MEDIA STUDIES – UNIT G324

ADVANCED PORTFOLIO IN MEDIA

Evaluation

Joe Holden

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Introduction Main Task Ancillary Tasks Audience Testing Self Evaluation

IntroductionOur project for our A2 Advanced Portfolio in Media (Unit G324) has been to

create a promotion package for the release of an album; consisting of a promotional music video, a CD cover for the CD/Digipak’s release, and a magazine advertisement for the CD/Digipak’s release.

For this project, I have worked with Natalie Ainsworth, and my particular contributions to the project were; research, sourcing the soundtrack, filming, starring in the video, editing the video, providing photos for the ancillary tasks and assisting in creating the ancillary tasks.

Our target audience is the teen to mid-twenties audience, aged 15-26; Teenagers living at home with no independent income, Students, and adults in their early twenties; with lower status jobs without children and within this a niche audience; those who obviously have a taste for this genre of music.

For more discussion on audience, please click here

Main TaskMusic Video

The question of genre...1. What genre of music is your video based around?

Our video based on the Rock and Punk genre of music

2. What conventions have you used? Why was it vital to use typical elements?In our music video we have used typical conventions of the rock music genre, such as

fast paced editing, close-ups and focus on the members of the band and their instruments. It was vital to use typical conventions such as these to establish the video’s genre, and to keep the video in a recognisable format for it’s audience in order to avoid alienating the viewer.

3. Did you do anything different? Why is it vital to do something new to the genre?In our video, we differed from the typical music video by deciding not to include footage of

an additional storyline alongside our performance footage. It is often vital to do something new to the genre to avoid the repetition of ideas; to keep the viewer entertained.

4. Why did you think your innovations were likely to prove successful?By removing storyline footage and focusing on performance, this innovation could stress

the rawer nature of the band and their genre; as performers.

5. Did your choices here work effectively for your audiences?Our choices worked effectively for our audience to an extent, but members our audience

in feedback said that ‘another location’ might have improved the mix – a location shot with a parallel storyline.

Branding and Brand ImageOur Brand Image is of a teenage Rock/Punk band; young and energetic, but dark and heavy at the same time; a non-mainstream act.For Discussion on our logos, please click here

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why is brand image important to this industry?A media institution likely to fund and/or distribute a media product like ours would be a record label; namely labels that specialise in the Punk and Rock genres, such as Victory Records, Decaydance Records and Roadrunner Records.The publisher might see potential in the product because of it’s slightly different approach to the setting of a video – going from studio rehearsal to all out performance. Also, the video adheres to the genres these record companies specialise in.

In what ways has my product adhered to or subverted to generic media conventions, in comparison with existing commercial music videos?

The music video we have created as the main task for our coursework seems to have adhered to many of the typical conventions of music video, whilst also straying from some :

Our video focuses on the performance element of music video, fitting in with the generic conventions of most mainstream music videos. Where our video differs from most commercial music videos is in the absence of a storyline happening parallel to the music and video.

Comparison continued...

For our music video, instead of filming two different locations for Music video and storyline, we filmed two different locations for different parts of the performance; in the studio, and in performance; from the rough edged rehearsals to the sleek, lit performance.

Comparison continued...In keeping with the typical genre of rock music videos, shots focused mainly upon performance, and featured close-ups of equipment and instruments, in addition to the three members of the band; the three protagonists/main characters in the video.

Comparison continued...A video we took inspiration from was Billy Talent’s ‘A Devil In A Midnight Mass’ – a mainly performance based video though with some elements of a storyline.Our video had similarities to this in it’s: • Fast Paced editing• Emphasis on performance footage• The look and style (mise en scene of the video – appropriate to the genre)

However, our video differs in it’s lack of non-performance footage, and it’s use of two performance locations instead of just one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULSODQOMza8

Audience Feedback

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Audience FeedbackHow effectively have our brand and products

appealed to the target audience?

Audience Testing Footage

Audience Feedback (continued)

Our audience feedback seems to suggest that our product and brand did generally appeal to our target audience; 13 out of 15 people who we tested our video with agreed that our video was edited appropriately to match the fast tempo of the song.

Most of our audience agreed that our changes of location – and the locations we used broke away a little from the stereotype of a typical music video, but that this element worked.

Ancillary Tasks

This was the front cover for ancillary task #1 – the CD cover/ digipak.Upon drafting designs for this task, we decided to keep the cover simplistic (to a degree) to mirror the style of modern albums – especially the Pop-Punk/Post-Punk genre.Research we carried out into album covers can be found HERE.

Our simplistic design, using fonts (copyright free from dafont.com), and Adobe Photoshop brushes from brusheezy.com

The explosion/blood splatter in greyscale, used as symbolism for the explosive nature of the music and it’s more aggressive themes

CD Cover / Digipak [1]

This is our sleeve design for the back cover of the CD digipak.Here we repeated a little of the colour schemes used in the video – black and red, but focused on revealing more of the album’s content on the back cover.Here we tried to stress a modern, almost urban style to match the popular genre.

The silhouetted city - giving a sense of impending doom

Colour schemes reflected

CD Cover / Digipak [4]

Magazine Advertisement for CD/ Digipak

This is our design for a magazine advertisement for the CD/Digipak.Once again we have repeated the our black and white colour scheme, but this time with the absence of red. We have also maintained the use of similar (and some the same) fonts, as links to our other products.

How effectively have the main and subsidiary products worked in combination? Was the house style maintained throughout? Do these subsidiary tasks fit your brand image?

Upon reflection upon our products, it seems that our main and subsidiary products worked together and maintained a house style to a certain extent:

We attempted to introduce a similar, dark, yet not gothic theme into our products; using colour schemes consisting of mainly black, white and red, combined with our black and white footage.

These links were slightly coherent, but the ancillary products only seem to cohere with the main product in it’s colour schemes, and the imagery matching with themes associated with the genre and style of the music.

Whilst some of these were slightly incoherent with each other, our brand image does seem to fit – utilising dark colours; black and red in a connotation of darkness, whilst the combination of white and red, and the urban theme remind us of a modern young age.

AudienceContinuing from the introduction....

Why is this a good audience to target?

Whilst this audience is not a massive one, it appears to be neither mass or niche; the scene for rock music is still continuing to grow, and it’s audience is sufficient enough to make producing a product easily viable. Examples of highly successful rock bands can be seen in bands such as Green Day, Billy Talent, and more extremely so; Slipknot – all highly successful acts.

Are you likely to have any secondary target audiences?

The space for secondary target audiences for this genre seems to be smaller; but the Punk Rock genre of music has been seen to appeal to fans of other similar genres of music; from indie-rock to heavy metal.

Describe how you have used audience feedback throughout your project.

Throughout our project, we have used audience feedback to assess the successes of our products, and where they could ultimately be improved. During the creation process, we showed our progress to individuals, to pitch our ideas against to see whether they would work from the audience’s perspective.

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Technology

How has digital media technology been used in the research, pre-production, production and evaluation stages?

In our research, we have used digital media technology such as iMacs, and YouTube and other internet sites such as IMBD to research music videos and their typical connotations.In Production we used a Canon DC320 Camcorder to record our footage, and used Final Cut Express 4, on iMac to cut and edit our footage. To create our DVD for audience testing, we have used iDVD, again on iMac.For our ancillary tasks we used Adobe Photoshop, with downloaded brushes (from brusheezy.com) and downloaded fonts (from dafont.com), in addition to using Google images to source official logos of Music Distribution sites, such as iTunes.We used a Canon Camcorder to shoot our footage and to record our audience response in the evaluation phase. We used Microsoft Office Word to produce our questionnaire, and final cut again to cut up our audience feedback footage.To track our progress, we used Blogger to upload a database of ideas and research to refer to – available at college or home.

Use of Technology...What technologies have you used and why do you think this is an

effective way to do this?

In creating our products, we have used internet sites, such as YouTube to research styles of videos, and to inspire our own ideas – access to all types of music videos at the click of a mouse meant that researching styles of music genres was made easier- in addition to finding inspiration for our own products.

In the production stages we have used basic Camcorders to record our footage – which proved lightweight and easy to operate. For editing, we had access to Final Cut Express – giving us industry standard editing tools at our disposal. We also had access to Adobe Packages such as Photoshop – again giving us industry standard tools to shape our ancillary tasks

Did it influence the planning and Construction of your final products?

The availability of such technology definitely influenced the planning and construction of our final products; allowing us to research styles of video and have good access to research, and allowing us to plan for how shots would be shot and then edited.

Technology continued...

Did these technologies prove to be challenging – did they mess up anything? Why? Did they limit your plans or creativity in any way? – OR did they do the opposite?

I found sites such as YouTube and Blogger very useful for research and planning, but found Software such as Final Cut Express harder to get to grips with; because of my limited knowledge of the software and limited time to experiment, I feel my creativity was indeed limited. I also feel that the low picture quality of the Canon Camcorder we used to shoot our video compromised our ability to achieve a professional look to our video; in conjunction with my trouble with Final Cut. Because of the length of footage imported and the layout of Final Cut, editing was a lengthy process.

However, using Final Cut as opposed to more basic software packages such as iMovie, made it easier to produce a more professional looking final product due to the wider range of tools at our disposal. Contents

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Conclusion/ Self Evaluation

What improvements can be made to the 3 products? What evidence is there of audience feedback? How has it been used to inform discussions and improvements to the products?

Main ProductOur audience feedback suggests that a few improvements could be made to our final product:• The use of more locations for our footage.• Perhaps a storyline parallel to the performance footage• Better syncing of the drums• More focus on the vocalist instead of mainly the instruments.• Less of seemingly random switches from and to each location.

Although these criticisms do apply; there were some positive comments on our product:• Some members of the audience thought that the lighting and stage setting were particularly effective• Close-ups of instruments made the video more authentic• Editing was sufficiently fast paced.• The timing worked• The genre of music did fit in with the style of video.

Conclusion

Improvements continued...

Ancillary Products

Our audience feedback suggested to us that improvements could be made such as:

More visible links between the products and the video More visible links between each product (cosmetically) These would maintain a set (or house) theme. Perhaps more detail to the front CD/digipak cover –

matching with the back cover Higher quality photos

Conclusion

Self Evaluation

Self evaluationI personally believe that our product was successful

to an extent, but that given more time and some better resources could have turned out better overall.

Our products eventually came out well, though upon reflection could have been better if I as a member of the team had employed better organisation skills

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