Evaluation - Tom

Evaluation Questions:

When we were originally coming up with the ideas for our media products for the Rock/ Indie track, Much Against Everyone’s Advice, we decided that we wanted to follow well-known conventions for it’s genre, which we researched. We used this tactic throughout our three media products; music video, magazine advert, Digipak. In order to follow the Rock/ Indie genre we considered clear artist representation to be the most important aspect to all our products. We wanted our audience to see us and know who the band members are to increase the intensity of the relationship between the viewer and those on screen. This links to an increase in popularity from the audience if they feel they can relate to the band and this would tie in with the demands of the record label, an important aspect according to Goodwin’s theories. Another very key aspect to our music video was the inclusion of guitars so that instantly, our audience will be able to see that we are a band and know what sort of music to expect. This ties in with the rock genre music video convention of a performance taking place in front of the camera. However, a less mainstream approach that we took was, to include the name of the song at some different stages of the music video. We used a technique called key framing in the programme FinalCut Express to make the letters of the words move in and out of the frame. This was something that gave our video a unique selling point and will differentiate our music video from our competitors'. We also followed the basic conventions of music videos such as cutting from shots to other shots in time to the music on the beats. This is very important as without it, the production would seem very amateur and not have the same effect and link between music and visuals.

The main factor, which we thought about throughout the creation of our three media products, was making sure they all strongly related to each other so the audience or consumer knew instantly that the product belonged to us. We considered this brand awareness to be crucial to the impact our brand wanted to have on the market. We included a picture on both our Digipak and magazine advert which uses the same location and band members as in the music video so that our audience will recognise the link and the artist representation.

When we planned the creation of the products we thought that these links of the drawing out colour from band members in dull, lifeless locations would add to the effectiveness of the product combination.

Throughout the creation process of our products, we received a lot of feedback from different sources, from our target audience to our teacher, to the real band, Soulwax. We contacted the band themselves to ask permission to use their track and they got back to us very quickly which helped us to push on with our planning.

After we pitched our initial ideas to our target audience, we received some valuable feedback as to what might work or what might be less effective. It was good to have a different perspective from that of our own. One example was that when we spoke about the idea to have different frames showing different footage, it was thought that it could look too busy. We took this into consideration and thought about how we could tackle this. We planned to use text or letters in the different frames instead so the footage wasn’t moving and therefore less busy.

We again received feedback after we compiled a rough cut of our music video. We knew upon completion that the rough cut would not at all reflect how our final product would look. We had a very tight schedule to film and put our footage together and therefore we couldn’t complete the video for the whole song and also the video wasn’t always synced with the music. A lot of the feedback we received for improvements to our work, we already knew needed to be changed and therefore some of it was less relevant or useful.

However, a good piece of feedback that we received and really appreciated was that we needed a wider variety of shot lengths. The inclusion of close-ups of the artists was what they particularly made reference to, "There are a number of long shots, these need to be punctuated with close-ups. You need to incorporate close-ups very early on to visually establish your artist straight away". When reflecting upon our footage we realised that this was indeed the case so we had another filming session. This time we filmed the lead singer and member of the group singing the whole of the track in 2 different locations and 3 different lengths of shots. We then mixed this into our music video, ensuring the music and visuals were synced correctly for precise use of lip syncing, and we were very happy with the result.

During the whole project, we presented, constructed and planned our ideas all using new media technologies and different software. Without the use of the internet, our products would not have been of the quality we would hope for. It allowed us to research conventions and examples of products which were very helpful for inspiring our products as well as allowing us to research Soulwax and their products and other products from the genre. We used the internet to view the band, Soulwax’s website and products which gave us a feel of how they conduct themselves in their work and how we can use some of their themes in our products. We looked at examples of Digipak’s such as Blur’s Greatest Hits and work from Jennifer Lopez which helped us to see what needed to be included in the product and conventions we needed to follow for our own product we were able to access these by using amazon, online shopping website. The use of the online Blog ‘housed’ our whole project as we continuously uploaded our work and posted our progress throughout the project. Without this we wouldn’t have been able to display our work as effectively and we wouldn’t have been able to access it so easily. We used it to record our ideas and the feedback we received at each stage of our project and its all there for everyone to see. The two main pieces of professional software that we used to create our products were, FinalCut Express and Photoshop.

FinalCut Express was the video compiling and editing programme that we used to physically create the video. We captured footage from a digital video recorder and were able to place it straight into the programme and could add it to our music video timeline. It’s simple to use the programme and use the many tools it provides to edit video clips. These include, trimming clips, fading in and out of clips, introducing filters to change the colour of clips and animating clips within a frame to name only a few. All of these were needed in the production of our music video.

Photoshop was used mostly for the ancillary products. Providing a library of tools and effects to manipulate raw pictures into professional looking, refined images. We used its clever tool, magic wand, in order to select band members and make part, or all, of them a solid colour whilst keeping the rest of the image the same. This made a good effective and professional look, highlighting the band members, which we used in both our Digipak and magazine advert in a continuing theme.
Of course, the availability of the video camera and tripod, the digital camera and the Apple Mac computer were the foundation of our success giving us the opportunity and provision to complete such a media project. These media technologies really did facilitate the research, the planning and the producing of everything we did.