Evaluation

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

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

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

Audience Feedback

This video was taken at home (apologies for the poor quality) after showing my mum the music video. I thought it would be interesting to get the views of someone who hadn't taken media in college, was of a different age and sex, but was still within my target audience. (she is an arctic monkeys fan.) The video was so brief because I couldn't really ask her all of the questions I asked the other media students, and so I could only get an overall opinion of hers. However it was very helpful in bringing a couple of issues with the video to light. She mentioned that she didn't quite understand the storyline, and while this was sort of an aim of mine it wasn't meant to have a negative effect on the viewing, it was supposed to highlight the fact that the main character was a heavy drinker and a confused person and he didn't quite know where his life was going, although know that I have had this feedback i think that perhaps this metaphor was a little to extended and ultimately, has proved a bad decision for my target audience. Even though it is a convention to have a somewhat confusing storyline if not, none at all.

She also pointed out to me that at times she felt there was too little narrative (which added to her confusion) This was actually not part of the initial plan, but due to the fact that I had trouble with the performance and little time to get any extra filming done, I had no choice but to use only what I had filmed on the first time out filming the narrative. This has definitely taught me a lesson about scheduling and planning things much better to get the desired results.

She did however feel (like most people seem to after watching the video) that my singer Sam Gainsborough, was a perfect fit for the video he had the perfect attitude, lip syncing was great and he even looks like the singer from the arctic monkeys. So I feel choosing to exploit the convention of having a performance within the video and then develop it further so that I was just using the singer was a very big part in what made the video good. However someone in my media class told me that they really disliked the fact that I didn't have the full band, they mentioned that they felt just having the singer was taking away from what the Arctic Monkeys were really about which is essentially a whole band effort. 

She also pointed out that my lighting choices were very good, and I was particularly proud of the lighting in the performance. I fell that it added to the already dark tone of the video and again fit in with the genre conventions because of this. similarly my choice to film some of the video in black and white was a way of me developing some conventions, in my initial analysis I saw one video entirely filmed in monochrome, and one entirely in colour, so I thought it would be a nice idea to try and mix the two, and it even allowed me to add a very subtle twist at the end where the singer, who was in colour the entire way through, was pictured in a close up, in black and white. Developing this convention I feel did pay off, as it was noticed by someone who hasn't been taught to notice these things and they enjoyed the variation.

During lessons I got feedback from classmates as I feel these will make a good comparison with the feedback i got at home as I would have thought they would be more technically informed and more able to recognise how I have constructed my video and what for.

In this feedback session I found that again my singer was a hot topic, I found that my audience enjoyed the fact that I didn't use the full band and felt that the brave decision to just use a singer paid off. As well as this they also felt that exploiting the conventions of having a narrative was good, and rather than not understanding this they got that I was addressing the idea of there being a drug culture in todays youth, which actually revealed to me a good point about my audience in that it seems like younger people understood this whereas my mum who is just outside of the audience I was aiming for did not. However one thing my mum did pick up on that the others didn't was the fact that I used different colour styles between the narrative and performance. 

As far as my narrative sequence goes, someone else in my media class felt that the framing was off, they said to me that although it wasn't bad, at points it was too shakey and almost uncomfortable to watch. This uncomfortable effect was actually desired whilst I was editing but the student felt that it wasn't a positive effect at all.

Final Music Video

Arctic Monkeys - Pretty Visitors

Magazine Advert

Here is the finnished version of the advert for my digipak.

As you can see I took a similar approach to the advert as I did with the digipak covers. I went with a dark background with monochrome images and writing, again in keeping with the tone of the piece. I also chose to keep the advert and digipaks quite similar because it seems to be a convention of adverts for digipaks that they are quite similar to the actual product. I feel that doing so has lead to a very effective product, as this is a tried and tested method of selling albums and allows the audience to get a general feel for the style of music.

I designed it in an A4 size so that it could feature in a magazine or be put up around local gigs or even at the bands gigs. this would allow for the exposure of the advert to be maximised and therefore its audience would be exploited fully. However I realise that when you try to click it up to view it in its full size it doesn't come up in A4. A similar problem was encountered with the digipak designs. I have tried to rectify this by re-uploading each piece, I double checked their original sizes and I can assure you that i did make them the correct size, it just seems to be that a technical fault within blogger is causing them all to be uploaded in the wrong size.

I have included on the advert the logos of stores that I feel would sell my product, the band website, and record label name (for copyright issues) as these again are all conventions I picked up on during my preliminary research.

I have featured the artist on the cover as I also did with the digipak (for the same reason) because I feel that the artist is generally the main appeal when someone thinks about buying an album, if it was a single, it might not be as necessary but because this advert is for an album I took into account that the majority of the audience would be interested in the artist, and not one particular song. Ultimately maximising it's persuasive effect on the audience.

Further Filming Updates

Last week I hit a rather bumpy patch in terms of completing the filming so I could move swiftly on to editing as I learned that because of exams the two people I had asked to do the guitar parts had been unable to fully learn the song, obviously this presented me with a huge dilemma. I could either hope that they had learned enough of the song to piece together a decent performance, or completely cut them out, which then would have presented a lot of visual problems, with there just being a singer and a drummer. I asked the guys if they thought they could play most of the song, "convincingly" enough to pull off a decent performance that I could edit with quick cuts to mask any mistakes made, and they both said that, that wasn't really a possibility because they really hadn't learnt much of the song at all. So I had to let the drummer down, which was extremely unfortunate because he had actually taken time to learn his part, and decided to go with just a vocal cover.

Fortunately in the early stages of development I took a few rough drawings down on what this might look like and how I might make just having a singer look more visually interesting. (i will upload these pictures when i get back to college, as i dont have a scanner at home.)

As you can see I had various ideas of what might make this more interesting, firstly the changing backgrounds (via greenscreen) throughout the song seemed like a very interesting prospect technically speaking but I had to take into account the theme and tone of the song and this did not fit at all as it is much darker than this.

Secondly I thought that having the singer appear in places the narrative has already been through was quite interesting, in terms of the storyline at least. because the main character of the storyline winds up searching for the singer, it could be a nice twist if he had been following him the whole time, however I just didn't like something about this idea, i wanted the two places to be separate until the very end, and for the twist to remain until then, and keep the audience wondering who the main character is actually searching for.

Interestingly the idea that I came up with was actually an accidental idea. A few days after doing these drawings I was still thinking about the music video and I walked into the studio where i was going to be filming the performance to see if my teacher was in there. The studio must have been used as a classroom in the period before this because there were chairs scattered around the room and once I saw this I imagined filming in front of it, with a few lights in the background, and one light on the performer, and I really liked the idea, so I drew how i imagined it would look and still liked the idea, the song is quite weird and dark in tone and I imagined that these unknown chairs in the background would only add to this mildly dark and extremely odd and confusing atmosphere. Other than this there is no real link to the song, but I just felt that aesthetically it was very pleasing and i could find no faults with it in terms of matching the videos tone and themes.

I have now filmed the performance with this idea, and got every shot I need and a few extra shots that were merely me playing around with the camera, they might make it into the final cut, if there is room.

All that is left to film now is one shot for the narrative that I realised today that I forgot to get the other week, however this can be done during the editing process and slotted in whenever.

Final Digipak Designs

                                   1. The back cover                     2. The front cover

                                   3. Inside (front) cover             4. Inside (back) cover

Whilst designing the digpak I ran into several problems. firstly, I found getting the appropriate pictures for the theme and general tone of the song was quite difficult, so I took the possible subject matter of drug abuse in the song and used that for the digipak idea taking photos of several types of drug and finding a way to incorporate the song title into each picture.

Secondly when I came to putting the finishing touches on the back cover such as the record label name and the bands website, I realised I hadn't written a track list, so I decided to make up some names of songs for the digipak. This was actually quite a fun excersise as i enjoy creative writing and thinking of the song names required this.

Shooting schedule and Filming Updates

SHOOTING SCHEDULE

Here I have copy and pasted from word the document I have used as a schedule for my filming.

Jan 25th 

Narrative

out in wem by 3 - begin filming

3:00pm final doorway + running shots on school premises

3:15pm find a suitable are with bench and film drunk shots 1 and 2 and bottle drop

3:20pm walk through wem, getting various tracking shots, head towards dads house

3:40pm film shots in dads house, argument etc

4:00pm half an hour to get shots of messy room, and lead up to running scene.

4:30pm finnish in time for kieran to get picked up

EXAM PERIOD for editing

Feb 18th

Performance

3:30pm in studio with lights, camer, and band set up.

run through song twice for each of these different shots

-Long shot of whole band

-pan shot, going from side to side while band playing

-close up of singer

run through song once for each of these different shots

-close up of guitarist

-close up of bassist

-close up of drummer

-high angle band shot

-low angle band shot

done by 5:30 latest.

FILMING UPDATES

So far I have begun and nearly completed filming the narrative side to my piece. I managed to get all of the shots I thought I needed in one night, but after I double checked with my storyboards and realised I had left out two or three shots, they weren't central to the video but I would like to have them so I need to go out again with the actor I used in the narrative and finnish filming. In terms of the performance side to the video i have done very little, apart from sort out a time, place and cast for the filming.

I chose each member of my cast for a particular reason:

Sam Gainsborough, who will be doing the vocals looks a lot like the singer from the arctic monkeys and he is a huge fan of the band so I know he knows the song well and will do it justice while performing.

Tom Edwards who will be doing the drums was chosen because he is an extremely capable musician and the drum track in the song is exceptionally hard.

my guitarists I again chose on there musical merit as I know they will be able to keep up with the songs fast pace.

here are a couple of shots the the narrative that might go into the final piece.