Evaluation

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

In my music video I used and developed forms and conventions of real media products. You can see this from my planning stage as we decided to use the song ‘’Perfect World’’ by Kodaline which is a indie rock/alternative rock band. There are many different forms and conventions of indie/alternative music videos. • NarrativeFrom my research I found that a lot of indie/alternative music videos tell a story which is usually strange and mysterious. For example I found that Imagine dragons video to ‘radioactive’ was very mysterious which included surreal animals in it and overall had a ‘odd’ feel about it. This video also told a story and focused on one character throughout the video. Researching Kodaline videos also backed up the fact most indie/alternative videos tell a story. Kodalines video for ‘All I want’ followed a character with a face disfigurement through his day to day life. From my interview i conducted, I found that people believe too many music videos use ‘love stories’ which is why we chose something different. The video of our chosen song Perfect World also tells a story which focuses on 2 characters. There was also a link between visuals and lyrics (Andrew Goodwin - There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)). The video showed the characters idea of their ‘perfect world’ . Analysing these videos helped me plan our narrative for our video. We decided on a ‘story’ type video following one character (like Kodaline’s ‘all I want’ video) with no band performance (the majority of Kodaline videos don’t include the band performing). Also bands from the same genre such as bastille often have music videos which don’t include the band performing. Our story was based on a character with Agoraphobia (afraid of outdoors)

• Camera work

Like Imagine dragons and Bastille (bands of the same genre I researched) videos we focused a lot on shots from behind the protagonist which I believe gave it a ‘mystery’ and ‘unsure’ feel. This is a way in which my video uses the forms of a real music video. Kodalines video for ‘perfect world’ also included shots from behind which followed the character as he walked. We also used this in our video.

My Music Video: Real Music Videos:

• We also used similar sky shots in our video of Kodaline’s videos. Our Video:

I decided that this shot made the character feel isolated from the rest of the world and alone. This is something we took and did with our video as it also fits in with our character and the story in our video.

• Mise en scene

The setting of our video was in fairly everyday places e.g a house/outside. Kodaline also adopts this approach in their videos. For example they use an office in ‘All I Want 'to show the characters day to day life.

Our costume was just ‘everyday clothes’. Which Kodaline again uses in their video.

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

Synergy:

We used an image from our video for our digipak cover. The audience can easily relate this image to the band Kodaline and also the certain song and video. -

We also used the image for our poster as well. This creates a link between each product and the audience can easily relate it to Kodaline. We also used the same type of colours in the image on our poster. We used photoshop to help make the colours of the graffiti look brighter in our digipak image. Doing this also has a link with the song title ‘perfect world’ – the colours are bright/happy colours. It also shows her walking out into the ‘’world’’.

Font:We used the same type of font for our digipak, poster and in our actual video - making a link between the different products whilst also creating an identity for the band. The audience can relate to kodaline when seeing this font. We also had a theme of purple.

After researching Kodaline’s previous digipaks I found that most of the images were outside and included aspects of nature. We decided to carry on this theme and shot our digipak cover outside with emphasis on the brightness/colours of the outside world. We also focused on ‘nature’ in our video.

Although both set outside, we went against Kodalines theme of the characters being in the distance and we had ours closer to the camera – almost as if we were following her.

we also carried on the theme of nature and the outdoor setting with the back of our digipak.

We included a bar code and their record label logo just like Kodaline’s and other bands real products. We also used similar aspects e.g. sunset colours.

Cross Media convergenceWe included the Kodaline website on the poster – overlapping technologies.

Like Kodaline, we copied their signature underlining of their title with text underneath.

Surrealism/Fantasy

Our VideoKodaline

We found Kodaline uses surrealism a lot, including one of their videos being in cartoon. We took this idea an included a scene of Alice and wonderland playing on the television. We kept up this Alice in wonderland theme throughout the video as it gives a sense of ‘fantasy’. They also use fantasy in their video for ‘perfect world’. We see what a teenage couple see as their idea of a ‘perfect world’ even though the scenes aren’t surreal. This is something we took and used when making our characters idea of ‘fantasy’ which is for her to be outside( as our story is based on a character with Agoraphobia).

Match on actionThe theme of our video was fantasy vs. Reality. We therefore included Alice in Wonderland in our video.

Our video concludes with the book at the bottom of the tree where the character was previously sitting. This makes theAudience wonder if she was ever there or it was all her fantasy Inside the characters head. This ‘mystery’ theme again goesWith the forms of other music videos of the same genre.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter I embedded the link to my video for my friends/followers to watch and share and also to give feedback.

Using the hash tag in my tweet allows people who are obviously interested in Kodaline to view the video. When fans search ‘#Kodaline’ my music video will appear. Also tagging the actual band in the tweet will also help the video get across to those interested in Kodaline. People can also share the video by ‘retweeting’ my tweet.

Sharing the video on Facebook allows friends to watch and also share the video. Including a thumbnail in my post helps grab the audiences attention and gives them a ‘preview’ to our video. This is also the picture we used for our digipak and poster. Therefore fans could easily relate this thumbnail to the band Kodaline and the song/music video to perfect world.

At the moment, our video only had 80 views with 2 likes. We hope to get more views and feedback in the future. Youtube is a website in which our video can reach a mass audience rather than just facebook friends/twitter followers.

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

stages?

I used lots of different programs/websites to help research and plan and evaluate my product:

• Research

I used YouTube to research and analyse existing Kodaline videos, videos from my chosen genre and the actual video for my chosen song ‘Perfect World’. I looked at the comments from users and took into account what they thought of the video. Google was another helpful search engine to find images associated with the band. I used social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter to look at Kodaline’s accounts and see what type of band they are and to find out what their fans are interested in. I also used twitter to ask permission to use their song from themselves and record label. Again, I used Facebook to have group discussions with the restof my group on what song to choose and to arrange shooting days.

I used Surveymonkey.com to make a quick easy survey on music videos. I then shared this on Facebook asking people to take part.

I used Tumblr and Flickr to find out what things are related to the indie/alternative rock genre. This helped me create a mood board. It also helped me plan certain aspects of my video for example costume. Seeing the main character in clothes related to the genre makes the target audience feel like they have a connection with the video and therefore band.

Another website which was very useful and relevant was www.Kodaline.com as it had all the information about the band. I then analysed the website to help me understand what the band is trying to achieve with their theme/font/sections. This made me realise what I had to do in order to give our products the same feel or whether to go against this and have the band sending out a different message about themselves.

• Research and Planningo I used Blogger a lot throughout my research and planning as I wrote about my project as I went along. Blogger

was a useful site as it helped me keep track of my work as I progressed into the planning stage. Blogger allowed me to imbed images (such as screenshots/band images/inspiration/digipak images) and videos (YouTube videos such as interviews with the band/music videos/ final product) to show where I was getting ideas from while I was planning my products.

o ‘Paint’ helped me crop screenshots and add images together and also to do a rough plan of our digipak.

o I used Microsoft word to make a shooting schedule – including the times/dates/equipment.

o I used my IPhone camera to take photos of our story boards and shot lists then embedded them onto my blog. This was helpful as it is a simple way of getting this information on my blog.

o I used DaFont.com to look at different fonts which would be suitable for my digipak. This helped me get an idea of what else I could include on my digipak and gave the band a ‘feel’. E.g. swirly writing would make the band seem girly. In the end we went for a ‘robotic’ type of font which we included in our music video. (synergy).

• Construction

We used a canon 600 D camera to film our video as well as using a tripod to make sure our footage was perfect. We uploaded our footage onto a Mac. We used Adobe Photoshop and Premier pro to make our digipak and video. On this we uploaded the footage, decided which were the best shots, added the song and added transitions. We also made sure the song matched the action.

Photoshop helped us add text/edit the colours of our photos for our digipak.

We then used YouTube to upload our finished product. We also used Blogger to upload our finished Digipak.

I used PowerPoint and pain to create my evalution. I then uploaded it to slide share and embedded it on my blog.