Typed Evaluation

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

Our media product challenges the typical conventions of a music video as we have unusual edits, we mix fast edits then we proceed to watch longer edits. Carole Vernallis has her own theory on creating and editing music videos, she says it must be quick cuts and on the beat. We took this into consideration when editing and found that this worked very well. Other music videos usually have either not both. As the song we chose ‘Shark In The Water’ by the indie-pop artist V.V. Brown, the song is upbeat and has a clear rhythm to it. To incorporate the beats we edited our shots to them, the beginning of the video is without any lyrics so we focused on the beat and created edits on the beat. We then realised that this emphasised the rhythm of the song and as the clips are rapid the viewer is intrigued and has to pay attention to keep up.

I came across the artist ‘Example’s music video called ‘Kickstarts’, this is also an upbeat song but has more of a dominant beat to it than our chosen song. The edits are cut to the beat like ours and this makes the viewer aware that they are watching a text.

Music videos are usually based on concept, narrative or performance, ours is mainly narrative based as we felt that this would portray the meaning of the lyrics best as well as keeping the audiences attention. The music video ‘Kickstarts’ also like ours develops a narrative, this is a typical convention of a music video as the lyrics in songs usually have meaning to them so for the artist/band to show this, a narrative is developed and created in the music video.
Our music video switches from the narrative to the artist, however, we do show the artist involved in the narrative. I researched Goodwin’s theory that the video should convey a relationship between lyrics and visuals. I believe that this applies to our music video as the song written as if it’s telling a story and our narrative did stem from analysing the lyrics of ‘Shark In The Water’.

Another convention of Vernallis is not having a resolution at the end of the music video, we have gone against this convention and our resolution to the boy cheating on the three girls is that they all find out and that they leave him and all walk off together which is our end shot. We decided to be playful in our camera shots and try to incorporate many angles as possible as we didn’t want the video to look dull. We kept the conventions of extreme shots such as extreme long shot and extreme close-up. Which I think worked well as this gave the viewer a variety to remember and to look at so they would want to watch it again to take it all in.

We didn’t want to base our image our video on certain artists as we felt that this would influence us too much and would take away our own creative ideas. V.V. Brown is an artist that is iconic in style and therefore not wanting to be based on other artists. I feel that even though it is a girl band singing in the music video I believe that it appeals to male and females as people of both sexes may be able to relate to the narrative.

The song may not appeal to older males but maybe the fact that it is a girl band singing and appearing they may like even though we don’t appear to be prerogative whether that’s in clothing or positioning. We dressed differently as a band but we still looked like a band as we all wore a unique fashion forward item like our chosen artist, V.V. Brown, after some research on her style I decided to wear a fur grey hat like she has been photographed in, another band member would wear an eye-catching coat or a scarf. These items would attract the viewers attention but they were still understated that it wouldn’t detract your attention from the video. The style was also in keeping with the bohemian location of London. 2.

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

I have decided to market my band in the typical way in the sense of creating album artwork and using the internet to promote them. I based my album artwork around the chosen genre of the song which is indie-pop, I decided to use a black and white effect but not make it has harsh, I did this as I was using a bright yellow for the colour of my text. By doing so, this made the text dominant on the cover and is a code for that the bands success is about to increase due to this album. I also included the album name but whilst the font colour of this is the same as the band name it doesn’t take away from the main image.

The image I have used in the background is of the band but you are unable to see their faces, this challenges the conventions of a typical album cover as if the artist or band appear on the front cover, they usually are looking at the camera. The album cover followed the typical conventions with the band name being on the cover and the album name, so I decided to make a change somewhere as I wanted the cover to be different. So I chose a picture of the band facing away and there positions vary, instead of the lead singer being at the front she looks to be at the back lower down but this shows that she is showing them the direction. The other two singers are also important so they are standing up. The girl sitting down is code for that even though the band is becoming more successful she and the band will stay grounded and true to their roots, ironically and specifically the image is photographed next to a tree.

I have marketed the band CANUTE by creating a Facebook page specifically for them. As a user of many sites such as this I knew how to easily create one. I added images of the band and a little paragraph talking about the band which made the site more personal. I then posted release dates of the song and album in stores and online. This shows that I have understood the current market of downloading whether it being illegal or not. I wrote on the wall that their video will be out soon so therefore even if they have downloaded the song illegally they may like CANUTE and want to go and see them play live, I have also posted dates of gigs and concerts as well as competitions.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From the feedback I have been able to see the video from a different perspective which is helpful as the music video is our own hard work it was hard to critique it I have learnt that they liked the edits to the beat and that there should be more throughout, making this iconic to the music video and therefore iconic to CANUTE. The footage we had to show was short but from that we knew what we had to film. We found that we needed more variety of shots, such as a long shot and close-ups. As well as moving ones to break up the video a bit. We also found out that our lip-sync was off at times or our mouths didn’t look as if we were singing the song.

We took this constructive criticism on board and revisited London for some more filming and when we came back to edit we saw a massive improvement in style and lip-syncing. We were glad that the audience understood the narrative without us having to explain to them, which was our main concern. However the feedback reported that we had done this really well and that the edits complimented the narrative. We wasn’t able to take all of the feedback on board due to the time we had left to finish, if I were to begin my music video again I would start filming earlier on.

However, this year this was a problem due to the weather and unexpected amount of snow. Also due to all of us being at school we found it hard to find a time that all of us could meet at as well as it getting dark earlier in the evenings. Even though these factors hindered our progress I believe we have achieved a detailed video which is made up of many successful components. 4.

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

The technology of the imac computers helped tremendously throughout as we were able to blog our ideas and concepts as well our comments. This was helpful to my fellow group members as well as my teachers as they were able to see our progress and if they wanted to make a comment whether it be a positive encouragement or a helpful idea. I also frequently used networking sites such as Facebook as we were able to have private quick discussions as a group, whether it is on Facebook chat or an inbox. Unsurprisingly we all had Facebook and therefore were able to communicate effectively.

We were able to research other videos on Youtube and sent each other the links, this allowed us to create our own bullet points discussing the key ideologies, concept, codes and conventions, therefore we all had our own opinions and could merge them together to benefit our music video.

By using Final Cut Express we were able to see our music video come alive. It took a while for us to get to grips with all of the functions such as ‘rendering’ and cutting but we were soon away experimenting with our edits.