Evaluation

By Mario Saliasi

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

• Looking at our music video you can find many traits of a conventional Heavy metal music video, the reliance of performance shots combined with conceptual or narrative shots are normally key elements within a Heavy metal music video, some of the camera angels we chose to use, show a direct correlation and influence of the conventions of a typical Heavy Metal music video; for example some of the shots like close ups of the band members playing the instruments or close ups of the lead singer preforming on the microphone. These types shots favour Richard Dyer’s theory of a star image, which in context allows stars in this case Quad Damage to show case their talents. Also like many Heavy metal music video’s inducing the idea of mystery behind the band through the use of dark lighting and a special effects in which the band members are hidden behind, until 1:43 into the music video forcing the band in a sense of questioning and enigma of the identities of the band members and also feeling a sense of reward for watching the music video allowing for the big reveal of their faces. This has been done before with many other bands creating a sense of illusion of their identities, bands like Slipknot who wear masks in their performance and Marlin Manson who wears make-up are quite famous for the personas they have created.

• Unconventionally though our music video challenges the codes and conventions because of the healthy balance between our conceptual story line and our performance which is unorthodox because the majority of heavy metal music videos are largely based on the performance shots.

Lip Syncing and instrument synchronizing

• Lip syncing was also a very important aspect/convention to a music video because if the music is out of sync with performance it takes away from the energy and excitement from the performance shots, but seen as our music video was a Heavy metal music video we had to worry about instruments being in sync as well as the lead singer, luckily for us we had the band playing their own song which didn't’t cause to many worries but they still had to embody the roles as if they were really playing.

Red- having connotations of danger, violence and anger, also reflecting the mood of the overall music

Darkly lit, again reflects the nature and mood of the music

High angle close up signifies lack of power, vulnerability which is unconventional in heavy metal music video’s because the musicians are normally view with power and status

Out of focus induces mystery

Shot analysis

Conventional mise en scene for an indie heavy metal band being featured in someone's room or attic

Lighting

• The lighting for our performance shots was quite dark, we wanted to create a dark environment so we could highlight the shadows on the wall using only three phone L.E.D’s to light the whole room creating massive shadows, allowing for the illusion of that the room is surrounded demonic creatures. Which configures to the heavy metal code and conventions of the music video having reference to Satanism and Evil.

This lighting also had its disadvantages, for example the lack of variety, we couldn't’t do much with the editing of the performance shots because the lighting was to low.

Conceptual Vision

• The conceptual side of music video is inspired by the movie ‘They live’, which is a social commentary on today’s capitalist society, when we were looking through Quad Damage’s songs we found that their song ‘Dead side’ fitted our Idea for the conceptual side perfectly, as the lyrics reference the idea of being surrounded by industry; we chose this song because of the relationship between the lyrics of the song and the visuals in which we had envisioned for our conceptual part, which also relates to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of visuals amplifying the lyric’s.

• Conceptual shots, are almost a recreation of the movie, finding inspiration for most of the shots from the movie

Making reference to john Carpenters ‘They live’ although we made changes to location, for example, Jakubs character seeing the alien at the bank instead of a news , making a link between money and antagonist in our, Conceptual narrative but also expressing some of the bands view’s and making a statement that people shouldn’t ‘follow the money’ because it is immoral and evil

Our Concept setting

Actual movie setting

Different location’s

Intertextuality• The intertextuality of the conceptual side of

our music video was mainly an inspiration, allowing room for our own creative vision; we still kept the key features from the film for example the truth seeing glasses and the other worldly beings controlling us, even incorporating a scene from the movie in our music video, but we wanted to add our own twist to the storyline. Instead of the protagonist finding out the truth about how the world really works and fighting the machine causing a rebellion, he simply gives up and throws away the glasses which in a sense adds a sense of realism to the storyline but also our version of the story fits in more comfortably with the sense of pessimism within the music. We also make direct references from the movie for example on the box “open your eyes” is written on the of the box foreshadowing to the audience what is to take place.

IntertextualityAs you can see we also tried to recreate some of the scenes shot by shot to also help make direct reference to the film, both being shot on busy high streets, as well as both showing a magazine through the truth seeing glasses

Our music video

Actual movie

We also used some conventions from the movie for example Black and white representing the truth. Black and white, has always had been perceived as a deeper, more artistic expression of what was happening either on the photograph or in the film. The basic theory and justification explaining why this famous effect is so favourably seen in our eyes says that it is simply because it is not the way in which our vision perceives the world. Shorter range of tones makes everything simpler and easier to understand.

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

• Quad Damage is a heavy metal band, but more specifically a Doom metal band, through our ancillary text we had to show the genre of band through the use of colours, choice of images, but we also had to make it appealing to the niche audience that bought into the genre, when we thought of the ways in which we could create our ancillary text, a digipack to seduce its main audience, the main thing we all agreed on is that we had to be original about our idea, as our target audience is very critical about anything that fail’s to differentiate from generic advertising as it is deemed main stream and lack’s credibility to our audience.

• We chose to create a abstract style of art in which portrayed the mixture of emotion’s and also could be subjective to the individual’s own interpretation, the album art work almost looks like a mixture of screaming faces, which implies darkness and horror. The references of the evil ghost also add correlation to the music video which is a metaphor for society evils of consumerism

Research into digipackWe also accumulated research on our digipack to find out how other doom metal bands marketed them selves and how they presented their album art work. We found a lot of reference to the horror genre, as well as iconography towards Satanism

Text- The text and image are contrasting- “electronic wizard” styled in a “groovy” 60 sixty’s font which looks fun and stylish and the album name

Lighting & colour design: the overall look and design of the album cover gives a retro feel

Location- The background setting seems to be a hunted castle although the background is vivid we understand the reference of it which is made to be looked like the setting of a classical horror movie. The implications of the background has on consumers is to give some idea to what the music maybe about

Image- The album art-work reinforces some of the conventions of doom metal, being dark and having reference of a satanic nature. An old man with horns and beard smoking a pipe which is believed to be a depiction of the devil

Digipack- Textography

• For the creation of our textography we took inspiration from the album ‘Dope Throne’ we liked the way it looked, the video game style of the font really spoke to us because of its retro look and distinctive style and shape. We did improve the design by adding spacing to make it easier to read and distributed the thickness quiet equally to make it look more smooth

Retro game style font differs from the style of the image which is very dark. The text subverts conventions of doom metal. The our intention is to show ourselves in separation from the more generic branding of the genre.

Digipack- Front album artwork

The mixture of the red and black signifies connotations of death and blood, which displays the iconography of violence.

We also added the ‘Advisory’ sign to show this album if for a mature audience but also adds an authentic look to the advert.

Subliminal faces in the abstract art connoting horror and evil implying some sort of reference to Satanism which is a very conventional of the doom metal stylistic presentation for example, Electric Wizards album ‘Dope Throne’ or Motorhead’salbum ‘another perfect day’ both also having reference to Satanism

Abstract style of artwork, subjective to individual interpretation

Digipack: Inlay booklet and inside cover

The inside cover features a similar theme, with red and black but the images are different on the inside again following the codes and conventions of the doom stylistic presentation, an abstract image of an old evil ghost implying some innuendo to hell or satanthrough the colours and image

The back image of the inlay booklet is a little different as it has a little more variety in colour to it but still maintaining the dark scheme of coloursto conform to the conventions of the heavy metal music genre. The black and red theme being prominent in all of the the ancillary text trying to create a branding around the combination of these two colours.

Magazine advert

The Magazine advert we created to promote our music video and album features many of the conventions you would see on a conventional, Heavy Metal, the textography is bold and sharp which conveys the music, as well star ratings from trusted Heavy metal Magazine and websites, allowing for audience’s to have recommendation’s from a familiar source. Also the again trying to build branding through the use of the black and red as it is a relevant theme through out the band marketing. Also the ‘Out Now’ text shows the advertises the availability of the product making it more inciting. The use of the performance shot also signifies the genre of music allowing metal heads to recognise the advertisement is for them. The sound cloud and facebook pages are also stated at the bottom to allow consumers to take a glimpse at the music before they buy into it and also acts as another marketing feature.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

• Audience feedback was very crucial in all aspects of the creation of our production of a music video, for example set ‘Dead side’ apart from the rest of the other tracks was because of we previewed the views In which it received on Sound Cloud a music sharing social networking website, which made ‘Dead side’ the most listened to track out of all of the Quad Damage tracks, therefore we believed it wise to create a music video for the most sought out track.

Research into our audience and their feedback.

We also followed out many questionnaire's to find out why our niche of audience in which we were marketing to watch music video so we could appeal to them.

Through our research into our specific target audience we found that most of our audience watched heavy metal music videos because they like to see the band members perform, so this feed back helped us to decide to include a healthy amount of performance shots so we could me meet our target audiences demands.

We also gathered cumulative information, on things like age and gender to make our music video age appropriate but also to see if had a market in the female’s to appeal to that audience as well

• We also had several test groups from our target audience during the editing stages of our music video to make sure they understood the concept and whether they thought it worked with performance shots, the consensus was generally positive but we also picked up on key feedback on how to improve the music video, because some parts were confusing to them, for example when my character drops of the box they didn't’t understand why Jakubscharacter would follow him into an alley so we had to go out a reshoot this scene to make sure that my character looked shifty enough that it would interest Jakub’scharacter enough to investigate him.

After we had decided on our track and concept we had to create a pitch to present to an audience introducing our idea to them, where the possible locations for our music video would be. After we listened to their feedback, we went back to the drawing board keeping in mind their feedback for example, our audience asked whether they thought it would be practical to shoot on busy high street’s and after the group and I discussed it we saw the holes inside that plan so, the audience helped us see possible time consuming flaws, apart from that they absolutely loved the idea of inspiring our music video on the film ‘they live’ they thought the idea was very well thought out and original.

Presenting our Pitch

Audience feedback

• After are project was finished we uploaded it on to Youtube as well as share it on social networking websites such a Facebook, Twitter and other Forums, we looked at the comment’s to see how successful we had been at meeting the audiences demands and what we had found is that people really enjoyed our music video not receiving any negative reviews online as of such and the music video hitting over +1,000 views.

A compilation of some of the review people gave our music video

• Our audience feedback was very important to us it allowed for us to step back and have a fresh pair of eyes look at our music video, and tell us what to improve on. Taking on board our audience feedback was one of the keys to the success for our music video, which later went on to receive recognition from ‘Observer’ Newspaper and were given very positive reviews through out social networking sites such as Facebook and Youtube.

Questionnaire used to build cumulative research on our key demographic

Article about our news paper in the harrow, observer

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

Technologies used in our Research and planning • Media technology has been essential in all parts of the

construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of our a2 media project.

Web 2.0 and its participation in our Research• The integration of web 2.0 was essential to pin point our target

audience, especially keeping in mind the fact that our music video or band did not cater to a general pop loving audience. We had to research our key demographic, through the use of networking websites like Facebook, Sound cloud and various different forum website to understand our target audience, we accumulated research to pin point things like the variation of age and gender with these media media technologies

Information we gathered from Facebook to understand our audiences age and gender

Research and Planning• Facebook was a very key Media technology to understanding our

audience in detail, Quad damage had a Facebook fan page in which people could visit and like, to show their support for the band. It gave us chance to understand the audience in deeper detail instead of just staring at statistics and building our research from that information only.

• Given the advantage that we could visit their profiles and find deeper understanding who they were, as well as set up a live performance events in which me and Jakub went to see Daniel preform with his band to talk to our demographic audience to understand why they listened to the genre of music and what they like about the band in particular so we could amplify that in our music video.

Quad Damage Facebook fan page

The group and I speaking to some of the quad damage fans.

Research and planning • We had to use the internet on various part of our planning for example the use of

Google and Youtube websites to build up knowledge on how we could shoot and edit scenes, for example we watched a lot of tutorials Youtube to better understand how to edit so we could make our music video look as professional as possible, as well as watch various different heavy metal music videos so we could find inspiration for shot ideas.

• Blogger was also essential to us because it showed all the different stages of our work from picking a genre to planning out days go shooting, ideas for our concept, on blogger I have recorded all my research and planning.

• Prezi was a program that we used to help make some of our presentations more visual and creative. Prezi is also easily integrated with web 2.0 website like blogger which made it very easy to share our presentations.

• We also used technologies like Microsoft PowerPoint and Word for presentations we showed to our audience as well as setting up planning for Shot lists, possible location and showing various parts of our research.

Construction- Hardware

• We used a lot hardware media technologies for construction of our project for example using the c camera in which was given to us by the collage was an essential piece of equipment to film everything, as well as a tripod to stabilize our shots, and a micro SD card to save all of our footage. The camera was also useful for vlog parts of our filming to show the process of how we created our music video as well a vlogging parts of our editing. We also had to use features like manual focus on the camera when wanted to capture the audiences eye on specific things.

• Lighting was also a hardware technology in which we used L.E.D lighting in circumstances of minimal light so our image didn't’t suffer from darkness, unless this was intentional.

• We had to use music instruments in our performance shot to depict a real life performance.

• We also used Macintosh computer systems for our editing process.

Shooting parts of our music video.

Construction: Software• Final Cut express was a crucial software in the editing stages

of our music video, this was the sowing needle that stitched all of our footage together as well as add effects. The variety of effects on final cut pro was very useful to use as for the first couple of days we played around with most of the features building idea into our heads on what would potentially work and what wouldn’t. We used many of the features on the program for example different filters like distortion which shook up the image. to different transition like fades and cut aways which smoothed the transitions of the scene making it more watchable

• Paint was also a key software in the creation of our ancillary text, we did use programs such as photo shop and illustrator to also create the textography

Editing our piece on Final Cut Pro

Evaluation

• I used a lot of different media technologies in the evaluation process for example using Safari internet browser to gather information for my evaluation e.g. looking at the codes and conventions of a typical Heavy metal music video, Blogger was also useful because it allowed me to reflect on the work I had already completed to see If had missed anything in the evaluation stages of my project. I also used a Macintosh feature called print screen to take pictures of any relevant information that applied to my evaluation, a well as PowerPoint to present the whole thing.