2. After filming and editing the music video, making
the digi pak and doing extensive of research of the
band and the overall production of our group music
video, this is my evaluation of every step of
producing this video for Rise Against- Saviour. This
is an evaluation documenting all the planning and
different stages we had to go to produce our video.
Introduction
3. 1) In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
4. For filming our music video, we used the Canon EOS 600D DSLR that was given to us to
be used by the college. I haven’t had much experience with a Canon camera, but have had
used a Nikon DSLR a lot before and it was pretty much the same thing which made it easy
for me to get use of the different buttons and effects for filming the music video. The Canon
600D had decent quality for filming but it was difficult to change the lighting setting for
when were outside exposed to the sunlight and we found that the camera didn’t do its
justice for focusing automatically when we had to take action shots and we had to
manually adjust the focus, which made the video unsteady and that set us back with time
too because we kept having to refocus the shot over and over again.
While filming, we did not use the tripod as much as we thought we would to give the video
a more realistic and dramatic feel. When we film the main character walking to his car and
driving away, we made the camera shaky to give the audience the feeling as if they were
part of the video, giving the viewers a more intimate experience to the song and the
characters.
5. Using different forms and conventions to produce our music video like camera work,
editing, mise-en-scene, sound etc., makes the video seem professional and
interesting to watch for our viewers. The song we have chosen, Saviour by Rise
Against, is a rock song and after listening to the lyrics properly, we figured that the
song was about a man trying to save his girlfriend to get her back, but we decided to
take a different approach to the song and make it seem that the boyfriend character
in our video accidentally kills his girlfriend after she finds out he is having an affair.
This is a much more aggressive and darker approach that the original video by the
band, but we thought it would be more interesting to the audience to watch
something that they aren't expecting. We cut out the sound from the shots we had
taken and just replaced it with the song, like any other music video out there, so there
were no natural sounds in the background to distract the viewers from the music
itself.
6. The camera shots we used were quite straightforward. There were some
over the shoulder shots, to shoot from the girls point of view, high angle
shot, to show her lack of power in the relationship, the regular medium to
medium long shot used to film the events that are happening and an
establishing shot to show the audience where she was buried and where
the man looking out when he was having a flashback. We used an edit
on the scenes to make the saturation darker to make it look like more of
a memory or flashback of what they boy character has done. The band
shots that were used in the music video were taken from the audience
point of view of the band playing, giving the viewers the feeling as if they
were in the concert at that moment. We also used a close up shot to
show the intensity of the action that the characters were doing and close
up to objects to show their importance in the video.
7. 2) How effective is the
combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
8. With our poster for our bands advertisement for their album,
we had to change and improve it at least 2 times to get to the
final ad. We had to change it as we thought that an ad with a
lighter background would make it more appealing to the
audience and we thought that the band ‘Rise Against’ were
more of a rock band than a hard metal band that is known to
be quite dark so we lightened the background and put a full
band image instead of just the lead singer to show the fans the
whole group instead of just only 1 person as this is a band, not
a one man performer.
Final product
9. The poster helps promote the band a lot as they represent what kind of band
they are and what kind of music they produce and their image of a rock band
will gather more fans that are into rock music to listen to ‘Rise Against’ music
and eventually watch the music video that we have produced for a song by
the band. The digi pak helps with the iconography of the band with the track
list at the back to show the type of music they have to offer to gain interest for
more rock fans, a picture of the band itself to get them more well known to the
public, original artwork of a half face/ half skull picture as the front cover to
give the buyers and idea of what kind of music this band has produced and
since it is an original artwork, it shows that this album is personal to the band
and the logo of the bad in the heart is placed everywhere to tell fans and
listeners that this is the official signature of the band and it will be recognised
by people whenever they see that logo, they will immediately associate it with
the band.
10. When we had drawn up the initial ideas for the poster and the digi pak, we had
to think of something that would fit the bands music and appeal to the large
number of fans they already have. We also had to consider how the visual
aspects of the poster would fit the theme of the music which is what led us to the
final outcome.
By incorporating the image of the whole band, we felt that the poster would in
effect also appeal to a wider audience, including young adults from ages 20-25
years. The grey scale of the poster creates a darkened and mysterious effect
reflecting the themes of the music including that of love and death.
11. 3) What have you learned from
your audience feedback?
12. To gather our audience feedback and research, I used Survey Monkey to
create a questionnaire as well as using Youtube to obtain audience criticism
of our final music video. We used Survey Monkey and made a
questionnaire for the public to answer and help us understand what the
audience is looking for. We used social networking sites like Facebook and
Twitter to help get the word out on our survey to friends and followers.
We have gotten a substantial amount of answers to our survey and it has
become very helpful to give us ideas to help improve our plans and ideas
for our music video.
13. From our audience research, we found that our target audience preferred a
more narrative structure, which also reflects the lyrics of the song, compared
to the original music video which only featured the band performing and a
irrelevant narrative. We also decided to have an unpredictable narrative for
the music video to keep in the audience interested and want to continue
listening and carry on watching the video.
14. 4) How did you use media
technologies in the construction
and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
15. Since the beginning of September, we, as a group have used the social
media to get audience feedback to help with the production of our music
video and we also used the social media to announce and spread our
music video to the public.
The social medias we used were:
Facebook, to publicize our final music video
Youtube: to upload our actual final music video product for the public to
watch.
Tumblr: our blog website where all our work is presented, including the
planning of our music video.
16. For the actual research and construction of our music video and the
album, applications like Photoshop and Final Cut Pro were used to
create our final products like our music video, posters, album covers
and digi-pak.
We used Photoshop to make some crucial adjustments
for our albums and posters to look appealing to the
target audience we have chosen and so we used tools
like levels and curves to darken our image, background
drops, unique text themes and paint to give our
album/poster a grudge/ rough look that went with our
chosen band.
Final Cut Pro was used on the Macs the
college provided to edit the clips we had shot
and taken from our camera and place them
in the desired order we wanted our video to
be in and this app also allows us to add a
background music, which was Saviour by
Rise Against, and use edits to make some of
the clips look distorted to add to the
uneasiness of the narrative in the music
video and with this edit helps the clip look
more dramatic and exciting.
