The document discusses the student's music video project analyzing how it uses and develops conventions of real music videos. It summarizes how the student researched Coldplay videos and similar artists to apply techniques to their video. The student also analyzes their video using Goodwin's music video theory. The document discusses the effectiveness of combining the video with ancillary texts like a CD digipak and feedback received to improve the project. It describes the media technologies used at different stages.

1. A2 Media Evaluation- Music
Video
By Dan Eavis

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

3.  My media product both uses
and develops media
products which are currently
on the market conventions.
To do this I did some
research into the artist I
chose ( Coldplay) to see
some of the key techniques
they use within their videos. I
also did some research into
similar music artists who
have similar genre of music
as Coldplay, this allowed me
to apply certain features into
the music video.

4.  Using Goodwin’s theory as an analysis
of my music video, it is easy to see that
the video falls into some of the
categories he used to analyse videos.
The first point of the theory is that the music video demonstrates genre
characteristics; generally videos done by Coldplay around the time of ‘Yellow’
were seen to be to evoke emotions from the viewing audience as visuals
were shown with the actor reflecting on the past, this builds a relationship
with the song as it has a slow tempo to go with the lyrics which helps evoke
emotions. We decided to use the same idea to evoke feelings by putting
images such as graveyard and also fade ins of the female character in order
to give the idea that she is an illusion. We also challenged this convention by
using a band as well in the footage, as Coldplay generally don’t add live
performances to their music videos, this adds a sense of rawness to the
video which helps immerse the audience in the video.

5. Another Goodwin theory is that
video’s contain a lot of shots that
are centred around the artist.
After doing research on other Coldplay videos, they
include a lot of shots of the actual band who also
act in their videos. We had to develop this idea by
using a different a band to Coldplay who did a
cover for the song we chose. However we weren’t
able to get their version of the cover a part of the
video due to restrictions and problems we ran to
when producing the video, we choose a local band
‘Seismic Activity’ as the video would help boost
their popularity as we included a lot of close up and
long shots of the band during a performance.

7. The third theory of Goodwin, is that
music videos contain a relationship
between visual and lyrics.
In some Coldplay videos we researched
such as ‘Every Tear Drop Is A Waterfall’
Coldplay used on screen lyrics in order to
show a relationship between the visuals
and the lyrics. We decided to develop the
use of a relationship between lyrics and
visuals by using actions to animate the
lyrics being said in the song, this allows us
to engage with the viewer and also helps
us produce a more effective narrative.

9. The fourth and fifth elements in
Goodwin's theory are:
1. Voyeuristic views of women
2. Intertextual references in the
video
After researching Coldplay videos we found out that they
didn’t use voyeuristic views of women in their videos,
however they often used a female actress in some of their
more narrative, so we decided to use this idea to in order
to show a powerful moral to our story.
We also looked into if Coldplay used Intertextual
references in their videos, we found that they didn’t really
use many if any within their videos, so we decided not to
use products intently in our video, however we do have
branded clothes in the video to suggest some product
placement within it.

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

11.  I believe that the combination between the main
product and ancillary texts are effective, I believe
this because we decided to used an image taken
from the main product as the front cover for the
digipak. This shows a relationship between the
main product and the digipak as we haven’t used
an alternative image from the main product which
also saved us time for taking another picture.
 As our story is simple, we decided that the layout
for our digipak and advert will also follow the
same structure by having the back of the digipak
just a plain yellow with the name of the songs on.
The use of the colour relates to the title of the
feature song emphasising the combination
between the products, as the back is often only a
guide for the potential buyer of what is included
on the CD.

12.  For the text, we decided to use a font
similar to that from Coldplay’s original
album ‘mylo Xyloto’, this shows a
creative aspect to our digipak in order
to show relationship between the band
and the new cover song performed by
someone else.

13. What have you learned from
your audience feedback?

14.  At the beginning of the project, we
used a questionnaire to ask people
what they thought about Coldplay and
our song selection of ‘Yellow’ by them.
After collecting the results we found
out hat most people believed that the
song would have a story that
suggested about love and the pain of
it, so we decided to try give what the
questionnaire told us by using this as
a template for future porduction.

15.  After we did our first cut of the video,
our media teacher asked for it to show
to a lower media class in order for us
to gather some feedback on what we
had done already. After creating
another questionnaire for this, we
found out that what we had done was
good and that there was some lip
synching issues, so we went about to
correct this issue in order to not ruin
the feeling of the song with poor lip
synching.

16.  Finally, for the 2nd cut, we had our
media teacher give us feedback. We
found out that there were some
pointless scenes so we cut them out
and extended others so that other
sections of the film didn’t suffer. He
also suggested turning up the
brightness and contrast on the first
bedroom scene because he felt that it
was to dark, so we tried adjusting it to
suitable levels to a point where it didn’t
look artificial. (All questionnaires and
feedback on blog)

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

18.  Song Vegas- We used the program Sony
Vegas in the editing of the video. To being
with I found this a complicated piece of
software, but after some guidance from my
teacher and also some time practising after
downloading it for my home computer I
found myself comfortable using this
software by the end of the project as things
like implicating effects in the footage and lip
synching became an easier task.

19.  InDesign- We used this program in the
production of the magazine advert for the
ancillary product. After using this program in
previous years, I already know how to use
this program effectively. This was also
useful in the planning stage as it allowed us
to plan out the magazine before using it.
After using this program for the advert we
created, we used a tool called gradient
feather tool in order to give to highlight
more of the text than the other to give it a
more creative feel.

20.  Photoshop- We used this in the editing
of pictures we were using for out
digipak and also the magazine advert.
The program allows us to edit pictures
to accurate detail allowing a
professional look to it. However I
found this program quite problematic
as it is quite complicated with what
you want to do. But over the course of
the project it became better to use.

21.  Blogger- We used this in putting
together all of our coursework in one
place which is easy to edit and add
work as we go along the project. After
years of using this also, I have
became very comfortable with this and
after recent years with this software,
the updates that been used to update
it have also made it a more
comfortable experience.

22.  YouTube- We used this to help with the
research stage of the coursework.
YouTube allowed us to look up videos of
the same genre to Coldplay and also
other Coldplay videos in order to help us
plan out our own video. We also could
have had the option of putting our own
video on YouTube in order to have
feedback, however after writing to the
record company for allowing us to use on
YouTube we never got a reply so for
copyright issues we didn’t put it up on
YouTube.

23.  Slideshare- I used this program in order
to be able to upload slideshows onto
blogger in order to give variety to my
coursework. This is a very easy program
to use especially for it being the first time
I have used it.
 Scribd- I used this program to be able to
upload word documents I had completed
on to my blog. However after updates to
Blogger this program became obsolete
and no longer worked with uploaded
documents so had to find other ways to
put these documents on the blog.