In what ways does my media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

GOODWIN’S THEORY “There is a relationship between

the music and the visuals” (with the visuals either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music)

Lip syncedWhen I began editing my music video, the first thing I did was to

lip sync all of the video footage of the band miming to the track, against the mp3 of the track on Adobe Premier.

Cut to the beatWhen editing my music video I cut to the rhythm of the song.

Actions Not Words, which is the track I used is quite a fast song; so this meant I cut on the dominant beat of the song. There are parts of the

songs, such as the guitar part in the middle 8, this is cut at a very fast pace, also the build up to the third verse has lots of fast paced cuts, I felt this really livened the video up.

GOODWIN’S THEORY

“Particular music genres have their own music video style and iconography”

(such as live performance in heavy rock or choreographed dance routines in RnB)

My video is solely live performance. In my storyboards I had planned to have a narrative story to link the lyrics to the visuals. When I presented the rough edit to the

band to get their opinion, we decided that the video did not need a narrative and decided to have fast pace cuts

and close-ups of the instruments.

“It is the lip-synch close-up and the miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it” Andrew Goodwin

GOODWIN’S THEORY

“There are likely to be intertextual references either to the other music videos or to films and TV texts”

(this may or may not feature actors from original film or TV programmes)

My music video has a very apparent intertextual reference to 1960’s variety shows; the black and white picture and the grainy ‘film like’ effect I have put over the finished product to create this 1960’s recording.

Nirvana’s single "In Bloom” released in 1991 was

accompanied by a new music video which parodied musical

performances of 1960’s variety shows

How effective is the combination of my main

product and ancillary texts?

I have kept the house style throughout my digipak, digipak booklet ,magazine advert and music video, of black and white with a greyey, green tint. I think this helps the audience to relate and recognise the band and their image. I

have used an original I took of a one of their guitars on the front cover, then two stills from the video on the back cover and inside, and for the booklet.

(booklet on the following slide) The guitar gives a flash of colour on the front cover of the digipak to catch the eye of the buyer when it sits on shelf in HMV

for example.

I decided to keep my magazine advert very plain and simple for maximum effect. After looking

through existing magazine adverts in Q magazine I realised that in fact they are often very simple, which

can actually make them much more effective than a really busy

crowded advert.

Again I stayed within the house style of the digipak and music video, with a black and white

image and grey text.

What has my audience feedback taught me?

My band gave me some brilliant feedback on the video. I went over to their house and showed them the video. I was very nervous as they had not seen any progress since the rough edit.

Here goes…

Once the band had watched the video they all immediately wanted to watch the video again. Once we had watched it a few times they were all really chuffed with it and said that they truthfully weren’t expecting anything of that quality. I produced 2 videos to start with, one with no effect but black & white & filters, then the second one had a filter to give the effect of an old film. I left the decision to them to choose one and they chose the one with the film filter on. I asked what they thought I could of improved on and if I were given more time what would they have wanted done differently. They all said that they thought the cutaways of the lights didn’t really have any significance to the video itself, and I confessed that the only reason I put these cutaways in was as a filler because I didn’t have good footage for every part of the track. They said they did like the cutaway of the disco ball though. Their favourite part of the video is the middle 8 where there are lots of very fast cuts that flick from guitar, to drums to their feet etc, they said this part really ‘makes’ the video. I’m really happy with all of the feedback the band gave me, most of it was really positive, but I’m glad they told me a few ways I could of improved it. The band have been brilliant to work with & have communicated with brilliantly.

The first way I went about my audience feedback was by producing a questionnaire on www.surveymonkey.com I produced roughly 10 multiple questions. I put a link on my facebook status for all of my face book friends to complete, I got about 10-15 surveys back.

Example question: If my video came on a music video channel such as MTV would you keep it on and watch it all the way through or would you switch it over to something better. i.e. does it engage you?

a) Yes, it would totally engage my attention

b) No, I think I would turn over half way through because I would get bored of it

The second way I went about my audience feedback was by showing friends and family the video on YouTube on my iPhone. I asked people to give me their truthful opinion. My friends & family seemed really impressed with it, but a few people didn’t like the quick cuts to the lights etc.

How did I use media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

I used my iPhone to communicate with the band, I sent texts and had phone conversations with some of the band members in regards to times and days we were meeting

I got lots of information about the band of MySpace and could when they had gigs lined up, we exchanged some messages on MySpace

This was the main way of communicating with the band through e-mailing their band e-mail address: interpreters@hotmail.co.ukAt the beginning stages of research

and getting initial ideas, I watched many different music videos on YouTube. This is also where I uploaded my final edited video.

Ning is a unique social networking site where you can make your own social networks. We used this as a place to upload every single piece of work I embed Twitter onto my Ning page, this

was to help me illustrate the progress I made during the project by updating it regularly, it also helped as a communication tool between myself & the band & my classmates.

I used these 3 programmes to type up research and presentation notes, which were then either published to Slideshare, Issuu in order to upload onto my Ning page. I used movie maker to produce my animatic storyboard.

Google was the main search engine I used for every piece of research on the internet for this whole project I published some

word documents to Issuu to make it more accessible to read on my Ning

I uploaded all of my power point presentations to this website in order to publish them on my Ning page with an embed code

I used Adobe Premier to upload my footage onto the timeline & edit on. I also uploaded the mp3 track onto here. Once I became confident with this programme I began using filters such as black and white and I used a greeny coloured tint to give my video a 1960’s look. I also used a filter on the finished video which made it look like an old film.

I filmed my test footage & final footage, using a hard drive camera, this made the initial process quick and efficient. It meant I could ‘drag & drop’ my footage into a D:drive folder onto the computer then delete the footage straight away.

I took a CD player along to the location where I filmed & played the band’s track so they could mime to it as I filmed them performing

I used Photoshop to produce my digipak and magazine advert. I am already familiar with Photoshop from AS. I used effects such as black and white filter on the photos, and effects on the text such as outer and inner glow.

QuickTime was used to convert my finished video form Adobe Premier, to then upload onto the college YouTube site.