A2 MEDIA STUDIES CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION

1. A2 MEDIASTUDIES
CREATIVECRITICALREFLECTION
Made by Illia Boyko
for Media Studies Class
Final Presentation

2. INTRODUCTION
For my A2 Media Studies project I contacted my friends from
Belgrade-based indie-rock band - Daze.
They informed me that they have a new song coming out soon
and they would love to have a music video for it, hence why
Deep Blue Thunder by Daze was my song of choice.
Additionally to that I have designed a website for the band and
created a digipak for song and music video distribution.

3. MISE-EN-SCENE
Just like in most indie rock music videos, the characters
are dressed in vintage clothing, the athmosfere is either
dreamy, romantic or melancholic, but not aggressive like
in metal music videos, so in that sense my music video is
up to codes and conventions of indie rock music videos.
Minimal make-up and hairdos are common to see in
indie clips as well.
To create a feeling of timelesness of the music video I
minimalized the appearance of any contemporary ob-
jects/locations to make the video relevant for any genera-
tion and for it not to be too topical and be interesting to
watch decades after.
Main source of inspiration: late 90’s to early 2000’s.

4. AUDIO
A big chunk of indie rock music videos are narrative-based thus often feature ambient sounds from
filmed shots, voiceover or dialog of some kind.
Alas, my music video is combining concept-based and performing types of music video, so I chose
to mute all the ambient sounds of the shots to let the viewers fully dive into the athmosphere of the
track and it’s grungy production with minimal mixing and mastering, which pairs well with the vid-
eo footage.
All of the shots were precisely synced up with the song, using actual footage of the audio, where my
assistant held the phone next to the camera with the song playing for easier syncing afterwards and
also by using the audio waveform, in which it is visible where the phrase starts and ends.

5. CAMERAWORK
Most of the time, indie rock music videos feature close
up shots to concentrate on character’s emotions rath-
er than background and middle shots to allow viewers
to closely see the movements with which the player are
playing their instrument. I followed those conventions
for the most part, but also challenged them in the con-
cept-based parts of the video, in which there are a lot of
wide shots to let the viewer experience the athmosphere
of the set to the fullest and to underline how different
the characters are from the other people on the street.
To challenge the conventions I used zoom-in camera
movement in a lot of shots to emphasize how different
and beatiful things look with and without the urban
context, which is also a take on this clip’s main theme -
contrast.

6. EDITING
When it comes to editing, my music video adheres to
indie rock music video codes and conventions.
Editing is frequently done in accordance with the song’s
tone and rhythm. Editors define various scenes with
varied cuts and editing so that they may display a whole
story with a clear storyline. Even though my video does
not follow one, it still coplies with codes and conventions
because cuts are done every phrase and/or bar, energet-
ic parts of a song are synced with energetic performance
shots and breakdowns are synced with calm, dreamy
shots. It also breaks the convention of constant change
of shots since the guitarist solo was filmed in one take
and lasts over 30 seconds, but it still has viewer’s attetion
due to camera movements: pans, zoom in and zoom out.

7. EDITING
I also kept the transitions fairly minimal, according
to indie rock genre conventions, used cuts, fade in/
out and a few were quite experimental to spice up
the music video dynamic by shakig the camera to-
wards the end of the shot, that way when I cut to
the next shot it seems as if the camera was thrown
into the next scene whilst recording.

8. DIGIPAK
My digipak is a 4 panel digipak with a pamphlet
containing band and song info on it. It includes
band name, lyrics, a CD containing the song and
the music videos. I followed the conventions to use
uniform color in designing the digipak, although
added an accennt: colorful image below the CD
holdr and all the images are relevant, obtained from
the photoshoots I performed.
Typography is consistent as well, one font used
throughout the whole digipak, that fits the song’s
athmosphere and mood.

9. WEBSITE
The website looks modern, as one in 2022 is expected to
look, features big images of the band members, has a call-
to-action page where promoters can book the band for gigs,
there are links to their newest released music and concert
recordings. The front page greets the visitor by telling them
a little bit about the band and redirecting to the press inter-
views if the visitor wants to find out more. Fonts and colors
used consistently. Band name is always large and visible.

10. BRANDING
I needed to develop a sense of ‘branding’ in order to promote
my music video more effectively. Branding is the process of
identifying, developing, and implementing a unique feature
or collection of features for my client so that customers may
associate the brand with the products.

11. BRANDING
The main feature of the brand was chosen to be retro/vintage/timeless/archive/retrospective/nostal-
gic look, feeling and mood. I mainly achieved it through the outfit curation both for photoshoots and
actual filming. Moreover, grainy images/footage also adds to that. I achieved it through vintage gear
and digital effects and textures.
Additionally to that, there is a recurring notion of the “deep blue” color: song name, photo in the di-
gipak, bad weather shots in the music video, website font color.
Photos on the digipak and the website are from the same photoshoots, thus making the connection
between those and the photoshoot was based on the already shot music video.
However, there are imperfections in that matter: fonts on the title card, digipak and website are diff-
ent. Good next step for the band brand would be choosing one typeface and further using it across all
platforms. Nevertheless, they are similar and are of the same mood, but still different and it is visible
when you look into it carefully.

12. BRANDING
Typeface Inconsistencies

13. BRANDING
Vintage Feel

14. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
I need to make my products engage with the audience in order to properly promote my product
and reach my goal. I must do audience preference and opinion research and assess their feedback
throughout the planning and production stages. The audience’s input and comments can help to
broaden the scope of the project.
I conducted market research at the planning stage. I prepared a questionnaire and handed it out to
10 people in order to collect additional information from my target market and their thoughts on the
music genre. My survey asks about a variety of topics, such as their favorite genre of music video, so
that I may better understand their preferences.
My audience favors abstract music videos over narrative ones and do no think VFX are needed in a
music videos. Additionaly, they do not see visual representation of lyrics as needed.

15. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
After I have completed the editing process, I sent out the video to a few of my friends, a band mem-
ber and to my family to gather their thoughts and opinions on it.
The importance of audience feedback on my final product cannot be overstated. It was critical for me
to understand what my audience liked and disliked about my music video in order to properly evalu-
ate my work. As a result, I can better my thoughts and ideas, change my selections, revise my plans,
and so on.
As a result, my choices had to adapt to their thoughts in order for my music video to appeal to them
and entice them to purchase the products.

16. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

17. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
[RUS]
- Check out the clip I filmed
- Hmm, I’m not sure
It’s funky

18. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

19. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

20. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
[RUS]
- Are you the cameraman or the editor?
- Both
- That’s fantastic, very oldschool!!!
- Thank you
- The portrait shots and artist’s
outfits - everything is very cool!
- Thank You
- It’s like you are watching a music
video from the 90’s

21. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
[RUS]
- 90’s dear 90’s.. cool

22. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
I learned about the characteristics of my target audience and their preferences after examining and
interpreting the findings of the questionnaire and audience feedback. I discovered that the majority of
the participants are teens and students who favor abstract artistic style over storyline in music videos,
therefore I’ll have to make my music video in that way to accommodate their preferences.
From the feedback I have gathered I realized that I have succeeded in making the video look like an
instant classic from the 90’s and that it takes people from Generation X on a memory trip to their
youths and is familiarizing young adults with popular culture of last decades. Although some peo-
ple have rightfully pointed out that the clip lacks substance, but in my opinion abstract music videos
are always supposed to stay up for interpretation and they are generally less understood by the masses
compared to storytelling music videos.

23. TECHNOLOGYINTEGRATION
The use of technology in this project hasplayed a massive part in it.
I will report on all of it in three sections: hardware, software and web-based tools.

24. HARDWARE
My choice of camera for the filming of the music video was
Canon PowerShot SX210 IS.
Various reasons influenced my decision: I needed to show the
athmosphere of late 90’s - early 00’s which was often captured
by the emerging digital cameras. This one is quite old so the
quality of footage is a bit blurry and grainy - precisely what I
needed to translate that authentic last decade feel.
Besides that, it is quite technologically advanced for being an
amateur device. It zooms in up to 14x using optical zoom and
up to 76x using digital one. I chose to film everything in me-
dium quality due to the small amount of megabytes inside the
camera and to make the footage even grainier. The mode of
camera operation chosen was manual so I would be in full con-
trol of ISO and aperture control using a simple Light Meter
app on my phone to consult regarding settings.

25. HARDWARE
Same device was chosen for photoshooting process for the same
reason - grainy images, portability, manual mode of capture.

26. SOFTWARE
To edit the music video, I used iMovie for two reasons: I did not need any VFX or advanced technol-
ogy to edit a 90’s inspired music video with minimum of transitions and another one being my com-
puter having no spare memory to install professional editing software besides the one alreay pre-in-
stalled.
For presentations I used Adobe inDesign because I could create one unique, self-made template, save
it as .indt file and only edit text and images, which has made me extremely efficient in the process of
their creation and made them stand out too.
To edit photoshoot pictures and to design a digipak I used Adobe Photoshop, since I am already
profficient in it thanks to me beiing very interested in graphic design for 3 years now.
To design a website mockup I used Figma, which is a website and interface design tool, in which I
layed out a simple prototype of the band website since it is much easier and primitive than Photo-
shop and is ideal for such simple tasks.
To film voiceover videos I used a simple screen-grab feature of QuickTime player.

27. SOFTWARE

28. WEB-BASEDTOOLS
To share and receive files I used both Google Drive and WeTransfer, since the latter on is easier to
use but it only stores files for up to 7 days.
For my blog platform I chose the most advanced and popular one - WordPress. It took me some time
to figure out but once I set it up it has become absolutely essential for me due to its versatility and va-
riety of plugins and themes it supports. It is also integrating fully with the most popular presentation
sharing platform - SlideShare, which I used for a long time and has become familiar with.
For video uploads I obviously used YouTube due to it’s absolute dominance over the market, accessi-
bility and having been a user of it for nine years now.
To upload an audio interview I used Mixcloud for it being the most leniant audio-upload platform
there is which does not charge the creator anything for uploading, unlike Soundcloud, which has re-
cently decreased it’s free features to a bare minimum.
For website design I used Readymag because it offers stylish and contemporary solutions for creative
and eye-catching web products and a variety of templates. It is fully free to use and publish until you
use their company name in your domain.
Finally, SurveySparrow for surveys because it is the only free platform for such activities.

29. WEB-BASEDTOOLS

30. EVALUATION
I reviewed my project and gained a lot of knowledge from it. I determined whether or not my items
used or challenged genre codes and conventions, as well as how I used or contested them. The study
of codes and conventions has enabled me to comprehend music video genre conventions.
I closely evaluated the amount of combination of my core product and secondary items and gathered
information on branding.
I conducted market research and used audience feedback to learn about the preferences of the audi-
ence. This information allowed me to enhance my music video to better cater to the market, allowing
my product to be regarded successful.
During the production process, I used a variety of technologies. Diversification of technologies is
possible thanks to, software, hardware, and web-based products, and my personal abilities have
been further enhanced while working on my project.