Evaluation

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

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Our music video for ‘The Aquatic Escape – Gryphen Ford’ was inspired and influenced by a variety of different existing media products and musical outlets, and contains various notable themes. First of all, it appears to use the conventional form of a narrative as the character/artist is seen partaking in some sort of journey and travelling throughout. This narrative form is seen in numerous existing music videos and plays an important part in conveying the story of many artist’s/band’s music. However, our video subverts this clear narrative convention by containing a sense of enigma as it isn’t clear throughout where the character is going or what his journey is for; leaving the audience in suspense of where the character will end up and what the climax of the video will be.  

Small Bump - Ed Sheeran

            The idea of a journey taking place throughout the video could be compared to and is similar to the aesthetics of ‘Small Bump – Ed Sheeran’.  This video features the artist sitting and performing on a boat which is travelling along a canal. The idea that he is travelling along as he plays the song is similar to the idea expressed in our video, however this video does not necessarily tell a ‘story’ as such and is not a narrative. It is primarily focused on a single still mid-shot of Ed playing on the boat, but occasionally cuts to long-shots of the path alongside the canal showing the public and how they do not react. It was these shots that inspired us to use a similar theme in our product; showing the public passing by the artist/character without a care, thus depicting him as alone and lost.

The Girl - City and Colour

Another comparison that could be made is that with the video of ‘The Girl – City and Colour’, in which the introductory shot is the artist sitting on a stool under a bridge. The juxtaposition of home furniture with natural surroundings appealed to us and seemed appropriate for conveying the themes we had expressed interest in (indie/humble character, solitude). We took this further by using a bright blue inflatable chair, making the juxtaposition even clearer and further expressing the characters distance from other people and his surroundings.
The final climax of our video could be compared with that of Ed Sheeran's 'A-Team', as this video contains a similar 'shock factor' at the end. The video revolves around the theme of a prostitute's daily routine and features her taking drugs and supposedly dying in the final scene. This is similar to the scene in our video of our main character walking into the sea and ending his as the climax, which is unexpected and fairly shocking to the audience.

We also used a 'sun-glare' technique in our video, as this is a common convention of 'indie' style music videos and conveys more of the naturalistic mood we were trying to put across. An example can be seen in the video for 'Summer in the City' by Mikill Pane, who is also an indie/alternative artist.

A screenshot of a sun-glare used in our video.

A similar 'indie' style sun-glare in Mikill Pane's video.

            

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

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Our main product and our ancillary products are effective together in that they retain themes as a multi-platform product. We stuck to a rigid ‘indie’ and ‘humble’ theme throughout the creation of our products, making sure everything we designed and produced was recognisable as single parts of one whole product. We used an old-style ‘ 1980s’ filter throughout the music video to keep with the indie theme, and we then applied this to the rest of our products; making sure the audience could link our CD/DVD cover and advert back to the video.

            With regards to mise-en-scene, we also ensured that this remained consistent throughout our products. We used the same costume in all the promotional shots taken of the artist, allowing the audience members to recognise this costume and then relate to and link the character in all our platforms. We also made sure the lighting for each shot we used outside of the main product was similar or close to that used in the video, and that our locations were also recognisable and repeated throughout; almost making the audience feel ‘at home’ and giving them a sense of security due to the repetition. Obviously the props we used in the video were also the same ones used in the ancillary tasks, showing further continuity

Back and front of our CD cover

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

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New media technologies played a big part in the planning, research, production and editing of our media product; which would not have been possible without the knowledge and access to such technologies. First of all, the blog has played a large part in the planning stage as it has helped keep all our ideas, thoughts, inspiration and notes organised and enabled our whole group to keep on track and monitor each others and our own progress whilst creating our product. It has meant we can document every idea and look back chronologically to view development within the media process, which was a significant aid in the evaluation process too as we could see everything we had changed and improved from the original statement.

            To edit our raw video footage, we used Final Cut Pro. We made extensive use of the ‘RGB’ colour-editing tool to apply an old-style ‘indie’ filter to our footage; slightly increasing the red and purple hue and adding some desaturation to give it a ‘hazy’ feel. 

We used cross-dissolves for transitions between some shots to fade them into each other as the overlapped, creating seamless links between them and making them flow with the music. We also discovered and made use of the ‘opacity’ tool which is used for decreasing or increasing the transparency of each shot. This meant that we could overlap shots in the editing track and decrease ones opacity to make them appear as one shot. This came in extremely useful when we wanted to juxtapose the scene of the artist walking along the train station and the scene of the artist performing on the rocks. We then also used the ‘keyframe’ feature which allowed us to move the ‘walking’ scene above the line of the water in the ‘beach’ scene; combining with the overlapping shots, making the artist appear as those he is walking along the horizon.
In the planning stages of the process, we used a scanner as a useful tool for documenting and posting images of rough ideas, mind-maps and storyboards, which then allowed us to look back  and refer to them digitally.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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The internet played a big part in the research part of constructing our product, as we used websites such as YouTube to freely discover and access existing products to inspire and influence us. Search engines also allowed us to easily find existing posters, CD covers, DVD covers and digipaks for research into these products and for use for analysis.

            Our audience feedback was fortunately very positive, in that it reinforced our original ideas and let us know that we executed our original plan very well. From the original audience feedback the general consensus was that the idea conveyed a ‘peaceful’ and ‘fluid’ atmosphere and these feelings were also said to remain upon the audience viewing the final product. One original criticism was that we could possibly add more characters to the narrative to possibly give it a twist and make it more interesting. To cater to this, we used other members of the public as side-characters in our video, allowing a contrast or a comparison to be made between normal citizens and our humble and forlorn character/artist. This portrayed him as isolated and distant from the rest of the world.

These two shots were used as a technique for 'distancing' our character and conveying isolation within our music video.

 We justified not using other actual characters as we stated that this would take away from the theme of isolation that was important in the portrayal of the character. Our feedback was useful as it consisted of people within the age-group of our target audience, (14 – 20) and showed us that our final product was received well by this audience; indicating that our video appeals to the desired range of people.

Final Digipak design

This is the final design for our digipak. The images were photographed by us specifically for the ancillary products, and then edited using photoshop. We applied an 'rgb' filter to the images to keep a sense of continuity from the main product to the ancillary products, and we used similar locations for the images we took and those in the video.

Digipak Design

Front and back of our CD design

Inside sleeve of our CD design.

Media Product Advert - Final Design

We carried out a public survey to determine which advert design would be chosen for our product. We asked a range of people from different background within our target audience group. Here are the results:

Advert 1: 1 person
Advert 2: 8 people
Advert 3: 21 people

This is our final poster design for the release of 'Gryphen Ford - The Aquatic Escape'. We took influence from the existing posters we researched and used similar factors that were appropriate to our product. The white, simple font displays the artist's name very clearly at the top, with the name of the song release underneath. The date is displayed in a smaller font-size at the bottom which, in contrast, singles out the information and gives it more impact. We have used the image and font in this way as they both compliment each other; the font frames the picture nicely and brings the eye down to the middle of the poster to the image of the artist, followed then by the date. We also used a similar filter to that used in our music video, giving the poster a '1980s' feel that is popular within the 'Indie' culture. Using this filter throughout our media-product and it's associated products creates a sense of overall continuity, which will allow the target audience to recognise each part of the release campaign.

Advert research - Ghost Poet

This is a poster for a concert of Ghost Poet, another Indie/Hip-hop artist. The imagery and design is similar to the previous post, with the large white font and simple layout, including the distorted and edited image of the artist. Although this image is in the background, it is still the focal point of the poster and is recognised by the target audience. Again, filters have been used to distort and change the image which makes it more interesting to look at, and the stark white font over the top of this creates an effective contrast and allows the text and information to really stand out.

Advert research - James Blake

As we need to create a poster for our own media product, we researched and looked into designs for posters for existing media products.
This is a poster for two James Blake (an Indie artist) concert events. The poster features a large edited picture of the artist, around which the information and other text is displayed. The artist's name is displayed in a large, simple white font against a black background at the top and the other texts such as dates, locations and websites are located underneath the picture. This layout maximises impact of the artist on the audience and instantly shows them who the poster is associated with. The whole poster is heavily edited, filters and effects having been used to create an old-style and almost ancient look. This '1980s' filter works well because it appeals to his teenage-young adult (15-23) audience as 'old-school' and 'retro' cameras and photos are extremely fashionable in 'Indie' culture at the moment. All these elements come together to catch the eye and draw in members of the target audience, therefore encouraging them to attend these live concerts.

Media Product - Advert designs

Here are two possible designs for the advert/release campaign.

We used the same 'stark' bold white font in both of them, which stand out nicely against the background. We have also used a similar filter to our music video to create a sense of continuity throughout our media product. However, there are flaws in these designs which we will revise, such as font style and layout.