The document provides an evaluation by Darryl Wardle of his group's music video project for their coursework. Some key points: - Their music video for the Arctic Monkeys song "When the Sun Goes Down" took a narrative approach rather than just being a performance, challenging the conventions of typical Kings of Leon music videos. - Feedback on their video was mostly positive, praising the lip syncing but suggesting reducing unnecessary scenes. - Their black and white album cover design received praise for emphasizing the actor's loneliness but also some criticism for not matching Kings of Leon's style. - Various technologies like YouTube, Facebook, smartphones, and Photoshop were used at different stages of

1. Media Evaluation Darryl Wardle

2. Research into Music Videos Using Kings of Leon Songs and Videos such as Use Somebody and Molly Chambers, we came up with the idea that Kings of Leon songs are mainly performance based. However my group and I decided that we would challenge its forms and make our music video narrative based with our only performance being lip syncing.

3. Making the Decision for our main idea in our Music Video. I feel the Arctic Monkeys song ‘When the Sun goes Down’ was a major influence for us when choosing the ideas of our music video. The Music Video is all narrative based and it shows a story that is also in a slightly negative attitude.

4. Conventions that are similar to Kings of Leon Music Videos I feel that the way we have a few shots of our main actor close up and lip syncing is very similar to Kings of Leon music videos. Songs like Sex on Fire especially, show the lead singer close up and singing. Having our main singer do this as well shows conventions similar to Kings of Leon. Our actor also fits into the conventions of Kings of Leon. Everyone in our group felt that both the main character and the female character had similar looks to that from the Indie style. We also thought that the main character looked fairly similar to the lead singer from Kings of Leon.

5. Conventions that are different to Kings of Leon Music Videos I believe that our music product challenges the conventions of a Kings of Leon. Kings of Leon music videos usually consist of a strong performance based video. It hardly has any narrative based videos. So I feel that having a narrative based music video challenges the conventions of their songs.

6. Ways our ancillary task challenge real media products Our album covers challenge the conventions of real media products. The kings of Leon album covers are usually just one image on a plain background. We decided to do a still image with our main actor in the middle of town. We did this as we thought it would be good to do something different compared to normal Kings of Leon album covers.

7. Ways our ancillary task develop real media products We also made the album cover in black and white. This again has influence from the Arctic Monkeys, as they are also a very popular Indie band. One of the album covers from the Arctic Monkeys is a close up of a man smoking with it in black and white. Instead our image is a mid shot of our main actor sat down in a town centre.

8. How our ancillary task and our main product work together I feel that our media product and our ancillary task work well together. Both of the products use the same character in them both. We also made sure that the actor used the same clothing in both. Using both of these I feel that we advertised our media product very well towards our target audience, the Indie genre.

9. What we learnt from our audience feedback of our music video - Positive Using our audience feedback we got a fair bit of praise but also a few criticisms. The most praise we got was about our lip syncing. The audience were pleased with how the actor looks like he is actually singing the song. The way the actor at the end, ‘the new boyfriend’, came out doing nothing but having his hands in his pockets made the audience know exactly what has happened and in a very effective way. Overall the audience were very positive with their feedback, saying it looked like it could have been a potential real media product.

10. What we learnt from our audience feedback of our music video - Negative From our audience feedback we learnt that we spent too much time on a few unnecessary things. For example when the main character falls to his knees in disappointment and at the beginning when we span the trees. Our audience feedback suggest we should have found other things to fill them time slots and not wasted a lot of seconds on unnecessary things. Another criticism we got was that at times the actor should have looked into the camera more often when he was lip syncing, for example at the beginning when the actor walks out of the shop and when he gets of the felled tree and walks down the slope.

11. What we learnt from our audience feedback of our album cover - Positive Again we received a fair bit of praise on our album covers. With people saying it gave an effective look on what the song was about, loneliness. The audience particularly liked how the surroundings around our actor were all blurred and in black and white. Saying it really emphasised just how lonely the actor is. They also liked how he remained in colour making him stand out and also showing off the colour in his tattoo. The writing they said, also is a style that they would have considered to be the exact style of the Kings of Leon and it is very effective in its plain white colour.

12. What we learnt from our audience feedback of our album cover - Negative Some of our audience felt that the album cover should have been more similar to the Kings of Leon styled album covers. With just one image edited on a plain background. Others stated they would have liked it more if it was set in an area that was used in the actually video. Some also disagreed with others stating they felt the plain white writing was a bit bland and boring.

13. How we used our blogs in our Coursework We used blog’s to keep our research up to date and organised during our research. We also used it to post up our video and all other work we have done for our Music Video. Using blogs also helped us keep up to date and organised with the other members in our groups and it also gave easy access to our work for our teachers and other members in our class to compare and give feedback.

14. How we used social networking websites in our coursework Facebook was used a lot in during our coursework. It was an easy way to get hold of our other group members to make sure we were all organised in our work. It was also very helpful in getting audience feedback to our productions. On Facebook you can easily upload videos or links of videos and it gives people a very easy chance to give feedback on the work. This is how we got most of our audience feedback

15. How we researched music videos and Indie Bands We used YouTube a lot when we researched music videos. YouTube allowed us to get easy access to watch music videos by all sorts of bands and because it is an extremely popular website all the music videos we needed were up on the website. We also used Google to search for information on Kings of Leon and to find their home website and other bands in the same genre.

16. The use of Photoshop We used Photoshop mostly to create our ancillary tasks. With practise we were easily able to create and edit all kinds of images and to then create our final piece. The Lasso Tool was a tool from Photoshop that we mastered and was used a lot during our time spent on the ancillary. The effect to turn things black and white was also used as was the blur tool. Each of these tools as well as others helped us create a final album cover.

17. Other ways we used Media technologies to create our coursework Luckily we had an iPhone during our coursework period. This helped us get access to the internet where ever we were and it was also very helpful as we were able to get access to iTunes and get the Kings of Leon song Revelry. This was important as it helped the actor know when to do his certain parts and to keep in time with the actual song, as the iPhone could play songs out loud. It was also beneficial as it was used as a phone to contact other members of my group and the actors and actress’.

18. How I posted my Evaluation onto my Blog I created an account onto slideshare and uploaded my evaluation onto it. Using this website I was able to make my evaluation viewable to the public in an easy way. Then once I had created the slideshow I shared the link onto my blog.