Our Music Video

Evaluation Q1 -How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?

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

I feel that we have achieved our aim of not only targeting younger age groups to expand our target market, but also reached the original target market. We have used one method in particular which ties in with our aim, this was to show the band in a casual dress, in the original video by the Hoosiers they are seen to be wearing very smart indie clothes, i have identified this by looking into and researching indie clothing. I feel we have elaborated a casual sense of dress into indie genre and throughout our ancillary tasks to help us achieve our aim.

I made the album cover which combines an original feel with casual clothing. The fact that we have shown our album cover in the video not only advertises our band and our music video but allows us to advertise on another technological platform. This also helps to establish the bands dress sense by showing casual clothing in the album cover and the video. We have now imprinted a view of The Big Beat into our consumers minds which is a technique used in almost every platform of the media. Mainly seen in the news where 'youths' are imprinted in the minds of the public as 'trouble makers' and 'druggies', where as in the real world there are only a minor few who show these behaviors.

Our poster shows some aspects of our album cover, this ties in with the Hypodermic Needle Model, where we are simply imprinting our album cover in the minds of our audience meaning they subconsciously remember it without processing or challenging the data., which also maximises the use of advertisement and band recognition. Along with our website the poster shows dates and gigs in local areas along with how much it is for entry.

I think that my initial research into music videos really helped me to understand and develop what to focus on and what shots to film, i think i needed this skill as i was filming, preparing the shots and editing; i think my research into lighting helped me to focus on a certain subject or area in a shot. I also decided on costumes to wear, which was very important to make sure we achieved our aim.

Our end product has been developed using planning and time management which are vital to achieveing our aim. We have taken the Uses And Gratifications theory into account when planning our values in the video because audiences use the mediaa for a "personal Identity" purpose meaning the learn values from texts. The moral of our video was to make the right decitions for yourself because you cant turn back time, as with what happens in the video. Josh decides to take a very laid- back attitude in the video and with shots of him and the band this then cotridicts his 'young life' by becoming a singer.

When i researched contemporary music videos i found that not one is nearly the same as the other. I like the way 'Hurts' conduct a music video as in some respect we took on their way by filming up close footage of josh miming. However i feel that the very unique way of filming and mise-en-scene they use would be hard to explore whilst on a very low budget.

I feel that each ancillary task has been thought about and is relevant to our band, and overall our music video takes on a subject that is very important to young people. So combining a band that dresses and acts like a young person with the subject 'choices' that young people can relate to we have created a combination of album covers, posters, websites and a video that differs from contemporary music videos.

We have chosen our audience very well and have adapted some shots to try and widen our audience further, like hurts we have chosen to add cheek bones and a close up of a male face to try and appeal to females, which again is stated by the Hypodermic Needle Model- whereby our audience are manipulated by our group ( the creator) of a music video.

Evaluation Q2 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Firstly we identified our audience and then conducted a questionnaire that was specific. this allowed us to take on their views to try and adapt our video to the requirements which falls under the definition of customer orientated marketing,

You can see evidence of this in the first few shots where images are flashed of choices made at school and higher education. This was from our findings during our audience research.

Questionnaire Question
What do you consider to be an important choice at this age?
Answer  - Boy aged 16
Options for higher education and beyond

We also asked our audience if they preferred to see the artist in their music video
90% of the people we asked said they would, from this we have adapted our music video to show the band throughout.
Our questionnaires have also helped us to find out whether or not our audience would consider buying the song if we took their views into account, All 20 year 11 pupils said they would buy our song if we did this.
I believe our music video gives young people a change to relate to their life in a media area where it hasn't been changed and mediated to the extent people change their beliefs and turn into a mischievous 'youth'.

We have also learnt a lot from friends due to their age group being in our target audience, both before and after filming we had positive and negative views, and overall enabled us to adapt our video further; not only by quicker cutting, but adding shots like the coin toss and trying out new effects. We also added close up shots of our actor due to a comment made by one of my Friends " i think if you take more close up shots then more women are likely to buy the video because of things like male cheek bones being shown" We then shot some extra footage to take her view into account. You can see this when only parts of Josh's face are shown miming to the song.

Overall we have learnt that you can adapt a music video to all of your audience preferences- However you can change some shots only a slight bit which changes the feel of a music video, to advertise to different sexes.
We have managed to take on male and female aspects of advertisement, audience likes and dislikes found from our questionnaire. Our young age male group are known for wanting cars and being independent, we've shown some scenes of cars so that there are many subjects in the video young males can relate to, and see themselves in the actors shoes! Showing the Representation Theory, in how our music videos allows our audience to relate to themselves and represent their young life.
For females as Ive spoken above, we've learnt that they prefer close-ups of male faces, which we have also adapted into our music video.

I have learnt that our editing has been consistent throughout our film and has enabled the viewer to keep up with the references and storyline. Also our idea that we have chosen goes well with the song. This feed back has come from people in our target audience so the comments below are relevent to who we aimed our product at.

"Holly Addison The shots of the band is lit really well, with effective shadows!
good variety of shots, and cut well to the beat of the music
edited really well, with lots of fresh and quick cuts!
good job!"


"Beth Walton wow well done on the editing, all the quick cuts work really well particularly towards the end:)
you got a good balance between the band shots and the story too"


"Naomi Cassiopeia Lloyd-Wakeman well done guys this is a really great video :) love the smoke machine at the end :)"


"James Scfc Thomas this is awesome :) well done, i like that the video relates to the music too, and the editing in this is really effective, watch out steven speilberg ;)"


"Ellis Baker really different, interesting shots and fast-paced, works really well!"

Evaluation Q3 - In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Contemporary music videos are changing all the time and are producing more symbolic references than ever before. I have chosen a video below that i feel is one of the first videos of its style. I cant identify what the style is other that saying it conform to the male gaze theory.



Looking and observing this we have clearly challenged contemporary media music videos by choosing to show a story in our video.
We have clearly challenged the current band approach to conducting 'Choices' and i feel have managed to take on the views of our target audience and put their preferences into practise.
We have also used symbolic references such as cheek bones to show attraction, and the rewinding of the clips show how you cant make the same choice twice, and that you only have one shot to do what you want at this age.
Also the banging of the symbols and the slamming of car doors symbolises the singers frustration with making the right choice.
Other symbolic references include, the throwing of an application form , this shows he has to many options to choose from and is frustrated about being forced into a decision.
So from symbolic references we have developed a contemporary way of producing music videos, because the modern media uses these references, unlike older music videos that blatantly show what they want in a video.

One of the ways i could approach this question would be to talk about my endless research into the original video, trying not to copy ideas and shots because my main ideas was to differentiate from the Hoosiers. However the last shots from the original video are mainly taken up of the band therefore i developed this and constructed my final shots around this idea. including many elements from my own imagination taken from the subject we specified ' young peoples choices'.

There is also much 'tongue in cheek' evidence in our video this also conforms to the Hoosiers video, specifically when the man plays his keyboard at the start and his actions on screen do not match the music notes in the song.

I also tried to take some aspects of their indie pop genre into our video, this is seen when the camera is seen to move from the interior of the singers car and zooms back out the back window.

This then makes me come to the conclusion that we have taken aspects of historical and contemporary music videos to symbolise and show a young persons troubles, along with being able to attract them to buy our product by taking their and some of the original bands' views into account. however we have both developed and challenged forms and conventions of contemporary music videos.

Evaluation Q4- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research,planning and evaluation stages?

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

Firstly we have used computers to research The Hoosiers, and also plan and evaluate our project.
The Internet has been extremely helpful by helping us to gain audience feedback from YouTube and facebook, and also enabling us to research different lighting techniques such as three point lighting, which was used in a combination of shots.
The internet has allowed us to produce a website that advertises band concert dates, gigd, posters, clothes, and other products. Today the internat is one of the main ways of advertisement and comunication, therfore i feel we should exploit this to make full use of it, and its free uses, such as weeble where you can make a website for free.

For me the most important technology i used was the i mac.

I edited all of the video and found i movie software extremely usefull and frustrating at the same time. different effects and transitions have enabled me to create a video that is 8gb, mostly due to quick cutting and experimentations with transition effects.

Due to our song choice being so up-beat and ending suddenly i needed to make sure our final shots where just right- therefore i used a tried out many different effects to have full effect along with the sudden ending. during this process i used the internet to find out how the original song ended at try and crasp some transition techniques. however our version of the song was slightly different, and the original did not finish as suddenly, therefore compared to the hoosiers i searched more difficultly to fit the music with shots and effects in our video.

Youtueb helped me considerably when trying to confrom or differenciate from contempory industry norms.



Youtube also helped us when trying to gain audience feedback, and promoting our band.

overall we have used a list of technologies ranging from older ones such as the video camera, to new editing sofware and applications such as i movie.

Day 1 -Filming

Day 1

Today we have filmed our band miming to the lyrics of our song, most of this is when the band are singing. we arrived at our venue at 9.00 and started to set up. We used lamps underneath each member to make them stand out, we also used three-point lighting to try and create the perfect light for the band and enabled us to control direct lighting that creates unwanted shadows.

We played the song through speakers, this meant the miming was easier to follow. We placed the camera in 10 different places so that in the editing process we had enough camera angles to show, some of these shots  included:  low to high, mid shot, close up, long shot, a swoop shot and an over the shoulder shot.

The weather didn't have an effect on today's filming because we used a music venue that was indoors.

Day 2 -Filming

Day 2

Today we filmed the next third of our video, this included mostly outdoor shots. We had a slight problem today, which was that the weather was unpredictable; meaning we had to be on guard for any change that would be obvious in our video. We improvised on some of the props that we used, below is one of the sets; a computer chair that we used for the swooping shot, as you can see there are block paving on the ground which meant we had to film numerous shots to get the overall effect we wanted, and to try and minimise any obvious slanting in our final video

Today we also filmed the first few inside shots, like yesterday we used three point lighting, to try and minimise direct light that creates unwanted shadows. We also controlled natural light with curtains and turned all ceiling lights off, to make sure we could control the light to the best of our ability.



As you can see i had to get into some arquard positions to gets the shots i wanted and planned for. ( above me on the top of my fridge )

Day 3 - Filming

Day 3

Today we filmed the school and car scenes, as well as the close up shots of Josh's face so that we can appeal to females.

Lighting was key in this close up shot to show and emphasise Josh's facial features, overall i feel these three days of filming have been very successfull and on time with my predictions on the timetable.

Timetable

We came to the idea that we should make a timetable for our project, this is going to help us keep on track and focused. Below is the table i made for our project. I used windows software to create it and also added to some columns throughout each day.

Props

I have listed all of the props i can think of that we need for our music video, and what each will help us achieve.

Costume - Shirts ( black, white) Braces, thin tie, black trousers and black shoes.

These costumes will help us achieve our smart- casual look, which is going to help differentiate our band to The Hoosiers. Helping us to appeal to a larger target audience.

Instruments - Guitar, drums kit and sticks!, piano, microphone, amps.

Without these we would have a pretty basic band, so we asked a few Friends to borrow some instruments for the day.

Lighting - Foil on wooden board, lamps, the sun and natural light, large tripod lamps.

This has enabled us to show the band in different ways not only by using different camera shots, but too focus on the subject we want it too.