Evaluation
Task #1:
Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks. Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to indicate which conventions you have used at which point.
This is quite a conventional and typical still because indie rock/pop bands often do close ups of the lead singer/vocalist so that it's easy for the audience to identify with their attitude, emotions and general appearance. This shot also involves backlighting, this was very purposeful in our video because that is a very conventional feature in music videos because it helps illuminate the bands features and actions a lot more. Generally, our group was very happy wth our backlighting attempt and overall performance in this shot because it's a very comfortable and 'warm' performance shot because the whole band are there and throughout the video there is footage of every member, of course, most of it is on the singer, which also follows convention.
This is a conventional shot because videos often involve long, sustained footage of a solo during a video because a lot of the target audience enjoy the solo's or riffs that guitars are often involves with.
I was really happy with how this shot turned out anyway because a lot of bands do these sort of shots and ours was really well synced in my opinion and actually looked legitimate.
Again, this is another example of a conventional shot, where we have more performance shots of the band members playing their instruments, we thought that it was essential throughout our video to have quite a bit of performance footage because then that way it means that we aren't as heavily relying on our actual video footage and/or acting skills to be the mainstay of our video.
This shot is conventional because it establishes the setting and time, with the morning light shining through the curtains, it clarifies any doubts that the audience might've had about the time of day it was set, as our video is shifting because night and day quite frequently. I actually asked my dad about feedback on our rough cut and he said that it was quite hard to tell the difference between day and night sometimes so we tried to make the differentiation more apparent and clear to the viewer. I even think that we made all the day time shots lighter, using colour corrector, to try to avoid the confusion between night and day. After showing my dad a short clip of our improved version, he said that it's a lot easier to tell the difference now and that was all that he said he could've criticised.
This shot was interesting to play around with in final cut, because it took us a while to find the right colour that wouldn't look overly vibrant but still vaguely noticeable. Personally, I think this is one of the few shots that we have which actually goes against convention because it's unusual to see two different time settings which are only distinguished by the colouring of the shot. I like this shot because it really shows the audience the 'life of the party' with Edgar laughing at the front, it is reminiscent of the performance shots, where Edgar, also being the vocalist, is also at the front of those shots too. I think this is really good because it shows some continuity on our part and allows the viewer to stay in sync with what is going on a bit more.
I am in two minds about this shot, in regards to whether it's conventional or not, because some bands/music videos do have performance shots where there are extreme close ups on characters, but we added this shot with the intention that it was different and broke up the monotony of the conventions that we had seemed to stick to throughout. It is generally also different to the shots that we had in reference to the distance the shot is away from the target, with most of our shots medium range - close ups, it makes a pleasant change for both me, and the viewer to see an extreme close up.
This shot was primarily to establish the main setting and main character and i think, seeing as a lot of bands will instinctivly want to do that too, it's quite conventional but this is the shot after our opening shot so we didn't want to confuse the viewer by a strange couple of first shots.
I really liked this shot personally, as it's a good example of voyeurism, the notion of looking, and I really think that it helped to 'spice up' the feeling of the party. You can't really see much, but at this current time, the people in the room cannot see us either. The way he
shot is filmed also makes it seem like it's actually you looking into the room, further contributing to the immersiveness of the video.
I am really happy with our magazine advert because it looks very real and in my opinion, if fits our star persona & target audience. The idea of bikes and leaves is quite an indie image which is why we chose them and indie bands often use bikes or leaves on their album covers, magazine adverts or digipacks. The magazine advert is good because it also has everything that it needs but had no unnecessary information or clutter.
I was happy with our Digipack because it was similar to our Magazine Advert, which was definitely a good thing. This would mean that our two ancillary products wouldn't look completely random and it would attract our target audience towards our products and therefore increase sales, were this a real product.
I'm glad that we chose to take as many shots as we could when we were taking these photos because I definitely think that we wouldn't have come to such a great result without having done this.
Again, this follows convention like our music video because bikes and leaves are both conventional images to use for an indie pop/rock video.
Task #2:
Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think that our target audience would be expecting a very upbeat, cheery & happy main product and ancillary products. I definitely think that our group took this idea on board and tried to make that continuous through all stages of the production. Despite the fact that the song we chose is a happy song about enjoying a night at a party, I do think that it would be very difficult to make the video to this song without making it happy.
I think that our magazine advert is happy and upbeat. It uses a lot of vibrant and warm colours, like oranges and yellows. I think that this magazine advert is a lot more attractive using these colours because it suits the feeling of the song a lot more accurately.
Our digipack was very much the same style as our magazine advert, because we all agreed that they would look very arbituary & irrelevant if their design was different. Therefore, we made them both similar in design, with warm, vibrant colours and plenty of large text which make it's easy to read.
Task #3:
Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback.
After recieving our feedback on both our Rough Cut and Final product, we soon realised that people actually liked the non-static approach we took on filming our video. Of course, being handheld, it was never going to be perfectly still, but we tried very hard throughout the filming process to make the camera as still as possible.
We tried to follow convention quite a lot and as a result, we were often cutting on the beat but on this particular feature, we found a mixture of opinions. Most people liked that we were sticking to convention as it's a much safer, less risky and generally very effective method, but others thought that we should perhaps try something different next time we got the chance. I found this very interesting to think about as I always thought that cutting on the beat was always the best method, but now that I think about it, it may well be a better option, of course, it would depend on the mood yo'r trying to create or the actual song that's being played.
We thought that it would be easiest to add annotations to our video on YouTube, here is the editted version which has annotations. Be sure to check that annotations are enabled so that you do not miss our feedback responses and commentary over our video!
Task #4:
Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Task: Create a video presentation which discusses the technologies you used at each stage of the project. This video needs to be different from the Director’s commentary in terms of its presentation and content ie. Presented as a ‘How to use…’/ Teaching (in character?) style of video that could then be used as a future teaching aid.
Final Cut:
We used Final Cut Express a lot in the construction of our music video as it was the main programme we used to edit, organise and ultimately design and create our music video. Without it, we wouldn't even have a music video. It allowed us to edit, playback and organise our clips into our final product which we were all content with. I definitely think that, out of all the available software that there is to buy, this was by far the best option. It's simple, easy to use and effective at creating both simple and complex videos.
Photoshop:
We used photoshop a lot to create our Digipack and Magazine Advert ancillary products. We used it to manipulate images and make them look how we wanted. For example, on our Digipack, we managed to edit in a bottle of Jack Daniels into the leaves and make it look realistic and legitimate.
I did not warm to the photoshop software very quickly and I found it very annoying and uninituitive to use most of the time, but fortunately, a few of my group members had past experience using photoshop and were able to help me with any problems I encountered.
Internet:
We used the internet to do general research and ultimately keep our blog up to date and remain updating it weekly with new posts and ideas for group discussion. We also used the internet to do individual reasearch into star persona, professional digipacks and magazine adverts and other things which contributed to our ideas.
This is quite a conventional and typical still because indie rock/pop bands often do close ups of the lead singer/vocalist so that it's easy for the audience to identify with their attitude, emotions and general appearance. This shot also involves backlighting, this was very purposeful in our video because that is a very conventional feature in music videos because it helps illuminate the bands features and actions a lot more. Generally, our group was very happy wth our backlighting attempt and overall performance in this shot because it's a very comfortable and 'warm' performance shot because the whole band are there and throughout the video there is footage of every member, of course, most of it is on the singer, which also follows convention.
This is a conventional shot because videos often involve long, sustained footage of a solo during a video because a lot of the target audience enjoy the solo's or riffs that guitars are often involves with. 
Again, this is another example of a conventional shot, where we have more performance shots of the band members playing their instruments, we thought that it was essential throughout our video to have quite a bit of performance footage because then that way it means that we aren't as heavily relying on our actual video footage and/or acting skills to be the mainstay of our video. 
This shot is conventional because it establishes the setting and time, with the morning light shining through the curtains, it clarifies any doubts that the audience might've had about the time of day it was set, as our video is shifting because night and day quite frequently. I actually asked my dad about feedback on our rough cut and he said that it was quite hard to tell the difference between day and night sometimes so we tried to make the differentiation more apparent and clear to the viewer. I even think that we made all the day time shots lighter, using colour corrector, to try to avoid the confusion between night and day. After showing my dad a short clip of our improved version, he said that it's a lot easier to tell the difference now and that was all that he said he could've criticised. 
This shot was interesting to play around with in final cut, because it took us a while to find the right colour that wouldn't look overly vibrant but still vaguely noticeable. Personally, I think this is one of the few shots that we have which actually goes against convention because it's unusual to see two different time settings which are only distinguished by the colouring of the shot. I like this shot because it really shows the audience the 'life of the party' with Edgar laughing at the front, it is reminiscent of the performance shots, where Edgar, also being the vocalist, is also at the front of those shots too. I think this is really good because it shows some continuity on our part and allows the viewer to stay in sync with what is going on a bit more. 
I am in two minds about this shot, in regards to whether it's conventional or not, because some bands/music videos do have performance shots where there are extreme close ups on characters, but we added this shot with the intention that it was different and broke up the monotony of the conventions that we had seemed to stick to throughout. It is generally also different to the shots that we had in reference to the distance the shot is away from the target, with most of our shots medium range - close ups, it makes a pleasant change for both me, and the viewer to see an extreme close up.
This shot was primarily to establish the main setting and main character and i think, seeing as a lot of bands will instinctivly want to do that too, it's quite conventional but this is the shot after our opening shot so we didn't want to confuse the viewer by a strange couple of first shots. 
