Evaluation

EvaluationAsh, James and Jon

How does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media

product?Use

-Patterns; walking is used as a common filler in music videos or helps tell the story of a specific character similar to what we do

-Story; more contemporary videos have a story to really grab the attention so that viewers watch till the end, and also serves to keep it in the viewers memory and associate with the song

Develop

Conventions of style; Editing; Post production:

Rewind

Sound manipulation; whereas most videos have their song playing throughout the video, we have added in extra sounds that fade in and out to enhance the idea that it is in the main characters head

Challenge

No lip-syncing – most music videos would have shots of the band/singer lip syncing to the lyrics of the song.

No band playing

Use of close-ups

Intertextuality – The film “127 Hours” by Danny Boyle uses planes to show time passing by.

How effective is the combination of your main product and

ancillary task

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

The digipack

The digipack is an effective piece of media to go with the music video as it clearly represents what type of music the band play.

The brick wall, the suspenders and the cigar all suggest that this guy we are seeing might be apart of a punk and rock culture meaning that genre of music is rock. This is effective as it shows clearly what kind of music this band plays without even listening to them

The website

The website is the colour red accented over dark colours. This is because it keeps with the red and black themes on the digipack cover. These colours stand out quite a bit and typically are used in the genre of music the band plays.

The website design is quite simple taking inspiration from the Foals website where the background is unique but not too much for the viewer to take in. Also like on most modern band’s websites there are options to view the bands various social networks such as twitter and facebook. This is so that viewers can keep up with the bands news and upcoming music and tours on any type of media, not just a website

We decided that we wanted a centre focus for the album cover,

something that would be instantly recognised by fans and people who have seen it before. An Icon. The style of the man is

also quite different and indie styled so people can identify with

the band

Continuing with the font we have used throughout the DIgipak, we slightly

manipulated the title of the album into a more curved style. This sets it out from the

other pieces of text and makes it easier identify as the title

We put the name of the band right at the top so the audience knows who’s album it

is, for example, most music shops have there CD’s stacked in front of each other with a small portion of CD’s sticking out

over the CD in front. The fact that our band name is at the top makes it easier for our

target audience to quickly identify our album

For the background, we originally wanted a white background, but after more planning and also difficulty

in finding a matt white back ground. After using the wall we thought it accents the independent side to our

album and band as it gives it more of an edge to it

The design of our track list is that it makes a chequered pattern when put next to the character in the

centre

Traditional Copyright info at the bottom

Record label logo

Back cover is like a photo of the back of our character and so it

matches the style of a CD case with a front and back

WebpageWe have links to social networking pages, so people

can share what they have seen on our website and so we can post them by Facebook and Twitter to give them instant

updates

Links to different pages on our website

LIst of concert dates and instant new updates and news

Audience Feedback

“How do you think the storyline of the video links to the song title?”

•-Links in with the whole “Stranger things have happened” title.

• -The idea of the character being dead but making him appear alive.

• -Tempo of the storyline – fits well, its not to fast paced or too slow.

• -Irony of how the title is based on Stranger things happening and you couldn’t’ get stranger than some of the clips throughout the music video.

Audience Feedback

“How does this compare to other music videos in the same genre?”

• Other bands of a similar genre produce music videos with storylines.

• Most music bands have shots of the band being played throughout their music video but this didn’t.

• The use of special effects can be seen in other music videos with the same genre.

• Dark/Interesting storylines can be seen frequently in music videos.

Audience Feedback“What works well”

• The range of different shots.

• Special effects to add the whole “strange” emphasis. E.g. the faceless man.

• How the story is seen and told to the viewer.

•The ending suits the storyline – rewind sequence to the funeral end shot.

• The “Lost your way graffiti” seen on a wall.

“What could be improved?”

• X-ray image and car crash images don’t fit in the picture frames down the stairway.

• Some shots are quite jumpy.

• More strangeness needed.

How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction

and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Digital technology has helped us capture our ideas for the media production by allowing us to research on the internet for music videos in the same genre as our bands music on websites such as “You Tube”. This gathered information for the main characteristics of our production; theme, visual style, iconography, plot and mise en scene.

The benefits of using digital cameras and digital technology over analogue is that we could film in high quality compared to the use of tape cameras. It also allowed us to rewind specific pieces of footage easily at our location whilst filming. By doing so, we could see if we had achieved the shot we wanted.

How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction

and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Digital technology influenced our work in post production by giving us the opportunity to view similar bands music videos in contention with ours. This helped us create ideas on the stylistic features for the mind map. In post production, we used Adobe Premiere for editing and also it allowed us to manipulate our footage using visual effects to create scene that would not have been possible to shoot. This included removing a characters face, fading the colours of the footage and the aeroplanes flying into each other. These effects helped us create our surreal world that the main character was travelling in.

In designing the digipak and the website, our main use of technology was Adobe Photoshop, it really helpesd us to be creative with the layout of our cover and easily manipulate images to the way we needed them to be

Over the course of producing this music video, we have learnt to edit in a professional manner and the use of effects to create surreal scenes in order to achieve our target in making our production “strange”.

OverallJon James Ash

Overall, i thought we managed our project well. We managed to get our shooting done in the amount of time we needed so that we had time to re-shoot footage we needed. The editing process was thrown due to a computer error but we managed to bring it back and keep on. I feel we have managed to improve our technological skills as well as our media skills.

Overall, I believe our production had been a success. The way our group worked aroundtechnological issues and faults proved our eagerness to gain a good grade. The use of extra timeneeded to re-shoot specific scenes was used to ouradvantage along with the special effects all adding up into a strong production and the improvement of our all roundproduction skills.

Overall, I think our final cut of our production was good. we had some problems with editing due to loss of files and lack of time but we eventually sorted this and then worked hard to get it done. I think we leant a lot through using technologies such as visual effects software. using visual effects really helped us create our surreal world.