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.