Media Evaluation Final Product Evaluation

Media final product evaluation

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge media forms and conventions?

Our media product used several conventions of those that are present within a professional music video made for a famous band. One of these is the use of a variety of different shots, e.g. the close up and extreme close-up shots. Many amateur music videos do not have many of these shots in them. However, professional ones do and I feel that we have included a substantial amount of these shots in our product.

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

In my opinion, the combination of our main product and ancillary texts worked well and was reasonably effective. This is because we kept a consistent style between our main product and the ancillary texts e.g. we tied in the style of the ancillary texts with the main product and kept the theme/feel of the music video the same for each of our products. Also, the ancillary texts clearly promote the artist of the song and give the audience an idea of what sort of band it is and also what to expect in the music video.

3. What have you learned from your feedback?

From our feedback, we have learnt that we should improve our organisation. The reason for this is because some of he shots in our music video are quite long because we did not have sufficient footage to add in more shots to replace some of the longer ones. Also, we learnt that we needed a wider variety of costumes for the characters that starred in the music video, in order to make it more convincing as a professional product. Another thing we learnt is that the overall storyline and narrative of our music video was interesting and kept the viewer entertained, and we had also added in a picture of a girl to give the audience a better idea of what was going on, as suggested by previous feedback for our rough cut.

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

We used new media technologies in the construction research aspect of developing our music video such as the use of the internet – we searched for images of bands which were similar to the one which we had chosen for our video and took notes of what sort of costumes they were wearing to give us inspiration. This was also used for developing our ancillary texts, as we needed ideas for what sort of things we could include on the album covers and the magazine advert. In the planning stage of our final product, we used YouTube to gather ideas about how we could carry out the performances in the music video, e.g. how the singer acts and what kind of things he does and also what sort of narratives would usually be found in music videos within a similar genre to ours. In addition to this, we drew out as many ideas as we could for the numerous different shots which would be present in our music video on sheets of paper, and then took pictures of each separate one and we then created an anamatic – a presentation of all of our shot ideas which we put where we wanted them to be in the song. We used this as a template for the actual filming of our music video. In the evaluation stage of our music video project, we used the blogging website “Blogger” to type out all of the feedback which we had received for the final cut of our music video.

Magazine Advert

Magazine Advert

Our Digi Pack

looking  our digi pack you can see we have kept good consistency with each of the different parts of the digi pack for example the red flowers on our mid-covers and also we have made a good relationship between the images on the front and back cover.

for example the mid-cover for the the album has flowers all around and the white of the CD stands out from the rest of the album.

Final Draft of CD

Magazine Advert Ideas

We were made aware that the pictures needed for the magazine advert were required to be taken of the actual singer who starred in our music video. After finding this out, we have come up with some ideas which have been typed below.

• To keep the consistency within all of our music video products, we had an idea of taking a portrait shot of Dan (our lead singer) standing up against a brick wall or something similar. 
• Another idea that we had was to take a shot of the lead singer using the green screen studio at college and use final cut to put in an artificial background behind him which looks convincing. 
• We also took some shots of our lead singer standing on a park bench in the the wind with his arms in the air. 
• One more shot we did and finally used was our lead singer posing, by starring into the distance away from the camera against a white building.

Album Cover

What I've done so far

Our Rough Cut Prior to receiving feedback

The Final Mid-cover

Another Mid-cover

Draft Back Cover and CD Slot

I've just finished the back cover for the album:

 And I've also done the CD slot:

Finished Album Cover

I've just finished the album cover which contains, and gets its name, from the single 'Saturday Night'.

I'm now working on the back-cover 

Feedback From Our Rough Cut

• good close ups
• the close up of the phone was good however screen wasn't too clear
• lip sync was good most of the time, some areas need to be adjusted
• it comes across like there may be a possible gay relationship between the two characters
• possibly add a girl in the video
• performance was good and enthusiastic
• maybe add some night time footage
• sunset shot was popular
• the style of song works well with our narrative
• the pace of the editing becomes slowly throughout the video 
• more costumes and costume changes
• some of the shots used were a bit shaky
• horses seemed to irrelevant 

Album Cover

Filming Schedule

On the day of our filming, we firstly filmed the singing aspect of the song and we did not film it in linear order. We decided to film in Cottenham as we thought it would be a suitable location to fit the music video and also one of our houses was there which enabled us to use that as a filming location for the narrative. At first we were a little worried about how the filming was going to go, but then once we had filmed a couple of scenes and it was starting to look like it was coming together well.

Band Performance Scenes - Inspiration From 'We Shall Visit'

Islet | We Shall Visit

This video is strictly a performance showcase, there is no narrative or plot whatsoever. Instead, the band perform in a blandly anonymous location, and careful editing with strange effects (as shown below) give the video the extra something it needs to be entertaining.

We've decided against the use of these effects as they would not fit the mood of the song, as it's not nearly as 'psychedelic' as 'We Shall Visit'.

However there are still things we can take from this video, even if they're small. For example, the idea of the band playing to themselves, instead of the audience is an interesting idea. The cinematography in this video is definitely something we should aim for as it manages to stay exciting by snapping between band members quickly and sharply, and shooting at odd angles.

Animatic

Test Footage

Creative use of technology

Technology

For our video, we will be using a range of different techniques such as using black and white shots, different shots such as over the shoulder, close up and mid shots. Also we will be using split screens for when they are texting, wipes and different effects for when we change from one shot to another.

Cinematographic Style - Inspiration From 'Leave Before The Lights Come On'

Arctic Monkeys | Leave Before The Lights Come On

'Leave Before The Lights Come On' is a music video which is totally plot-driven, unlike our video, which blends a narrative with a band performing the song...

However, we can take inspiration from the video, which we can apply to or underlying story. In particular, we will mirror the style of cinematography. The style in this video is very rough, but neatly edited together. What this does, is create a sense of reality, while still making the story clear to the audience, very important without any dialogue; (this video contains none).

Another technique we will keep in mind during the shoot and apply in editing is the use of jump-cuts. They are used very subtly in the aforementioned video, but are very effective.

A technique which we hadn't at all considered, but are now very attracted to is the use of freeze-frames.

These two images are both freeze frames and in consecutive order, they add tension to the scene and serve as an easy way to help the images sync to the music.

These freeze frames also highlight the expressions on each character's faces, and force the viewer to see them in detail. We clearly see desperation (above) and anger (left). These two simple images tell us a lot about the characters and their place in the narrative.