Evaluation

Evaluation

Heather Hutchinson

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

Our media music aims to follow many conventions of our chillwave genre, whilst also straying away and being individual. We decided to follow main aspects of the chillwave genre by having a loose story line- following a loose fractured linear narrative; of a girl on a hallucinogenic walk through a forest, this is similar to Bondax’s – Never Leave which is in the same genre. A performance or strict story based video would contradict our artist as he is more of a producer than a performer with a instrument.There is no lip syncing in our video as we decided it would not be suitable for our genre as there are minimal lyrics

and the song and video are supposed to seem disjointed and not set up or choreographed. Andrew Goodwin’s theory of voyeurism is clear in our music video as most of the shots follow the attractive girl and the viewer feels as if they are with her in the forest, with the masked people, watching her. This coincides with the lyrics and visual of the song which are ‘runaway, runaway, runaway breezeblock’, which is a convention of music videos, to show what the lyrics are suggesting. The song is fairly slow and quiet, which is emphasised through the visuals. There is also lots of close up shots or the artist, which is another point that Andrew Goodwin makes, these close ups allows us to feel closer to the girl in the music video which allows us to connect more with her.

Our music video included lots of similar looking shots of the scenery around, this reflects Steve Neales’ point that ‘genres are instance of repetition and difference’ which is what we created with the repetition of some of the shots. The use of repetition is a common convention in this type of genre music video, as it adds to the disjointed, dazed feel of the music videos. I learnt all this after looking at the other music videos by XXYYXX and other artists of the same genre. Unlike the other videos that we looked at e.g. XXYYXX-Never Leave, which included lots of bright colours and shots using different camera filters and effects, which all added to the ‘trippy’ feel of the video. However, we decided that combining different effects on some of the shots and leaving others without would have looked less effective and too random; not keeping up with the typical genre.Our video is set in the forest which has many connotations of nature and the circle of life, these colours are bright, ethereal and almost ‘out of this world’, which signifies the hallucinogenic feel of the music video. The colours of nature contract with the man-made aspect of the video-the white masks. This contrast of purely natural things with the incorporation of the man made masks, represents modern society and how teenagers live in a society where the two worlds are so mixed together, e.g. nature and technology. This could also be reflected in our protagonists clothing, she is wearing black which is a colour than has connotation of mystery and fear, which is also shown in our music video. It could also show that she is troubled and miserable, which explains why she is alone in the forest on drugs.This setting also represents the low budget of our music video and other videos of this genre. Our genre, in contrast to other genres such as Pop, Indie, Rock etc, is very low key which reflects the independent, rough edged feel of this chill wave genre. It isn’t highly choreographed and constructed using sets etc, like videos in the mainstream.

The editing of our music video was also a typical convention of this chillwave genre. We used fairly simplistic shots, including medium close up’s, extreme close ups etc, and we followed a slow cutting rhythm and rate. This rate presents the calmness of the song, as frequent cutting of shots would not match the music or that conventions of that genre. We also included over the shoulder shots, and shots that looked like the protagonists view, I think that these all worked well together and added to the feel of the video of the girl being chased and having to run away.As XXYXX doesn’t personally have many highly budgeted and published music videos to his songs it made it very difficult, to look one and learn lots from that. But instead we looked more at music videos by artists thaqt are very similar, which allowed us to understand the type of conventions that were typical of this genre.

Picture from Bondax’s Wet Summer. Follows a female protagonist through varies parts of nature, e.g. outside/the beach. This is similar to our music video with the attractive female lead and her journythrough a forest.

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

Digipak:

Album Magazine Advert:

This is our music video magazine cover. It shows XXYYXX’s logo in big in the front. Behind it is imagery on some trees, which is taken from a screen shot of the music video so it is all incorporated and linked. Our magazine advert is fairly simplistic, and it is similar to the adverts for most genres. The Killers and Kasabian are more of a indie/rock genre yet their magazine adverts follow the same basic layout of the musician/bands name in a larger, bold font the underneath it goes on to explain how it is a new album on sale. If I was to do my magazine advert again I would make sure that I included a date or release, as that makes it look more genuine and would appeal more to the audience as it is informative and helpful.I used synergy with the reference to the ratings from NME magazine and Q, this is to show that this album is in high demand as other legitimate music magazines of a similar genre think so. This is a typical conventions of all types of genres, as it is a way of promoting the album and the music so that more people are likely to buy it.I think that the use of the gradient of the green in to black, is effective and aesthetically pleasing. But I also think it signified the meaning behind our music video, that society was once all about nature yet everything is fading and becoming more polluted and corrupt. It also shows the blurred boundaries for young people about what is right and wrong, the dark aspect of the advertisement could represent the drug use in the music video and how it isn't morally right. The drug, hallucinogenic feel of both the advertisements and the video is a convention of this genre.The large logo in the centre of the advert reinforces the musician we are advertising, I wish that I had used a stronger stroke our outline to make it stand out more, but overall I am happy with the appearance of it.

The front cover of our digipak, is the same as our music magazine advert. This is because the adverts are normally the music albums front cover, which makes the album easily recognisable to the buyer, as a form of promotion and marketing. So using the same image with the logo, works effectively. It is fairly simplistic, but it does its job to promote the album and artist.

For this inside of the digipak, we experimented more. We used four main colours using effects and filters, and then saturated them to make them lighter and less bright. These colours symbolise the hallucinogenic, brightness of this chillwavegenre, whilst being fun and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. They contrast to the colours used throughout the rest of the video and digipak, but this only creates an edge and allows it to stand out more. The repetition and the reflection is an image taken when we were filming the music video, which shows the masks which feature in the video. The incorporation from the music video shows that the music album and the music video are all working together to make one main product.

The insides of the digipak, where the cd’s would go show a simplistic image of some leaves on the ground. This coincides with the theme of the music video and each ancillary text of nature and scenery shots. It fits in with the overall colour scheme of the digipak, of natural colours such as green and brown.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Firstly, to gain audience research we constructed a questionnaire through Survey Monkey, the feedback we got from this then helped us when constructing our music videos. We discovered, that our target audience were males between 16-24, who were most likely to be students, who watched music videos online. We took this feedback and incorporated it into our music video, for example, the video appealed to the males (male gaze theory) with the female protagonist. The video is also fairly simple, and low budget which represents the typical student lifestyle. Our videos were then uploaded through various types of technologies, such as youtube and facebook, which means it is even more accessible to our target audience.

To get audience feedback I showed my music video to the rest of my media class. They were then asked to give either positive or negative feedback.

-Enjoyed the loose narrative of the girl in the forest, could clearly understand what she was doing.-Liked the use of fades in the beginning, and the repeated cuts-Enjoyed the references to controversial topics, e.g. drugs. Displayed well, but not too much

- Some shots were a bit shaky- Some shots, such as the establishing

shots were reused quite often- The narrative was sometimes too

loose, and there were moments with not enough action

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

stages?

ResearchSince September, I have used many different technologies at each stage of my media coursework. We started off with coming up with our initial idea, we did this by brainstorming as a group and coming up with artists that we all like, we chose XXYYXX. We then began to research him and his music. We used the internet to watch other XXYYXX videos on youtube, and videos of similar artists, such as Bonobo, Bondax and M83. I already had a lot of experience with the internet and was very familiar with how to use it. This research was very helpful and gave us a great insight on the typical conventions of music videos of this chillwave genre. We found out that most of the videos did not follow a strict narrative, yet focused on a attractive female. All the videos also had a hallucinogenic feel to them. We then used the information from this video research to help construct our initial idea. It was very helpful to get a wider understanding of what other music videos of that genre contained, it allowed us to create a music video that followed the conventions and that we were happy with, which follows Steve Neale’s view that ‘genre’s are instances of repetition and difference’We used google again to construct a mood board of items that give us inspiration for our music video; pictures included white masks, forests and woods, and smoke. We also analysed digipaks of other artists of other genres, such as The Killers and Rihanna. We used these to show how artists use things such as colour schemes and fonts etc to present their album. The images they used are also essential to attracting their audience. Each didipak was focused at their target audience, e.gRihanna’s main colour schemes was red which has connotations of love and passion, which are more associated with females. As XXYYXX and the Chillwave genre is quit unknown, it was difficult to find existing digipaks from that genre; this made it more difficult for us to produce our digipak. However we incorporated images of the main conventions of the chillwave genre.

I used a voice recorder to interview a person to get more in depth answers about the kind of person who likes the chillwave genre would enjoy. This was helpful to me as it allowed to me find out what a the qualities these people have. We also asked him which music videos they have enjoyed in the past and which qualities they liked in that music video. His responses implied that he likes a videos that had a fairly loose narrative yet are intriguing and easy to watch, with many quick shots.In his spare time that he said he liked to go out with his friends, play guitar and listen to music. If he had £50 he said he would spend it on music downloads and on vintage clothes. This interview was very helpful as it made it easier for us to understand the kind of things that people who we are aiming the video at would enjoy. We then incorporated these ideas in to our music video. I didn’t have music experience with using the voice recorder, but it was simple and easy to upload the data to the computer. On the computer I then uploaded it through windows media player.We wrote up all of this information on microsoft power point and then used slideshare to convert them so they were able to embed on our blogs- blogger.com. The blogs are very helpful as they allow us to store all of our information and make it possible for other people to look at the work we have done and give us feedback.

Screenshot of blog

PlanningFor preproduction planning I created a short powerpoint including a mood board of similar types of locations that we were going to film at. We then used the social media application of facebookto get pictures of the actor we were intending to film. However, our original actress couldn’t film for us, so we had to change actors.

As a group we then constructed a story board, this was about 20 pages long and included shots that added up to the three minute song. This story board turned out to be very helpful as we created a shot list from it which was basically a shortened version of it, including the length of the shot and what it included. This was very helpful as when we were filming our music video we were able to look quickly at the shot list and know what we were filming next- (using Microsoft excel) It enabled us to create a music video that roughly followed the story line that we wanted to. Obviously some of the shots did not work and we had to change them, e.g. we intended to shoot a long shot but instead it became a medium close up. Due to the location and the weather on that day, some of the shots were difficult to take, e.g. lying on the floor. So some shots like that had to be changed.

Production

We used a canon 600D to film our music video, the camera was very good quality which helped us get the shots that we wanted. One shot we did- which wasn’t planned- was a shot of the distance which a bike, we then pulled focus to the bike handle, and then back to the distance. This wouldn’t of been possible if we didn’t have a good camera, so it was very beneficial to the video. This use of defocus/focus, reinforced the hallucinogenic, relaxed feel of the music video which we were aiming for.

Once we had filmed our video, we used final cut pro to edit it together. I had very little experience with this application and I found it very difficult to get used to. After a short period of time I soon got used to the technology, and I learnt how to import the clips I need and work out the length they needed to be. I found the software quite time consuming, and instead I would of probably of used Premiere as other people in my media classed used it and they said to of found it simpler. We could only use final cut pro on the macbooks which weren’t always available to us, which made it even harder to compete our music video. I think final cut pro was helpful as it meant we could edit in a non linear way, which was good to us as we adapted our music video from the original shooting schedule.