EVALUATION - The Use of New Media Technologies Within Our Project

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

The main impact that new media technologies has had on our project is the use of the internet . For our research and planning we were able to quickly assess who our target audience was and examples of similar media texts on sites such as Youtube and Muzo. Not only was it very easy to watch these videos through the click of the button whereas before relying on television etc. but we were also able to gather the opinions from our our audience by reading some of the comments that can be left this gave us clear views on what our audience liked and what they disliked. The internet also helped us with our storyboard, instead of drawing the different shot types by hand we took screen captures of shots within existing music videos, putting them together to create, what I feel to be a clearer way of seeing how the music video will progress. In doing this we were also able to show the more detailed mise en scene for our video in the storyboarding, such as lighting and props. After this we were planning on creating a animatic but eventually ran out of time to do so, so instead we matched our screen captures to the lyrics of the song and time of the song, so we'd have a rough idea of what scene and shot type would be going in the song. This however did change throughout the editing process as the speed of our cuts, became so fast-paced. Overall media technology visualised the entire research and planning part of our work. 

Within the production of our work, we used Adobe Premier to edit our video. It wasn't latest edition of the editing suite but it had all the essentials that we needed and the ability to cut specifically to every millisecond. It also provided us with enough lighting effects to correct some errors we made during filming.  For our ancillary tasks we used Adobe Photoshop CS4. As we wanted to create artwork which not only fitted in with existing media products but also be visually impressive to look at, we were able to use masks and brushes to create our album cover. We also shot the photoshoot for our artwork in Olympus Raw Format, allowing us to alter various different effects within the photo, such as temperature, vibrance and clarity.

The biggest benefit that new media technologies had within our work was being able to present it all clearly on a blog. Sites such as Scribd allowed to embed our work (which was saved as Word documents and Powerpoints) onto our blog neatly and efficiently. This was especially helpful in presenting audience feedback results which we were able to present as graphs. We were also able to gain audience feedback using our Facebook group page as well as uploading all our work for everyone to see, giving us the opportunity to have our work be seen by market that we wanted.

EVALUATION - Audience Feedback

"What have you learnt from your audience feedback?"

The use of Web 2.0 within our product has been very beneficial in gaining accurate audience feedback. As well as going about audience feedback in the more traditional ways such as questionnaires, interviews and viewing sessions we've also posted our video and ancillary tasks on the DarkBeat Records Facebook group page and also on Youtube. 

Here you can see a screen cap of our Facebook group.

The main response from everyone has been overwhelmingly positive, many people are shocked by the ending which is fantastic as it was the reaction we were hoping for in breaking the codes and conventions of our genre. They've also complimented on the speed of the editing in our video as it's extremely fast paced and complex as many of the different performance shots link together through the movement in the video. 

When analysing the results from our questionnaire (which can be viewed here) we can see the most people thought our music video was excellent but a few people thought our performance was stronger than our narrative. This was not an intention of ours but it just so happened that we had large amount of performance which we thought really carried the song through. If we had more time we may have added a few scenes in between different parts of the narrative. We can also see that the majority of people thought that our music video was appropriate to the genre, but we can understand why some of our audience would a bit confused to see someone getting run over in a pop music video. We've also found out that 20% of our audience thought the editing was a bit too quick and was hard to follow. However we feel as a group, as do the large majority of our audience that the quick editing keeps the viewer much more engaged in the video. 

EVALUATION - The Effectiveness of Our Products as a Package

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

I would say that the video doesn't have as much relation to the artwork and poster but looking at existing promotional packages this is not particularly common in the music industry as it would be in the film industry. The video is based around the song and the song is part of the album which has it's own theme itself. However the music video has a sort of lonely, isolated feeling in the way it's only got two people starring in it which is similar to the artwork. The scenes that which were shot on the beach at Weston at night are present throughout the entire video with the ending scene also on the beach. Therefore as it's the most prominent location in the video it links to the dark vibe that our artwork has. 

The narrative in the video also deals quite strongly with themes such as sadness, anger, death, remorse and regret. These themes are also present within some of the album artwork as well as within the title of the album 'Stop The World, I'm Getting Off'. 

We also tried to maintain this idea with the artwork for the inlays for our album. We decided to keep a similar background for each inlay but change the picture, we used lyrics from the song Cry Me A River to establish a link between the artwork and the music video. Clicking here will take you to where you can see our artwork.

I think it was important to keep the poster very similar to the album artwork. We essentially used the image from the back cover for the poster, enlarged the title of the album as well as the Max Black logo, then added other information such as album reviews from newspapers, availablity, the DarkBeat records logo and information of what the album includes such as the single. 

EVALUATION - Challenging Codes & Conventions

"In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge the codes and conventions of real media products?"

For our A2 media project we were to produce not only a music video but also CD artwork for an accompanying album and a campaign poster. All three would fit together to form a promotional package. I think all three product are effective with the way the challanege the codes and conventions of media products by existing artists in the same genre that we have been working in.

The main focus of our music video is a guy who has been hurt in love by his girlfriend and throughout the video he is haunted by her and despite the fact she is remorseful, he finally has enough and does something that he may live to regret. This story plays out whilst we are presented with many different performance shots in different settings. When looking at the codes and conventions of existing music videos you can see that we have followed the mainly the same conventions of male pop/R&9B singers in the performance shots of our video.

Here you can see the variety of different shot types we used for the performance part of our music video.

Clicking here will take you to our storyboards which were created using existing music videos from the same style of genre. As you can see what is notable is the variety of different shot types for just one scene, in doing this it makes the singer the sole focus of the music video allowing the viewer to follow him completely without any distractions. We also tried to replicate they way movement and dance is used in the existing pop/R&B videos through the use of long shots. Therefore in our there is a great amount of telling the story through the hands and through dancing. It also came to our attention how in existing music videos lots of sharp, striking poses which are pulled especially in male music videos. For example skip to various points in the original Cry Me A River video (1.50, 1.57, 2.16) Timberlake jumps in the video and it looks impossible. Therefore we tried doing this within our performance as you can see above in our screen captures, we slowed down the jump and reversed the playback to make it look impressive like in Timberlake's original video

.

Where we feel we challenge the codes and conventions of existing music videos is with the narrative within our production. Many pop videos also feature very cliché and predictable plots, even within songs which hold darker meanings. The male in the video is always seen as the dominant one whilst the woman is seen as the vulnerable one who relies on the man. We deliberately decided to challenge this convention of music videos. Below you can see how.

In the video the guy's love interest almost haunts him throughout the video, yes she may be sorry but when it comes to a dangerous situation she stands with her head held high as the car comes speeding towards her. It's as if she's challenging him and calling his bluff. We did originally film some lower angled shots to make her seem more dominant but ultimately it didn't look right with the rest of the shots we had. We also had quite a controversial ending in the video which is left on a sort of cliffhanger. After the guy speeds towards her, just as he's about to hit her the screen goes to black, leaving us with the question of her did he kill her or not. To make the male lead (the singer of the song in fact) the bad guy who has just done something terrible, is not typical of most music videos and gives the video a level of controversy. 

For our ancillary tasks, our CD cover & artwork as well as our poster I also felt we challenged the codes and conventions of posters advertising music products. We originally had the idea of the title 'Stop The World, I'm Getting Off' in our minds as we thought it was a clever use of words and we had an idea of what the artwork would look like. However when it came to researching existing album covers and posters everything we found was relatively plain and simple. A flattering picture of the artist against usually a plain coloured background. In terms of following the codes and conventions we kept the clothing plain black and white, the colour scheme dark and the artist as the main focus of the cover. However super-imposing him on top of the world and having him almost climbing off makes a clear link between the title and the image. Something which is not always apparent in lots of album covers. 

Despite the image being very original and artistic, we do think it has similarities in with existing media products such as this album by Justin Timberlake.  We created a logo which identifiable and used a clear yet distinctive font similar to many album covers in the existing genre. I also think that both covers have a very distinctive dark ambience to them. 

When researching posters we discovered that the majority of posters were just extended versions of the album covers. We felt it was essential to be different therefore we used a different image than our album cover but kept the same theme and the same clothing. The only exception we found was the Britney Spears poster you can above. The name of the album is Circus and the poster is different than the CD yet still has a clear relation to the name and theme of the album

EVALUATION PLAN

Now that we have completed our music video production and ancillary tasks, the final part of the project is our evaluation. In evaluating our products as well as our pre-production we have been given the following questions, which need to be answered in our evaluation.

• In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge the codes and conventions of real media products?
• How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
• What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
• How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages of your project?

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK GRAPH RESULTS

To present a clearer view of our audience feedback here are a set of graphs which show our results.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

After we finished the music video we thought it would be best to gain some feedback from our audience to clarify whether any changed needed to be made to our video. We have interviewed 20 people who fit in to our target audience and have asked them the following questions with our results.

How would you rate our music video out of 5?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 2
4 - 4
5 - 14

How would you rate the performance out of 5?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - 6
5- 14

How would you rate the narrative out of 5?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 4
4 - 6
5 - 10

Is the narrative relatively easy to follow?
Yes - 13
No - 4
Don't know - 3

Does our video look like a typical pop/R&B music video?
Yes - 17
No - 3

Have we used a variety of different shot types?
Yes - 16
No - 4

Is the editing at a standard where meaning is apparent?
Yes  - 15
No - 5

FINAL VERSION OF OUR MUSIC VIDEO

Here is the finished version of our music video. We will be evaluating and requiring feedback shortly.

CD ARTWORK

Here are the finished versions of our CD artwork and inlays.

POSTER

Here is the final version of our poster.