Daniel Stephen evaluation writing

Q3 media evaluation

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

I think that in our music video we used a number of different conventions of media for example we like the bright colour's the band wear in contrast to the black and white background that they are performing in, the video of “misery business” (2007) by Paramore . Also a big contrast is the dark room of the performance to the very light high school setting which makes the cuts seem very distinctive and then the merge of the band and the characters at the end acts at the end of the narrative and ends the video its self very well. So we took these ideas in our video the graffiti and the mix of dark and light. We wanted to keep to the genre of rock and punk though the whole video so another video we took inspiration from was “Sk8er boi” (2002) by Avril Lavigne with how she moves in her video. And trying to keep with the rock theme when if came to costume we had Alphie in very vibrant colours and black to bring across the rocky theme. We thought that using mainly hand held camera shots would also show the punk rock theme because it brings u a lot more freedom to move, again like in Avril Lavigne’s “sk8er boi” the way she moves in the video the “head banding” kind of movement. And also one of the conventions we used was a visual lyrical link which is one of the six points that Andrew Goodwin tells us in his book “dancing in the distraction factory” (1992) which is for example in the lyric when the word “touch” comes up Alphie touches her face. And when the lyrics “somewhere to hide” come up her body language suggests that she wants to hide.

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

I think that the way our three pieces when together the music video, the digi pack and the magazine advert went well together. I think that what makes them work so well is the strong theme of the graffiti kept the three of them together if gives the three pieces something to connect with each other. And our stencil of the band name “garbage” we have on all three pieces so that you can make the link between them with the name.




3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback from our rough cut version of our video was very helpful in the finishing of the final piece, the feedback was mostly about our good locations and good variety of shots along with the strength of our lip syncing but the main thing people said was wrong with it was that video was a bit repetitive at times and that the video needed finishing. So then we set about finished our music video and the feedback we got back was again mostly positive with some constructive criticism. Some of the things said on facebook were that we had picked a good location, that our choice of shots was strong, that we had good mise-en-scene and that the lip syncing of our video was very good. The constructive criticism we got from facebook was that Alphie needed to put more energy into performance and that there weren’t enough effects.


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

In the making of our music video we used a variety of different technologies. The first one being youtube which we used to find and watch other music videos that we could take ideas form and be inspired by. And we used blogger to log the videos we liked about why. Then its was time to get a camera out and get some footage of our own, once we had some we uploaded it onto Apples final cut to edit the footage together to create the rough cut and eventually the final piece. As for our digi pack and magazine advent we took some still images from the footage we had on final cut and transferred them over to photoshop were we used the tools and effects on there to create them. To get our feedback we used vimeo and facebook so that people could watch the video outside of our class room and write down that they think about our video. Then finally using the camera and final cut we made our evaluation video to explain we were try do to with our video.

Jenna Silk Evaluation Writing

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our lyrics, music and visuals all fit with the punk rock genre as mentioned by Andrew Goodwin in “Dancing in the Distraction factory” (Rout ledge 1992) it was one of the six important conventions of a music video for the music, lyrics and visuals to link with each other. The music and lyrics are quite dark and heavy with a negative mood and emotion. The visuals relate to the punk rock band image, for example we set some of the video in front of a wall of graffiti of which we got the inspiration from the band Paramore in their video for “misery business” where the band is performing in a black room covered in white writing. We based our video around the performance of our lead singer in the video, as does Garbage’s music video for “I think I’m paranoid”. Also the motif of graffiti showing the lead spray painting over a stencil of the band name, Garbage. The songs tempo varies a lot so the locations contrast each other from the edgy graffiti wall to outside in some woods.
The lead girl, Alphie, is presented in a typical style for the rock genre of today. She is shown dancing and delivering the lyrics to the song “Silence is golden” in the settings and locations. Her look fits with this style as her clothes are in style but also quite rock chick.
All of this mise-en-scene is to adapt the artist and video to represent the genre of the music by using props like amplifiers and graffiti giving it a rock feel.
The camera shots are a mix of static and freehand. We found that the freehand camera shots worked better for our style of video in what we wanted to achieve as it allowed us to capture a large variety of angles, tilts, movement shots and tracking, for example in the woodland scenes where we follow and move around Alphie.
The lighting was kept natural as it was quite dark which fitted with the mood. Bright lighting would have contradicted with the down tone of the music, lyrics and genre. Green day’s video for “American idiot” uses quite dark and natural looking lighting and they also are a punk rock band so we kept the lighting this way to fit with the look of other bands and their videos of this genre.
Our digi-pack and magazine advert have a similar look to the album covers of the pop rock artist Avril Lavigne and two of her albums “Let it go” and “Under my skin”. They are both quite abstract and edgy featuring the lead singer.

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our music video is very similar looking to our digi-pack and magazine advert. They all use the graffiti stencil of the band name, Garbage, to promote the band. Screen grabs were used on the digi-pack and magazine advert that were taken from the music video itself so it is all directly linked with the edgy, punk visual style with strong, dark effects on the images. We used an overlay of the graffiti wall with an opaque image of Alphie from the music video to make the poster look abstract and interesting.
Originally our idea was more complex and our digi-pack was going to have a jagged diagonal fold almost triangular shape as leaves and then the inner fold would have graffiti on a wall of the band name so it looked as if leaves were growing over the graffiti which would contrast as our video does with the graffiti shots and outdoor shots. This idea proved to be too ambitious for the time we had to achieve it.

3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We got feedback on our rough cut firstly from our teacher. He said we needed to break up the performance throughout the video as it could get boring just having performance so he gave us the idea to spray paint our own bit of graffiti on the wall and film Alphie doing it throughout the video but not revealing it until the end of the song.
We also got feedback on the rough cut from our classmates. They listed the strengths of our video; “Locations. Nice shot variety. Good editing. Good emotion shown by character and good lip synching. Good camera shots in locations and nice mix of long shots, close ups, etc.” The areas for improvement; “shot variety in final chorus (unfinished editing). Add some effects to transitions. Some strange shots. Editing cuts short. More variety of shots.” What they thought should be changed; “In the forest shot college is seen in the background. Transition work. Too much of the same movements from the performer. A bit repetitive at times.” And what our group still had to do; “Editing (ending incomplete) and sharpen it up with transitions.”
This feedback helped us to decide to include the discussed graffiti shots and to add some transitions.
We also had a lot of feedback when we posted our final music video onto facebook. Here are some of the things people commented on:
“Lots of different shots and good links between the visuals and music. Good effects at the end.” “Liked the general idea of the video. Good transitions and movements from each shot. Movements and facial expressions from the performer weren’t very convincing, could have been stronger. Could do with more effects and the opening shot could have been better.” “Sold the artist. Good locations and cool mise-en-scene. Good lip synching.” “Could do with some instrumental performance.”
Overall we were pleased with the feedback. We were happy with our leads performance and did attempt to get instrumental shots but the musicians that we tried to incorporate were unavailable at the time of our filming.
Lastly we had feedback again from our classmates about the strengths and weaknesses of our blog, video, digi-pack and magazine advert.
Some of the strengths of our blog were that it had good content showing we had researched well, good detail, various examples of digi-packs, good planning ideas, lots of writing and pictures to back up what is said, very visual, images and text all relevant and all stages of planning are documented.
The weaknesses of our blog were that it needed more music video examples during the planning stages, the Garbage graffiti logo is unclear and difficult to read, good quality posts but some are quite lengthy, maybe create smaller posts when making new ones.
The feedback on our music video stated the same strengths and weaknesses as our feedback from facebook.
Strengths of our digi-pack were that the graffiti goes well with the genre and the picture fits in perfectly, obvious links between video and digi-pack,

4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used new media technologies throughout the construction, research, planning and evaluating of our music video and ancillary projects. We used Blogger to document each stage of our project. Vimeo was used to post our music video online for others to view. We used social networking sites such as facebook for feedback on our final video and myspace in the first stages of planning to contact the band.
Final cut was used to upload our footage and create and edit our rough cut and final version of our music video. We also used photoshop to make our magazine advert and digi-pack. We had difficulty using photoshop at first but soon developed our skills in using both programmes.
We also made a documentary to evaluate our music video, we used the same technologies but discovered more techniques for example I learned how to add images into footage on final cut for the documentary when it talks about the album cover and magazine advert and examples of other artists work using google images. Also we included a small clip of the Paramore “misery business” video from youtube to the documentary when it talks about what inspired us to use the graffiti wall as our main setting.

Rose Cormie Evaluation Writing

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

Our music video for ‘Silence is Golden’ focuses on the punk rock genre characteristics of a performance based video, which Andrew Goodwin suggests is one of the six points of analysing a music video in his book ‘Dancing in the distraction factory’. We used graffiti and dark colours with fast paced editing to emphasise the dark mood of the music and the lyrics.
Our video shows the typical way a record company would want their artist to be represented because it specifically focuses on our performer, Alphie, for the majority of the video. It also shows Alphie spray painting graffiti onto a wall. This shows the way a record company would want to represent the band because it is displaying their ‘rock and roll’ behaviour.
When researching ideas for our video, and other videos that may be similar to ours, we looked at the band Paramore. In their video for ‘Misery Business’ the camera focused on the lead singer performing in front of a black and white graffitied background. By looking at videos such as this we decided it would look effective to include graffiti shots in our own music video.
In some ways our music video is also similar to other Garbage videos. For example in their video for ‘ I think I’m paranoid’, the video is very performance based. There are shots of the lead singer, Shirley Manson, performing alone to the camera, as Alphie did in our music video.
When we were filming our music video we used static shots and freehand shots to achieve the result we wanted. We found that the freehand shots worked better than the static shots because it meant that we could achieve a wider variety of angles, which was in keeping with the rock style of our song.
We used natural lighting throughout our video, rather than using staged lighting to make it brighter. We thought this worked well because the darker lighting kept with the dark heavy style of the rest of the song. Real music videos are less likely to use natural lighting, as there are larger budgets so stage lighting is easily affordable. When we were looking at the lighting in real music videos however, we did find that in Green Day’s video for ‘American Idiot’ the lighting looked natural, and quite dark, which is similar to the lighting in our video.
The setting for a large part of the video was a room at college with a wall covered in graffiti, however we also used some outdoor locations. Some of our shots show Alphie walking through a forest or through leaves. We think these brighter shots show a good contrast to the dark, heavy style of the graffiti shots.
When we were deciding on the costume choice for Alphie, we decided to try to make her look edgy and keeping with the rock theme. For the video she wore a white top with a graffiti print on it. This looked effective when she was performing in front of the graffiti wall. We also used props, such as the spray paint and had Alphie sitting on amplifiers to show the rock style of the video and the band.

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

When looking at ideas for our digipack, we looked at ‘Green Day, Bullet in a Bible’. This gave us the idea of using a three fold album design. We also looked at Avril Lavigne’s Album ‘Let Go’. The cover shows her standing in a crowded road, but everything behind her is blurred. This makes the audience focus on the artist rather than the rest of the cover. This gave us a good idea on how to create our album cover as we want it to focus mainly on the artist.
The reason for creating a magazine advert is to promote the artist and to sell the song, aswell as giving the consumer information of when and where the product is available. We have used these advert conventions in our magazine advert by using bright colours and a large eye catching title to grab the consumers attention. We have also used images from the video on our advert. This shows a connection to the video, which also helps to advertise the product. We didn’t include large amounts of writing on our advert because too much text can be boring. We used the minimum amount of text but still gave the consumer all the information the need to buy the album.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After we had finished our rough cut video, other groups in our class gave us feedback on it. Overall the groups were impressed with the video and said we had a good variety of shots in good locations, and that our lip syncing is good the whole way through the video. There were not many problems with our video but, even though some people said we had a good variety of shots, other groups said we needed more of a variety. Some groups also said they thought we needed to add some transitions, although we later decided that the choppy editing that we had already worked well with our video. Our teacher said that, even though our video was meant to be performance based, there was something missing and we needed another aspect to the video. With our teachers help we then came up with the idea to show shots of Alphie spray painting onto a wall with a stencil throughout the video, to then reveal what the stencil says at the end. After we had put these shots into our video we were a lot happier with the result.
After we had made the changes from the previous feedback, we put our final video on to facebook. We were also given feedback sheets, on which other groups had written feedback on our music video, magazine advert, digipack and our blog. From facebook and the feedback sheets we found that most of the feedback was positive. People said that we had a good variety of shot types and camera angles, and that our lip syncing was perfect. Some people said that Alphie gave a realistic performance, and in contrast to this other people said that the acting wasn’t convincing and could have been better. This shows that it is more peoples opinions than whether Alphie gave a good performance or not, and we were happy with the end result of our video. Groups also said that they liked our graffiti concept because it gave our video more depth and kept the audience more interested.
From our feedback on our digipack and magazine advert, people said that there was clear link between the two. This is because we used the same colour scheme and the same image of Alphie on the advert and the digipack cover. Groups said that our magazine advert includes all the conventions and key information of a real advert, such as the information about where the product is available. Some groups suggested that the left inside cover of our digipack did not fit in with the rest of the cover. This is because the rest of the cover is in darker colours and we decided to give the image for this section a negative effect. This made it bright when compared with the rest of the cover. Some groups thought that this didn’t work, however we thought that it created a good contrast.

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

We used new media technologies throughout the process of creating our video. To begin with we used the internet, using websites such as Google and Youtube, to do research into the band and other bands and videos of a similar style. We then uploaded any images and wrote about what we found using a blogging website called blogger.com. After we had done our research and planning and filmed for our video, we used Final Cut to edit the footage and create the video we wanted to make. We also used Photoshop to create our digipack and magazine advert. Social networking websites, such as Facebook, were also useful for the evaluation stage of our product because, by uploading our video onto Facebook, it created an easy way to receive large amounts of feedback on our video.

Alphie's Evaluation

Media Evaluation

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

One of our conventions was to create a visual link in our video and the lyrics in the song. Fir instance the performance sections in the video are acted to match the song. For example sad, frustrated looks when the line “won’t someone listen” is sang.
Another visual link is more to do with the band name than the song. We decided as the name of the band was garbage we would use quite a dirty graffiti style background with a natural background for contrast.
We also felt the graffiti look kept with the band image that a record company may want to convey. As it is a rock genre the main singer wore a torn long t-shirt with graffiti on it and black underneath. We felt this was stereo typical of what a rock band would do. We got this idea from the Paramore video “Misery Business” which has the graffiti element. As a lot of our ideas were our own and just a few elements from other music videos there weren’t any real inter-textual references referring to any films or themes.
We used many different camera techniques for example a lot of hand held camera work was used for the miming and performances pieces. We especially used this technique for the close-ups and the outside clips. We also used the tripod for establishing shots and the spray painting.
Our lighting throughout the video is very simple. We decided that as we were filming on a very dull day that would make for the best effect.
I feel we used our mise-en-scene very well. We felt the graffiti wall and amps performance clips were quite like Avril Lavigne like in some of her videos where she mimes to the camera. Our other mise-en-scene includes a very natural element with leaves and trees to give a different theme for the change in tempo in the song.
Looking at other music video’s we decided not to use a band performance which we saw in so many video’s like Green Day performances in “American Idiot”
When it came to designing the digipack to go with our video we decided to look at Digipack’s that Dan bought in for us to look at. He bought in Green Day pack that gave us the three fold idea. We also looked on Amazon.com to see other pack’s they included Leona Lewis Deluxe album and Beyonce’s platinum album.
When the digipack was completed we looked at magazine conventions. When we looked at Mikka’s advert and used our own knowledge to construct the main large image with the information layered on top, with the things like the name, what the album included, its release and the record company.

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

I feel the combination of the two final pieces have been very effective. For instance we have a very heavy theme that makes the band have a recognisable image. The graffiti has been the main part of the video, poster and digipack with the effects we used on the band name.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
After we completed our rough cut version of our video we had feed back from our teacher who suggested more emphasis on the graffiti which was when we decided to spray paint the name ourselves. Our class also said it was a little repetitive which encouraged us further to add more of the spray painting.
When we finished the final cut we decided to put the music video on Facebook and were pleased with the response we got. Overall we felt people liked the video but maybe wanted a more obvious storyline and better acting.

4) How did you use new media technology in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

Firstly we used YouTube to work at other music videos. Then we used cameras to film the footage and Apple’s Final Cut to upload the footage. Once we had finished we used Facebook. For the digipack we used Google and Photoshop to create our look.

GROUP 49 EVALUATION VIDEO

Q3-49 MUSIC VIDEO EVALUATION from SATMEDIASTUDIES on Vimeo.

documentary time line

This is the time line for our documentary so far.

Digipack final

Inside

Outside

magazine advent final

Extra ending

when we were making the music video we had an idea of our ending where Alphie would disappear but decided against.

Advert Ideas

Part of our project is to create a magazine advert for our album. Here are the ideas that we came up with:

Facebook Feedback

This is some of the feedback that we got from putting our music video on Facebook:

Bethany Estelle

awesomee maan (: ♥

Beth Walsh

Tis good :) Lots of different shots and good links between visuals and music :) I love this song :P

And good effects at the end : )

Cinnamon Francis-Burnett

Ok well lets see - I like the general idea of the video. The shots used were pretty good - good transitions and movements from each shot. Good choice of music - I wouldn't have chosen it but yeah... Liked that.
Although saying that there were a fair few things that could have been improved;
-The movements of the female in the video weren't very convincing - the head shaking could have looked alot better and the body movement could have been stronger.-
-Facial expressions could have been worked on too but yeah...-
-Could do with a few more effects over the main section of the actaul video - it was slightly "plain" in a sense but maybe you wanted that effect I don't know-... See More
-Opening shot could have been done a bit better - the movement was a bit dodgy compared to the female walking but that's my opinion-

I don't really wanna go on because I don't wanna upset/piss people off =/ But yeah...thats my opinion on the shot = over-all it's good, could do with some work - but yeah xxx

Nathan Ives

Nice work. Good choice of locations and other pretty cool Mise-en-scene.
Good job on the lip syncing, all in time
Uhhh...yeah heavy performancely based and did a good job with it, can't really comment on any narrative points though.
Think it used many of Goodwin's points (Selling artist, ect)

Luke Slater
I really like the bit with the leaves towards the end, more of that?

The girl seems a bit insincere when she's doing the head-banging/rocking thing.

Also personally I didn't get a firm feel for a concept within the song, she seems to be getting a bit emotional kinda thing (silence is golden) but what's with the forest and graffiti? Maybe it's a scene kid thing...... See More

You have a bit of funny dubbing on 'speak' right before 2:00

Daniel Andre-pasquier

LOVING THE VIDEO well done team, you did a great job, from the looks of thing you put some blood sweat and tears to get this down right.
oh and seriously is this women part of you media group, because she is stunning!

Christopher Gregory Saunders

this is really good. music and video all in time. simple but not too simple if u get what i mean (makes it good). maybe a little stiff with the acting in some places but can soon sort that out. overall i would say that theres not much to do to it. just little bits and then it will be all good. loved the location of it all. looking foward to seeing your next bit of work :)

Laurence Smith
"Nice job man =]
I think the Idea of the music video is good but really need some instruemntal
perforamnce.Even though the angles and footage you got of the performer were good
it got a bit boring after a while. Also could of done with a bit more tighter editing
near the beginning with maybe a few more fade in and other effect around the start.
last half of it is awesome but if people get bored before the end there not going to
see the end, good lip syncing aswell
over all great video just needed that little bit extra really


hope this feedback does you some good =]"

How to grab images from final cut to photoshop...

Cursor on time line File, export, using quicktime, Format: still image.

Our Design for the Digipack

Our idea is to have two bases with a CD in each one base has the back on it with the track list and the other comes across to make the front cover. Then we have a flap attached the first base that comes across the cover as a cut away.

Other Digipacks

Above are some of the digipacks we found online giving us ideas on how to do our covers.

Digipack

Here are the Digipack's Dan bought in for us to base our ideas on.
From this we have decided to have the this design.

GROUP 49 FINISHED MUSIC VIDEO

Q3-49 MUSIC VIDEO 2009 from SATMEDIASTUDIES on Vimeo.

Our graffiti stencil

To go with the idea of the graffiti in the background of some of our footage we decided to create our own stencil which Alphie would spray onto the wall. So we set about coming up with a stencil idea which was a hard but fun task because none of us had ever done any graffiti art. You've seem some of our original ideas and our inspiration and you've seen the design we decided to have so here is the big version of our stencil.

Editing

Here is a screen grab from Final Cut to show the editing involved with or final version of our music video. As you can see we had our music track running the whole way through and our clips layered up on top of it show it matched the lip syncing and then cuts were made to get the best parts of the footage and keep it interesting.

SPRAY-PAINTING

Stencil Graffiti - Bridges

The graffiti fonts need to have bridges in the letters for example if we wanted to do the letter 'O' - once cut out there would be one large circle - to hold the center circle in place we would need bridges to hold them in place. Therefore some of our experimental fonts would not work - so we have developed a font with bridges. This will look like an obvious stencil and will make a good motif for the band graffiti font.

Help with the arty bits.

Once we had decided to do a stencil we had some problems with creating a convincing stencil that we thought would look good with the rest of the wall, so we looked for some inspiration with designing and creating. lucky we found our help in from someone called Jeremy Burgess. Jeremy is a friend on my from college and offered to help. I was more than happy to have his help because he himself is young urban artist does specializes is spray paint stencils and graffiti work. so with a few pointers from him we managed do come up with a stencil that we all liked that look of and thought that is would blend in with the wall of graffiti.

Graffiti stencil "garbage" font scetches

We tried out various graffiti sketches of how we would like our finished stencil of the band name to look like...

Graffiti artists and pictures

Or shots of the performer in our video spray painting a stencil of the band name should contain shots similar these graffiti artists at work.

Garbage Graffiti

In our music video so far we have a lot of performance shots focusing on our lead performer, Alphie. The music video is just over 3 minutes long so to separate the performance we discussed an idea inspired by the graffiti background in the shots, the pattern on Alphie's clothing and the artwork on the wall. We are going to create a stencil of the band name "garbage". We will shoot a variety of camera shots showing the spray painting over the stencil but not revealing what it is going to say until the end of the song.
We also had the idea to get a sheet of transparent material such as glass or plastic and to place it in front of the camera lens and spray over it like the camera is being "blinded" with the paint.

Final locations

Here are some of the location we picked to be in the final cut of our music video.
the reason we picked these locations over the other ones we had in mind was because as a group we thought that a good mix and light and dark with the shots in the graffiti room and the shot with the lights coming through the trees also with the bright red of the leaves that fall on Alphie etc.