Evaluation

For my A2 media coursework I decided to create a music video and 2 ancillary texts to go alongside it. I decided to make a music video for a song by my favourite band 'Architects' I choice to make one for either 'Dead march' 'Every last breath' or 'Hollow crown' I thought; Every last breath is too short and hollow crown is to slow, so it would be hard to create a decent narrative for either of the two videos that fitted well with the pace/length of the song. Whereas dead march was perfect. I started to watch previous music videos created by the band so as to understand the conventions of the genre. The genre is 'Technical metal' which is basically very fast and 'eccentric' music. The conventions of the videos were; fast editing, very bleached out colours and a non linear narrative that had no significant relevance to the song. I started work on my storyboards, I first of all just drew out my shots of the band playing, each shot lasted no more than two seconds because I was going to use rhythmic editing to edit to the pace of the song. I then decided on my narrative. "A boy is seen watching a girl on several occasions, he follows her to and home from work and disappears when she goes to meet her boyfriend, towards the end of the video it is revealed that the boy watching is in fact the girls boyfriend and is watching her to make sure she is being faithful" This narrative reflected the meaning of the lyrics, which is NOT a convention of Architects music videos. I decided to film my video in two locations, firstly in the theatre at college (this half would be the bands performance) and outside my friends girlfriends house (this would be the main area in which the boy watched the girl) I started to assemble my 'band' and 'couple' for the video. Because of my work and college schedule being impossible to match up with the schedule of those involved in my video. I decided to scrap my video and make one that involved less people, therefore more reliant upon my own time rather than theirs. I decided to create a video fora song by the artist 'City and Colour' I instantly decided on the song 'Off by heart...' as it is my favourite by this particular artist. I watched acoustic videos and videos by this artist to recognise the conventions of the genre. The main and most important conventions were; slow editing, most frequent edit being a fade, a use of natural settings (such as a forest) and stationary shots. I analysed lyrics of the artist and found most of his songs are very sad and about being alone. I also noted that a convention of his music videos were that there was absolutely no narrative involved in the video, I decided this was convenient as it allowed me to follow his conventions and also made it easier for me to concentrate on the other conventions in terms of the micro elements. I decided to film Josh playing guitar and singing in a forest near my house, this allowed me to use a natural setting. I put the song on my phone and asked him to learn it so that my syncing would be a lot easier to do in post production. I filmed my video in one afternoon and got about 20 minutes worth of footage. I edited my video using a mostly fades. I created a fade effect by using the pen tool on Adobe Premiere to lower the transparency of a clip to either show the clip beneath, or a colour track (creating a fade to black or fade to white) I was extremely inspired by a shot from a 'Bon Iver' video of the sun being filmed through the branches on trees. So I decided to recreate this shot and have the camera move around trying to get the sun in the centre of the shot before settling, I then zoomed at as I faded to white. Over the top of the white screen I wrote the name of the artist and song name. I edited my video so that at the end of every line the shot fades into another one, and also over the elongated words, the shot changes. At the end of the song I had a shot fade but linger around during the 'ooh' vocal section, the shot is shown over a shot of Josh walking through the forest, I created a match on action in the sequence, as Josh is seen walking through the exit to the forest, the shot fades to white and slows down, because it makes the whole thing look more natural and pure.


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

My video uses the conventions of the genre to create meaning and effect within the text. The main convention used is the use of fading edits in time to the music (Rhythmic editing). Another strong convention of the genre (and all music videos in general) was the use of the artist being featured in the video. I thought this was an important convention to follow in my case especially as with an accoustic song the narrative would be very simplistic and dull if shown to explicitly with no other narrative involved.


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

I think that my main product (music video) works well with my ancillary texts (CD design and magazine advert). The main reason I think this is because they share the ambient and natural theme of the forest setting. I used shots of the tops of trees being the foreground and the clear sky with the sun out as the background in most of my pictures. I also took several pictures of the horizon on a field, and some pictures of the entrance to the forest that my video was set in. I also took a few pictures of my artist playing but showing the artist in the artwork was not a convention of the genre. I think the theme between all of my products helps enforce the relaxed natural ideology of the genre. I used photo shop to edit my pictures, the main edit I used was the lighten/darken tool. I made my images lighter to add the natural feel of them. I then used the selection tool and darken tool to create a darkened box, in which I wrote the text for my art (The artist and album name) This was an idea I took from the album cover to 'Everything perfect on the wrong day' by the band 'Sky Eats Airplane' In the picture I made involving my artist, I used the 'lasso' free selection to highlight the artist and then used the blur tool to blur the rest of the picture. I used the De-saturation and auto contrast/lighten features to balance out the images levels. I liked this idea because the background being blurry works well with the clear artists image, making him the main focus of the picture.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My audience feedback was very positive and made me feel I had succeeded in creating a music video and ancillary texts that followed the codes and conventions of the music genre. The main response I had was that the pace of the editing and types of editing fitted very well with the music and re-enforced the ideology of the acoustic genre. My texts were very well received and it was thought that they definitely suited the style of music of the video and it was clear that the two were linked.

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

I used media technologies in the; research, planning and evaluation stages of my production.

Planning: I used media technology in this stage by using the Internet to access websites such as YouTube. This helped me watch music videos and analyse their content to find study the codes and conventions of certain genres. I also used it to find artists lyrics online. This helped me analyse the meanings to their songs which would help me create a narrative for my video. I used the Internet to access a music video director (Adam Powell)'s website, I wanted to do this because he directed a number of videos by first choice of artist. I wanted to see his website so that I can get some sort of in site into what inspired and helped me develop his ideas, unfortunately his site offered no help. I used 'Adobe Premiere' to import my storyboards, from there I used the editing tools, (most notably the razor tool which helped me create 'cut edits' ) to make my animatic. I also used websites such as 'Google images' and 'Play.com' to find artists album artwork, this helped me to study the conventions and apply them to my own ancillary texts. I used the website 'blogger.com' to keep my notes and research together in one place, which helped me greatly because I could find things easy to help me with specific areas of my production.

Evaluation: In my evaluation I only used media in the form of YouTube to watch my video repeatedly to study it and asses the conventions and micro elements. I also used blogger to write my analysis and to look back on my previous work to see what needed mentioning.