Media Evaluation

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

Our media product mainly challenges the forms and conventions of real media products but also uses them in some way.
One way in which our product uses the forms and conventions of real media products by The Thrills is that we have carried through the 60’s style of The Thrills in our music video. Our animation is of a Saturday night set in 60’s America with typical 60’s atmosphere. For example the 60’s disco, Bob Dylan playing the guitar and the JFK poster - these are ways in which our animation uses the typical conventions of The Thrills. Also parts of the mise-en-scene are similar. Sepia filters are used a lot in “The Thrills” music video and is used in our video as well to give that same 60’s appeal. Also the costume is similar as well as The Thrills have very 60’s clothing and even though our characters are basic drawing we tried to give them that same 60’s look.
One way in which our product challenges the forms and conventions is that it’s an animation with a childish look. When we researched through The Thrills past music videos we could see that they were largely performance based with the camera always directed at them. We challenged these conventions and went with an animation as we thought it would be very effective with the type of song. The type of animation we went for has a child like look that also goes against the lyrics of the song. The song talks about love hate and sex on a Saturday night that are very adult things, yet the video has a child like look.
We also challenged the forms and conventions by using camerawork and editing. The camerawork in indie/rock bands are normally largely focused on the band/artist singing with a few shots of their location. Our music video challenges this in that the artist is not in it at all, so our main focus is on the character within the animated world and the animated city he’s in. Also as this is a basic animation, the video is a lot more static than a typical indie music video where they might be moving around a lot.
One way in which we did use the forms and conventions in camerawork is that we had variety of shots in our video. Long shots zoom in, establishing shots and close ups of the main character, minor characters and buildings. We also conformed to the conventions of editing in typical indie/rock music video as we used simple transitions between different scenes in the editing – We used mainly cuts to go from one scene to another.


2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

The combination of our main product and ancillary tasks is effective in different ways. Our main product is an animated music video of the song “Saturday Night” by The Thrills. We had to make an album featuring the song and a magazine advert advertising the album. Our album cover is of a night skyline with a moon and stars above. It has a colourful and cartoon feel to it which works well in conjunction with our main product, an animated video of Saturday Night. Also our magazine advertisement uses the same look as our album cover so it’s easily recognisable to anyone who sees the advertisement to find the album. The magazine advert uses the rule of 3rds for easy recognition. At the top it has moon, stars and ‘The Thrills’ on it (in the same way the album does) In the middle there are recommendations from music magazines such as NME ‘Album Of The Year’ to make readers want to go out and buy it. At the bottom we have the record label Virgin Records, release date and same sky line which are used in the album cover. Both the magazine advert and album cover share the same colour scheme making it colourful (blue backgrounds which represent the sky) and again recognisable.
Our main product and our ancillary also have an effective combination by using shapes, colour, theme and motif. The shapes used in the main product and ancillary tasks are similar in that they are both very basic. Our music video mostly uses basic shapes such as squares for the buildings (with a small triangle top) and the props are very basically drawn with simple lines (basic people, clouds, people in nightclub was just drawn as a shade etc) The poster and magazine cover are both rectangular shapes. The colours used in the main product contrast to that of the colours used in the ancillary. The music video used the kind of peach, beige, grey and creamy colours to create a simple and calming look which contrasts to the ancillary tasks which both use bold colours such as yellow, blue and black – This makes the album and magazine advert stand out and get noticed by the audience. The music video and ancillary also both share a similar theme in that there both in a childish/simple world, for example the yellow moon and stars and “The Thrills” written in white behind a blue (sky) colour and city skyline at the bottom, the child like world in the music video is that city – The motif of our video is this theme of innocence and the 60’s look given across throughout the music video. Both our ancillary tasks (magazine advert & album) and music video feature no representation of an artist, this helps keep the effect that we wanted in that this is a separate world that the audience can be a drawn in by.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Throughout our project we were given feedback from our peers and teacher to help us improve on the work we had done and see what we were doing right/wrong.
Our peer feedback for the rough-cut was relatively positive despite our rough cut being about 5 seconds worth of footage. Most said our camerawork was good as was the artwork, however aspects such as transitions and use of conventions couldn't really be judged as we hadn’t properly started editing yet, and hadn’t even put the song up. The comments on missing stuff were obviously extensive as we hadn’t yet got a sequence together. We learnt quite a bit from this feedback as even though it was 5 seconds long it helped any uncertainties we had about the artwork (maybe not suitable for the song) pass on which we were happy about.
Our teacher comments for the rough-cut were quite mixed. We had positive comments on the style of our video "a quirky and effective approach to the genre of music" which we liked. Camerawork was also praised, but transitions need to be done. We were told that we need to treat the animate like cinematic footage, meaning include a variety of angles, movement and distance. We learnt a great deal from these comments as treating the animation like a cinematic footage was something we defiantly needed to be more aware of and are very important in creating an effective animation. To fit in with our genre's conventions we decided to include a few close-ups of our main characters face to get some expressions. Overall, feedback was good, but it has definitely highlighted aspects we need to focus more on when editing and doing our final bit of filming.
Throughout out the whole task we posted blogs on how we were getting along, our plans, designs, research etc. Midway through we had a peer blog feedback. They said our research into similar bands were detailed with lots of visuals and good analysis – We were happy with this and made sure we kept it up throughout. They also commented that our storyboard is clear and detailed and our initial ideas were very good. They said that we had good photo tests but needed to add more video test footage – We learned a lot from this as we realised we needed a lot more visual practice for the animation.
After we had finished the final cut we had a Goodwin Peer Feedback. Our Goodwin Analysis feedback was very positive. They said that it the video fits with the characteristics and the different style of video was good with the animation, the storyline linked well with the animation and flowed well. They also commented on how the relationship with the lyrics and visuals were obvious giving images that illustrate in different ways that is being said in the song- This is something that we were trying to carry out throughout the video, to visually display the lyrics of the song to create a vivid image. They also commented on the relationship between the music and visuals shown, particularly the part of the guitarist as he is strumming along with the music, also the drawing moved along with the music well. As it’s an animation we wanted the audience to get inside the animated world so we wanted to create a relationship between the visuals and music in order to do this. They lastly commented on how there no obvious notion of looking as there are no artists present on screen, however there is a symbolic voyeuristic treatment of the female body when the prostitute is shown.

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

We used many different kinds of media technologies in the construction and research, planning and education stages of our products. In the planning of our main product we used the Internet. Firstly we had to contact our artist to ask them if we could use there song in our video. To do this we used MySpace an online social network, where we went on there page and left a comment.
We used Google Search Engine and wikipedia (online encyclopaedia) to research into the bands style and genre (rock/indie). We used Youtube which is an online library of videos uploaded by other people to look at The Thrills past music video’s and we could see from these that a 60’s American style was obvious throughout most there videos such as there clothing, hair etc Also some had special filters (sepia) to achieve the 60’s look this helped us to make out music video visual effective. Our video is called “Saturday Night” and is of a 1960’s Saturday night. To get inspiration for our animation we used Youtube again. We looked at many different kinds of animation until we decided on a particular style we wanted to go for and thought would be most effective for our music.
To import our music form the CD to the computer we used itunes. Once we had our ideas we had to present them to the class. For this we used Microsoft PowerPoint and used slideshare to put it on our blog. Using PowerPoint allowed us to easily display and show our ideas to the class as we could have different slides for different topics (style, ideas, album cover etc) we got images to help us show our ideas from google images.
To create some of our characters in our animation we used Adobe Photoshop and printed it on photo paper. To film our animation we used a camcorder and a tripod to keep the camera in the same position throughout and perfectly still. To edit our video we used Final Cut Express which is video editing software. To create our two ancillary tasks we used Adobe Photoshop to create the magazine cover and digipak. We got the images for the magazine cover and digipak from Google images and screenshots form our animation. All the fonts from our ancillary tasks came from a website called dafont which has a huge range of different fonts, we used dafont so we could get the fonts that would be most effective.
All this technology is accessible to nearly everyone and can have a huge impact on an amateur filmmaker. This technology such as Final Cut Express and Photoshop can help amateur filmmakers make their work effective and professional and leaves them to do whatever they want. Also the new online technology can really help them get their work noticed and watched by people all over the word. By using YouTube (which allows anyone to upload videos) amateur filmmakers can upload their creations on the website so anyone around the world can see it. This is what we did with our finished music video, we uploaded it on the Longroad media channel on YouTube and now it can be watched by anyone – People who watch the video can also give you feedback by rating the video (1-5 stars) or leaving comments under the video.