Evaluation - Question 4

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

Research

In the research stages of our project we each analysed different videos by various artists within the indie rock genre and outside of it, to gain a perspective on the conventions of music videos by our chosen artist and by artists in the same and opposite genres. For this we used Youtube to find the music videos and embed them in our blogs to analyse them. This helped us to gain an understanding of what we would need to, or not need to, include in our video. We also researched and analysed different posters and digipaks for these artists to gain an understanding of the aesthertics required to create a convinving and proffesional looking product. We all researched different videos so that once we had finished we could pool our research together to give us an even wider understanding, as analysing all the same videos and ancillery texts would provide with four sets of the same answers.

However the comments section under the videos was filled with stupid and comedic comments so instead of trawling through them all to find genuine ones we created a survey using Survey Monkey to attract an audience that would be answering the questions for the sole purpose of answering them. To spread this we used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We all posted it on our own accounts allowing it to reach a wider range of people than just our close friends. On twitter it was retweeted and this meant it reached people that I did not even know, giving us a wider range within our audience feedback and thus a better understanding of our audience on more than a regional scale. On a smaller scale we also conducted an interview which was uploaded to youtube and embedded in the blog to give us a personal view on music, contrasting the wide view of the survey.

Planning

In the planning stages I used my blog to display all the research planning and work I had done towards the project. Sometimes I wrote straight onto the blog and sometimes I used other media such as slideshare. I also uploaded JPEG and PDF files and embedded videos from youtube. Blogger is not the blog I used last year for my blog, last year I used wordpress. However to embed a slideshare in wordpress you had to use a particular code and blogger allowed me to sin in using my alread existant google account. It also allowed me to search for youtube videos from the platform of the blog itself and insert them into my posts without the stress of finding it on youtube and copy and pasting links. It also saved pictures I had previously used incase I ever needed to use them again, this saved me a lot of time and hastle and I found blogger a lot easier to use than wordpress. 

Production and Editing

During the production we used a Canon DSLR camera, a shoulder rig and a tripod to complete the filming of the music video. For this I changed the exposure and white balance on teh camera to suit the conditions in which we filmed. However we forgot to take some of the pictures of the locations as stills for the digipak and advert and subsequently we had to use stills from the video, which meant that they were not of the best quality, this is something that we needed to have planned better. However through the use of photoshop we corrected the images the best we could and created the best quality products we could with the images we had. The other thing I felt I should have done is shot the stills we did take in RAW format, this would have vastly improved the quality of the images once they had been edited.

Photoshop was integral to the production of our ancillery texts. I had had a lot of experience with photoshop as I had used it during the AS foundation portfolio and over the last two years in photography so it was a programme I was familiar with and confident using. We used different tools to correct the images and achieve the product we wanted. For most of the images we edited the exposure and contrast using either the exposure filter or by changing the levels. On some images I also had to crop and use lens correction for some of the images, in particular the digipak images of the band members stood in front of the shed. For this I had to use the lens correction tool to line back image up with the images of the blank doors that were on the discs. I also had to change the opacity of the discs to show the difference between them and the background and this was done using a selection tool over the bit of the image needed for the discs and creating a layer from it, then copying that layer onto the main digipak. Also on the advert the image we used was landscape and the advert was portrait, this mean that we had to cut some of the image out to fit it in, but instead of cutting it out completely I used the clone tool to create more clouds at the top, meaning that more of the image could fit in the frame of the advert.

For the editing of the music video we used Premier Pro, which is another programme from the adobe suite. We imported all of our footage and used the editing screen to edit each clip and cut it down to the right length, then inserted it on the main project timeline. We inserted the song as a whole first and worked out the timings between each beat to make sure the footage cut to the timing of the music. FOr this we had to extend the scale along the top of timeline to be able to work out minuscule timings. There were a few transitions used to create effect but the entire concept behind the videos editing was this quick jumpy cutting that we used. However, after the video had been completely pieced together we worked out that a lot of the colouring in some of the clips did not compliment the others and this presented an issue. So we applied colour filters and changed the curves on some of the videos to great a bluer more nautical feel to match the style of the ancillary texts. However a lot of the same types of clip are repeated throughout the video so we had to copy and paste each effect onto the same video, for example all of the shots of the lead singer on the beach have the same effect put onto them through copy and pasting.

Evaluation
In the evaluation I have mainly written straight onto blogger as I felt this was a consistent and simple way to present my evaluation but I have also taken screenshots and used images from throughout the project and embedded a video clip in the audience feedback part of the evaluation to vary the types of evaluating I have done. I feel that the use of the videos and images displays my work in a visually pleasing way and shows my varied use of different media technologies. 

Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Instead of carrying out another survey I chose to use social media to gather my feedback as this would offer me a more personal insight and provide a more informal platform.

The first comment I want to discuss is the one on the video itself. This points out the lack of sun in our video despite the name of the song being sun, this is mainly due to the time of year we filmed but also due to the fact that we decided the lack of sun would be ironic in context of the story of the relationship within the lyrics. Obviously this may not have been clear enough to everyone but it was a subtle element we added in for the interpretation of the audience. The that fact that the music video itself only received one comment is mainly due to the fact that only people with a youtube account may comment on a youtube video. This presented me with a problem as it narrowed down the people who could feedback on the video. So I decided to create a facebook page to post the video in and receive feedback on.











On this we received some interesting feedback. The first comment reads that the transition of the shots had a good flow and that the viewer liked the way the video was cut to the rhythm of the music. This is was a massive aspect of our video and so this was a good thing to hear back. This viewer, unlike the previous one, felt that we had conveyed the story of lyrics just like i previously explained and this was also good to hear back as the narrative in the video linked directly to the narrative in the song.
This is important as Narrative was a hugely popular response in our survey and was found in a lot of the music videos I, and the other members of the group, analysed. However we did receive the criticism that our guitarists could have been more convincing, this I take as a fair comment as only one of our guitarists could actually play guitar, this gives us a space for improvement, as maybe if we ever re-shot or started a similar project in the future we could remember to use real musicians.

The next comments weren't quite as in depth the second comment reads 'Really like the video, accompanies the song really well and fits great' This is quite a bit more general than the previous comment but still, positive feedback meaning hat we have achieved the aim, again, of creating a recognisably indie video to go with the song.

The last comment reads that the video is 'really really good' and the viewer picks out the shots from the arcade in particular. The only negative aspect they pointed out was that if one of the guitarists was pretending to be a bassist not to play it with his thumb. However this was never even something that occurred to me during planning. We got three guitars but didn't think about anything else like bass, and the traditional format for a band is at least a bassist, guitarist and drummer. However we left out a drummer as, from what we learnt in our initial research, tdcc play multiple instruments each but never really include drums in their videos as its none of their main instruments. This again is linked with the fact that 2/3 of the actors can't actually play the instruments and is maybe something we should have researched or considered more, to improve.

The differences in the comments relate to Andrew Hart and his theories. Hart said “Texts need audiences in order to realise their full potential for meaning. So a text does not have a single meaning but rather a range of possibilities which are defined by both the text and by its audiences. The meaning is not in the text, but in its reading.” This shows us that our audience will pick out different things from the video, each individual will interpret it differently, picking out different aspects of the meanings we created depending on their personal experience. I have created a video containing a set of symbols and motifs based on the conventions of the indie genre and the narrative within the song, but it is up to the audience to interpret these, and as I said they will interpret them differently. For example, The youtube commenter did not pick up on the use of the weather as an ironic pathetic fallacy and this was down to his perosnal experience and the things he noticed when watching it. However another viewer might pick up on that.

Evaluation - Question 2

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

Our media products link strongly. The ancillary texts and the main product link very obviously visually as they use the same images. The front cover of the digipak and the image used in the advert are the same and it is taken from the same shot in the video. This is the shot at the start of the video, the one that shows us the titles for the band and the song. This creates a visual link for the audience to identify with and means that the ancillary texts are directly relatable to the main product. So without knowing what it is, anyone who has watched the music video will recognise the poster and digipak and vice versa.

There is also a set colour scheme across the products. The use of yellow was established in the video and this was another use of irony in its connotations to happiness and the sun, despite the lack of these things within the context of the video. The purple/blue and blue tones within the rest of the text connote the true emotion of the context of the video and the lyrics of the song. This contrasts against the yellow and will intruige the audience as the two colours are pretty much exact opposites. The two opposite colours also link to the use of the two locations, the two sides of the story. One the happy memories and the other the sad reality of the lead singers current emotional state. The font, as I have already mentioned, was taken from the bands previous albums and this means that it keeps in uniform with their previous releases, meaning that any fans would recognise any of these products without having seen the other, widening our audience further. This is also important as it the band aren't pictured on the front of the digipak or on the advert and this means that the font is the only signifier of the product being theirs without actually reading it, so using the font they have always used was important as it means they are recognised without their physical presence. This is lacking as it is a convention of the indie genre for the band not to be pictured as it fits with the whole 'its all about the music' style.

However the band are featured inside the digipak and this is challenges some of the conventions because in some cases the band aren't pictured at all on their digipaks, the same for other bands within the genre. But instead of having them plain as day visible we placed the images of the band stood infront of the beach huts across the inside and covered them with the blank shot of the hut doors over the cd's lining it up perfectly so that the band are only visible when the cd's are removed, hiding their presence, still not promoting their image but more the music. Almost like it says 'play the cd to see me'. Its still putting the music first. Another thing that shows the music being put first is the information present on the bottom of the advert and the bottom of the back of the digipak. This includes the record label logo and information about the record label and links to various social media sites relating to the band and the label allowing the audience to look into the band and their music even more.

Evaluation - Question 1

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

The video starts by using an establishing long shot of the beach, this is following the conventions set by the band in several of their music videos and one set by other artists in the genre, including bombay bicycle club. This actually closely mirrors the style set in the original video for 'Sun' and the their is a direct link between the visual image of the beach and the opening lyrics, paired with the title displayed on screen this helps the audience to connect with the media product.

The title font is also representative of the convention the band have set in which they use the same titling for their videos frequently. This is something that signifies from the start who the video is by and something many fans would instantly recognise.  The use of the yellow set against the background of the beach connotes summer, the lyrics also do this too. However this is set in contrast by the blue-ness and overcast look of the beach, which relates again to the lyrics of the song. The song talks about a long distance relationship falling apart, this is obviously a negative thing, and this is represented by the contrasting blue-ness of the setting just like the context of the lyrics contrast with the imagery used. 

The shot rotates 360 degrees back to where it started but now the band are stood in place. They are stood together with their instruments as if ready to perform, this foreshadows the live performance element of the video which is something that the audience will expect as it is a common convention of the indie genre. The use of this isolated location links with the style of genre. The indie genre promotes individuality and originality. The use of the isolated location suggests its a place not many people go, a place where only the band are and this emptiness reflects the exclusivity of the genre. Most of the shots in the music video lack any presence other than that of the band or the narrative character. Steve Neale argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference'. During the video their are several shot types that are used more than once. We constantly return to these shots, for example the shot with the lead singer walking along the river of the one set against beach huts. But you can also see that their are compositional similarities to these shots. The beach hut shots and the stone wall shots are set up very similarly following the rule of thirds and resigning each band member to their third in a similar fashion, thus making them easy to cut between smoothly and providing a visual match for the audience to follow. 

This brings me to the narrative, the convention of narrative inclusion in the music video is very common in the indie genre and something very present in tdcc's existing music videos. The narrative focuses on a relationship between the between the band a girl. The girl is aways shot as if the camera is the person she is talking to, so a POV shot. This removes the identity of the person who's relationship is with the girl. However the lead singer also has a lot of camera time where he is singing directly to the camera and this creates an unspoken link between the two.  Also, even though their is an obvious connection between the band and the girl there are no shots with them both in, this leaves the exact relationship to speculation and allows for audience interpretation, this means that they will relate to it in the way they best can and this widens the number of audience members who will relate personally with the video. 

The band are never pictured without their instruments and this links with the convention of the importance of the music and the lack of sexualised images in the indie genre. It is common for the most important thing in genres such as indie for the most important thing to be the music. Unlike the pop genre, where the main focus is normally the aesthetics and glamour of the artist and not the integrity of the music. The focus on the music is obvious throughout, like them always having their instruments, and even the cuts between the shots are timed to the beat and rhythm of the music, exaggerating its importance. 

I feel our video doesn't challenge the conventions of the indie genre but it does take some of them and develop them. The narrative is a key aspect of the video and this and it is taken directly from the lyrics of the song. The use of the two locations is representative of the distance in the relationship and the darker, gloomier shots of the lead singer contrast the lighter shots of the girl, this shows that one side of the relationship is unhappy and that the shots of the girl are the lead singer remembering the good times, they are untainted by his current mood. There is also the clear irony in the fact that the there is a lack of sun in the video despite that being the title of the song and this irony is representative of the fact that even though the song is called sun it isn't about anything happy as the audience might initially interpret from the name. 

Final Poster

Final Digipak

Final Music Video