Evaluation

In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?
In a vast number of rock/metal music videos, the image that is portrayed is normally based around the band. In many videos that i have recently studied all have the same form of convention, which is to focus mainly on the band on the band, and as the song progresses, so does the storyline to it. Many of the characters that are in rock/metal music videos are shown as powerful, aggressive and loud. This is exactly what we wanted to do with our music video. Some of the examples of the characters being presented as powerful, aggressive and loud is through the number of different camera angles and shots that they use. Many of the camera shots they use are panning and tracking shots. These are used to focus on the main target or image. In my music video we used this convention in order to get numerous shots of the band as well as of the main character in the storyline. In many rock/metal music videos the backgrounds and the outfits are usually dark which gives the audience the metal feeling and/or vibe. This is what we wanted for our music video but, instead of using this convention, we challenged it by altering between a bright background, to a dark background, giving the mise en scene to the video a slight balance of bright and dark which can also be interpreted as good and evil. However, many videos don’t focus much on the physical appearance of the artist as a pop video would. Instead, the video focuses more on their instrumental abilities which gives the audience the vibe of hard, fast and loud aggressiveness when the camera is focused on a guitar solo or heavy drumming, which again is what we used in our music video by showing in many cases, shots where they were purely focussing on the guitar solo or the drumming. Another very important point that rock/metal music videos focus mainly on is the storyline and the actual meaning of the song. As many rock/metal songs have strong and powerful meanings, as well as powerful instrumentals, most of the time the video tells the audience the story of the song through the actual video. Sometimes this is shown more than the actual band /artist playing the song. However, this convention we used but developed a new convention that hadn’t been done very often. We developed the convention of cross media by including a separate part of the storyline which then leaded on to the main video. In our music video we started of with someone of the computer watching a music video, the character is unimpressed with what they are seeing and decides to comment on the video by leaving an insulting remark. He then falls asleep and at this point we take the audience into the characters dream of him being chased by the band. From the use of cross media, we are challenging the convention but, we are also developing a new one but also creating suspense and excitement for the audience as they get brought into a dream where we see the band playing. At the end of the video the character wakes up and finds that he has received a comment back which is from the band. This convention that we used showed two different universes, one which is reality, and one which is dream but, at the same time we see the use of media cross from the computer, onto the actual music video.
Many techniques that rock/metal videos use is the drop and crash of beats which when occur, we see a sudden burst or explosion in the video. An example of this would be in our music video when in the intro, after the drummer flicks his drum sticks and slams them on the cymbals, we see a sudden change in location, story and time which is often used to bring the audience into a new time span, a new location or even to bring them into the actual story. These drops and crashes in the beats suggest the band in the video as well as the song that they have “Broken out, exploded and irrupted”. Conventions like these can be easily related to amongst the audience as they can say whether they are anger or if they are upset. Another convention that can relate the audience to this is again through the dark backgrounds and the dark clothing. In our music video we used the common yet effective convention by wearing the dark clothes with the chains and ripped jeans and sleeveless shirts and by having the band play in a dark and dingy garage which again will give the audience the impression that the song might have a negative meaning or storyline.
A very important convention that is used in metal videos is the physical appearance of the band. Their outfits and clothes are aggressive looking and sometimes “Scary” due to the tattoos and metal chains they have, but most importantly, their hair and facial looks. When singing, some of the lyrics may be grunts or screams and a lot of emotions are put into this. We used this in our music video by including the lead singer put much emphases into the vocals. Another convention was the hair. We took the convention of having 80’s rocker hair and used them in our music video by buying the appropriate wigs. The lead vocalist also grew a beard in order to complete the convention. As the song was called “I Disappear” we took much time and effort in making the storyline obvious that the main character was trying to disappear and that he suffered while doing it.
Many of the camera shots and angles we used we took the conventions from were low angles to show the importance’s of the image, tracking and panning, long shots, medium close ups, zoom shots and high angle shots. In the majority of the music video we used many conventions form real media music videos however, one of our only shots and scenes that we truly challenged the convention was as i mentioned before, the cross media scene where the audience gets brought into a dream. This for us we thought was very unique as we hadn’t seen it very often in existing rock/metal music videos. We thought we would give the audience a bit of excitement by giving them a journey in the music video.

How Effective Is The Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?
In order to promote our music video, we produced a CD promo pack which consisted of a front cover, back cover and insert cover and two magazine adverts in order to promote and launch the music video. For the promo pack we decided to keep a similar theme but, we went with a more dark and fearful theme for the promo pack. One of the reasons why we did this was so the audience could identify the two aspects of the band I general, but also the music video itself. We chose to go with a complex front and back cover so we could show how the band and video in whole reflects onto the audience. As we used various affects in the music video, we thought adding artwork onto the front cover would give the video more of an understanding of its complexity. On the CD covers and adverts, we created the text to be “Aggressive” and “Loud” by making it either “worn out” or “in your face”. We did this also because we thought the text would go well with the album title, the band name and the picture and artwork that we used.
The adverts that we made varied. We made one that was simple but mysterious and the other one obvious and to the point. We chose this method of doing two adverts because we wanted one of them to give the audience the impression that the album was “Fearful” as it was in coherence with the album title. We kept this one simple but at the same time, gave the audience a sense of confusion and stability at the same time about the album. The second advert we created was related to the actual music video itself. We did this because we wanted this advert to be obvious to the audience, and also to remind them about the music video. However, what we did differently in bother adverts was in the obvious advert, we added a magazine rating that showed the quality of the song and album but, we also mentioned that the album included the “Hit single” which was the music video so again we are reminding the audience about the song and music video. In the second advert we kept the theme simple but the text that we included was a release date and I small annotation which related back to the album name and music video. In bother adverts we included a small picture of the front cover showing that the front cover is the album which again we are reminding the audience who the band is and what the album title is.

What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?
After showing our audience our music video and CD promo Pack, we gathered a lot of information from them and how they felt towards our media product. After showing them our music video, we learned that many of the camera angles that we used were very professional but at the same time difficult. The reasons for this were due to its uniqueness and timing between scenes. We also leant that people enjoyed our music video because it looked good due to the mise en scene that we had created for example the clothing, the appearance, the song and the locations. The audience liked the fact that we used the actual music video as a dream sequence and thought it was very creative. For this reason this set off a good vibe for our video and again the audience thought that due to the way we edited the video and added affects, it looked professional and ideal for the theme of the actual video. We also got many comments and remarks about the meaning of the actual song and how well we made the storyline fit in with the song meaning. Overall we received many positive comments about our music video and how we constructed it all together. We received many positive comments about the accuracy and timing of the scenes of the band playing. However, the main comment that we received was some of the camera tricks that we did and some of the tricks that we did in the scenes for example the drum stick trick in the intro of the music video, at the guitar solo etc. Many of our audience enjoyed watching our music video and wanted to use some of the conventions that we used for their own music video. Our choices of characters were most suitable for our music video as the audience had said that the characters were suitable for the video sue to our passion and enjoyment of rock/metal. We were told that in the music video, the characters emphases and enthusiasm in playing the instruments were very realistic and very convincing and looked as if we were actually playing the instruments. However, one comment that we did receive about the music video was about the storyline. We were told that even though the story was easy to follow, some of the scenes on the storyline seemed a bit random and could have had a bit more sense to what it was, why it was there and why it was there. However, overall, the audience had given us positive feedback and we were happy to take. The last thing we learned from this was that in the music video was that the audience wanted a slight bit more understanding in some of the scenes. We know this for the future.

How Did You Use Media technologies In the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stage?
Throughout this whole project, there was a wide range of technology that was used in order to construct, research, plan and evaluate my project. The first use of technology to construct my media project was a filming camera that allowed us to film all the footage and take our pictures for the CD promo pack. We used for the vast majority of the researching was the use of the internet. We used the internet in order to present our project on our blogs. This was to keep record of all our work and to show our work. However, the internet was also used to research different CD albums, Different music videos, different songs and different methods of filming and constructing. Many websites that I used in this stage was Google and Youtube. Youtube was a huge help to me as it allowed me to view the different types of music videos and gave me an insight on what type of music video I should do in order to go with the storyline. The research through this was done in order to get a rough idea on what to do for the music video that we made. Google images were used largely in order to find all the different types of CD albums to base ours on. Other technology that we used In order to construct and plan was Sony Vegas 10 on computer. This was the key element for us to edit our music video. This is where we spent the majority of our time editing and constructing. If it weren’t for the program, we would have had to use premier plus on the Macs which we would have struggled to construct the video as we were all unfamiliar with the controls and settings of the program. Another very important use of technology that we used was Photoshop. This was the key element in constructing the promo pack which included the front cover, the back cover, the insert cover, the CD spine and the two magazine posters that we created. This programme helped us created these pieces and also helped us with the research as well. We experimented with some of the settings in order for us to find out which setting would fit best, which affect would go better and which setting would be most suitable. However, throughout the whole project we used existing media such as real music videos, real songs and real CD’s in order for us to create our own. We used many conventions from these existing pieces of media and challenged them in many cases in order to get the best possible version of our own idea. However, In order to upload all of our products onto our blogs I first had to convert the pictures into JPEGS in order for me to upload it. The video was more difficult to upload. I first had to create a youtube account and upload the video to youtube. I then had to take the HTML code and embed the code onto my blog. After this was done my blog was complete.