Millie Martin

Candidate number: 0376

Issues, as per usual

We're having problems uploading the evaluation to our blog, it seems that whenever i try to upload it i recieve an update informing me that a recent attack on my computor system was blocked and the process of uploading the video has so far taken over an hour with no progress and no upload.
Sorry for the delay, it will be uploaded asap.
Thankyou.

Final version of the Digipak

Here is the final version of the digipak, there are a couple of changes from the previous one added...

Website Complete (Finally)...

The finishing touches have been made to our website, read the previous post on the website for an in-depth analysis of it. Follow this link.

Evaluation Finished!

After days of editing, we finally finished our evaluation and we have given in a copy to our teacher on a digistick. We filmed most of it using a green screen which looks very good, but as we found out when editing, does mean a lot of harf work. We'll upload our evaluation here as soon as possible.

Evaluation Script:

Media Evaluation Script:

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

As a group we inspired to create a music video that adhered to the conventions of a real music video. To help achieve this, we researched “Goodwin’s 6” which identifies the typical conventions of a music video:
- a relationship between music and visuals,
- a relationship between lyrics and visuals,
- a demand for close-up shots,
- the notion of “looking”,
- Intertextuality.
We believe we have included all of these things, for example, our images change on the beat of the track as we have tried to make a relationship between the visuals and the rhythm a motif throughout our music video. The themes in the lyrics are of exploration, searching and discovery which we have tried to demonstrate through the narrative scenes in our music video. The landscape shots we used in our music video represent the audience themselves exploring and searching their surroundings and this helps to include the audience within the video and make them involved in what is happening. We incorporated the demand for close-up’s rather begrudgingly in our music video because it was the plan from the beginning that during the video we would slowly reveal the two singers in the video until on the last line they would see them, in there entirety . We did this so that the audience would themselves be exploring and trying to see the singer’s faces and this would help link the lyrics to visuals, another of Goodwin’s 6. However, when it came to filming our video it was very unpractical and also unconventional, so we decided to scrap that idea and we include many close-up shots of the band. We also included “the notion of looking” in our video, shown by the singers looking directly at the camera on many occasions, as we thought it complemented our theme of “searching and exploration”.
Here you can see that we have included 5 of Goodwin’s 6 rules of a conventional music video so we have tried to challenge the typical conventions of real music video products by not including a lot of “Intertextuality”. We did this to make our video “original” and a breath of fresh air when compared to a lot of stereotypical music videos.
Our media product challenges other real media products by its simplicity and clear themes. We have represented our themes of “exploration”, “discovery” and “nature” very clearly in our video. We have shown our theme of “Nature” by filming entirely outdoors by a lake and in woodland. “Exploration” and “discovery” our represented in our video through the narrative of people searching through a wood to find each other and eventually discovering each other beside a lake. The simplicity of these three themes makes our video unconventional compared to many other complex music videos with a convoluted and confusing array of themes and representations: These types of music videos are most prevalent in the indie genre, the same as our music video.

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We wanted to make all of our media products to have aspects of synergy; where different things work together advantageously to create a better final product. We have achieved this by creating similar logos on all of our products and incorporating the same settings on all of our products: woodlands, forests and lakes. We have also included the same grungy dark colour pallet all the way through our products. Through the combination of our ancillary texts, we believe that we have created a clear brand for our band.
However, creating this synergy throughout all of our media products became exceedingly difficult due to each of us working on a different product each and using limited technology. “Wix”, the site on which we designed and created our “website” ancillary text, turned out to be restricted in some aspects. For example, the font we used on our digipak is not included on our website because Wix only offer a few different fonts. However, we did try to include a font that is similar to the font we used on our digipak to try and have a consistent design aesthetic.
We have interlinked our media products also by advertising our digipak on our website and vice-versa. Both of our ancillary texts also advertise our music video, with the digipak including pictures of how the music video was made and the website showing the video on the homepage. The website also includes links to buying the single of the song and so we believe that our media products combine very well together.

Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

It is very important to understand what the audience wants and expects from a music video. In preparation of making our music video we created a questionnaire of which asked many questions on what people liked in a music video. This questionnaire gave us many ideas for our music video and helped us choose our choices in certain aspects of our music video. For example, the clothing our band and actors was decided via the results of our questionnaire, in which people voted for the “grungy” look to be their favourite.
We also hosted many test screenings of our music video in our media classroom, room 101. People commented on how they liked the fast-paced, “snappy” editing in our music video which we agreed is one of the strongest aspects of our music video. We made many changes via the test screenings of our music video. For example, people commented in the imbalance of performance shots in comparison to narrative shots. Therefore we did a reshoot that weekend with the band and included many more performance shots in our video. Another example of changes we made was at the end of our music video and during the bridge of the song where we changed a long still shot by the lake. Instead we included shots of the band’s guitarist playing and spliced in images of the singers walking by the lake. This made the ending more interesting for the audience rather than the original long shot which came across as a bit boring.
The test screenings also became very useful in understanding whether they “got” the music video and understood the themes and points it was trying to get across. We were hugely encouraged when many of them understood its themes instantly and complimented the subtlety of the way we got them across.

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

We used “Blogger” throughout all the stages of our media product, especially in the research and planning stages. During these stages we evaluated other media products (music videos, digipak’s and websites) for inspiration and understand what we were going to produce. However it also proved to be very useful to keep all of our work organised and it also allowed us to comment on each others work.
We also used “Wix”, on which we all made a website for our product. After choosing the best and most conventional website we created, we used it to give information about the band and the music video. We also used it to advertise the other products like the digipak.
We used “YouTube” in the research stage of our media product to examine other music videos, especially music videos in the indie genre.
We used “Photoshop” in constructing our digipak, in creating all of its panels and putting it together. It proved very easy to use and helped improve the “reality” our digipak and make it look very professionally done.
For uploading our footage onto the iMac we used “iMovie”, yet to edit the footage together and effectively create our music video we used “Final Cut” which was very easy to use which helped considering none of us had sued it before. We used “Final Cut” instead of “iMovie” because it was offered a better range of effects and technology that helped make our music video look professional.
In filming our music video, we decided to use Hannah’s own personal camera to shoot it for many reasons. One reason is that the quality was slightly better, another that we could use more experimental shots which we may not have been able to using the schools camera in fear that we may break it. Unfortunately, during filming the screen on Hannah’s camera broke which made filing extremely difficult as we could not see what we were filming unless we looked through the viewfinder. This may have affected the quality of our filming and so this could be a way in which our media technology negatively affected our media product.
We used “screen-grabs”, via using the “Print Screen” button on our computer, when we were researching on different sites. Evidence of this can be seen on our blogs were we used screen grabs multiple times to prove our research.
Finally, we used “iTunes” for purchasing our song “Islands” of which we uploaded via iMovie to use on our music video.


Q5: What would you do differently if you were to do this process again?

There are many things that we would do differently in creating our media product and, although we are pleased with our final product, many things have hindered us in its production.
We would make more of an effort to organise our actors better for filming as it was all done very haphazardly. Some actors did not turn up, other’s had to leave early and some messed around during filming making the process very drawn out and slow. If we were to do it again we would choose our actors wisely and make sure they were free for filming before involving them in the project.
In the planning stages of our media product, we planned for the actors in the narrative scenes to each have a torch with them when they were “exploring”. However, we faced many problems with this by not having enough torches for each actor and by the limited time we had for filming at dusk. This very limited time proved impractical, especially during winter when it lasted for 2 hour’s maximum.
We could have used the schools High Definition camera for filming. We chose not to use it because it had to be booked out and had a very limited amount of time available to use it. If we would have had to re-shoot, we would have had to have done it using a normal camera and the combination of different definitions would have made our film look very strange. If we had planned before to use a HD camera and organised our filming better then we could have had a better quality to our music video and make it look better for the audience.
The clothing in our film all falls into the “grungy” category as it is all dark earthy colours with no stand-out and bright colours. However if all of our actors had worn all the same colours, especially the two lead singers to signify there relationship, then the themes in our music video may have been portrayed more clearly.
Finally, the storyboards we made for our music video did not have enough detail to follow it completely so during filming we often had to improvise shots. Not that it’s a bad thing but, planning the shots better may have given our music video better structure.

Updates!

For up to date information on our process ensure you check out all our blog posts as they may have been refreshed.
Thankyou.