Daniel's Evaluation

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

Our media products predominantly use conventions of real music videos, CD/DVD digipaks and magazine advertisements. As the initial purpose of any music video is to be used as a marketing device to promote an artist/band. We decided on a performance/narrative structured video in order to publicise the band. Performance based videos are typically chosen for rock music videos (Firth 1988) an example being Rage Against The Machine's classic 'Killing in the name' (1992).
As the band we are promoting are under the broad 'rock' genre, our video offers 'rock' with a range of strong performance band close-ups with handheld camera movement. It offers a story as something less conventional. This also worked hand in hand with the band members as the whole concept of their music is a unique fusion of Reggae and Hardcore. This format also helped put the bands' message across. Straight away the video is separated from other rock band videos. Including a narrative is a good technique because it adds substance to the video. There is a story for the audience to follow. This means they may need to watch the video more then once to register everything on screen. Creating another dimension or setting to be familiar with.

Another essential convention of a music video is to create an association between the lyrics and the video - especially for one including a narrative (unless the intention is not to). Therefore, we based the narrative on domestic violence as is the theme of the song lyrics. We agreed that this is an advantage otherwise, it may become confusing for the audience and this way, it is more likely to be remembered because the visuals reinforcement the song and can paint a clearer picture in your mind. Our music video also can support Schwichtenberg's (1992) theory, which suggests that males dominate roles in music videos providing the action and women passively react. However because we film from the woman’s point of view, we show this in a bad light, in the form of abuse, which perhaps, in turn, challenges the standard conventions.

In terms of camera work, performance based videos for edgy rock bands usually have many different band close-ups, camera movement(handheld or crane) and also quick cuts to give the audience a sense of energy and being there in the live gig environment with the band. Narrative based videos have a range of shots to grasp the mood and message of a song. I think this media product follows these conventions in an attempt to look professional and to also put the intended message across on the bands' behalf.

The mise-en-scene has a big affect on the overall aesthetic of a music video. Our research on subject matter showed me how other music videos used alternative techniques to hint violence rather than showing it full-on as this would cause controversy. For example, in Ludacris and Mary J Blige’s hit 'Run away love' (2006), they include alcohol and drug abuse as factors that influence domestic violence. Therefore, in our music video, we used empty beer cans to convey the image of alcohol abuse. Furthermore, instead of showing actual physical violence, we used simple but effective techniques we picked up from other videos like using sillhouettes of the confrontation between the couple and bruises on the face of the female abusee. Other conventions we used, within the editing stages, were jump cuts from the narrative to the performance. This is typical of a performance/narrative music video. We used jump cuts throughout the video to keep the performance moving with the storyline and vice versa however I decided, as the editor, that it would make sense if there were quicker cuts in the choruses which are heavier and more energetic which contrasts with slightly laid back cuts for the cleaner, darker sounding verses, not only in order to make the video more dynamic, but to emphasise musical sections of the song, which overall affects how the audience react to the song.

A fair amount of research into digipaks and magazine advertisements (for albums or music DVDs) has given me an insight on the consistent conventions used for both adverts and digipaks. Magazine adverts tend to have a main image that corresponds with the digipak cover however, our ancillary texts don’t have the same visuals, but they both do have a relationship with the music video itself, which challenges the conventions of the ancillary texts. Apart from that, our magazine advert and digipak stick to the majority of conventions and continue the theme with the artists’ name and song in the largest font, a trademark logo and limited information.
The rear of the digipak case features common conventions like the track names and a bar code, the official 'dvd' logo and sometimes a warning about explicit lyrical content, which is up to the label, or in our case the band (as they are unsigned).

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

The focus of our music video is domestic violence, for that reason we thought the magazine advert should relate to this in some way. We chose to make the central image a dead rose, because a red rose symbolises love and therefore a dead rose would be a fitting metaphor for love being dead. There were several issues when trying to create the magazine advert with the rose, because we found it difficult to make the photographed image of a dead rose blend in with the hand drawn logo for the band that looked more edgy and artistic. In the end we had to produce our own rose, by using a couple of different brushes chosen from a selection we downloaded for use with photoshop, we then used shadows to make it look darker in tone. We used a texture for the background, which we found gives more of a raw, gritty look, with a slight gradient which acts as a soft spotlight pointing towards the flower. The magazine advert does not use the same image as the digipak, because the digipak focuses more on promoting the band, then the theme of the song. There are different photographs of the band on the back cover, to familiarise them with the consumer. This can be seen as a downside and affect the combo of the ancillary texts as the consumer does not have one significant image to recognise the digipak by. Nonetheless, I think our music video could get away with use of different images, since the video is constructed with both performance and narrative. Photographs of the band are conventional in performance structured videos resulting in the blend of the two modes appearing compatible with that of the ancillary texts.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience are males and females aged 16-20. We showed our video and print production to a sample of our target audience and asked them to comment on their likes and dislikes. We also put it all up on facebook to show receive some thorough feedback Overall, we received a very positive reply, the majority of people commented on how we cut between performance and narrative in the music video. A handful of people commented on their favourite parts and also on the jaunty camera techniques used for the performance closeups which added urgency. Many people also liked the design and colour scheme of the print production, particularly picking up on the logo and fonts used on both print products. After receiving such good feedback, we felt not to change much as myself and the group were always asking of peoples opinions through the production process. This led to constant idea development, to improve whilst producing.

In conclusion, I learnt more about what catches the eye of the audience, this helped me with choosing colour schemes and simplifying layouts, video sequences or designs in order to make them more big and bold.

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

In the research and planning stages, we used the internet copious amounts in order to complete our research document, which then led to the planning stage and continued to be at our disposal throughout the planning stage for idea development or if we had any general queries. Two websites that helped me most were 'Google' and 'Youtube' and were both at our disposal. Google is by far the best search engine and comes up with billions of results relating to your search therefore, it was very flexible. Youtube helped me on having access to watching the majority of music videos that have been released into the media. This is part of secondary research. Its extremely helpful as you have the freedom to find what you intend for free! It helped a great deal for me during post-production, as the editor, it enabled me to find out more about software the college had available as I was a beginner with most of the programmes and had to adapt swiftly. Although our teacher handed out a manual for the 'Canon XM2 Digital Video Camera' we used for filming and one for 'Final Cut Pro'- the editing software we used for the bulk of our video, which both helped a great deal, I did a bit of research for myself about a few techniques and fundamentals used in editing and also asked a couple of professionals for any first hand advice. Finding out simple things for example at the start of editing, how to 'mark a significant beat on the timeline'. This made my life alot easier as I marked every significant beat in the entire track before I introduced any of the visual footage, which later locked onto each clip allowing me to cut to the beat without any worries. Being the drummer of the band and also writing the song, gave me an advantage on the editing side, as I knew the song very well and was able cut clips in time. After I had cut the whole video, I added a grade to the video to give it more of a professional look with 'Quicklooks', a plugin which works in harmony with 'Final Cut Pro' which allows you to edit the colour.

We were provided with the 'Canon XM2 Digital Video Camera' for filming. Digital cameras are of a very high quality and a high resolution, giving the picture better definition over an old film camera. This camera had a number of useful features which helped us in the filming process for example, optical zoom and white balance. The fact it was digital helped us essentially at the capturing and editing stages. If we had an analog, film camera, capturing would have taken a lot longer as it is on tape, and during editing stages, would have taken extremely long, especially if you cut a clip and then decide you need seconds of it back, then you are in a sticky situation.. However todays' computer software technology (Final Cut Pro) has saved everyone from the disappointment and is very straight forward and been reliable with our video.

For both the magazine advertisement and the digipak, we used 'Adobe Photoshop'. This package was very straight forward and user friendly. As it is an 'industry standard' package, it has a range of features. As I have learnt a little bit about the software in A level Photography, I managed to get to grips with the features available, in order to create the digipak dvd cover. I used a logo that I had drawn before-hand, scanned it, cleaned it up in photoshop boosting the hard lines, and filled inside the letters with solid colour for the logo to stand out. For the digipak cover we chose orange as it doesnt clash with any other colours on its background. We changed the colour of the logo for the magazine advert to a dark red, to match with the red rose. But still used the same hand drawn logo type face to be consistent.

Finally, I used Google Documents for most of my essays and reports. It is a fairly new free feature offered by google, qhich allows you to access documents online from anywhere in the world. I uploaded everything to a 'Blogger'. Blogger is a blogspot equivalent owned by Google and enables any individual to store information on a blog of their own. Blogger is unique to its rivals as it is fast and easy to organise the blog, however many posts or members you have on it. Facebook played a prominent role ont he post production side as it allowed us to put our finished products up on there to show our friends and contacts, to then receive criticisms from our peers and most importantly, target audience.

Since the start of this coursework brief up till now, I have learnt a great deal about a range of media technologies. Improving my understanding of it has made me realise how instrumental technology is in society and how it continues to advance a collosal amount every year.