Music Video Evaluation

How effectively is the combination of your media product and ancillary texts?
Both our music video and our ancillary texts (magisine advertisment and DVD case cover) reflected each other very effectibely. We felt the best parts of our music video were our split screen effects, which we used throughout. Because of this we felt it wwas necessary to copy this idea across onto our ancillary texts. In this way, our video and ancillary texts all fit as a combination very effectively. Our DVD case and magasine advert both make use of the same photos (stills from our music video). They also use similar photo editing; softened sides of photos above a black background. We have also used the same font on both the DVD case and magasine advert. This was to maximise our digipacks strength, we understood that if you were to see our music video, you would recognise the editing types, and images on both our magasine advert, and our DVD case. This also meant that if you were to see the magasine advert, you could easily find the DVD in a shop, for purchase. In these ways, with uses of similar images, similar editing techniques and colours, our media product and ancillary texts are very effective, as a combination.
These images we used on our DVD case cover and our magasine advert are very random shots. This relates to the Artist 'Everything Everything' as they are a very quirky, lively and strange band, using new and imaginitve sounds in their songs. Also, the song we chose to create a music video for offered little narrative in the lyrics, so we reflected this across our digipack. We did not show images of the band members on our ancillary texts to leave the target audience guessing.

In what ways does your media product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media video followed many of Goodwins points of analysis. We tried to give each character in the group a different identity, or personality, so that our 'fans' could relate to each individual member of the band at different times. We did this by filming each band member individually doing different things, according to their character trait, then we filmed the whole band in some shots. In this way we sell the artist very well, also with uses of instruments and lip synching. We met genre characterisitcs with uses of indie clothing (chinos, cardigens etc.) We also filmed a lot of rustic, authentic shots of animals, plants and every day life people, or our audince can easily relate to, something we felt was very important. We feel the genre 'indie' is very honest, and minimalist when it comes to expenses, so we didn't make use of expensive brands in our videos; modesty was a key feature throughout our video. We also felt our song was very jolly and up beat so we filmed our group having a good time together, with alot of smiling to help portray the songs feelings. We found it hard to get any intertextuality into our video as the lyrics were very strange, however we managed to film a shot of the Symbol used in the drum kit, also some shots of our branded shoes were filmed. However we understand that minimal use of product placement and intertextuality is a characteristic of our genre. Visuals and lyrics we found very hard to shoot, however we found a sword we could film when 'scimitar' appears in the lyrics. As our lyrics were very random we reflected that in our video, and used strange, random and simple shots throughout, making uses of close-ups, zooms and long shots, also low angles and high angles. Like many other professional media products, we edited in similar ways, making use of the heavy beat of the song to cut to the beat, using fades and split screens also, meeting music and visuals, another one of goodwins points of analysis. Our ancillary products took inspiration from similar atrists.
We challenged conventions of real media products by not making great use of lyrics in our video, this was because the lyrics were both fast, and random. Therefore offered no narrative, and were difficult to film lip synching. However we got more familiar with our lyrics towards the end of our project and managed to film more shots, further selling the artists, and individuals in the band.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and resaerch, planning and evaluation stages?
We did a lot of research on the new Macbooks at college, using Safari to view videos on Youtube about similar artists and interviews with our artist 'Everything Everything'. during our research stages we created a magasine advert for Nikki Minage, and found this very dificult. Becuase of this we decided we should give ourself more time to spend on our ancillary texts, as Photoshop was a new media technology to us, however it soon became second nature, much like Final cut, which we edited our music video on. We blogged a diary onto Bloggers.com every lesson, and added our research onto this site too. Bloggers we found very helpful to write up the progression throughout our researching time, as the layout makes it easy to back reference and find previous work which we can relate to. Photoshop is very technical, with uses of terms and effects which took me and my group a few lessons to get to grips with. We had an initial idea to put each member of our band onto the DVD cover, however we felt it looked tacky, with uses of fades and cropping. So instead we decided to create a split screen effect with still shots of our video onto it, linking the DVD cover and the music video very effectively. We then decided that the magasine advert should feature the same effects and photos, so the editing of this wasn't such a challenge. We had been uising final cut express since the first year at college so we were quite practiced at this, with uses of fades and other transitions, and how to cut and crop certain clips which we filmed. Because we were practiced at this we didn't spend too long on the editing process of our video, and moved onto our ancillary texts. Evalutating our media product and our ancillary texts proved very simple with the easy use of back tracking work, and checking previously posted items. Bloggers helped us in this way very effectively.

What have you learn from your audience feedback?
We took our audience feedback very professionally and seeked to change any initial problems as quickly as possible. We were told we hadn't focussed on enough lip syncing, so we went out and filmed more to edit back into the video. We were also told we had a lot of shakey shots, so we edited these out and replaced them with better, more appropriate shots (however here we felt some shot variation was important so kept in some 'shakey' shots) Of course our feedback wasn't all negative; we were praised on our shot varieties and use of animals, so much so that we decided to edit in more shots of the 'swans' which were so greatly appreciated. We found our audience feedback was hugely important, as our target audience are people of our age. The genre of the song we chose is 'indie pop', mostly appreciated by people of our age. Because of this we tried take into account all of the feedback given, and generally improve our editing techniques to please our target audience, with uses of more split screens and things which appeal to our audience. Our feedback we thought was very good, in general, aswell as very helpful to us. We feel that without the feedback that we recieved our music video will have been of a much lower standard, with less strong editing towards the beginning of the video which we were unsure about. Our pitch feedback seemed to be questions which we had not answered in our original pitch. Our peers asked which locations we would be using, and advised us not to film too late due to a lack of lighting in the centre of town. They also asked us if we will be showing uses of instruments; we suggested that we could film us on a guitar, however this did not work out so we had to use a drum instead. We also had an initial idea to put a sepia style colour correction on the video to give it an 'authentic' look, however this too didn't work out as it didn't match our video message of the band having a good time, a 'feel good' idea we wanted to portray. Our rough cut was critisized on not enough lip synching so we took this on board and concentrated on learning lyrics, and getting timing right to make it look as professional as possible. We were also told that there was little narrative, however this is a point we wanted to elaborate on, as our lyrics didn't offer much narrative aswell. Our teacher suggested we should give each band character a different personality, so that each band member could have their own 'fans', as it were. We did this by filming each band member separately, then as a group, to give a well rounded view of each band member.