Emma Grayland - Music Video Evaluation.

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

In our final piece, we have created links between the lyrics and the video. From the beginning, we knew we wanted a cute, girly theme to match the theme of the song, with lots of hand-drawn animation and doodles. Where we have used these, they are relevant to the song. Also, we have included scenes that are relevant to the lyrics at the time; for example, we included party scenes during the section of the song that was talking about going to a party.
We have used a variety of camera shots and angles, and also included a lot of still images taken on a digital camera, and compiled them together to produce a stop-motion effect. This is similar to a few music videos that we have seen and improved the development of our video as it made it more interesting to watch. Most of the lighting in our video is natural; at one point, we positioned our main character in front of a sunset and filmed from behind her. Our lighting is varied due to the nature of natural lighting, and we think this adds to the believability of our video as it is meant to be almost like a diary of the girl’s day. We also used some artificial lighting when filming indoors.
Mise-en-scene was a very important part of our video – for example, it was important that the viewer could see the notebook that the girl was holding. The notebook played an important part in the storyline and featured in some of our stop-motion.
Shots in our music video clearly demonstrate our research into other existing music videos. Kate Nash’s ‘Foundations’ video was where we gained a lot of our inspiration, as we were keen on a similar vintage style, and also liked the small amount of animation in it. It also used a couple of examples of stop-motion which we were very keen to use.
Although not an official music video, we also really liked an animation made for Kate Nash’s ‘The Nicest Thing’. It was very cute and girly and used the idea of hand-drawn animation and doodles, which we were very keen to use.
We also really liked an example of previous student’s work, which was made in 2008 by group R1-17 and based on the song, ‘I Don’t Want To See You’. This particular example used a similar vintage style, and also used the same idea of a ‘projector-effect’, with a frame creating a circle of video, sepia toning, scratches and an old film effect.
A convention of music videos is that the genre might be reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camerawork and editing styles. I think our music video links to this convention as our vintage theme throughout links with the lyrics of the song, and all aspects of the development process reflect the same theme and genre.
Our camerawork has a strong impact on the meaning behind the video – the movement, angles and shot distances are all used as a representation of the band, which is another convention of music videos.
Our digipack design matches the theme of our video, and uses the same template as many others that we researched – it folds over twice to allow room for two CD’s. We also used our research to design a realistic pack that would not look out of place on a supermarket shelf.
Our magazine advert uses conventions of real magazine adverts, as it uses many overlayed images to create depth and texture, but fits in to the theme of our song and band. It has a strong visual link to our digipack and many aspects are similar to create a brand image. It also uses text, which is a common trait of real magazine adverts.

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

Our main product and ancillary texts are strongly linked and this makes the combination of the two effective. They are both very visual and contain the same themes, which show consistency throughout. Both show attention to detail. One of the advantages of creating our own ancillary texts is that it gave us the opportunity to develop the brand image that is featured in our music video. Our ancillary texts have a continuous theme throughout and similar fonts are used on both. This consistency can be considered as a method of building a band identity and would boost the publicity for the band, making their work instantly recognisable. The digipack is relatively simplistic, whereas the magazine features a little more detail to prevent people getting bored of looking at them. This simplistic approach links to the theme of the music and could be seen as a trademark approach for the band.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We used no footage from our roughcut in our final piece, due to our roughcut being filmed quickly and not very well, and being put together in a short space of time. We had mixed feedback but it mainly said that we used good editing technique, and the theme was fitting to the song. However, we needed more shot and scene variety, and also more performance shots. There was too much variation in the lighting between shots, and our video cut a bit short due to lack of footage. We needed to gain more footage, use more locations, and tidy the video up all round.
As a result of this feedback, we changed pretty much everything about the video and started again from scratch, which was much more successful. One of the final adjustments we made was on the old film effect that we applied to our video, this led to the whole video having a sepia tone and a ‘scratchy’ effect over the top. At some points, we gained feedback that said the sepia toning was too strong, and was working against some of our natural lighting in our video. To sort this, we decided to continue using the old film effect to ensure consistency, but toned down the sepia so in certain places, it was barely visible. This was a lot more successful and we were pleased with the result.
Feedback that we gained from Facebook stated that “idea is good (animation type like) I really like when Hannah is walking towards the trees and the camera turns also when the effects of when she's dancing by the trees are great” and also that “loved the sepia effect in your video it gives it a kind of old film look and it goes really well and also the stop motion parts are really good”.
Feedback from our peers stated that our blog contained sufficient posts and evidence of research, and all fitted together visually with sufficient detail and photographs. However, we should have had a post on general ideas for the digipack, and could have had more colour and images as some of our posts were text only. The feedback mainly said that the animation and lip-synching were strong points, and people liked the effects on the video. However, we could have used a wider variety of effects and a wider variety of still images. Feedback for our digipack said that our track listings were good with a good overall design which linked strongly to the video, but we should have used more images of our main character. And finally, the feedback for our magazine advert said that the overall design was good and links strongly to the digipack, but some aspects were a little hard to read.

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

We used Blogger to regularly update our online blog, with new information, examples and research. This was an effective method and an advantage of media technologies as it meant our blog could be easily edited, added to and was accessible to everyone. In the research stage, we used Youtube to research other videos, both official and also previous students’ work. We also used Myspace to research and contact the band. In the planning stages, we used Photoshop to compile mood boards and also to begin drafts for the poster/postcard etc. In the construction stages, we used Final Cut Express to put together both our roughcut and our final video, and Photoshop for our digipack and poster. We took images for these off both Facebook and Myspace. Our final piece was put on our blog using Vimeo. We also used a camcorder and Final Cut Express to create our evaluation video, in which we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our video and explain the ideas behind some of the scenes. Modern media technologies definitely benefited our group and video as a whole, and has led to a professional-looking and effective video that we are all very pleased with.