TJ - Evaluation Draft Question 4.

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

By using Blogger.com, we have contained our research, planning and evaluation on a collaborative blog. Embedding clips from Youtube to make our blog more professional and easier to read.

RESEARCH
Survey monkey - for our research we had to start with audience research and we accomplished this by using a website called ‘surveymonkey’. This enabled us to create our own questionnaire to send to our target audience and retrieve feedback from our initial ideas.
Test shots – by trying and testing various shots, we were able to discover what were the most effective for our music video. We did these on a trip to Brighton sea front where there were loads of different areas and locations to film in.


PLANNING
Slide boom – we used slide boom to upload our PowerPoint presentation to our blog.
Animatic – by drawing out each shot and filming them, we were able to create an Animatic which was used as a template so we knew how long our video would be and which shots worked the best.
Location shots – by practising and attempting shots in our location, we found suitable places on the rail track to shoot.
Blogger - by responding and keeping in touch through Blogger, we were able to gain knowledge of each others strengths..

CONSTUCTION
Photoshop – digipaks and advert using Photoshop and its many abilities to create a digipak, we added layers and images to create several different formats in development for our final piece.
Within this program, there are ways to create a professional picture easily. These include; changing the contrast, blurring the image, fading the image into another layer and even cutting and replacing bits from the original image which we did for the band photos on the digipak and advert. We used 'Old English' text for the titles as it is goth like and fits in well with the forms and conventions of the genre. This creates a brand image across the digipak and advert.

Premiere – this was the main, lengthy process of our whole project. This is due to the many different editing techniques and effects which were used. For Example -

• The crop tool to create the ghosting girl effect and overlapping each of the shots. Adding with it, the ghosting effect on the program to make it lag behind.


• And the black and white effect for the old style, as well as the film grain video we changed the opacity to layer over the top of the narrative parts to create the authentic effect of the film.


• And finally image control, to darken and change the contrast of the CU shots and performance to add to the mise-en-scene and feel for the genre.
  


• There is a main timeline, which makes it easy to drag, drop, cut and place your desired video clips in order. This helped us construct Dyer’s first person mode of address in places where we thought would be most effective.
  The shot size and zooming was also edited into the video at this stage, creating some movement which we weren’t able to film.


• The cutting rate was increased as well to conform to the rock genre conventions and the time lapse of the drummer was made to add to this.


• A problem we had was synching the lyrics and instruments. For example, some of the shots had the drummer not playing, when in the track it was a drum solo. So this created a small challenge for us.
  
  
  EVALUATION
  
  Youtube – By uploading our final edit to Youtube, we could find out peoples responses and comments. This is an example of using Web 2.0 to one of its full advantages.
  Survey monkey – using surveymonkey again, we were able to see if we had achieved our main goal successfully and conforming to the forms and conventions of rock videos.
  Premiere – we used premiere again to create a short multimedia video to produce the evaluation, with clips and screenshots to explain the points further.

SF Evaluation Question 1

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


By using the framework devised by Goodwin it is posible to see that this is a music video as there is a distinct link between the visuals and the lyrics, with one of the key moments being the use of the lyrics 'burning on the inside' with fire overlapping images of the band and meat shots of the girl.

With this shot, it is directly illustrative of the lyrics as the shot appears with the lyrics 'burning on the inside' also dded more connotation to the lyrics as it is suggesting that there is an inner hatred being shown by the musician towarss the girl. This is also reiterated by the non verbal language used in the ECUs as the male character is using facial expressions to show his hatred and fear of the girl.


With the ECU shots where the singer is looking directly into the camera, by using the idea of the notion of looking devised by Goodwin, we can see that it appears as thought the singer is talking directly into the camera. The lighting in the video connotes a darker side to the male character as his face is partially engulfed by shadow, suggesting that he has this more sinister part of him that he was trying to keep locked away.



Intertextuality is used in the music video through the referencing of the silent movie genre, which is strengthened by the use of black and white make-up to help to make facial features more pronounced. The black and white colours are used to imply that there is an idea of foreboding and also as an indicator of an earlier time, to give the music video the effect of having been filmed and produced in the 1920s.


The train shot in the video helped to amplify the use of the silent movie genre with it hurtling down the track towards the girl, connoting danger as she appears to show no signs of getting out of the way.


The idea of dismemberment is used with the focus on the girls face at points but there is a challenge to traditional stereotypes relating to women as we chose not to introduce the girl from the ankle up. Full body shots were used instead as a method of providing the idea of male and female equality as the same shots are used for both the male and female characters and at points the camera is looking up at both characters, with an example of this being when they are both walking directly towards the camera.


The girl was still reinforcing stereotypes to an extent as she still had a look on her face that made her appear dreamy, connoting the idea that she is still weak and potentially using the idea of ignorance, especially with the shot where she is walking towards the train as she appears to have no idea of the impending fate approaching her as she walks down the track.


The myth of masculinity is challenged to an extent because:
• The male character appears paranoid about something, meaning that during some point of the video, such as the shot with the girl following him placing her hand on his shoulder and there being nobody there.
• Also when he meets his doppelganger, there is the connotation of an inner conflict, thus indicating more vulnerability.
• This is done through a face-off shot which is another intertextual reference as it uses ideas from the video for 'The Kill' by '30 Seconds to Mars'.
• This is a band in the same genre as Three Days Grace, which helps it to relate to other bands in the genre and conform to the conventions.



However, male stereotypes are also reinforced as during the performance shots, the male character appears angry, strengthening the idea that men are prone to anger. • The video is a combination of narrative and performance, although the narrative to the video is more of a reflection on the idea of asynchronous narrative fuzz, with more of a focus on performance, which is a common feature within our genre.


With the combination of the silent movie genre with the music genre, this provides an idea of postmodernism through the use of Intertextual references to work between the two texts.
• The post-modern effect has been created by blurring the boundaries between the two different texts.
• With this post-modern style, the narrative is asynchronous with there being a time lapse showing the male character singing and the character staring directly into the camera as a method of communicating directly with the audience.
• This involves utilising the first person mode of address to make it appear as if he was talking directly to the audience members.


This has been done by changing the colour of the narrative segments to black and white and making the video appear grainy to give the video the effect of appearing to be from another older era. The silent movie influence is only really evident when looking at the loose narrative of the video because the effects are only really used on the narrative section, with the black and white colouring giving the music video an idea of authenticity.


By using semiotics to analyse mise-en-scene we can see that:
• The use of the black shirts worn by the band and the red tie worn by the singer, the video conforms to the conventions of the genre as the costumes relate to similar bands within the same genre.
• These black shirts are symbolic of the idea of rebellion as it can indicate the idea of impending doom because it potentially goes against some of the typical beliefs in society.
• This is because it ignores the idea of optimism that many people in society appear to portray.
• The red tie provides the connotation of danger as it can be used to remind people of fire signals.
• It can be with the overlapping fire-effect shown in the video as it reiterates that there is something rather dark and demonic about the character.


The presence of microphones, guitars and a drum kit help to establish the genre and again conforms to conventions of the genre because:
• Almost all the bands in the genre show instruments in their videos.
• This is commonplace as it shows that the band is conforming to convention of the genre.
• With it having a performance part being on a stage, it conforms to the genre as the band are being shown off fully by the record label.
• This would ideally be portraying their ideas and also helping to identify exactly who wrote the track.




The shot of fire overlapping the girl’s face connotes the idea of danger and also amplifies the lyrics ‘burning on the inside’ with it also being illustrative at certain point in the song. With this, it connotes the idea of the femme fatale, meaning that she is dangerous but still has the dreamy and confused idea about her. This overlapping of fire is also used with a meatshot of the band, again as a portrayal of anger and danger.

JC-Evaluation

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

The brief was to create a promotional backage for the release of a new album. This included making a music video, a digipak and an advertisement.

• We set out to create the three texts with the band image in mind at all times.




• After extensive research into the band, we knew how we would convey the band through our media.




• We set out to represent the band's authenticity, showing the group together with their instruments. We wanted the texts to have a genuine band feel to them.

The advertisement was designed to run in Kerang magazine. It was desinged as a whole page advertisement, and kept to the conventions of punk rock advertisements as well as conforming to the style of our other two texts.

• The advertisement had a colourful image and contained the album cover on it, the use of big wording that stood out made the advertisement effective as it jumped out at the reader flicking through the magazine.

Here is a copy of the advertisement, you can see by looking at it that the leading line is effective in the hard sale of the album.

The use of visual motifs reinforce the band image by keeping to their usual colours of white red and black and also by yet again showing their authenticity. The advertisement contained a picture of the band members standing together.

• Feedback from our audience showed that this helped give the message that the band played their own instruments on the album, and it isn't just a voice over pop group.




• The text on the advertisement was simplistic in terms of its content. This connotes the raw fact that the band want you to buy the album, and they're not all about being in the limelight.




• The same background patterns from the digipak were used on the advertisement, this time it was used as a border for the advert rather than its bulk content.

The leading line of the advertisement is:

• Album cover




• Band photo




• Text




• Out now

This was the desired impact of the advert as it quickly grabs the reader and the last thing they remember about the advertisement is "out now" so they know it is new and hopefully therefore more likely to buy it.

The text anchors the image of the band by again being simplistic. There isn't loads of wording to put the reader off or bore them, it gets clearly to the point.

• The band name is quickly seen which lures the reader in.




• The album name is read in quick succession so the reader knows from the offset what the advertisement is about, this makes it succesful as some advertisements do not have that effect and therefore are more likely to be skipped past.




• The colourful pattern keeps the reader looking and allows the eye to travel down to the album cover.




• The album cover shows the reader what to look for in the shops. This is effective because although they may forget what they saw in the advertisement, they will subconsciously remember it and so it will stand out to them when they see it on shop shelves.




• The reader then sees the band together, with the guitar, clearly showing that the band is genuine and the fact that they are there looking out at the reader conveys the meaning that they want them to buy their music.




• As the words "out now" are read, only moments from the page being turned, the album's message is anchored in the reader's mind and will hopefull influence the reader to buy the music.

The digipak was created with the music video well underway in it's editing stages. We were therefore able to use intertextual references with other digipaks, album work and our video.

• The digipak conveys the genre of the music with its colours and style.




• It is a four page digipak, typical of the punk rock genre and was designed to convey the band's authentic image. It shows their common meaning and and usual persona.




• The digipak contains a band photograph which is essential for the fanatic audience who like to see the band they are listening to, this helps them to feel closer to the group as they essentially have a piece of the band.




• On the front cover there is no image of the band, as this is not seen in the punk rock genre. The text is eye grabbing and quickly shows what the album is, it is recognisible easily from any advertisement the buyer may have seen.

Here is the front and back cover of the digipak.


• The back cover has the track names, numbers and playback times. It has a yellow text that is used throughout the digipak, meaning that it feels genuine and proffessional.




• On the inside there is the band photograph and the definition of Punk Rock, this is to help the the owner of the album understand the meaning behind what they are listening to.

Here is a copy of the inside pages of the digipak.


• On the page that the Cd would sit on is a white sillouhette of the band. This is a very influential image and helps to convey the mystery and dark nature of the band. It could also connote that they are still only human because the band are seen as white in darkness, rather than being dark themselves.

Both texts relate to the Music Video through:

• The use of the same three base colours throughout, red white and black. Other colours are rarely added in and only used for the relevant effects.




• Much of the music video is in black and white, so the coloured sections are important as they show live performance which adds to the authentic feel.




• By using these colours in the digipak and the advertisement, the reader who obtains all three will be able to relate the texts to eachother and will acknowledge the reccuring theme of the band's image.

By using Dyer's critical framework on the construct of star image, it is evident that the star persona is created through the three texts by use of light, colour, non-verbal language and visual effects.

• By having images of the band members looking towards the camera in the digipak, the owner has a virtual piece of the band.
• This creates a sense of accesibility to the band and also an inaccesibilty as this is a photograph of a band that they might idolise.
• This relates to Dyer's paradox theory of the band being made accessibile to the audience through being able to see what the band are like, and to have some visual links to them, to be able to understand what they have heard during the music. This is a paradox because the band is inaccessible to the owner of the digipak, the images help to create star image and the feeling of desire to meet these people.
• The music of the album, collected with the music video and the digipak creates a para-social intimacy. The audience will gain to learn a lot about the band, through understanding their values and beliefs through their music, learning about their career and what they look like in band photos etc. On the other hand, the band may not have ever met the possesser of these texts. The audience may know a lot about the band but the band has only a limited knowledge of the demographic that it plays to.

Star persona is created during the music video according to Dyer's theories:

• The performance shots of the band have the singer often looking into the camera, especially during the extreme close ups, this helps to show the audience that the singer is genuine and potentially live during the video, it creates the feeling that the singer is performing to the audience.
• During the video, the girl looks into the camera during significant points of the narrative. This helps to maintain the sense that she is of a darker nature and that is very important in the video.
• She is not directly represented as a person during the video, she is the inner struggle of the lead singer. Therefore she is also the male, thus star persona is created by the video emphasising two sexes and two beings as the same person.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• For our album, the target audience was males between the ages of 16-24. During the planning stages, we identified the artist's work as punk rock.


Pitch

We needed to test a concept in the planning stages to ensure that our video and album art would work. This was very important as without doing this test we could have been running blind. By testing our concept we could see whether the target audience thought along the same lines as us, without doing this we could have made something totally irrelevant.

• The results showed that our concept would work with the music




• The idea of using live performance video was accepted by everyone we asked.




• We asked our target audience as well as the other Media students.

We were concerned about the silent movie sections of the video, as we were not sure whether this idea would work.

• The feedback we got was that the use of a train line and a steam train would work well with the concept of our video.




• This screenshot shows the use of the steam train in the video. You can also see how the black and white effect makes the shot so significant in the video.

We told the target audience about the femme fetale idea during the pitch.

• This was accepted by the target audience during our pitch and so we decided to go ahead with our ideas.

Rough Cut

• When we felt almost finished with the video, we tested a rough cut of the video to a target audience. This allowed us to gain some feedback of our work so far.




• 
  The feedback from the rough cut highlighted a small glitch in one of our shots.

We were pleased to have got that as we had not seen the video on a large screen before and so could have potentially missed something like that.

We gave out a small sheet with some questions asking for comments.

• You can see an example of one of our question sheets in the screenshot.
  
  We asked if the video stood up to repeat viewing, everyone answered yes.




• We then asked if they enjoyed the video and why, everyone said yes and gave different reasons, these included the edditing, the use of steam trains, the use of railway lines, the performance shots etc.




• We asked if they could identify the genre of the song from the music video and everyone said rock/punk rock.




• We then asked them to name a shot that they particularly enjoyed, we had responses such as the face off shot, the steam train shot, the performance shots and the camera movement shot around the drummer.




• We asked if there was anything they thought could be improved, some said camera movement, some noted the glitch at the start and some said that there wasn't enough of the bass player.

Finished work

We tested our final work again to the target audience by the means of asking people to watch the video and either fill out a survey monkey questionnaire or give a vocal response if we watched it with them.

• Everyone we asked said that the video was strong and supported the sound of the song and supported the band's image.




• They said that the way it was put together looked very proffesional and looked great in the old film style.




• Having added camera movement to the video there were no more complaints about the way the video looked and we recieved very positive feedback for it.

The following short clip shows the camera movement around the drummer and also shows the shot that much of the audience feedback said was one of the most enjoyable shots.

We wrote the video with the intention in mind of having the girl as a haunter in the opening sections of the video, making a clear link between the singer and the girl and latterly in the video making the girl appear part of the the singer, a mentality link to "burning on the inside". The preffered reading of the video was that the artist would be portrayed as an authentic band and that the narrative sections of the video would contain a road into the lead singer's mind, in this case, his inner struggle and emotional link with this girl.

• We were pleased to see from our feedback that this was the majority reading of the video, and that they liked the look of the performance, making some viewers want to see the band perform live.




• Many said that the shots of the drummer were some of the best shots in the video. Here is a screenshot from midway through one of the panning shots.











• Post production




• The audience research carried out post production showed that the digipak carried strong links to the advertisement and the music video, essentially in its use of shadow and the three recurring colours.




• Many commented on how the digipak used the same background graphics as the advertisement, however in the digipak it had its contrast risen dramatically to wash out the details and give a darker effect.

• We posted our video onto youtube and it quickly gained many views, the first comment on the youtube site reads: "Awesome, well put together and good song. 10/10". The screen shot of the video shows this comment.

• The feedback on the advertisement was pleasing, as they said that it made the reader stop flicking through the magazine so fast to glance/read the advert.




• They said that it quickly made it clear what it was about and that they looked quickly at the name, album and out now then the album cover and was effective enough to get them to want to purchase it.







• The research showed that the advertisement was effective and aesthetically pleasing, as did the artwork of the digipak.







• The digipak contained pictures of the band, which was seen as an added bonus to the fans, as not only did they get to listen to the band but also got to see some images of them.




• They liked the artist sillouhette shot of the band behind the CD holder and said that the use of contrast was mostly effective in portraying the bands image, they said it was like many other proffessional album covers although it stood out as something new.




• Others said that the contrast ruined the digipak and we should have stuck with the background of the advertisement.

Music Video Final Cut

This is our final cut of our music video for 'Get Out Alive' by 'Three Days Grace'.

JC-Rough Cut Feedback

Yesterday we had a class session where we watched everyone's rough cuts and looked at their art work. During this session we were given small sheets that we could give some feedback to the videos about.
From this session, we got:

• Every group said they enjoyed the video and that it stood up to repeat viewing.
• Each group said that they enjoyed the performance shots and that the silent movie effect was a unique twist in this for the genre.
• When asked how the genre of the track was made apparent, the groups said that the dark clothing was a strong input, the darkened effect added to the performance shots was important and some said that it had a gritty feel. Two groups of the five that responded said that the flames were an important effect.
• We were told that the video reinforced the rock band image and that the style of video worked well with the song. It was also noted that the video was not directly symbolic to the lyrics which is what we intended.
• When asked for one shot that they particularly enjoyed, most groups said the meat shots, they showed emotion and authenticity of the band. One group said the shot of the steam train was the important one and another group said that the face off shot stood out to them.
• The audiences were also asked for an area for improvement, some groups said we needed more shots of Scott, the bassist and others said there was more movement needed in the performance shots. Also there was a glitch on the first face off shot which needs sorting out. It was also stated that the drummer had his iPod on, unfortunately, in some of the shots the speakers are worn and in others they are not.

This viewing was a good event for us because it helped us see where we could improve. It helps to iron out some imperfections when seeing it on the big screen. The feedback helps get an outside view of our work and allows us to get an opinion from someone who is not absorbed in the work. Watching other peoples videos helps us take a step back from being so stuck in to our own video and was a bit like a stress relief.

We had feedback from our teachers and some of the students on our artwork. They liked the advert but on the digipak, it was noted that the pages werent all the same size, this just needs sticking into publisher and making into a booklet file. The picture of the band on the front cover needed to be bigger and they didnt like the yellow wash on the photo. On the inside cover, the text font/colour wasn't easily readable because of the background style.

We are now in the process of making these changes.