Evaluation

The Graph that go's with question 3:

Evaluation

MEDIA EVALUATION:

1

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

Our Media product, firstly being in the ‘Rock’ genre allowed me and my partner a vast amount of freedom within our video that most other genres don’t allow. ‘Rock’ music has always symbolised a sense of inhibition and of breaking the rules. Because of this we found that we didn’t have a set of guidelines to follow unlike for example R&B – whose guidelines tend to generate around a single artist, with a storyline centralising around a boy/girl relationship, usually set within places such as nightclubs or house parties, and nearly always ending with the protagonist getting whatever they desire. With a variety of Rock videos to sample and analyse, after research – me and my partner came to the conclusion that specifically not one of the videos were ever truly alike.
The average forms and conventions to any music video are:
- Show the audience the artist of the music video.
- Show the audience the personality of the artist in the music video.
- Show the audience the track/song in a visual and memorable way.
- Represent the artist in a positive way to the audience.
- Represent the genre of the track/song in a very clear way.

In most videos – the aim is to follow these guidelines to ensure that the video is successful, but in some cases these forms and conventions are challenged – this can make a bigger statement and can potentially further a career, or destroy it.

Genre:

‘Rock’ can be one of the hardest genres to portray, although as I mentioned – there are no strict guidelines, on the other hand, Rock is notorious in its ability to shatter form and conventions, so when preparing to make a music video for the genre, we had to research sub-genres of rock to know exactly what forms and conventions fit in with our chosen song.
Our song  - ‘Neutron Star Collision’ by British band ‘Muse’ is a sub-genre of rock called alternative rock, within that sub-genre the bands style of music diverges into another sub-genre called Nu prog/post-progressive – this sub-genre of rock is a term described to bands that incorporate elements from progressive rock. Progressive rock developed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as part of a “mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility” - Lucky, Jerry. The Progressive Rock Handbook. So knowing this we knew that we had even more freedom to be artistic and completely challenge all forms and conventions of general music videos.

Narrative:

With great freedom come great challenges. Not having strict guidelines to follow can be a blessing and a curse all in one. To come up with a narrative, just from our imaginations – not knowing where to start was difficult. It took several weeks of brainstorming and going over and over different ideas to finally agree on a narrative.
To be set in Britain during World War Two – it’s a time period used in music videos many times before – we agreed on this as at least we had some restrictions – some forms and conventions we could follow. Such as mise-en-scene. The narrative focuses on a couple whom have wed recently, until the husband is sent to war, leaving a pregnant wife alone in the countryside, only having her sister-in-law there for comfort. The husband is killed in action, leaving the widowed wife contemplating her existence and her growing resentment towards her child. The finale is the widow at her husband’s graveside, holding the child, along with her sister-in-law – she hands her sister-in-law the child, and then leaves. This narrative had been done many times before – we were aware, so it was up to the way we shot and edited it, to portray the genre without it looking too commercial.

Andrew Goodwin:

We studied Andrew Goodwin’s theory that there are six key points when it comes to the creation of a music video, the key points are:

1.       Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.

2.       There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

3.       There is a relationship between music and visuals.

4.       The demands of a record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs that occur across their work.

5.       There is frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6.       There is often inter-textual reference to things such as TV programmes, movies and other music videos.

Although in our music video we broke several of these conventions such as, close-ups of the artist, and the voyeuristic treatment of women we did comply with most –

-          Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics –

The way we wanted our music video’s format to be was in the style of a short film, therefore we wouldn’t have any traditional shots of the band playing their instruments. To make sure this complied with the conventions of the alternative rock we researched for other alternative rock artists music videos that had done the same. We found two prominent examples of modern day artists both of whom showed the narrative as the main feature to their music video. The first being  Greenday -  songs such as ‘wake me up when September ends’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU9JoFKlaZ0 although there are many shots showing the band playing – the narrative is the main focus of the video, often cutting the music to have actual scenes with dialogue – something that features during one scene of our music video. Comparatively the narratives are very similar, both including war stories, both with partners leaving for war, and never coming back – just set in different time periods,

 Greenday focus on popular culture – what was occurring during the time when the video was released, in their case the attacks on the twin towers on 9/11. Our video focuses on the past, not referencing pop culture at all, which is breaking forms and conventions of traditional music videos. The best example we found that directly compares to our music video concerning our format were My Chemical Romance. From their most recent album, the songs ‘NaNaNa’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IU and ‘Sing’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTgnDLWeeaM despite being set in the future and displaying some forms of pop culture, the narrative is the only thing on display within their first two music videos of that album. Like our video there are not any shots of the band playing their instruments, and no lip syncing to the camera. On the other hand, unlike ours the band members of My Chemical Romance are all present throughout both videos, whilst our music video features ‘actors’.

-          relationship between lyrics and visuals and music and visuals -

The relationship between lyrics and visuals is one of the most important and a key element to our video, the way the lyrics link directly to a scene, and at a particular moment, can give the audience a better understanding of what we are trying to portray, for example;

The first chorus to the song begins directly after the first verse which is slow and uses quiet instrumentals, the first chorus then begins loudly and dramatically -

‘Our love would be forever
And if we die
We die together
And lie, I said never
'Cause our love would be forever’

Previous to this chorus, the shots used were landscapes and locations, which we used as a dramatic tool, to convey to the audience the vastness and loneliness which that location exudes, but also showing the beauty and desolation which it brings. When the first chorus starts at ‘Our’ 

The scene is cut instantly to the young couple using shot reverse shot and close ups – which shows the audience their facial expressions, clearly showing how in love they are, and throughout that short chorus it cuts fast paced to different shots portraying their love, eventually leading to the last line ‘Cause our love would be forever’ it cuts to a wide shot of the couple walking up a road together, then the two of them disappearing into thin air. This represents a dramatic irony, and shows a foreboding to the audience that in fact their love will not be forever.

 The editing was specifically done in order to keep up with the lyrical and musical relationship – which was problematic at times, trying to get all the different shots in at the right lyrics whilst keeping the narrative simple to understand.

- Inter-textual reference to things such as TV programmes, movies and other music videos-

There is not much inter-textual reference within our music video, the only thing being similar to TV programmes and movies portraying World War Two. We felt as it is a very emotional topic for many people, we chose to focus on that aspect rather than the actual war side of it, mainly due to production difficulties we would not have been able to convincingly portray battle. To portray a fictional couple in a real time period, we had to be careful especially with mise-en-scene, we researched costumes in extreme detail, and hair and makeup also were a major contribution to the overall effect. With all the different shots we had to be careful to not to show modern day appliances in each scene, for example, during the scene with dialogue between the two main characters, we had to clear the entire room of any modern objects, and when shooting against the backdrop of the window, only filmed while no cars went past, as it would’ve spoiled the effect of the time period we were portraying. The costumes were all time appropriate, although not authentic, and the hair and makeup were created to be not as glamorous as the style during the 40’s is traditionally known for – but we downplayed it to show that our characters were typical average middle class people living in a rural area.

Editing:

When editing the video, we used iMovie on an Apple iMac computer – we found this software incredibly easy to use, and had a much more professional feel compared to the windows movie maker software I had used previously. We turned all the footage into black and white, which we felt gave it a more vintage feel to the video, which we wanted to portray to the audience, and make them feel as if the video could’ve been shot during the 1940’s, and that we were just adding a soundtrack over the top of it. The editing is a mixture of fast and slow paced cuts, linking in with the musical and visual relationship, using slow cuts during the slow paced parts of the song and vice versa for the fast pace. It is not conforming to the forms and conventions of a traditional rock music video, but rather showing a more indie alternative artist feel, not quite mainstream, but because the band is popular enough it wouldn’t be overlooked by the general public, therefore complying mostly to what the record company would want from their artists music video.

Camera Shots:

We used a wide range of camera shots to display our video, as when making a short film, the editing isn’t as fast paced as a normal music video, so we therefore had more time to think specifically about what shots we wanted, for example,

This mid-close up is the first image of the couple that the audience sees, it instantly defines them and shows the audience what kind of relationship they’re in as the shot allows you to see not only the expressions on their faces – but their body language as well.

This wide shot establishes not only the relationship, but the mise-en-scene around them, showing their social class and from what they’re wearing what time period it is.

The close up of our female protagonist’s reflection was a different way of avoiding stereotypical camera shots, and showing a diversity in angles, so the audience won’t feel bored with the video.

The first introduction to the supporting character – the sister-in-law. The close up shows clearly on her face the anguish she too feels of her brother being at war, and being unable to help her brothers wife. This character is a tool for the audience to connect to, as she too is looking in from the outside.

Extreme close up of the letter sent informing the wife of her husbands death – allows audience to read it for themselves.

Another extreme close up to show in detail exactly how she is feeling.

Wide shot to show the audience the location, and to show what situation the characters are in.

Final shot of male protagonist – wide shot to capture the light change, from dark to light – symbolizing from life to death.

Final shot – along shot to show the characters long journey ahead of her. Symbolizes death and desolation.

2

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

Our ancillary texts were a CD album cover (front, back and inside covers) and a magazine poster promoting the album.

It directly relates to the feature song on the album – the song of which the music video is made from -‘Neutron Star Collision’ so the theme for the ancillary was based on the music video, as is the rest of the album – like previously mentioned bands Greenday and My Chemical Romance, the album follows a story, song to song, with a regular theme throughout the album.

The poster – like the album keeps with the war theme, showing soldiers marching underneath the moonlight – hence the title Moonlight March – and is also in black and white.

The inspiration for the album and poster came from famous old photographs taken during the war, most notably is the infamous ‘The Kiss’ photograph taken in times square the day the war ended. I thought this iconic image could portray to the audience that the couple within the story of the album had as much passion, and as much love as the love portrayed between the couple in ‘The Kiss’. The background on the front cover is two different images – the first being soldiers marching (again linking with the album title) and of a country lane – which represents the couple – he being the soldiers and she being left in the country. The insert within the CD case is simply the band’s name on top of the image of a bomber plane, to convey the reality of war, as is the back cover – where the back ground image are graves of those who died in battle. I believe the combination of our main product and our ancillary texts link incredibly well together, altogether they look part of the same product, and would be obvious to the audience.

(Below- Our album front, back and inside covers, and the CD spine :)

3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After we had finished filming and editing our music video, we created a questionnaire to survey other people’s reactions to our video, and to see how we could improve.

From the questionnaire I discovered from the people I asked that the majority prefer to watch music videos on the television compared to on the internet, with a 80/20 difference ratio. I also learned that the majority of males prefer to watch rock music videos, whilst females prefer pop – but from watching the video, and unanimous decision between both genders occurred, as both enjoyed watching. When questioned further, the males produced the answer mainly being they enjoyed the music, whilst females when questioned further recognized that although the music may not be entirely to their tastes, they enjoyed the narrative of the story, and felt emotionally involved. The same result occurred when questioning different age groups, under 12’s were the age group that least liked the video with a 10/90 ratio whilst surprisingly a 70/30 ratio of over 60’s showed more interest while watching. The age range that the video proved most popular with was the 12-30’s, with a 10/90 ratio success rate.

With these results it is clear that we have reached our age demographic of young adults successfully, and have appealed to a surprisingly varied range of other ages that were not originally even in our age demographic.

  

4

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

Technologies we used:

-Video Camera – Our primary filming method, used for the majority of footage we shot.

-Digital Camera – A secondary filming method, was used as an alternative to our primary camera when we had technical difficulties.

- http://www.blogger.com/- used to log my progress and research into the music video, and also used for evaluation purposes – looking back on my research.

-http://www.youtube.com/- used for research mainly – researching other bands videos such as Greenday and My Chemical Romance.

-www.hotmail.com- used to contact Muse’s management about the authorisation of the song we wished to use.

-Apple iMac-iMovie editing software – We used this to edit our entire music video.

Overall the technology I had access to for the pre production, production and post production of our music video was varied, slightly limited but worked for me and my partner well. The most challenging technology we had to deal with were the cameras, due to technical difficulties we were forced to use a different camera ¾’s of the way through production to finish filming, despite an obvious change in quality, I believe it worked well for the style and genre of our music video, as the scenes we shot with the second camera worked well – the quality was more blurry and slower, but the scene that it was shot with was the most emotional and traumatic scene, therefore I think the difference in quality may have had a decent effect comparatively.

Using blogspot was an entirely different way of producing a media product to me, but it was quick and simple to use, and evidently proved very useful for my pre-production research as it was all in one place to come back to, which helped preparing for post-production.

The editing software we used was also new to me, and again I found it simple to use, and far more advanced than any other editing software I had used before – it enabled me to do more with our video than I had initially planned in pre-pro and therefore most of our pre-pro plans were pushed aside for bigger more extravagant ideas – such as colour contrasting, fade techniques and fast paced editing.  

The relationship between creativity and new media technology was not apparent to me, I don’t believe that the new technology available to us enabled my creativity further; I use auteur and intertextuality theory where the ideas me and my partner came up with were our own unique and original ideas that develop through inspiration from other ideas and what we come up with is entirely our own creativity. We used the new media technology best we could –it allows us to make professional products, but the creative side of it I believe has nothing to do with new media technology.

On the other hand new media 2.0 technologies have helped certainly developing our video – youtube is the greatest example – not only is it fantastic for research, we can upload our finished product onto it, therefore globalisation comes into effect as the entire world has access to our video.

HAYLEY MISSELDINE

Final Edit - CD

The final edit of the album -

Front Cover:

The front is symbolic of what the music video is about - the iconic photograph (The Kiss) is in the foreground, to represent the husband and wife characters in the video, whilst in the background is a merged picture of soldiers and the countryside - symbolising where each character was - husband - at war, wife - left at home in the country. The font used for the name of the band and the title of the album to me looked almost as if it had been written by a typewriter - symbolising the telegram notifying of the husbands death.

I did an inside cover for the CD, just a simple picture in the background of a bomber plane - hinting of how the husband died, and the name of the band in large letters.

The back of the CD is the tracklist in the foreground, and the websites of the band and the production company, along with the production companys logo and a barcode. The background is an image of war graves - in keeping with the theme.

The spine of the CD I left very simple, I felt if there was too much on it, it could possibly ruin the overall effect I had envisioned for the album, it is simply the title the album, paired with the bands name, and a black and white background.

Extras

A look behind the scenes at costumes, props etc..

This prop was used during the scene where the wife character is given a letter informing her that her husband has been killed in battle.
We researched how wives recieved the infomation informing them of husbands deaths, and normally a telegram would be sent out by a runner boy - and delievered to the next of kin. They were often short and straight to the point, as it would have been wasteful to use more than one sheet of paper thanks to rations.
We just copied a version of one we found online, and as we didn't have an old typewriter, it was written by hand.

Extras

A look behind the scenes at costumes, props etc..

First is the army uniform we used - it isn't from the 1940's, its a modern uniform, I tried everywhere I could to find an older looking army uniform, unfortunatly none were within my price range, so instead we used my Fathers army uniform from the 90's. I don't think its entirely bad, when presented in black and white, I don't think the audience would be too concerned about the exact minute details of costume and design - the fact that it is obviously an army uniform would register with the audience, and despite what decade its actually from, just from seeing the uniform, the audience would still be involved with the narrative regardless.

Final Edit - Magazine Advertisement:

This is the final edited version of our magazine advertisement for our CD album

Its in black and white - a recurring theme througout our entire process, as it adds to the 1940's theme that we were going for, its simplicity is what I believe is eye catching, as is the image of the soldiers silhouetted  against the moonlight - representing the title 'Moonlight March'.  

Filming Finished!

Filming is done!! We just needed to film the finale graveyard scene for the music video - we didn't dress up in black like we originally intended to - as it we couldn't find appropriate funeral clothes in keeping with the 40's fashion we changed the scene to our characters visiting the grave after the funeral, instead of the actual funeral. This turned out easier for production as we didn't need any extras, or any props. I think it still has that same effect, maybe even better as it feels more personal, and less of a cliché.