Evaluation Questions

Media Studies - Evaluation Questions
Cy Robinson

1.
The genre of our music video choice was sort of unique; firstly it was by a band named iglu & hartly, rock band, two lead singers, drummer, keyboard player etc. But the genre was slightly different as it had a hip-hop/drum&bass vocal approach which changed it from a standard rock band into something else, we managed to capture this, especially in our video as we showed the generic features of a down to earth, socially “unacceptable” teenager through our use of costumes and attitude from the main singers, and contrasted this back to the typical view of a band by conforming when performing on stage in the video (suits, ties, instruments).
Our media packet does have some common features of actual media packets especially in accordance with a band/duo – two lead singers. A common convention of a digipack for this sort of band is to use a lot of pictures empowering the main members, displaying significant characteristics, in our case showing two main singers and having them interact with one another, through chemistry, this allows the viewers to be brought into a sense of security and attracts them initially if not further. You could say the digipack does not challenge directly the conventions of media products due to its simplicity in complexity; however this can be interpreted as a challenging concept as it is not so much of conformity.
2.
In both our media products the combination of texts is suited to the bands image. This was done through firstly the actual font of the text used; it was nothing too special, simple in accordance to the simplicity and not being too complex which can distort what actually needs to be done. The colour of the text too is a consistant vibrant/neon pink and black again shows relation to the band, people are comfortable with relations, either making the viewer more likely to look into the band. The title in our actual video and even the track list for our digipack is in neon pink.
3.
From our audience feedback I have learnt that it is important to not allow the viewers to become bored. As humans it is in our nature that we are able to become bored very easily, keeping a variety in shots, editing techniques and locations is very important, the viewer must feel like they are being grabbed or communicated too through the use of the video, this will grab their attention and should not let go of it. As our choice of song was a fast paced song and performed by a band, a live performance was a must, this allows a crescendo of video footage, building up to the performance. The feedback received about the performance was very complimentary, I think it helped that we did build up to it, and saved it for the one of the last scenes, it does give a sudden change to everything included in the mise en scene of the video. I also learnt that relative shots are definitely a big factor in making a good video, although there are videos that exist that are very abstract and not to relative to the song, however in this genre of music it is definitely a good thing. Our rough-cut feedback did have a few comments about some of the editing in a bad way, e.g. that they had spotted the camera in some of the shots, this was positive criticism as it helped afterwards when we managed to sort these problems out and resulted in a much better video. I don’t think there wasn’t anything that we didn’t end up improving on (all that was said in our feedback) which then now would mean that our viewers should be completely satisfied with the final cut of our music video.

4.
The use of new technology has helped a great deal in making all this possible. Firstly the use of the actual DV cameras, if it wasn’t for the cameras the footage for the videos would not have been able to of been made. Also the use of the internet was a big help, using the internet to research pre-existing music videos helped us with the inspiration needed in order to create our music video. Again on the internet there is the use of blogs, which has not been around relatively long. This has helped with being able to share with everyone exactly what we have been doing and how, whether it be sharing what has inspired us by posting YouTube videos onto our blog, or showing people our rough cut which leads to feedback and then to final cut which is an improvement based on viewers feedback. Final Cut Express is the software we used on the computers in order to edit our captured footage, again if it wasn’t for this piece of software our music video would not exist, it allowed us to specifically create a music video to our likings and to fine tune anything we did not like. All our editing was done on Final Cut Express. Also another editing program used, mainly for our digipack was Photoshop, although we could have used a simple program such as “Paint” Photoshop allowed us to create more complexity within our digipack and advert. There’s a lot more of effects and ability within the software, not restricting us to certain editing techniques. Also on Photoshop we edited still photographs taken from a digital camera (another piece of technology which aided us in production). The digital camera helped our digipack and advert as we used the pictures from the camera rather than perhaps screen shooting from our video clip, using a still photograph allows higher quality and is a lot more efficient.