blog. This was beneficial in gaining further feedback on our plans and ideas for our final music video performance. YouTube was easy to use and also compatible with blogger, which helped when trying to upload videos onto our blog.

In conclusion overall I am pleased with our music video and both ancillary tasks. If I was to reproduce this music video again, there would be a few things I would change however, in particular some of the lighting which is too bright on the lead singers face in the performance aspect of the music video. I think all of our work links well together giving it ' brand identity' by using the same fonts, colours and images. I would also try to write more blogs about editing the footage of the music video and would also try to keep to our timings better as editing was more time consuming than anticipated. 

Evaluation - Rebecca Gatfield

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

For our completed music video we wanted to keep to the traditional conventions of an indie-rock music video. From research into the genre we concluded that our band members should wear simple ‘smart casual’ clothing as it best connotes the genre and appeals to our target audience of young adult/teenage woman. We found that from all the music videos which we looked at, more often and not, this type of clothing was the most popular – so we chose not to challenge this. 

We took a lot of inspiration from the music video ‘Matters at All’ by Kids in Glass Houses. The most obvious aspect is the generic boy-girl relationship which we have also used, however in this music video it had a twist at the end. This isn’t as conventional as the generic indie music video, but we wanted to follow a similar path by giving the illusion that the main female character was only imagining the situation – much like in the video we had based it upon. 

 We found that one of the most significant which allows indie music to stand out as a genre is the lighting – all very neutral lighting or in black and white. From the music videos by Noah and the Whale and Kids in Glass Houses we were able to decide what form of lighting we wanted to use for the narrative aspects. They both used very dull, natural lighting and we therefore wanted to mimic this, we found that it not only followed the genre but also complimented the tone of the song. After analysing a number of performance based videos we found that the same understated lighting was also used – for example in ‘I Bet You Look Good on The Dance Floor’ by The Arctic Monkeys the lighting used was normal stage lighting. We chose to mirror this as it allowed us to experiment with the lighting in the drama studio. We found that the lighting allowed us to give it a very ‘low budget’ feel as it isn’t very striking, this allowed the video to fit the normal conventions of indie-rock even further. However, the low-budget look was especially made by the setting as it was only filmed in a drama studio and notable public areas. To add to this, in editing there was a distinct lack of any effects which if used would make the video look far more upmarket. There was only the use of quick cuts between the narrative and performance – which within the genre is extremely common, notably in the performance itself where if the shots are changed between one another it may only shift angle. 

As the genre we are following is for an indie-rock band we wanted to challenge many conventions of ‘Star Image’, however we wanted to stick to certain aspects as we wanted our band to still be branded. For example our band members are for the most part kept apart from the advertisement for them as a brand – especially in the ancillary task aspects. On the digipak we chose to use a drawn image on the front cover and therefore this image can be used to represent and define them. This therefor eliminates any form of representation due to the way they look (such as the Male/Female Gaze and Body Morality) and focusses on their music. On the Magazine Advert the band is shown, but with their backs to the audience as we wanted to stray away from their appearance being the object of attraction. On the other hand, the band members are a large aspect of the music video, but are for the most part very monotonous for a large part of the video which strips them of a large part of their personality – this matched with the dark clothing which lets them fade into the black background almost renders them insignificant.  However, certain aspects of them in the video do give them an image, the use of one of the band members in the narrative gives them personality which may otherwise not be there. We chose to do this as we wanted the band to still relate to their fans. It isn’t common for a band member to be part of a narrative in an indie-rock music video - so this therefore challenges the genre in more ways than one. The band’s name and the album name are main contributors to star image as the same fonts are used multiple times on both the digipak and magazine advert. This follows research we found on bands such as the Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance who chose to keep their name in the same font over multiple albums. The name itself brands the band and gives them their image. This is common however over all genres, as is noted upon when looking at My Chemical Romance who are more commonly seen as a rock band. Most aspects of star image which we have chosen to apply are common in the indie-rock genre as a whole.

We broke the 180 degree rule in our music video at the beginning of the video when the main female character opens the door to reveal the band members. We decided that we could still use this as it didn’t affect the flow of the music video over all. However, it is rare that this is broken in most common media texts and is for the most part avoided by using different techniques. 

 

For our female characters in our music video we found that we followed some aspects of the Male Gaze, Body Morality and the Beauty Myth. For our lead female character we wanted to challenge the general theme of the male gaze by having her wear normal everyday clothing, instead of having her objectified to appeal especially to a male audience. This allowed her to appeal to the audience we have chosen as she is portrayed more as a role-model to the young-women watching and promote the choice to be happy with the way they look. The second female is represented as the opposite of the main female. She follows the typical aspects of Body Morality as she has the long blonde hair and Barbie-like look. This paired with the dark clothing on red which are typically together very seductive allows her to appeal to the Male Gaze. Having both challenged and followed many of these aspects allow the video to challenge the typical stereotype of what the audience should fine appealing – especially since the audience are meant to feel an affiliation with the ‘normal’ female character over the second. Through this the video therefore promotes healthy self-image and challenged the Beauty Myth. 

The attitude of a band doing what they wish could allow them to be a role model as they appeal to those who want to be individual and not follow a brand provided - however, indie music puts a huge emphasis on the music over how they are portrayed which could mean that they may not appeal to a mass audience. This is further portrayed due to the simplicity of the music video and digipak which isn’t directly striking. They may appeal to a younger audience, due to the strong connection to new-technology such as Youtube, which allows themselves to be noticed - many of which could chose to make them a role-model. Also, the lead female character may appeal as a role model in this video to the female audience as she is portrayed as to promote a positive self-image which is a different view than what is represented in popular music. This against other role models could reflect well on the band itself and allow them to be a Role-Models by simply having it in the music video.

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

We wanted there to be a clear link between the two ancillary tasks and the video. We did this by using images from the video itself as a few of the pages from the digipak, for example the image of the guitar and the microphone. We found that this was one of the easiest ways to make a link between the two.

We also chose to take the posed images for the digipak on the same day as the last day of filming. This allowed us to create a link between the two even more obvious. The only real changes made between the actual filming and the digipak was the use of Photoshop to make it back and white. 

 Another way in which we connected the video with the ancillary is the use of ‘Footsteps’. As the song is called this we wanted to make it the main image on our digipak – it was however more difficult to put this across in the video. We filmed a few shots of the band member’s feet during the performance and put a lot of emphasis on the different characters walking throughout the narrative. 

All of the texts presented were purposely made to be quite simple – as to compliment the style of indie-rock. Whilst the digipak and magazine advert were both grey-scale the video itself was not, however, we still kept to an overall muted colour scheme which could allow the two to intertwine. They are both very understated and would probably be left unnoticed if an individual was not already a fan of the band, it therefore still appeals to its own niche audience. 

I think all three very much follow the genre of indie rock – the main reason due to how they are all muted in their aspects. Another major aspect which could link it to the genre was the overall disinterest of the band throughout. In the video the band is largely very lacklustre and detached, and in the digipak the band’s faces aren’t in it minus the lead vocalist – especially when the digipak is put together if a passer-by would not find an image of the band at first glance. Similarly in the magazine advert there is an image of the band, but they are looking away. This not only connects once again to the genre of indie rock due to the hope that the audience would be most interest in their music over their image as individuals but also links the three together.

Overall I think that the combination of the three is effective and match the genre which we were aiming for, however many of the similarities are very small.

What have you learned from you audience feedback?

From our questionnaire we were able to decide what our target audience would be – as well as getting feedback we were also able to choose bands which were popular amongst this audience. From this were able to choose some of the band’s videos, CDs and magazine adverts to shape our own. We further used this information to find aspects of target audiences from YouTube. 

From Youtube we were able to further discover what our target audience is – however in the case of some bands, we found that the audience differed from the target audience we had discovered earlier. We eventually put this down to how long the bands have been famous for as bands such as Kasabian and the Foo Fighters portrayed an older audience. Also, we also found that the younger the band members are – the younger our target audience became. Therefore we chose to have young band members to match the target audience portrayed by our questionnaire.

Whilst making our video we were told that the video was very tedious as many of the separate shots were very long – this matched with the repetitiveness of the song that we had chosen made it very dull. To combat this we decided that we needed to put more different band shots in the performance aspects to pick up the pace of the music video overall. 

We had created two different magazine adverts as the first advert which we had created we were told that the advert was too busy as we had also added tour dates. Due to this we created a second poster which only sold the debut album and got feedback on the two from our target audience – from this we found that they preferred the second as it was more simple and eye catching. From this we were able to choose the more effective advert for our final choice.

From the feedback for our final video we found that we got a mainly positive response for it as an indie-rock video as well as how well the song matches the video itself. 

I think that this was one of the most important aspects that make the video effective with the ancillary task and is fundamental to advertising of the product as a whole. 

The main way in which most of the audience seemed to differ is by the use of lighting. Many found that it was the correct use of lighting for the genre, but not for the narrative itself. One individual states that they wanted the lighting in the narrative to look more like a dream sequence – however in our music video we wanted to hide the concept of it being an almost dream sequence until the end of the video as to work with the idea of a twist.

 One issue with the video which was brought up a couple of times was the fact that during certain aspects of the video that the displays were on view during certain angles of the performance. We didn’t think that this was an issue when editing the video together however as we found that it added to the ‘home-made’ look which we wanted. We chose the drama-studio especially to give it an almost ‘practice performance’ look.

 The narrative was possibly the most popular aspect of our video – and the way in which it merged in with the performance. Some however have stated that the narrative isn’t clear enough and certain aspects could be tampered with the improve it. The most popular aspect of the narrative was possibly the twist at the end and how the panning shot was positioned to portray how she may be dreaming or ‘be going crazy’. 

From our pitch that we created on PowerPoint we were able to get feedback of our music video idea before we had created it. From this we were advised to consider certain aspects – for example we were originally going to use flashing lights to the beats in the song itself and were asked how we could do this. We ended up removing this idea as it would be too time consuming to do. We were also told to make sure that we don’t stray from our given genre too far. Due to this we chose change certain aspects accordingly – for example the black and white within the video was changed to mutual colours. From the feedback we got from the pitch we were are to re-consider certain aspects which could potentially have damaged the final product.  

I have found that the feedback which we have acquired from our audience has been vital to both the creation of our band’s image and following through with it. I think that this therefore has allowed us to follow as rigidly to our genre as we had first wanted, and has also helped our products be the best possible.#

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

How did you use media technologies in the from 06Gatreb

To conclude I am pleased with the outcome of the task which we have created. I find that there are a few aspects of the video that I would like to have improved – for example how the lighting is on the lead vocalist in the video. However, I think that the video has turned out well – especially in terms of how it matches the indie-rock genre as well as we had hoped. This in addition to the ancillary task and video as I whole I find that they work very well together and I am satisfied with them as a brand and publication. If I were to do the task again I would like to improve on my time management.