Daniela Di Raimo's music video evaluation

Evaluation for Music Video

1) We developed forms and conventions of real media products by making our video as realistic and similar to the popular indie genre bands that are the industry today. Our video was strongly based on a live performance, with a strong female lead, and we brought in a narrative in reflection of the lyrics. For example we took the lyrics “my other half wants to run away with me” and shot a scene where the lead female (Bryony) was running away from the band member (Tom).
There was also the line “and this ain’t real”, which gave us the idea of making Tom seem abstract, different and unrealistic. We made Tom look like a mime by painting his face and he wore black and white clothing, to make it seem strange and not real. This needed to be done to show that Tom’s outfit as a mime goes against normality. Tom also wore skinny jeans and a tight hoodie and t-shirt to keep the indie look throughout the band.
The image of the band was important when creating a look and style that was edgy and indie. We got ideas from the bands “The Gossip” and “Paramore”, by going onto Google and finding photos of them and also by searching on YouTube some performances of the band.
We dressed Bryony in the typical indie clothing which consisted of pink leopard print tights and an oversized t-shirt. It was a messy look which looked cool and laid back, and we thought it fit the video perfectly. Our target audience would also wear this sort of outfit so we by choosing something similar to that would make it more appealing to our audience of indie-lovers who are 15+ years old.
Our location for our music video was a run down industrial estate and a forest which had not been taken care of, with various objects in it. We thought of our locations while we were planning as we wanted somewhere edgy, run down and somewhere that looked slightly rebellious, as if we shouldn’t be there. This also goes with the theme of youth rebellion as media stereotypes young indie youths to cause trouble, and we broke this stereotype as our band was only playing instruments and being creative, instead of being destructive.
Our setting was plain and the colours were dull to show a massive contrast between the band members and the background.
In our forest setting, there was an old rusty car that we used in our video and our digipak. We filmed and took photos of our band members in the car, on the car and around the car to show again the rebellious side to them, as it shows that whatever they find they will use.
By using Tom playing an instrument but showing 3 of him was effective and challenged forms and conventions in media products as it is not usually done as usually the whole band performs rather than just one musician, so we thought it was original and effective in the end.

2) The combination of our main product and ancillary texts was effective as we linked the two in many ways. We used photos from the location we shot the music video to put into the digipak and poster/magazine cover. The shots from the forest weren’t taken for the purpose of the digipak, they were simply taken for behind the scenes shots to put onto our blog, but we then decided, as they looked professional, we could use them in our digipak/magazine cover.
We used the car in our digipak and poster to show a continuous use of it as it symbolises a lot in our video, so we wanted to show this in our digipak and poster too. We thought that it could be recognisable to the audience as Apollo Stations main object in our upcoming videos. Putting these photos into the digipak/magazine cover showed that by buying the CD and poster, the purchaser would then have “behind the scenes” images of the settings that we used. We thought that this was a good selling point as our target audience would care a lot about what they are spending their money on, as they would mostly be students, so they would want some extra’s thrown into the digipak and whatever else they were buying.
We used familiar labels and franchises such as “hmv” to show that popular stores would be stocking our CD and merchandise and they are all high street purchases that anyone can buy. By placing the “hmv” logo on the poster, we thought it looked as if the CD was accredited by “hmv”, therefore good enough to be placed in the store. As “hmv” is a popular and well known place for people to purchase music and other technologies, our target audience would see the logo and instantly recognise it to be a place where up to date music would be sold, therefore this is another selling point.
We also used “NME” as our rating magazine as we thought a phrase or star rating from this magazine would look good on our poster. As it is such a popular magazine for new films, music and other such like popular pass times, it is recognisable to the buyer as a reputable source of information on this sort of subject. Our rating was originally 5 stars, but with feedback we then changed it to 4 as “NME” is tough at ratings so 5 stars was slightly far fetched. “NME” is bought by males and females who are teens and years older as its target audience is rather large, therefore we came to the conclusion that it is the best magazine to put on our poster.
We used myspace.com as our sponsor. Myspace.com is known for promoting unsigned bands as well as signed bands, and from researching this we found that most people went on myspace.com to search for music as opposed to facebook, as that is more of a mellow family site, whereas myspace.com is more of an indie, edgy site. We went with the conventions of a real indie band as we thought their fan base would all be on myspace.com.
The font we used in our poster and CD were the same as we wanted to keep them consistent and graphically recognisable to the purchaser. Apollo Stations’ font is a font we found on dafont.com and we thought it looked edgy, messy and rusty. It suited the band well.
Our tour dates font was also found on the above site and we thought it looked slightly American and reminded us of teenagers due to the simple, hand-drawn and scruffy lettering, therefore also linking to our target audience.

3) We learnt many things from our audience feedback and have used it all to improve our music video and digipak. By gathering feedback from our peers, we changed our video to suit their queries as they are our main target audience – teens of about 17+ years old. We changed our poster/video to make it more appealing, for example we asked our audience which photo they preferred to be on the CD and by process of elimination we found which photo suited the CD the most.
We also had an email from the ex art editor of Future Music magazine. By gathering feedback which was relevant as it’s from someone in the industry, we realised as a production team realise how precise and specific we had to be with our wording, our sizing and where to put certain things. The ex art editor gave us ideas on how to make our poster more appealing, for example we had written down 5 stars as the rating from “NME” but we were told in the email feedback to only put 4 stars as 5 stars was rather extravagant in a newly signed band. We took this into consideration and realised that he was right, therefore changing this.
The ex art editor also mentioned that it was confusing to see the letters “T” and “V” at the right hand side of the TV around Tom’s head, so we changed it by putting the letters either side of the TV. We could then see that it was a lot clearer and we managed to alter this mistake to make it better.
In the email, a quote was “The overall design lets me know what kind of band we’ve got here straight away”. This was our intention and by seeing this written by someone else, it has given us the confidence that we have done our job fulfilling its purpose.
In retrospect, I think we should have probably asked for feedback at the beginning of the project and asked our target audience what they would expect to see after listening to the track, and doing some more research of Be your own PET (the tracks original band) to see what sort of music videos created. But then we thought better of this, as by going against this idea we have made our video more original and we haven’t feared over copying anyone.
The feedback we gathered overall was positive and we think we have created a piece that links well with the target audience.

4) We used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages by using the internet for most of our project. We first had to use YouTube to search other indie bands such as The Gossip and Paramore to see what kind of videos they had made and also what they were wearing, along with noting down how the live performances were set, staged and delivered. This proved very useful as the information we gathered was relevant to our own music video and we used some ideas from various other videos to combine an overall idea for ours.
We used www.dafont.com to get our fonts for Apollo Stations’ name and tour dates. We thought that all of the fonts on Microsoft Word had been used before and looked slightly boring, so by searching for fonts on the internet made it seem as if they were our own fonts and original to the band. By searching on this website we hoped that nobody had seen the font before and that our band was the first to claim it.
We had to search on Google for our TV image to put around Tom’s face in our poster. This wasn’t easy as we had to keep changing the wording in the search box to find the exact TV that we wanted.
We used the Blogger.com for the planning process to share our ideas if one of us couldn’t make the production meeting, to record plans so none of us would forget ideas and another could develop on it, and to record our progress. It is interesting to look back on our earlier blogs to see how similar and different our music video is now to how we imagined it weeks ago.
Final Cut was used to cut, edit, add and delete sound for our music video. This programme was vital as without it our footage would just be what we captured on camera, which was 35 minutes long. We had to use it and play around with it to get the lip syncing and instrument syncing perfect.
We used Adobe Photoshop to make and edit out magazine cover and CD and to make it look professional. By placing a photo we had taken on our camera into Photoshop, we managed to add fonts, pictures from the internet and various other things to our magazine cover to make it look effective and interesting.
We had to use still cameras to take photos of our location for the blogging. We also had to take photos of our band and location for our digipak and behind the scenes photos. There were photos taken of the band members make up being done to show the process of before doing a live performance and how much time goes into all the fine details.
We also had to use video cameras to capture our music video. We sometimes used a tripod for this, and other times used the hand held effect.
A stereo was used to play the track when we were filming so the band members had something to mime/sing to when we were filming, to get the timing correct.
We used our phones to take photos of the setting and used Bluetooth on the computers to transfer this information onto them, to then put onto the blog or Photoshop.
USB sticks were used to transfer information from one computer to another.
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.
We’ve also used Final Cut to combine talking head footage with your final products for the Evaluation.