Evaluation

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

Throughout my music video it is clearly observable that I have used many conventions of real media products. Many of Andrew Goodwin's points can be viewed in the video, for example, the lyrics and visuals are closely linked and the visuals aid in illustrating lyrics from the song. A placard with the text 'Can you help me, Jeremy?' illustrates that particular lyric, 'I drink too much' is illustrated by a person drinking and 'can we have some security please' is highlighted by a group of police officers walking past. The visuals also match the music as they are cut quickly to reflect the tempo and style of the song. The crowds of people featured in the video also fits in with the slightly chaotic feel of the song.

References to voyeurism are a key part of the song and as such I have highlighted them in my video by showing numerous video and digital cameras to amplify the idea of being watched or under surveillance, a theme which the song focuses on strongly. The primary intertextual reference within the music video is to Dougal Wilson's video for Graffiti - What Is The Problem, after researching the director for my case study and being inspired by this particular video I decided to emulate his style by using a high level of verisimilitude which I was able to create through the use of natural lighting and mise-en-scene and little use of special effects. I particularly liked the use of placards in Dougal Wilson's video and the idea of people protesting about issues that are important to them, therefore, I too featured this concept in my video.

However, my video does challenge two of Goodwin's points. He states that music genres have their own style and it would be expected that the style of song I was working with, that featured a fairly fast paced tempo, would include a live performance from the band in the music video. I chose not to do this as, after listening to and annotating the lyrics, I felt that the song concerned the idea of people feeling anonymous and this inspired me not to use the actual band in the video. This also means that there are no close ups of the artist within the video which is something that would normal be expected.

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

To ensure that there is a strongly recognisable brand identity throughout my products I used the same colour scheme of black, grey, navy and white for both my digipak and magazine advert designs and a very similar colour scheme for my music video. I also used the same scissor effect and layout for the digipak and advert which means that they are both easily identifiable as belonging to part of the band's promotion material.

A clear stylistic link is established through all three products due to the photography and the layout of the images. The photos used on the digipak and advert were captured at the same event I filmed the video at and therefore they too feature the same lighting and mise-en-scene.

Like the music video I chose not to add any special effects to photographs which means that they continue the theme of the brand identity featuring high levels of verisimilitude. As the video features numerous quick cuts to reflect the fast

paced tempo of the song I attempted to reflect this in the print texts by cutting out parts of images and placing them on the advert and digipak rather than

using a whole image so it gives the impression of cutting between the photos.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

From my audience feedback I was able to establish that the majority of people liked the video and thought that it was well suited to the genre of music. A hundred percent of the people that I asked thought that the editing matched the tempo of the song. Fifty percent of people said that the music video would encourage them to find out more about the band and also that they would download the track after seeing the video. 92.9% of people that responded thought that the issues represented in the video were appropriate for the song.

In response to the question 'what would you change about the video?' forty percent said that they would change the storyline, twenty percent the special effects and ten percent the lighting. Other comments I received regarding this were suggestions such as 'more internal mise-en-scene, close up shots and literal references.' This suggests that the narrative of the video is not very strong or clear and is something that could be improved on. It also suggests that not featuring the band or close up shots of them is not appealing to everybody. 21.4% of respondents said that they would change the special effects. However, after being inspired by existing videos with high verisimilitude it was my intention to use little or no special effects to create this within my own video.

The primary response I received for the question ‘which music channel would you expect to see the video on?’ was Q. Q specialises in indie, rock and alternative music and seeing as I was aiming to create an alternative style music video for an indie band I am pleased that my audience feedback has indicated that people have recognised this and I have achieved my aim.

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

Throughout all the stages of my music video I utilised new media technologies such a Facebook, YouTube, Slideshare, Issuu and Blogger. To gain an idea of the bands pre-established style and existing visual material I used Facebook and YouTube which allowed me to view their previous music videos, CD covers and promotional material this helped me to plan for, and decide on the style of, my own music video. I also made strong use of YouTube for my Dougal Wilson case study - something which strongly inspired many of the ideas behind my music video. I found that my research was most effective in PowerPoint presentation format and used Slideshare to upload these and embed them into my blog. My treatment sheet was published on Issuu and then onto my blog; this meant that it was easily accessible to reference back to during the later planning stages.

During the construction of my video I used software such as Final Cut, Photoshop and Paint Shop pro.

To evaluate the effectiveness of my music video I created a survey on Survey monkey to gain audience feedback and sent it out to people using Facebook. This allowed me to gain quick responses and I was able to make use of the Slideshare's analysis feature to create pie charts which visually illustrate people's thoughts regarding the video.

Twitter was an invaluable new media technology which I made frequent use of throughout all of the stages of my music video. I primarily used it to post links to songs, videos or images that were inspiring to me at that moment and occasionally recorded my thoughts regarding the progression of my video or ancillary texts. This was particularly useful as it meant that I could look back at my account and instantly find inspiration for any aspect of my music video as well as keep track of where I was with it's creation and how I needed to progress. I linked my Twitter account to my blog using a HTML code meaning that it was even easier to access.