Bryony Craig-Matthews Evaluation

Music Video Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We developed the forms and conventions of a real media product by first of all researching the conventions of real up and coming indie band of today. The genre of our music video was important in the production. To make our product as authentic as possible we largely based our production on the live performance, tying in some narrative which related to the lyrics. We used the same location for both the performance and narrative so that our audiences would relate to both and be alble to follow along with the plotline. Our video had a strong female lead just like two of our researched bands ‘The gossip’ and also ‘Paramore’. To make our video as effective as possible, we chose the location carefully and found one that was edgy and rough, just like the look of our band. The costumes were also a big part of the intended genre, these were influenced by the band ‘Paramore’. The lyrics had an impact on the performance and the narrative, the lyrics ‘this ain’’t real’ gave us the idea of making the whole performance and portrayed image abstract and unrealistic, to do this we made Tom look like a mime by painting his face and wearing black and white, this went against normality, to keep to the indie genre he also wore skinny jeans and a tight top. To add interest and make viewing more enjoyable, we made the main female lead costume, colourful in contrast to the black and white mime costume. ***We also challenged the typical conventions of a real indie band by having our narrative linked to some of the lyrics, which is unusual in such a performance based genre. We also challenged the usual indie conventions by using final-cut and duplicating Tom (our mime character) in some scenes highlighting the lyrics again ‘this ain’t real’, by each performer on screen being the same person.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of both our ancillary texts and main product is very effective. We made sure that both the texts and our main product complimented each other and the audience could make reference between them and be able to recognise one from the other. We also wanted to carry through the conventions and genre of our indie band. To do this we did many things; to continue the atmosphere and theme of the music video, whilst filming we took many posed and natural photo’s of the band (Tom and I) on location. The photo’s could also be given as a freebie (behind the scenes photo’s and the making of) These we used in both the poster and the digipak. The idea of having one continuous landmark that could then be a trademark of our band was founded when we stumbled upon a rusty old car that we thought looked really edgy and unrealistic (perfect for our bands image) this we used in both ancillary texts. This consistent image shown in all aspects of our product challenges the mainstream styles of music, again bringing in the conventions of an abstract indie band. To make our poster look more real and professional we used many well known labels and franchises that fitted the genre. Using ‘NME’ showed that our band was in the indie rock scene of today and was accredited by them. We also used ‘NME’ as our magazine rating, as ‘NME’ being such a popular magazine to our target audience we thought it would be a good idea to have a rating from them, we realised our original 5* rating was a bit too ambitious we took it down to 4*, this stemmed from the feedback we gathered. This was also shown in the use of ‘myspace.com’ as our sponsor, we chose ‘myspace’ because this is where many of the up and coming indie bands put up tracks and where we would find our largest online fan base, we chose not to use ‘facebook’ because it is a more family network website whereas myspace is more edgy and young, this fitted our target audience. Our use of ‘HMV’ on our poster showed where our audience could purchase our product in a popular store, this was part of our marketing campaign. We also develop real media products through the use of the competition in the left hand side of our digipak, this was done as a way to connect and entice the intended audience of unsigned bands and to promote the release of the new album and 2010 tour. The ‘Out Now’ banner we put on the poster shows fans that everything is brand new and they should get it fast, it also promotes the fact that the music video is also on the album invites the viewer to buy it because it gives it an extra unusual factor, we thought this was a good selling point.
To carry on the consistency of our ancillary texts we regulated the fonts we used in the poster and digipak. The font we used for ‘Apollo Station’ acquired from ‘dafont.com’ suited our band because of the messy look it gave. We used the same font and size for both ancillary texts so it was recognisable. The font used for our tour dates and competition was quite childish and scruffy, this linked to our target audience and make it look more personal.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback has overall been really positive and very helpful in progressing and making our products better and more suitable for our peers and other audiences. By gathering feedback from our peers we learnt what could be better suited for our target audience. The ages of our peers helped because they were the age band we were initially aiming at. Many said that the poster and digipak were very effective together and would entice them to buy the album because of its striking image. They helped by commenting on some of the lettering being a little hard to read due to the font and how close it was together this lead us to spreading it out and in turn it looked more professional not just appealing. The feedback that we had from the industry was really useful, and ‘Ex Art-editior from Future Music Magazine’ described our ancillary texts as very professional and “the overall design lets me know exactly what kind of band we’ve got here”. This really pleased us because this is what we wanted to achieve. He also commented that the 5*’s we had given our album was unrealistic and far-fetched therefore we changed them to 4*. Also the clarity of the album name wasn’t great so we changed the layout to improve this.
Other comments we received was due to continuity errors in our final cut, these were the split screen looking too obvious due to the light changes, we worked hard to correct this by playing with the colours and got it as good as could be achieved. The feedback has all been helpful and encouraging allowing us to make the most of our products. To allow maximum potential of our feedback, if it was issued earlier it would have allowed us to continually tweak and perfect the final product.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Using new media technologies helped us greatly in the process of making of our final products. Initially we extensively used the internet to research the genre, forms and conventions of the band and the song we were using ‘Be your own PET’ ‘girls on TV’, this proved very useful because we learnt what sort of attitude ‘Be your own PET’ have and gave us an idea on our initial pitch. Other bands were researched for inspiration and reference such as ‘Ok Go’ and ‘Paramore’ . Using the internet for ‘dafont.com’ allowed us to get more interesting fonts not just the normal ‘word fonts’. Also the ‘longroadmedia’ blog was used for blogging and feedback. We posted blogs allowing our group and peers to read, feedback and contribute to ideas and production meetings. The use of camera phones and Bluetooth allowed us to share as a group possible locations and things that we had seen that would add to the overall product, USB sticks were also used for personal blogging and editing at home. Once we began filming we used a camera, tri-pod and C.D player. We used the camera to capture all of the footage needed to edit into our music video. The tri-pod was used for a large variety of shots including low, high, close up, wide-angle and panning, also for all of the performance so that it was steady and precise. We also used the camera hand-held to give the rough/running look, we used this in a lot of our narrative shots. The C.D player was used to enable us to lip-sinc when the footage was uploaded via a flashdrive. After the completion of filming the next step was to use final cut in editing our footage, lip-sinking and adding the soundtrack.
For the two ancillary texts, the most compatible choice was photoshop, this was used to manipulate the images used and to add text and labels to create our final digipak and poster.
We used still cameras to take photos of our location and filming process for the blogging. We also took photo’s of the band member’s having their make up done which we could use for the behind the scenes pictures for the digipak. ITunes was also used for us to first choose our song then to convert it so we could put it onto final cut to produce our music video.

Bryony Craig-Matthews