Emile - Evaluation Post

In order to evaluate my personal experiences in our music video, I will answer the following questions in detail:

• 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 product and ancilliary texts?
• What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
• How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? 

These will all be answered within the contents of this post.

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

Before our  music video had even reached preliminary planning stage, we were already doing plenty of research about the conventions associated with music of the same genre of our chosen song. There are blog posts deconstructing many rock bands' music videos, ranging from Linkin Park to the Foo Fighters. In watching all of these videos, we picked up on many of the common themes.

Due to all of our research, we were thinking of the genre's conventions from the very first conception of our music video. Straight from the off, we were thinking of how we could utilise common themes such as shaky cam, perpetually moving camera, extreme close-ups etc. etc. In fact, these themes turned out to be the most popular aspect of our video according to the peer feedback, so using the conventions was extremely beneficial to our group.

We didn't so much 'challenge' the conventions of real music videos as use them to our advantage. We wanted to ensure that our music video would 'fit in' with real videos, rather than do something completely different to all of them. I feel that this was something we did very well, as the fast editing and shaky camerawork are both, in my opinion at least, very effective. As well as basic filming techniques, the editing and even atmosphere itself was inspired by real-life music videos. In my opinion, the thing that sets professional music videos apart from home-made ones is the atmosphere they convey. Professional music videos manage to perfectly encapsulate the moods of the song itself. With my old post highlighting the mood of the song at different points and how the music video could reflect this, I think it is clear that we at least attempted to sync the video to the song as much as possible. Overall, I think that using this technique - a technique seen in videos of all musical genres - made our video come across as much more professional. One example would be the pace increasing during the verses between each chorus, and the bridge before the final chorus being the fastgfjgfjf

Martin- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?

The combination of our adverts, album cover and digi pack work well with our music video and the song its self.
The imagery used on the advert gives alot of information on the band and song but at the same time remains centered around the tone and style of the song and video. Not filling the advert with colours and lots of scenery keeps the gritty and slightly morbid tone of the video involved with in the advert. The advert also shows the two performers in the video, so people can get a taste of there personality through how there image on the advert looks.
The album cover and digi pack follows the same style of the advert but increaseing the power of the image of the lead singer by useing a megaphone to show how powerful his voice is, and how strong the song is and its message.
Overall the style of the advert, album cover and digipack let people know exactly what sort of band this is and what sort of music they play. They all give a clear definition as to what the music videos will be like, i think the use of the megaphone in particular shows that the song and video will be loud and have an angry tone. So all the adverts and imagery of the album compliment the song and music video.

Martin- What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Questionnaire for audience feed back
1. Do you like the video?

2. What elements do you like from the video?

3. What do you think makes it feel like a rock video?

4. Is there anything you feel we could have done to make it better?

5. Do you think that the outfits we have on in the video go with the tone and sound of the video and song?

6. Do you think the direction of the video was good?

7. Do you think the jump cut style of editing work or dose it make the video hard to watch?

8. Do you think the setting is appropriate?


What I have learnt from viewers so far is that they like the fast cuts, it helps create a fast paced rock video that has become commonplace with in the rock industry.
They also think the setting of the video was well chosen, the urban scene gives the video an extra gritty feel that suits the sound of the songs heavy guitars and growling vocals, it gives the video an atmosphere, Also the strong winds and rain added onto this and made it much more effective when the performers where in full swing.
I have been told that people like the mini story that goes on around the music performance and how it comes together at the end to show how the performers got to the roof of the building.
What people said that could of made it better if we organised our self’s better so we would have more time to perfect the video while we were shooting it, and then more time to edit it and have more time to experiment while editing, rather than having to rush the editing and not having to film any extra things that might of improved the video.
The one big criticism we got was that although the setting is fine, there possibly space to expand on it rather than staying to the one building. To some extent i agree there might of been room to do that but at the same time i think going of to lots of different places around the city might of made the narrative in the video harder to follow and made the video more confusing to to watch. 

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

In the construction of our video while filiming we used a HD camera to get the best qaulity image possible. This alowed us to do more up close shots and still capture all the little deatails in the frame, captureing more emotion from the performers and makeing the scene look dark and gritty.
Using Macs I did my research into the real band Audioslave and other similar bands to find out how there music videos look and feel like. Using the internet (in particulate youtube.com ) i looked into how music videos are made and some interviews with the performers and how they make creative decisions.  
This lead to useing the Macs for planning the ideas for the video. I made a story bord by simply drawing one out and then useing a digatal camera to take a photo and then upload onto the Mac and then putting it into Blogger.com where i then put some explinations of some of the picuters that i had drawn.
To make the advert and the album cover ( all the various different versions ) were made on "Photoshop". Takeing pictures of each member of our groupe indervidurly in photo both on the Mac with the comic book styled effect. Then we put each picture into photo shop and cut out the faces useing the magnectic cut tool, then the faces where moved over onto a black back ground. Then the titles where created on Photo shop. Useing a font we think suited, we then edited the titles to have an electric blue colour with a glow surounding it. We then decied to go with a more sutble aproach and replaceing the big colours with black and white and a more powerful image. This time a picture of the lead singer (me) shouting into a megaphone was taken on a still digatal camera and then in photo shop was edited to be black and white and slightly croped around the edges. The back ground was then made black and the title "turn to gold" was put in to make it look like the words where comming out of the megaphone.

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

Our music video uses alot of conventions and idears that can be found in many rock videos today. We got alot of our insperation for the video from looking at real videos, and takeing note of what conventions they used.
The first choice we made to keep the video moveing at a fast pace is something that is done fairly alot in rock videos from real bands and video makers, its a simple choice to make because it makes the video go in time with the music, this can help compliment the music and make the video more fun for a viewer. Something eles we did for our video was to slow down the pace of the video on the verses ( agine to mach the speed and sound of the song) this is something also used in rock videos but possibly not as much as a flat out fast paced video.
The way our video is edited together is anouther convention that is common place in rock videos. We went for the very cut up and lots of diffrent angles on the performers and scenery aproach to help created more of an violent gritty atmosphere for the video on the chorus. On the verses it gets slowed down so the audinence can have a break from lots going on.
We choce to not have the story of the video as the main focus but rather the performances and the song its self. This is something slightly diffrent but not completly unherd off in real products. The story in our video is very vage and just ties in with how the performers came to be at the top of the building and how they got there instruments. In most real band videos with a story, thet seem to keep to that story and use the song to acompany it and get the audeince to feel something, or there are videos that just purly focus on band performance and there style of music. Its a little diffrent and not used as often as a convention in rock videos to have a video like ours where both story and performance are linked and build up to the finaly where it turns out the performance is the story in the video.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

My questionnaire:

1. Having watched the video, what do you think its best attributes are?

2. Do you think the use of longer fast shots work better than still shots?

3. Do you think that we could have done anything better or we could have added something to the music video?

4. Do you think that the video looks like a rock video should look like?

5. What do you think are good and bad points of the music video?

As we posted the music video to youtube, this has allowed us access to another source of audience feedback, youtube comments. All of the comments so far have been positive towards the music video such as 'brilliant'. What we have learnt from this source is that the people that are likely to watch music video and this type of music, think that our video is quite good.

Our main source of information though was the class feedback. This is where we wrote down a list of questions and then let the different groups in the class answer them with what they liked and what they didn't. Alot of the class seemed to think that the use of a hand held camera filming in constant movement kept the audience interested instead of just having a still camera with both of us in frame.

Along with the filming the audience feedback told us that the summary of the music video at the end as it was clearly and ending to the music video and an ending to the narrative not just the song ending so the video ends too.

Evaluation Quesions - Michael

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

Our music video ideas were initially based upon typical conventions of similar real media products, from bands like Nickelback, Linkin Park and the like. We took original conventions from a selection of these media products and developed them to produce our own convention for the given media product. Like for example the fast cut scenes, background storyline, and the handheld camera movements.

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

The ancilliary texts our group has created help to complement the main product. we feel that this is necessary as the ancilliary texts are used to help describe the genre of music before you buy/listen to it. the ancilliary texts are usually seen before the music product. 

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback pretty much confirms everything we have done effectively. it shows nothing to do to improve.

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

Media technologies came in very useful for the construction of the media product. we used Emile's super awesome HD camera to film he best quality possible with the given resources, we used an apple Mac to edit, accessorise, and eventually post our music product, we used Youtube to hold our media product so that you can watch it on any computer.

In the research, the Internet came in very handy; we were able to search Google and Youtube for Rock media conventions, and to develop our ideas using this Blog.

In the planning and evaluation, The internet yet again came in very handy. we used Google Maps to find possible locations for our music video, facebook and Twitter to find feedback for our evaluatory feedback, and Blogger, again, to post and share our feedback.