The document summarizes a student's evaluation of their music video project. It describes the genre of music used and how the video incorporates conventions of that genre, such as close-ups of the lead singer. It discusses the locations used to film the band and narrative elements. The student reflects on feedback which suggested improving the band footage and planning more. The evaluation also outlines the media technologies used in production and presentation of the project.

1. Music Video Evaluation An evaluation of my music video and research

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The song we chose to use was Lullaby which is by “The lucky last”. This song was quite a fast beat song and fitted into the indie rock genre of music. Most traditional music videos within this genre have mainly close ups of the lead singer in order to make him seem like the most important person in the video. This is because it is what is asked from the record company as they want to get as much publicity from the band as they can so this would be a typical thing to see in a music video. The videos are usually either shot in a busy environment such as a live gig or in a busy area If they are not shot like this then it would usually be a quite area which shows some meaning with the song. Also in this genre of music we usually see a lot of shot changes in a short amount of time in order to keep the audiences attention and for them not to get bored of seeing the same thing all the time. Are music video is relative to this as we have used many of these conventions within our music video. We chose to shoot our video at the access to music centre in Norwich and also Chapplefield Gardens which is also in Norwich. We shot the band footage in the access to music centre, this wasn’t the best choice of setting for the footage of the band as it was a small room with little lighting and dull walls. However we made some changes to the footage in the editing process to make this look more professional. We then shot or narrative footage in Chapplefield gardens as this would give us natural lighting and also it was a bigger space and so we had more to use when shooting. We chose to shoot our narrative in a way that told the story of the song but also fitted in with the music. So we used lots of close ups and panning shots of the main person within the narrative .

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products The narrative of the song told the story of fame and how it changes somebody's life in ways that they would never of expected. So within our footage we chose to show the life of never being able to escape the paparazzi no matter how hard you try. We also chose to film the footage of the band in colour and the narrative in black and white in order to show the separation of the band and the narrative and also to show there importance. We also slowed down the motion of the narrative in some places in order to make it seem like everything is in slow motion and then on the more intense part of the song we make the footage move faster in order to show that the persona was becoming more and more aggravated. In the editing stages we chose to brighten the colours within the shots of the band as at the beginning the were dull and didn’t look very professional so by doing this it gave the video more colour and a more in your face look. Also we chose to have a transition where there was the camera following the persona around the tree and then on the other side there was a shot of her pushing the camera away and walking away from it. This showed two different sides of the persona one of her trying to hide away from it all and then another of her just trying to walk away but not being able to.

4. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts Overall I think that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is effective as I have used the same sort of theme throughout out the design of my digipack and magazine advert . I chose to keep them colourful and eye catching in order for them to be easily recognisable to the target audience and easily visible. My general aim was to make the name of my band stand out and appeal to my target audience so that they would be more likely to purchase the digipack. The digipack and magazine advert both use stills taken from the music video in order to try and create a connection between my main product and the ancillary texts. I chose to use quite plain and simple colours for the text on my digipack as the main colours of it were quite dark so the white text would stand out more and make it more visible on a shelf in HMV, Tesco or somewhere similar. I feel that the simple colours and the images of the band would appeal to my target audience as it would be similar to what they have seen before so they would be able to tell the genre of the band and create more of a connection between them and similar band or artists. When creating my magazine advert I chose to take inspiration from another band magazine advert which was for “Outpost Transmission” this was also a simple advert and went straight to the point of what they wanted the target audience to know so when creating my advert I also chose to use a simple design that told the audience everything that they needed to know. When designing my digipack I looked at two other digipacks from both Madonna and George Harrison, however I chose not to make my digipack like these are they were simple and not particularly eye catching although they both showed to the audience who they were from, as Madonna had a picture of her on the front of the digipack and George Harrison had a picture of a hand on the front but as this was something that he was well known for doing it made it clear to people that knew him that this was from him.

5. What have you learned from your audience feedback? From our audience it is clear to see that we should have used a different setting for the band footage in order to make it more interesting and also to make the band look more important instead of being just a small band practising in a small room that looks like it is at someone's house. We can also see that they liked the narrative of the song and found that this helped them to relate to it more, instead of just having the video consist of just the band on there own. When deciding that we were going to have a narrative within the video we made a storyboard in order to help us with our ideas however these were not used as we left it to late to film the original ideas so we had to come up with another idea which we didn’t have time to storyboard. When creating our video I think we looked at our ideas from an audiences perspective and this also made the video more successful when asking our target audience what they thought of the video. When I asked the band what they thought of the overall outcome of the video the drummer replied and said “My personal opinion on the video is that it is a potentially good video but it probably needed more time spent on it. Its let down by the shots of the band (mostly me being honest) laughing when were playing and it gives the video an amateurish feel. I think you should have used an individual shot to cover this and to have given the video more variety. I liked the contrast of colour (colour for the band and black/white for the narrative) that worked really well and the shots of Charlie (the persona in the narrative) were simple but made sense with the theme of the song. So from looking at this we should have done more planning with the band in order to gain a more professional look and made them happier with the video. Although we did use a lot of close up shots of the main singer in order to cover some of the bad bit of footage we wanted to show the whole band. However if we had planned better and filmed earlier then this would have given us time to re-film the footage in order to make it look less amateur.

6. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Throughout the construction, research, and evaluation stages of this project I have used a number of different media technologies. Throughout the planning stages I used both search engines and websites in order to find out about Andrew Goodwin, a music video director and other music videos in order to do this I used both Google and YouTube. These helped me massively when doing my research as the enabled me to find all of the information I needed quickly and simply. Then in the construction stages I used a digital video camera which didn’t contain tapes but just a small memory card and this made it easier to store all of our footage as it meant as soon as we had finished filming we could upload our footage to the computer and never have to worry about loosing it. We also used an iPod to make the track easy for the camera to hear so it would have been easier when trying to link up the miming to the track in editing. Then we used Adobe Premier to edit our footage and this allowed us to be able to construct our video quickly and simply as it separated everything into different tracks and then you could just add things onto the track when you wanted to and where you wanted to. It also allowed us to add transitions to our footage and also to make the colours brighter and to stop the video from looking so dull. Then in the evaluation stages I have used Microsoft PowerPoint in order to separate the different sections of my evaluation and also to make it easier to upload to my Ning through Slide share. However the technology used the most throughout this project has been Ning. It meant that all of my work was in the same place and I could always access it and not loose it. It also meant that I didn’t have to present everything in a work book and try to put it all in the right order and not loose bits here and there. It also meant that the examiner could just look at it online simply and easily without having to look through lots of paper and written up essays, as by doing it online it meant that we could present our work in different ways.