Eval

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

• We closely followed the three categories of music videos that were originally created by Firth, as he has set out the categories of Narrative, Concept and Performance. We focused on the conceptual category of these, this is because we wanted to encourage the audience to find their own meaning in the video and instead of being confined to the “standardised” steps of the other two categories and wanted to explore further than those confines. Similarly to this we used this type of video mainly because of the genre of the music video, as with the electronicore and metal music genres the lyrics of them are closely related to emotions and feelings, so they are most accurately represented in the media text by not a sense of journeying as with narrative music videos or shown in a performance video. Looking back on this I believe that we made the right choice in closely following this category with very little overlap into other categories, as it was the one that gave us the most freedom when exploring the emotions and meaning behind the song as its message is very powerful in itself.

• Another theory that we have challenged is the hypodermic needle theory. This is because we wanted to encourage the audience to explore deeper into the video by using ambiguity and straying from the conventions of usual music videos, therefore they must create their own meaning from this. Whereas the hypodermic needle theory suggests that when you are given are meaning that meaning becomes an absolute to the audience. The result of us contradicting this theory means that we have created a video that has a great effect on the audience but by making them look further into the video and doesn’t take away from the emotional value of the song.

• Finally Andrew Goodwin’s 6 features of music videos, we have also followed some of these categories, the lyrics are closely related to the visuals with lines like “like breathing without the air” then shows visuals relating to breathing etc., as seen at 38 seconds into the video. We have at some points used the relation between music and videos, there are two “drops” in this song, which the music speeds up and then the editing does two. However during the second drop the editing should be quicker however due to the sheer speed of the song and intensity the editing doesn’t quite keep up. Therefore if I was to change anything from our video it would be the editing during the second “drop”. However Andrew Goodwin’s features helped a lot when creating our video as it aided us when creating the video and what the conventions are.

How and why is having a “house style” or “brand identity” important when creating multiple media products?

• It is vastly important that when someone is creating a media product that they focus on the way that it looks and how it impacts the audience. For example if someone was creating a pop album they wouldn’t have the video filled with sandy beaches and the singers having fun, then when advertising they have dark colours and the artist looking dark and brooding. This means that within the music industry the way in which the artist is perceived is one of the most important aspects, as it creates the appropriate image that the artist and the record label wish to sell. Therefore meaning that when developing a “brand” or “image” for an artist it is key to focus on the synergy of the products that you are creating, as that synergy is what develops and sustains the image of the artist.

We have used several techniques in order to create a range of synergistic products for the video. This can be explained in the diagram

 What have I learned from audience feedback?

• From audience feedback we have found that people when watching the music video wanted a definite conclusion, for example when receiving verbal feedback, one comment was that it needed a “death” at the end. And they said that the ending was anticlimactic. These comments were given to us after the first draft of the video, however we decided that if we did put something like a death at the end of the video, it would have removed our original intentions of leaving the ending ambiguous and making the audience look for a meaning. Whereas with the death it would be giving the audience a desired meaning. Therefore I would not have changed anything due to it contradicting the ending and I do not agree with these comments.

• Faster editing was another point that we were told could be improved upon, this we due to the second “drop” in the song, this was because the shot that we had used was a long shot that lingered slightly on the screen instead of cutting away from that one image. I do believe that this was a weakness in our video as it did not fit with music and therefore doesn’t really fit with our video as a whole. Therefore if I could I would change this as it would make the video flow better and keep with the style of the production as a whole.

• Liked the editing and visuals other than second drop as outlined above, however the visuals and the editing was described as “fitting” with the song and it gave the correct feel that we wanted the audience to take from this. I agree with these points because when watching the video back, the lighting and general mise en scene of the video have differed very little from our initial ideas and approaches that we were going to use from choosing the song until the end product.

• One of the most crucial piece of feedback that we received on our music video was from the lead singer of the band who watched the first draft of the video, these were his comments:

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

• The Camera and tripod we used was a canon 600D and a standard camera tripod. This was because of the manoeuvrability of the canon, as it is a DSLR camera, so it was easy to transport and film during the filming process, and with its use of a SD card, the footage was easily transferable. We used the tripod because of its ease of use when panning and its small size so was again easily transportable, due to our locations being travelled to by bus, rather than car etc.

• We used YouTube because of its accessibility and large selection of videos to look at for our research. We also used this website to post our video because YouTube gets billions of visitors every day so we used that to our advantage by allowing a lot more of our target audience to see it from all over the world, improving our audience feedback.

• Tumblr was the blogging platform we used to document our progress. We chose this platform simply because it is easy to use and it allowed us to post using other platforms as well.

• Photoshop was used frequently throughout the creation of our digipak and advert. We chose this software because it’s one that we are already familiar with and one that had all the tools we needed to create or products easily and professionally.

• Pixlr is on online simplified version of Photoshop that I used to edit images from time to time – it was useful for the days that I was working on images for my products on a home computer without Photoshop.

• To edit our video we used ‘Serif Movie Maker Plus’. We could have potentially chosen any other software but we went with this one because it was more accessible, (it was available on most school computers) it was easy to use and it had all the features we required for the making of our video without being overly complicated.

• Slideshare and Prezi became extremely useful during the planning and research phase because it allowed up to post the power points we had made on to our blog in a tidy, easy to use format.