Evaluation - Charlie Saunders

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks (you cannot annotate ancillary tasks just yet obviously). Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to indicate which conventions you have used at which point. Explain which conventions you followed/challenged and how/why? Use Goodwin's 6 points as a guide here.   

Goodwins Points

·                     Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics eg. Stage performance in metal videos, dance routine for a boy/girl band, story of outsider that the world doesn’t understand- indie)

·                     Sound and vision. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. There is also a relationship between music and visuals.

·                     The video will have a certain ‘look’ or visual style that is used specifically to generate a star image: *group has to have a consistent style. *star image essential.

·                     Voyeurism; there is a frequent reference to notion of looking, and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body. Voyeur; gets enjoyment from watching.

·                     Intertextuality; there is often intertextual reference (to films, TV programs, other music videos etc).

1.

Here we used a medium side tracking shot at the beginning of the video. This immediately draws the viewers to the artist and helps them identify to his look and style. We wanted the artist to have a casual, trendy up to date style, concentrating on following goodwins point of portraying a star image we dressed him in a labelled jumper, jeans and trainers, which has been a typical 2012 fashion trend for teenage & young men.  

2. One of Goodwins conventions is for the music video to convey genre characteristics. Our song 'Beneath youre beautiful' is a pop ballad so our convention was to use lots of fades and dissolves in editing. In this scene of the female artist singing we used a white wall to film against and filmed the verse from a range of angles and merged them in with the tool on photoshop. This gave more depth and movement to the music video. 

3. We followed the convention of lyrics matching visuals half way through the song. At the point of "You built your wall so high" we had a long shot of sam in the dark and as the lyric said "high" he put his head up and looked to the sky and the camera tilted upwards. I think this was a really useful shot as it adds movement and more fun to the video.

4.We learnt it was important for the audience to identify with the artists, especially thats its a key demand from record labels and companies; therefore we used a range of close up shots of both artists in our video encouraging identification keeping the focus on the artists. 

5. Shot of camera panning down on Jess
With reference to voyeurism and attention to the female body, we chose an attractive female to star in our video. We used a range of shots in her scenes, many close up and long shots but also panning downwards from head to toe. This encourages males to enjoy watching and females to look up to the artist with inspiration from looks, costume etc. 

6.  One technique which is very important in the making of music videos was cutting clips on the beat. We successfully did this throughout the video. I feel the clip that its most noticed is this Scene where Jess walks past Sam, she starts to walk with the beat as well which makes the video seem more upbeat and also shows more strongly that she walks past ignoring him. 

 

7. Conventionally pop videos require a lot of camera movement in order to keep the audience entertained and keep the video interesting. In this shot we use panning from left to right of the two artsits singing the chorus together giving the video movement and showing the two artists together. 

 8. 
Nearer to the end of the video, we start to communicate a storyline throughout the video. Conventionally in pop videos the lyrics suggest a story so the video creates scenes to communicate it. Our song suggests the boy and girl and singing about each other therefore we started to film them on a date to show that the outcome at the end of the song results in the two falling for each other.

9.  Again, demands of the record label involve close ups of the artist. In this scene we used a close up of Sam singing his chorus, we concentrated heavily on lighting to highlight his face causing the audience to identify with the audience. The black background matched the slow tempo of the song and keeps the focus on Sam.

10. Challanging conventions, nearer the end of the music video, we used a range of scenes and merged them all in together on photoshop. We used a close up shot of Sams face on top of a long shot of Jess standing, then faded sam out then faded in a different long shot of him standing. Although this is really uncommon and unconventional in pop ballad music videos, I personally think it works well and communicates the storyline of the two artists getting to know and like each other. 

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Task: Create a Prezi which makes clear links between your 3 products.

Help: Consider to what extent you have created an effective promotional package for your artist. How have you used mise en scene, motifs, themes, composition etc to present a particular image of your artist? What do you think the expectations of your target audience are for each of your products and the package as a whole? Do you think you have met these expectations?

I made a Prezi to talk about the links between our music video, digipak and magazine advert. I think the expectations from our target audience is that we bring something new and different to the industry, but to also create an artist who will fit in today sterotype and expectation of music artists. I feel we have created a video that will entertain and intrigue our audience. Our two ancillary tasks link together very well with the use of imagery, style and colour, which will be reconised and praised by our target audience.

Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback. 

Help: Consider all the forms of audience feedback you have received as well as all methods and contexts for gathering it. Start by making a list of all of the types of feedback you have received, the context in which you received it, methodology and whether you found it useful/ whether you acted on it:
eg. Rough Cut Feedback/ other group feedback on blog/ qualitative/ we added more filters to the video to add genre authenticity. 

In this task I will consider our pitch feedback, roughcut feedback and final cut feedback, along with the comments we got on our digipak and magazine cover designs. 

In class we watched each others rough cuts on the macs and filled in a tick list as we watched in giving feedback. This really helped as it got a range of opinions. Each group also left a comment each of constructive criticism. Our rough cut video was very unfinised but the feedback really helped us notice more parts to improve and drew attention to what else we needed to include. 

Comments we recieved we were already aware that we needed to improve on were:

1. Fill in blank gap, get all the footage you need

2. Include more camera angles

3. Include more camera movement

However, we did get some really useful points that we hadnt really payed much attention to:

1. Some shots were too long, became boring after a while

2. Cut the kiss clip straight after - can tell they move away 

3. Improve female artists lip syncing

4. Need fewer static shots

Getting qualitative, specific and detailed feedback from our class really helped us decide and plan what we needed to do in the final few weeks before the roughcut deadline to improve our video. I really enjoyed getting feedback from our class as they are experienced in making music videos too, and also they are in our target audience range. 

Using the rough cut feedback, we took certain actions:

• Fill in blank gap - Filmed a lot more lip syncing scenes throughout the whole song
• More camera movement & angles - Refilmed the same verse roughly 3 times using a range of angles and camera movement which we could then edit into one verse in final cut
• Shots too long - Filmed a storyline to cut from lip syncing the whole way though & edited in a range of clips with angles and camera movement in order to keep the audience entertained
• Cut the kiss clip - We took this clip out as we didnt feel it worked well with the storyline or the song type, and filmed a date scene instead 

After the final cut and ancillary task deadline we did another feedback lesson, In this we all sat around the room and watched each groups video together and each person in the class gave a postive/constructive comment. 

We did get a few comments that were also mentioned in the roughcut feedback such as: some lip syncing still needs to improve, chorus needs more impact, song slow and boring in parts - I feel we did improve on these points since the roughcut feedback however they definitely could have done with improving.

In result of the final cut feedback we got mostly really positive feedback which i was pleased with:

• lighting is correct tone for video
• variation of shots - keeps it interesting & conventional
• faded shots are conventional and effective
• tone & clips in video reflected the tempo of song in slow parts
• star persona is clear throughout the video

I was pleased that a class member mentioned star persona as i feel its something we focussed on a lot when we refilmed due to the fact we didnt pay much attention to it up to the point of the rough cut.

This was the first time the class had seen our digipak and magazine advert. Comments we got were: It looks very professional, The black and white pictures of the artist are simple but effective, Digipak needed a variety of shots and costume change

I agree with all the comments about our digipak and magazine advert. Im glad our class liked it but i do feel that the ancillary tasks were quite rushed for our group as we were quite unprepared and the deadline came around quicker than we expected. Although they did need improving, i feel we produced professional products and communicated a clear star persona throughout. 

Below i embeded a prezi to show screen grabs of our video, digipak and magazine as it refers to our text. Also two xtranormal videos made up of rough cut and final cut comments. 

Rough cut Animation
by: charliesaunders
Final Cut & Ancillary Animation
by: charliesaunders

Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Task: Create a video presentation which discusses the technologies you used at each stage of the project. This video needs to be different from the Director’s commentary in terms of its presentation and content i.e. Presented as a ‘How to use…’/ Teaching (in character?) style of video that could then be used as a future teaching aid. For homework for Wednesday, you need to write the script for this and try to collect relevant screen grab images. Choose 3 technologies that you used and explain how you used them or you can
Help: Go through each stage of your project and make notes on which new technologies you used, for what purpose and how useful each technology was in terms of achieving your goals. Were there particular types of technology that you found particularly useful? Were all of the technologies you used digital? How did the technologies work in combination with each other?


Photoshop

In order to edit the photos of our artist for the digipak and magazine advert we used Photoshop. This was really useful to experiment with as it has so many different styles and tools that you can use. One tool we used a lot on our artist was the spot tool, we wanted his skin to look perfect to make him more appealing, especially for the close ups so we thought it was important to get rid of any blemishes. We also used the saturation, brightness and contrast and colour corrector tools as we wanted to get the right tone of colour. To create the background of the album cover and magazine advert we layered on top of the original background by using the blur and dodge tool which created a gritty effect which we then blended. This was my favourite technique as it looked really professional and matched the urban look we were aiming to create.

Photoshop Animation
by: charliesaunders

Final Cut

Final cut was really important in the making of our music video. We used it to load clips then delete what we didn’t need. We then would put a certain clip on the line and match it with the lyrics, using the marker tool really helped match lip syncing and we used this thoroughly in the process of our video. It is conventional in the pop music genre to use a lot of fading clips, so we used the tool which fades one clip into another. This looked really effective and made our video more interesting. As some of our clips lacked movement, we used an editing style called key framing which made the clip look like it was moving; this was difficult to do at first but worked well. Finally, we used the colour editing tools to make some scenes brighter and better lit, and also used the speed up/slow down setting in a few clips to match the pace of the song. 

Blogger

Blogger is not something we have used before in media so it was a new technology this year. I really enjoyed using it as it helped us keep track of all our work and what process we were in. Not only was it good for writing notes and planning, but we could involve so many technologies on there. Youtube videos that inspired us could be embedded and then talked about which gave visual and written info, but we could also add photos, powerpoints, prezis etc. I think I really benefitted from being able to incorporate technologies into blog posts as it can sometimes extend what you are explaining and can reference throughout. Also the benefit of being able to do group posts and individual posts worked well as then it is easy to remember what you discussed and what your own idea was.