Evaluation

BY PATRICK METRY

 Evaluation

- Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features which distinguish the music video as a form:

- There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.

- There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.

- He says that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song plus the artist.

- Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require.

- Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.

- Intertextual references, either to other music videos or to films and TV texts, these provide further gratification and pleasure for the viewers/fans.

 1. In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. The Relation To Andrew Goodwins Theory

In order for my music video to fit in with the dubstep genre, I know from researching other dubstep music videos from the past few years, that my video needed a creative structure, lots of bright colours and a strong narrative to it. As dubstep is a recent genre and formed not long ago I wanted my music video to represent this and have done so by making every shot weird and wonderful and using quick edits to keep the energy and pace alive. I have narrative which is typical of music videos in the last ten years.

1. Analysis of a Conventional Dubstep Music video

I have gathered some screen shots from a typically conventional dubstep music video; a song called ‘Sunlight’ by ‘Modestep’.

As you can see in the second, third and fourth shot the music video includes drinking and drugs which is not surprising for most dubstep videos.

Also another very conventional is summer scenes such as beaches, sun and blue skies as you can see in the first and fifth shot. Its not typical to see performance shots in dubstep music videos however it depends on the artist, ‘Modestep’ for example tends to have a lot of performance shots in his videos as shown in shot six and seven. Finally in the eighth and ninth shot these are clubbing/partying scenes in the music video which are extremely popular and very conventional in dubstep videos, as dubstep is very lively and up beat.

The concept of the music video was based around two sides ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ therefore we projected these two sides in different ways throughout the music videos for example; black and white, dirty clean and so on.

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

As you can see our print products also have a relationship to the music video as they both portray the theme we are trying to create.

In seeing these print products it can attract our particular audience and get them thinking such as why is she wearing a mask and holding a microphone etc, allowing the print products to be mysterious, leading to the audience buying the album to see what its about.

2. Conventions Of Dubstep

The song we chose for a our music video was ‘Cracks’ by ‘Flux pavilion’ this is a Dubstep song an has not got a music videos which gave us a great opportunity to create one. Usually in Dubstep the audience tend to have certain expectations of what they would see in a music video such as Excess lighting (usually a club scene with flashing lights, perhaps a disco ball) Summer scenes, e.g. blue skies, bright sun, beaches and sea, alcohol/drugs, sex, violence, story lines, partying, animation etc. however for our music video we went for a different approach and in a way breaking the typical conventions of Dubstep.

We done this by using costumes, lighting, props etc creating a different image and to portray the concept we are going for which is two sides ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’.

2. Digipak Analysis

This is our final print product, a six sided Digipak. Looking at this digipak, you can tell its following the conventions of our music video as with the other products. You can see this from the colour ware as the only colours used were black, white and grey giving the good and evil/ two sided approach were going for

The images used in the middle of the digipak were free images we managed to get hold of which worked extremely well with our theme. Looking at the first image on top you can see a fallen angel, which again is following the good and evil theme. Seeing the image on the bottom also shows powerful imagery as the angel is in black with one white wing and one black wing creating a powerful effect not to mention following the theme.

2. Analysis Of Product Example

Here are two very different print products by two very different artsits. You can tell already the genre of music they are from the way they portray these producs.

For example the poster on the left is by a UK artist named ‘Diszzee Rascal’, however not knowing this you immediately come to conclusions as we see bright coulours, items which give an image of hip hop such as ‘fitted cap’ and ‘Boom box’ not to mention the style of writing, written in a graffiti font etc. On the other hand looking at the product on the write you immediately see the artist projected in a different way e.g. the white glove which we recognize as ‘Michael Jackson’ even though we don’t see his face we realise this as its very iconic to his image.

2. What is Dubstep?

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During the process of creating our products, it was crucial for us to have regular feed back sessions. This was essential as it helped us realise what we could improve on or add to our products. In doing feedback sessions it gave us a good idea of what our audience expect to see therefore would give us a structure of what we should work around in order for our products to be successful with our target audience.

We done this by one to one interviews with selected people from our target audience of 15- 23.

3. Defining Media Audiences

Targeting of media productsMode of addressDistribution and circulationPeople using media People attributing meaning to media Media pleasures

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?

In order for us to construct and complete our music video we needed to use a program which allowed us to project our creativity onto the computer screen, for this reason we used Final Cut Pro.

During the making of our music video we used various editing techniques such as fast cut and montage. This establishes the mood of our music video this is important as it gave an effect when the bass dropped keeping the audience entertained and drawn in through out the music video.

4. Fianl Cut

Final Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc.

The software allows users to log and transfer video onto a hard drive (internal or external), where it can be edited, processed, and output to a wide variety of formats.

up to 99 audio tracks; multi-camera editing for combining video from multiple camera sources; as well as standard ripple, roll, slip, slide, scrub, razor blade and time remapping edit functions. It comes with a range of video transitions and a range of video and audio filters such as keying tools, mattes and vocal de-poppers and de-essers. It also has a manual 3-way colour correctionfilter, video scopes and a selection of generators, such as slugs, test cards and noise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Cut_Pro#Features