Lewis Harvey-Mott’sA2 Media Evaluation

Using forms and conventions of real media products

My media product follows very typical conventions of a rock music video; Showcasing the band performing the song to a live audience. Also, in music videos they often have the band following a very simple narrative, in this case, trying to get to the gig. As a general rule the cutting is fast, the typical music video rarely ever goes more than 5 seconds without a cut and in many cases much shorter, with the exception of when there is a lot of movement/panning in the shot. Another convention for the editing of a music video is timing, music videos are often edited so that the shots cut on a beat, rhythm, or change of sound. I have achieved this in my media product, e.g. approx. 2:36-2:51, during this time period there are a series of shot reverse shots, showing the band then the audience and then repeating, the shots are in time with the guitar solo/riff which loops for the last minute of the song.

Through the use of camera and editing I followed the typical conventions of a music video by showing the lead singer leading the narrative and cutting to him lip-syncing too. This is very important because this is shown in most music videos, it shows the audience who the singer is. Also, in a performance genre music video it is essential to see the band performing and lip-syncing represents the singer performing to the audience. Lip-syncing is also useful because it allows the video to have a good quality sound from the recorded version of the song, rather than if they were on a microphone during the shooting of the video, which may be lesser quality.

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

2:36

2:45

2:48

2:39

2:42

From my research I saw that there are several videos that have the band getting to the gig, for example the video for the song ‘All My Life’ by the Foo Fighters, which I analysed near the beginning of my process. This shows the band travelling down the corridor of the arena that they’re playing in, guitar in hand, and then they get to the stage. My video shows some similarities to this however my video is outside and during the daytime which develops the conventions because its similar but also challenges them because gig’s are often at nighttime and indoors because they can use artificial lighting. This subverts the performance back to times in which electrical lighting wasn’t invented and shows were performed in the daytime, however the music is very modern which juxtaposes the visual to the audio.

Developing forms and conventions of real media products

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

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

Another convention I developed was the stereotype of rock bands being known for breaking the rules and being daring so much so that the term “Rock ‘n’ Roll” is used more to describe rebelling than it is the genre of music. There are two historic events involving famous rock bands being on a rooftop that I researched and they are; The Beatles and their rooftop concert on top of the ‘Apple Building’ in 1969 and Brian May beginning the ‘Party at the Palace’ concert by playing ‘God save the Queen’ on guitar from the roof of Buckingham Palace, 2002.

These two events helped me develop the idea of putting the band on the roof in the video, my original intention was to have the band playing the gig up there, however I learnt the roof wasn’t strong enough, so I got one member of the band to jump off, which was just as, if not more, “Rock ‘n’ Roll”.

Developing forms and conventions of real media products

Challenging forms and conventions of real media products

I did also challenge the conventions of lip syncing by using it momentarily whilst the band was running instead of standing at a microphone. I did this because I felt that the line fit into the narrative quite neatly, ‘Too fucking far from here’, this represents their challenge to get the gig on time. It is not as common to find a director of a music video decide to have the singer lip-sync whilst running or moving, mostly because it makes it much more difficult to get the sound in sync with the singing on camera. One example in which I’ve seen this achieved is in the video for Alright by Supergrass. I analyzed this video during the process towards making my media product, the video is a concept video consisting of the band running or some form of travel e.g. a floating bed. This is where my idea originally came from to have the band running for the majority of the video.

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

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

Same background photo

Same photo

The combination of my ancillary tasks allow the audience to see synergy throughout the texts, there is a continuous colour scheme, matching the name of the band. The actors representing the band who feature in the video, also feature on the magazine front cover and the digipack contains silhouettes of the band, the digipack also shows the bands collection of songs on the album. All these features together promote the band and give them exposure.

Synergy

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

What have learned from your audience feedback?

Feedback from YouTubeI posted my media product on YouTube and asked friends to give their opinion, expressing feedback, positive and negative encouraged. I have highlighted what I think are a few important/repeated comments throughout.

The Yellow Highlighted – It appears that the viewers of the video are appreciated the fact that there are shots from within the audience seeing the band as if they were actually there. I had seen this in many music videos in which the band are filmed performing to a crowd so I used this convention in my own.The Blue Highlighted – Many of the people who commented mentioned the use of slow motion in a positive way, they were slightly vague as to what exactly they like about it but from what I can tell, they liked how it broke up the pace of the video and was just different from the rest of it.The Red Highlighted - The audience seemed to like the way in which the action on screen matched the genre of the song. They liked the rebellious youth feel to it.

What have learned from your audience feedback?

The Green Highlighted – A couple of people mentioned that they thought the video could have been improved by publicising the band more, by including some text or images of the bands name or logo. I had considered inserting a poster on the fence that is seen at the beginning but I preferred the idea of the public seeing them running past and running after them. Perhaps both would have worked better.The Orange Highlighted – Several people commented on the lack of close up shots of the band and shots of the band all together, I knew they would because there wasn’t an opportunity when I could actually get the band all together to film . I tried to overcome this with the shots of 2 or 3 of them but I knew it’d be noticeable to most people.The Purple Highlighted – Only one person mentioned lighting and was very brief however I expected more in that area because as it was filmed outside I was reliant on the weather being the same every time I filmed, and on one occasion it was slightly darker than the other days but I haven’t used many of those shots and clearly, due to lack of feedback about it, it’s not as obvious as I thought

To film the video I used a HD camera which allowed the highest quality footage possible and I was really fortunate with the first and third shoot being a sunny day and the footage was really clear. I was not as lucky with the weather on the second shoot however software such as After Effects allowed me to edit some of the footage to make them slightly clearer. I used Adobe Premiere Pro again as I learnt how to use it during my AS project. Adobe Premiere Pro allows me to put the footage in sequence which is highly important, meanwhile the most time consuming portion of producing a music video because perfect timing is essential for the continuity and rhythm of the video, therefore matching up the sound with the footage needs to be correct to each frame. Premiere Pro allows you to zoom in so that you can see the footage along side the sound and shuffle the footage along, cut, stretch or speed up to get it just right. I used the slow-motion feature several times in my music video; for the jump of the roof and for when the audience were running at the band. I felt that it made these shots more effective, it also made the shot longer on the time line. It was relatively easy to achieve, I simply put the clip onto the timeline, then right-clicked on it and went to ‘Speed/Duration’ then lengthened the time of the footage which made it play slower, I then ensured that the other slow-mo clips were at the same speed.I also used a program called Audacity to cut/edit the track, Audacity is simply a sound editing software, it allowed me to make the track shorter as the song given to me by the band was too long.I then use I-Movie to condense the film, after each draft then post it to YouTube which also me to take the file and embed it into Blogger.I also used Photoshop to help me create my ancillary tasks; Digipack and Magazine cover. This software allowed me to create and edit photos and pictures I found into new products. I was not very good to begin with but I seeked help from teachers and peers who know how to use the software, I also tried a few tutorials to help me better my knowledge of the functions of Photoshop.

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

During the research process I used a variety of new media technologies to discover existing music videos to use as examples, the most useful website was YouTube.com, it allowed me to watch existing music videos for free and then I was able to embed them on to Blogger.com. I then used my blog to write up analysis's of the music video which I researched which helped me developed my own work. Another useful site was Google, this allowed me to search the web for examples of magazine covers, album/digipack covers. Google referred me to such sites as NME and EMPIRE who are famous for their collection of music based content on their websites. I browsed these sites to find other examples that could help me develop my own for my ancillary tasks

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

Research

During the planning and making of the video I used a camera to capture the photos for my storyboard/animatic. This was different because everyone else draws their storyboard and it’s not always clear what they are trying to represent, however I took photos of where I would film and then drew over the pictures. This improved the depth of the pictures and gave a sense of location and showed exactly what the mise-en-scene was. I used Adobe Premier Pro to create the animatic from the storyboard photo-pictures, I learnt how to use this software last year for my AS media work. This year it allowed me to put together the photos in sequence and adjust the length of each shot according to how long they will be in film, and can have the music playing in conjunction with it.

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

Planning

Throughout the evaluating process i have been able to use the internet to broadcast my media product to anybody in a quick and efficient manner. This allows me to receive feedback from peers which is useful in the evaluation portion of this product making as it informs me of what others think of my work which is essential as they may see things i do not. Face book and YouTube have been the two sites i have used to spread the word about my product, they allow a select group of peers to view my work and give an area for them to comment and feedback.Slide share has also made it possible for me to format my evaluation into slide form, a quick and visually more stimulating method of evaluation. This can then also be broadcast onto the internet for others to see

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

Evaluating