evaluation ????s

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

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

What have you learned from audience feedback?

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

First Evaluation

When undertaking the research stage of this project, my focus was very specific towards modern indie rock videos, because this was the same genre of music as our song; this gave us a good idea of the styles and concepts of the work that other producers had done for similar videos. This research backed up what we wanted to do as our original plan was to deliver a story to the viewer based upon the lyrics of the song. Most of the videos that I looked at from similar genres focused on the story telling side, instead of a heavy reliance on lip synching and performance based videos. This helped us hugely as we had to do our filming with a handy-cam and with no studio or opportunity to build a set; we would have struggled to put together an effective performance based piece. I also looked back further to the ‘golden age’ of the pop video taking a look at examples of The Beatles work; for a while this gave us a thought about performance based videos due to their very basic, but hugely effective use of this kind of style. However we decided to stick to our original plan because we could not see how we could create something as successful.

Comparing this years work to our AS project, I would say that the main difference is the depth to which we took the research this year; it was hugely important for us to get a wide range of ideas from current videos in the same style before we jumped into filming. Between the group we have analysed in great detail around 30 music videos from similar genres; this gave us a clear picture of what made successful, popular music videos and showed us what it was that we needed to create to capture the imagination of our target audience.

For the ancillary tasks we decided to split the group up and each of us would create one of both extra tasks; that way we all got to express what the song and the video meant to us without having contradicting views on what would be used as the main influence for the artwork. We then came back together to pick what we thought best represented the work that we had already completed.

The ancillary tasks that I completed were inspired by the underlying sadness of the song and its lyrics, I feel that my work shows a darkness which is depicted throughout the music. I started by creating the artwork for the case, using very few colours; which appear to drain from a blurred image of a cityscape. I also used Kasabian’s font from their artwork to tie in what I had created to the band, I feel that this gave it a sense of purpose and belonging as it would have instantly been recognisable to fans of the band. For the back of the pack I removed all colour so to highlight the information to the viewer, I believe that sacrificing the aesthetic aspect was worth it because the user could clearly attain all the necessary information very quickly. The poster that I created followed the same theme as the front cover of the case, I used the same graphics again, but this time faded them into the background of the picture, then added the necessary text over the top; I had decided to create a fake tour advert for the band, which could be an insert in a magazine or a poster stuck up around towns and cities. For both tasks I used photo editing software to create the artwork as well as a graphics tablet to draw the cityscape that can be seen on both the poster and the cover of the CD case.

As I group I believe we work quite well; sharing the workload throughout the project to maximise the time that we had, at the beginning this was quite effective, but towards the end of the coursework we all seemed to find it hard to complete tasks together or separately and it’s possible that our video was slightly lower quality than we expected it to be. That said we are all very pleased with what we have produced considering the tools that we had to make it, using very basic camera equipment and editing software that was alien to us all at the start of the year.

All in all I feel that this project has been a success for myself as well as the group and I feel that I have furthered my skills in the production of videos due to having a large part in the filming and editing of our piece; as said before the video editing software that was used for the project was new to all of us. I now feel competent with this software and if I was to undertake a similar task in the future I would be happy to use it again.

If we were to complete a similar task in the future I would try and spend more time together as a group before and during production; so that we had more ideas to take to each video shoot and then more film to edit, as I feel one of the main issues with the piece was the lack of high quality content and I believe that if we had committed to recording more footage we could have eliminated this problem. I also feel that we should have spent more time planning the filming as we spent around 2 weeks after the research stage bouncing ideas off of each other before jumping into the filming; this left us with various scenes that we wanted to film but no real direction in which to take the story. If we would have had this direction I believe that the final product would have had far more relevance to the point of the story that we were trying to tell.

Our Music Video

Ancillary Task - poster

This is the poster that I made for my ancillary task. The aim of the poster is to promote a tour that the band are due to go. Using the same style from the first ancillary task I went about creating the piece using photo editing software.

Ancillary Task - Album Artwork

This is my work on the album art for the coursework; I have created a front and back cover as well as the CD artwork. I decided to keep the work quite simple, using very little colour on the front cover and none at all on the back. I used a graphics table to draw the city scape for the front cover which I then duplicated to give the effect of the colour bleeding out of the image. The font used for the band name is the font that they use on all of their marketing so I thought that using it for my work would keep it in the same style as they would have.

Having no colour on the back cover allowed me to simply apply the information about the pack to the user, this meant that they could clearly see what was contained within. For the CD itself I made the simple circle outline using the photo editing software and then applied the front cover to the template, I am pleased with the effect that has been created throughout the pack and I feel that it suits the darkness of the song that we have created our video for.

Prop Planning

The main props we plan to use are the costume for the lead character in the video which will be the typical thieves costume, the plan is to have the character being seen in everyday places wearing the outfit.

Below is similar to the one we plan to use.

We are still undecided about the use of instruments in the final video, but we will do some filming so guitars, drum kits, microphones etc. will also be shot in a few takes.

Blur Video Analysis

Parklife - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIEsmGzo2UE

The video is performance based, but has some narrative elements within the main story. The video follows two of the band members throughout the video as they drive around London. All the band members are seen at some stage, and they are all dressed to represent the genre in fashionable clothing for the time the video was shot. There is a strong relationship between the lyrics and the visuals when the singer makes reference to things they usually occur in the video in a comedic way. The music and the visuals are also linked; the video cuts when major drum beats occur. The scenes speed up at the chorus when the tempo of the song is increased making the video and the song feel like one piece, instead of two separate beings. The majority of the video contains close-ups of the band members showing strong demands from the record label to have the band seen as they were so big. There are several intertextual references to other pieces; the biggest of which being to The Beatles album art for Abbey Road where the band walk single file over the zebra crossing, which is repeated in the Park Life video.

Country House - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci0fyRAw21Q

The video is a both performance and narrative, with the lead singer being pictured throughout singing the lyrics of the song as they are heard, he is seen in front of a series of scenes that tell the story throughout the song. The first shot in the video is of a london tower block which juxtaposes the song title, the video continues to tell a story of the life and death of a man who leaves the hustle of the city to live a far slower paced life in the country. The video demonstrates strong genre characteristics with the members of the boy band all having a laugh at each others expense and using lip syncing to show the lyrics. The story in the video is taken almost word for word from the song lyrics and illustrates exactly what is meant by the lyrics. The music and the visuals are quite vaguely linked, with the cuts of the video occasionally being in time with the drum beat or the change in guitar. Throughout the video the lead singer is seen predominantly; highlighting the demands of the record label, with the need for the band to be seen. There are several intertextual references throughout the video the most obvious of which is to the board game 'Mouse Trap', which is seen several times in the video; with some of the characters using a giant version of the game. There is also a clear reference to Balzac, a French playwright and novelist in the 1600's.