Music Video Evaluation- Helena

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

Our product uses, develops and challenges conventions of real media products by creating links between the lyrics and visuals; like Andrew Goodwin says in his book “Dancing in the Distraction Factory” (Routledge 1992) music lyrics will have some relevance with the visuals. We achieved this by having the background as a desert in the night time which gradually turns into day time, when the singer says begins the song with the line “And the sky is falling on a summer desert night” which is illustrated in our video. Also in the 3^rd verse the singer mentions celebrities in Vegas; therefore we had chosen to have a Vegas like background on our product.

Our song comes under the genre of Rock, so a record company producing records for bands similar to ours, would expect the artists to be represented in a ‘rocky’ manner, we achieved this through the costumes our performer was wearing e.g. the head scarf. Many rock music videos have shots of all the band members playing altogether at some point in the video, in the chorus of our project we had all the band members playing and singing together.

We used various inter-textual references; one of them being the music video ‘Vertigo’ by U2 (2004), this music video gave us the idea to have a desert in the background, as it does the same thing in their music video visuals. Another example was by Rick Astley ‘Take Me To Your Heart’ in 1988, where he takes role as singer, camera man and mimes some lines of the female backing singers this gave us the idea to have Stuart playing as every member of the band.

The camera shots we used were varied, like in the Rick Astley video there are sections of it which are filmed with the camera hand held, we also achieved this technique, like for example with the outside shots. We also had low angle shots and mid-shots, we used varied shots to keep the audience interested.

Our mise-en-scene consists of instruments and costumes, they are important because the audience has to be able to tell and see the difference between the 4 different characters. During our planning time we watched a couple of music videos to give us ideas on what to include on our product. One of the music videos we watched was ‘The Masterplan’ by Oasis (1995), it consists of 3D animation to give the illusion of a 3D environment, and this gave us the idea to create ourselves some 3D backgrounds. Also we watched ‘I Disappear’ by Metallica (2000), where it has full band member shots; like in our project we did this for the chorus.

For the Digipak we looked various examples, most of which had all of the band members in the front cover e.g. Queen- Greatest Hits. The front cover of our digipak has a picture of all the members with one of our 3D backgrounds. Also we did a parody of the Abbey Road album by The Beatles. Magazines typically use persuasive/informative language e.g. ‘Out now’ we also tried to use this type of language our on magazine advert, we achieved this by having a review quote and an album summary.

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

The reason why each panel of our digipak is slightly different is because we wanted to achieve a sense of individuality, but keeping with the four band member concept. One way we combined our ancillary text with our product was by having screen captures from the video on the digipak, so that it links together, also for the magazine advert and the front cover of the digipak we had the four members of the band standing on the 3D Vegas background, we did this because we wanted to maintain the brand identity. For the track list on the digipak we used the night desert picture as the background, we did this because it has a connection with the video, it being a “Summer Desert Night”. The panel with the Abbey Road parody also shows the four members of the band, which in some way pays honor to what can be considered one of the best album covers of all time. The panel which consists of a silhouetted version of the four members was to show the difference the band members without colours. There are two disc trays because we wanted to have a CD with all the music tracks and one with just the video.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback from the class on the rough cut said that it was in an unfinished state with the green screen background incomplete; however the class commented that Stuart gave strong performances. The teacher’s feedback on this was that we had unique 3d background ideas, and the idea of having the same person playing as all members of the band worked well. In consequence of the feedback we continued working on the backgrounds, and finalizing the effects e.g. Chroma Key.

The overall feedback on the blog was that the posts were detailed, good research ideas on the digipak and good Photoshop work. The things we needed to improve on the blog according to the feedback would be to have a post with information on what’s on disc 2, also we need to cut down the length of the posts, as some are too lengthy, and make another post, to increase the number of posts on out blog.

The feedback we received regarding out digipak was that the visuals worked well, the Photoshop work was good and that it had the band details. The areas we would need to improve on would be some information on what’s on disc 2, and to stick to a theme.

The feedback on the magazine advert was that we had good attention to details, the landscape layout was also praised and that we had a good amount of information. However we also received comments that it was possibly a little plain and that the theme might not have fitted in too well.

The feedback we received from our final product was that the idea of using a green screen was good, the effects were good and that we had a good range of camera shots. The feedback also mentioned that the drums were out of sync and that we needed to work more on sharpening out green screen effects.

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

We filmed using a Canon MD205 camera both for our video and documentary, which then was uploaded on the Apple Mac. We used Facebook to talk to each other to plan things for the next lesson, we also used Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to try to contact Butch Walker (The artist of our song) which unfortunately up-to-date we have received no reply. In addition we used YouTube to look at other music video examples to gives ideas on our piece. The programs we used to make the piece were, Photoshop for picture editing (Magazine and Digipak), Final Cut for composing and editing the project and Modo to do the 3d backgrounds.