Evaluation Question 4
Friday, 10 January 2014
Thursday, 9 January 2014
Monday, 6 January 2014
Evaluation Questions-Written
Evaluation Questions
Throughout our media coursework, both me and Brad have worked well together, and have shared the workload between us equally. We have split roles throughout the group, with both of us contributing to each role, as we are only a 2 person group. This has been very useful as we both can experience all areas of the creation of a media product, and each chip in and offer our ideas and how we can improve to each other. Overall our group has been a success and I feel working with a small number of people has been a benefit rather than a hindrance.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Music Video
Our music video challenges, develops and uses many forms and conventions of real media products. Some conventions that we challenged were, firstly , the use of performance in many indie rock music videos. We chose with our music video to focus primarily on narrative, something that isn't particularly common in my genre, with video's like the Arctic Monkeys performance based " I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor" being extremely overused in the indie rock genre. We chose to focus on narrative as it was something fresh and new, and would hopefully make my band stand out from the crowd in the busy music industry. Another convention that we challenged was the use of both male and female characters in an indie music video. When narrative is used in indie music video's often romance is a key theme and male and female actors are used, for example in A Silent Film's "Danny, Dakota and the Wishing Well". We opted against this as it is extremely generic and can be very awkward for the amateur actors we are using, so therefore chose to use the theme of choice and use two male actors, with one being the main protagonist. This worked out well as it was a lot less hassle and allowed us to be more flexible with filming times. Some conventions that I used throughout my music video were, firstly, rhythmical editing. Rhythmical editing is incredibly common in music videos throughout all genre's, and is a convention that the majority of successful music video's follow. We used this at numerous points in my video, especially during the chorus and just after my protagonist had been mugged. This is a very useful convention, as it makes the video seem like it has been made for the song, and not the other way around. Another convention we used was the use of a band logo at the beginning of the music video. This convention is used by many indie artists, such as Swim Deep, A Silent Film and Bastille. Our logo was made by Brad during the editing stage, and helps to ensure that although we have no performance, our band is immediately identifiable and distinguished from the crowd. A further convention we used was making the actions in the music video link to the tempo of the song at that time. During the choruses and crescendo, we chose to have the mugging and tripping occur, along with the reverse segment. This is to make the music fit with the song, and have the action increase throughout the video. This is a convention used in music videos such as The Strokes "Under Cover Of Darkness" and "You Only Live Once" and was, I feel, very effective in our music video. Some conventions that we developed were, firstly, the anonymity of our indie artist. We began looking at music videos of indie artists that were clearly identified in the music video, such as "Vampire Weekend". We then decided that it would be better to identify our band through means other than showing them directly, and opted to use an anonymous protagonist and keep our band secretive, creating curiosity in our audience and making consumers want to know who they are. Our audience feedback told us this worked well, as they stated that "not showing the band was good".
My digipak and magazine advert also use many conventions of standard media products. They both use the convention of bold text to display the band name and a constant font theme throughout. This is crucial for brand identification, and many bands utilise this, such as Dog Is Dead. Another convention they use is having a running theme throughout their promotional materials. Both follow my running theme of choice, and I have done this by using imagery of suicide, and the choice to keep living. Many other bands also do this, such as "Kings Of Leon". Overall I feel our media products do all of these things- they challenge, use and develop standard indie conventions to make an original product.
Our music video challenges, develops and uses many forms and conventions of real media products. Some conventions that we challenged were, firstly , the use of performance in many indie rock music videos. We chose with our music video to focus primarily on narrative, something that isn't particularly common in my genre, with video's like the Arctic Monkeys performance based " I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor" being extremely overused in the indie rock genre. We chose to focus on narrative as it was something fresh and new, and would hopefully make my band stand out from the crowd in the busy music industry. Another convention that we challenged was the use of both male and female characters in an indie music video. When narrative is used in indie music video's often romance is a key theme and male and female actors are used, for example in A Silent Film's "Danny, Dakota and the Wishing Well". We opted against this as it is extremely generic and can be very awkward for the amateur actors we are using, so therefore chose to use the theme of choice and use two male actors, with one being the main protagonist. This worked out well as it was a lot less hassle and allowed us to be more flexible with filming times. Some conventions that I used throughout my music video were, firstly, rhythmical editing. Rhythmical editing is incredibly common in music videos throughout all genre's, and is a convention that the majority of successful music video's follow. We used this at numerous points in my video, especially during the chorus and just after my protagonist had been mugged. This is a very useful convention, as it makes the video seem like it has been made for the song, and not the other way around. Another convention we used was the use of a band logo at the beginning of the music video. This convention is used by many indie artists, such as Swim Deep, A Silent Film and Bastille. Our logo was made by Brad during the editing stage, and helps to ensure that although we have no performance, our band is immediately identifiable and distinguished from the crowd. A further convention we used was making the actions in the music video link to the tempo of the song at that time. During the choruses and crescendo, we chose to have the mugging and tripping occur, along with the reverse segment. This is to make the music fit with the song, and have the action increase throughout the video. This is a convention used in music videos such as The Strokes "Under Cover Of Darkness" and "You Only Live Once" and was, I feel, very effective in our music video. Some conventions that we developed were, firstly, the anonymity of our indie artist. We began looking at music videos of indie artists that were clearly identified in the music video, such as "Vampire Weekend". We then decided that it would be better to identify our band through means other than showing them directly, and opted to use an anonymous protagonist and keep our band secretive, creating curiosity in our audience and making consumers want to know who they are. Our audience feedback told us this worked well, as they stated that "not showing the band was good".
My digipak and magazine advert also use many conventions of standard media products. They both use the convention of bold text to display the band name and a constant font theme throughout. This is crucial for brand identification, and many bands utilise this, such as Dog Is Dead. Another convention they use is having a running theme throughout their promotional materials. Both follow my running theme of choice, and I have done this by using imagery of suicide, and the choice to keep living. Many other bands also do this, such as "Kings Of Leon". Overall I feel our media products do all of these things- they challenge, use and develop standard indie conventions to make an original product.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of my main product and ancillary texts is effective is many ways. The first way the combination is effective is through utilising a running theme. Throughout my digipak, magazine advert and music video I have used a running theme of choice- the choice in our music video to take the wrong path in life and the choice to commit suicide. This ensures that my main product and ancillary tasks combine well, as I have utilised a running theme, which is something our audience really liked when asked. It is also a convention used in many artist's representations, such as "The Hives". Another reason my combination of main product and ancillary tasks is effective is because they enhance my artists brand image. I have used a bold font consistently throughout my products to show "Florentine", and the font is also the same throughout. This is to associate the band with the font, and give them a consistent image that consumers can link with. The consistent use of a font is also a convention used in most representations of indie bands, like "Young the Giant". I also have used production credits on all of my media products- in my music video the directors are accredited along with the band, and on my ancillary tasks links to the production company and band websites are linked. This is crucial as it gives fans of the band somewhere to go for further information, and potentially attract more consumer interest. Another way my combination is effective is that my products target a niche audience. My products require some background knowledge of the band and deeper listening to the bands lyrics to understand just what my music video and ancillary tasks mean. This is crucial as long-time fans of the band are rewarded with a deeper understanding of the meaning they are trying to portray, this is a convention used by bands like "The Libertines", who's lyrics seem basic on the outside, but really hit hard at society and culture. The only reason I feel my combination may be slightly weaker is the contrast between the colour schemes of my products. My ancillary tasks use a black and white colour scheme, whilst my music video is quite vibrant, and this is something I would try to change looking back on my products, and hopefully make the combination even more effective. Overall I feel my combination is very strong, as with the key theme of choice in life and constructing a strong indie band image, my products link together well and with a few tweaks could be even more effective.
The combination of my main product and ancillary texts is effective is many ways. The first way the combination is effective is through utilising a running theme. Throughout my digipak, magazine advert and music video I have used a running theme of choice- the choice in our music video to take the wrong path in life and the choice to commit suicide. This ensures that my main product and ancillary tasks combine well, as I have utilised a running theme, which is something our audience really liked when asked. It is also a convention used in many artist's representations, such as "The Hives". Another reason my combination of main product and ancillary tasks is effective is because they enhance my artists brand image. I have used a bold font consistently throughout my products to show "Florentine", and the font is also the same throughout. This is to associate the band with the font, and give them a consistent image that consumers can link with. The consistent use of a font is also a convention used in most representations of indie bands, like "Young the Giant". I also have used production credits on all of my media products- in my music video the directors are accredited along with the band, and on my ancillary tasks links to the production company and band websites are linked. This is crucial as it gives fans of the band somewhere to go for further information, and potentially attract more consumer interest. Another way my combination is effective is that my products target a niche audience. My products require some background knowledge of the band and deeper listening to the bands lyrics to understand just what my music video and ancillary tasks mean. This is crucial as long-time fans of the band are rewarded with a deeper understanding of the meaning they are trying to portray, this is a convention used by bands like "The Libertines", who's lyrics seem basic on the outside, but really hit hard at society and culture. The only reason I feel my combination may be slightly weaker is the contrast between the colour schemes of my products. My ancillary tasks use a black and white colour scheme, whilst my music video is quite vibrant, and this is something I would try to change looking back on my products, and hopefully make the combination even more effective. Overall I feel my combination is very strong, as with the key theme of choice in life and constructing a strong indie band image, my products link together well and with a few tweaks could be even more effective.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Throughout production of my ancillary tasks and music video, I have received a lot of audience feedback on my work and have acted upon it to improve my products. I received my first lot of audience feedback on my planning. This was crucial as it gave basic views on our concept and how we could improve when we came to filming. Some issues that were raised were that we needed the crossroads to be clear at the start and end, and the mugging part needed to be fast and action packed. We decided that we would take this feedback into account, making sure that when we were filming our crossroads shot was clear, however after the first draft we received further feedback which stated we needed it to be even clearer, so we responded to this and made it as clear as possible with a reshoot. In the end our crossroads shots were very clear and our final feedback stated this. This taught me that I need to make sure that key concepts are signposted throughout my music video, and are extremely clear to the viewer. Later I received audience feedback on my digipak and magazine advert. This informed me of many changes I needed to make in order to increase the effectiveness and up my grade. Some of the things I changed in my digipak due to this feedback were adding lyrics to the inside panels, which is a convention used by a lot of indie bands like "Lifeboats for Atlantis". This made my digipak a lot more effective and I learnt from this feedback that my media products needed to be linked clearly to make them appeal to the audience, as it gives them something to relate to. Feedback I received on my magazine advert was also crucial, and I learnt a lot from it. I was told that I needed to add more reviews to my magazine advert and remove the "Buy on iTunes" text as it wasn't very effective. I quickly acted upon this feedback and edited these changes into my advert, and this made my magazine advert adhere to conventions and be a much more effective media product. Overall, my audience feedback has been crucial to the creation of all three of my media products, and without it I would have missed out on important indie conventions that I needed to adhere to to attract my target market. By the end, and after showing our final products to our target audience, they told us that we had correctly implemented the changes they wanted and felt that each of our media products was now much stronger, with the music video's narrative being much clearer and my digipak and magazine advert looking professional and adhering to many indie media products they had seen.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction , research , planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the creation of our media products we have used a huge amount of different media technologies.
To begin with we used many media technologies in our construction stage. During the construction of our music video, we used a Canon 600D, my own personal camera, to record the footage. The use of this camera was crucial as it is of a much higher standard than our school's camera's, and allowed us to easily create our slow-mo montage, as well as a much higher quality of footage, as I was mainly filming in 1080p and 720p. Another use of media technology in our construction stage was the simple, yet crucial use of a tripod. I used this during filming for both tracking and still shots, ensuring that the camera was completely still and no shaky footage would occur. Sadly, for many of our shots we had to follow our protagonist, and without professional media equipment like a camera dolly, I had to walk with the camera, basically meaning some of our footage was not as still as I wanted it to be. However, as this equipment is extremely expensive, there was little we could do to fix this. Another aspect of my camera I used during filming was utilising different framerates to ensure our slow-mo scenes looked good. I chose to shoot the slow-mo sequence in 720p, where my camera can hit up to 60 frames per second. This is crucial for slow motion footage as if I had chosen to film in 1080p, where my camera can only do 24fps, the footage would have been juttery, and not looked as smooth and clean as the 720p footage does. After preliminary filming we moved on to editing. During this part of production we utilised two main pieces of software ; Sony Vegas Pro 11 and Adobe Photoshop CS6. Sony Vegas was used for the bulk of the editing, as it is a great piece of editing software that we used to add effects like slow-motion and our reverse sequence, and generally arrange our clips into the order we wanted them. Adobe Photoshop was used more during production of our digipaks and magazine adverts, however played a role in our music video as it was used to create the band logo for the start of the video. The production of our digipaks and magazine adverts was nearly all done on Photoshop, and without it would have been extremely difficult. I utilised the program to add the black and white effects on my images, crop and add text to them, and I also used more complicated multi-photo editing when testing out ideas. Overall we used a huge amount of technology in our construction stage alone, even before the other stages.
In my research of the indie genre I also used a wide variety of technologies. In the brief creation of our test indie artist in July, we used Photoshop to create album artworks and tour posters for our imaginary band, Jumpstart, This was a good experience which allowed me to get to grips with the indie genre and utilise some of the skills I learnt with Photoshop later in the project. Another crucial use of technologies during research was utilising YouTube and Google to find images of indie artists and music videos, promotional materials and much more. I conducted an investigation into whether Lana Del Rey was an indie artist or not, and her representation in the media, and without these media technologies I would not have been able to get enough information to create a well balanced argument.
During the planning stage we again used many of the same media technologies. We utilised Photoshop to digitilise our storyboard, making it clear and easy to read. We also utilised word processors to type up scripts, ideas and basic concepts for our music video before filming. This helped us have a much clearer idea of what we were doing, and meant we didn't simply drop ourselves in at the deep end. For our digipak and magazine research we used many online resources, using websites like YouTube and Google to find images and video of the standard indie conventions that many of the bands we looked at followed, and needed to add to our own work.
Finally, in the evaluation stage I have used a few original media technologies. I have, once again, used Sony Vegas to edit together my entire evaluation, and whilst also having a written copy having it in video format is much more useful as it is interactive and utilises media technologies better. I also have used a microphone to record sound for the evaluation, whilst using the audio program Audicity to edit the clips and ensure they are loud and clear.
Overall I have used a huge amount of media technologies throughout my project, and I feel I was very effective at using all of them.
To begin with we used many media technologies in our construction stage. During the construction of our music video, we used a Canon 600D, my own personal camera, to record the footage. The use of this camera was crucial as it is of a much higher standard than our school's camera's, and allowed us to easily create our slow-mo montage, as well as a much higher quality of footage, as I was mainly filming in 1080p and 720p. Another use of media technology in our construction stage was the simple, yet crucial use of a tripod. I used this during filming for both tracking and still shots, ensuring that the camera was completely still and no shaky footage would occur. Sadly, for many of our shots we had to follow our protagonist, and without professional media equipment like a camera dolly, I had to walk with the camera, basically meaning some of our footage was not as still as I wanted it to be. However, as this equipment is extremely expensive, there was little we could do to fix this. Another aspect of my camera I used during filming was utilising different framerates to ensure our slow-mo scenes looked good. I chose to shoot the slow-mo sequence in 720p, where my camera can hit up to 60 frames per second. This is crucial for slow motion footage as if I had chosen to film in 1080p, where my camera can only do 24fps, the footage would have been juttery, and not looked as smooth and clean as the 720p footage does. After preliminary filming we moved on to editing. During this part of production we utilised two main pieces of software ; Sony Vegas Pro 11 and Adobe Photoshop CS6. Sony Vegas was used for the bulk of the editing, as it is a great piece of editing software that we used to add effects like slow-motion and our reverse sequence, and generally arrange our clips into the order we wanted them. Adobe Photoshop was used more during production of our digipaks and magazine adverts, however played a role in our music video as it was used to create the band logo for the start of the video. The production of our digipaks and magazine adverts was nearly all done on Photoshop, and without it would have been extremely difficult. I utilised the program to add the black and white effects on my images, crop and add text to them, and I also used more complicated multi-photo editing when testing out ideas. Overall we used a huge amount of technology in our construction stage alone, even before the other stages.
In my research of the indie genre I also used a wide variety of technologies. In the brief creation of our test indie artist in July, we used Photoshop to create album artworks and tour posters for our imaginary band, Jumpstart, This was a good experience which allowed me to get to grips with the indie genre and utilise some of the skills I learnt with Photoshop later in the project. Another crucial use of technologies during research was utilising YouTube and Google to find images of indie artists and music videos, promotional materials and much more. I conducted an investigation into whether Lana Del Rey was an indie artist or not, and her representation in the media, and without these media technologies I would not have been able to get enough information to create a well balanced argument.
During the planning stage we again used many of the same media technologies. We utilised Photoshop to digitilise our storyboard, making it clear and easy to read. We also utilised word processors to type up scripts, ideas and basic concepts for our music video before filming. This helped us have a much clearer idea of what we were doing, and meant we didn't simply drop ourselves in at the deep end. For our digipak and magazine research we used many online resources, using websites like YouTube and Google to find images and video of the standard indie conventions that many of the bands we looked at followed, and needed to add to our own work.
Finally, in the evaluation stage I have used a few original media technologies. I have, once again, used Sony Vegas to edit together my entire evaluation, and whilst also having a written copy having it in video format is much more useful as it is interactive and utilises media technologies better. I also have used a microphone to record sound for the evaluation, whilst using the audio program Audicity to edit the clips and ensure they are loud and clear.
Overall I have used a huge amount of media technologies throughout my project, and I feel I was very effective at using all of them.
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