Evaluation

Q1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We wanted our video to be more abstract and unconventional, so we decided to include more abstract shots, specifically these ones of water and ink. Since our song is an indie rap song, I think it fits nicely as it goes against the grain of standard rap videos, fitting with our specific subgenre.

We felt that if our video was completely abstract we would lose the attention of potential viewers, so we included a large selection of shots featuring our star. As he lipsyncs to the song, it fits with the lyrics. Some of the shots featuring him performing directly to camera and others as if he does not know the camera is there, creating a voyeuristic effect.

We also featured shots of other people dancing, since the song has a slight dancey feel to it. However, we abstracted these shots slightly, by altering their speed and occasionally reversing them, again going against the grain of standard music videos.

 We included an abstract shot of an egg splatting into a jar, first in slow motion and reversed, and then at full speed, with an earthquake effect added in Final Cut. The impact was timed to coincide with the first beat of the chorus, creating a strong and interesting visual effect

At a point in the song the lyrics go “I take a pull and wonder why the Beatles break up” in reference to smoking cannabis. We fitted our video to the lyrics by having our performer mime taking a pull of a joint.

We once again referenced the notion of looking and voyeurism by featuring an extended series of shots where Emily is looking at the camera through a variety of coloured filters.

We added product placement (Nike trainers) as part of the demands of our record label.

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
 I believe that our abstract, arty music video goes well with our ancillary products, which both feature a similar arty style. Colour is an important feature throughout our video, both in the ink shots and in the lighting of our performer, and this sense of colour is carried through into our ancillary products, with our digipack featuring different panels each featuring a cartoon-style character (the front cover of which is a cartoonised version of our star) and each has a specific colour background, which features very strongly. Our advert is also the front cover of our digipack, but with added information such as release date, reviews, where you can buy the product, and a link to our star's twitter page.

Q3.  What have you learned from your audience feedback?

(Make sure annotations are turned on)

Q4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger: Blogger was a very helpful tool throughout the different stages of our music video. At first, we used it as a sort of ideas scrapbook, showcasing music videos and star personas that interested us, allowing us to go back and gain more ideas from each reference. Following on from that, we used it to plan the general ideas for our shoot, followed by more specific and practical details such as when, where and what we would need to film. Throughout this process, we continued to blog influences as they came to us. Finally we used it as a tool to post feedback for our rough cut, allowing us to closely focus on areas that we needed to improve.

Final Cut: Final Cut was probably the most important tool in the creation of the music video, as without it we would have had no way to edit our footage (except possibly on a more basic program such as iMovie, which would have been much less successful). We made use of a multitude of effects, such as the ability to fade between shots, colour correction which we used to drastically change the colours of certain shots for an abstract effect, as well as for more simply making the colours of our less abstract shots really stand out, and key frames, which we used to move some of our static shots around the screen, making them more exciting and not look awkward in comparison to shots where the camera is moving.

Photoshop: We used Photoshop in a slightly different way to most groups, choosing to draw in our digipack and magazine advert from scratch, rather than editing an existing photo. We used the standard paintbrush tool to draw out our characters, and then added a noise layer over the top, set to a low opacity and on multiply, to add a grainy, lo-fi feel to our ancillary products.