Media Evaluation part 1In what ways does your music video use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions?

After finding a song I thought would be appropriate and interesting to work with I looked back at my directors research and also the style of the artist. Looking at the work of Dave Meyers inspired me to use a bright and saturated colour palette. These bright colours made me think of a fantasy world or dream like state, which would fit the theme of my song perfectly. I then thought of the memorable opening credits of the film Juno and thought how unique they looked and the style would be interesting to work with. I then began looking out how to combine to two idea’s together.

Dave Meyers video

Juno’s opening credits

My video

The main aspect I really like about the Juno credits was the way the actress had been made to look like a drawing and stood out from the background. I did this to my actor by putting an out line around him to make him look like he had been cut out from a piece of paper. From Juno I liked the way the other parts of the scene, such as trees and leaves, again looked as though they had been cut out and placed on. I created this look by cutting out my tree images on photo shop and then getting them to come into the video on a different layer.

Green, green grass and bright flowers

My music video has aspects of Goodwin’s theory. It has a narrative which I created from reading the lyrics. They are about being in his own special place, which I took to mean escaping from the reality of life. I showed this by using black and white footage showing the miserable reality, and then the big contrast of the bright citrus colours of the dream world. I decided to presented the themes of the song visually. Therefore there is an incredibly strong relationship between the visual and lyrics. At points there are even lyrics on screen which increases this relationship.

My video has a pure narrative as it has no lip synch what so ever or any live performance. I decided not to included this features into my video as I wanted to get across that these are the thoughts/ wishes in his head. I thought having lip synch or live performance would have brought the audience away from the narrative. I wanted my video to have a unique look to it. I thought having the contrast between the black and white footage and the animation would show that he had gone into a dream world, and has a strong contrast to the reality footage of his boring life. I think using animation was the best way of portraying a dream world as its so different to the usual footage.I wanted to make a fun video that stood out, my Video is postmodern as it is full of playfulness.

Media evaluation part 2How effective is the combination of your music video and DVD Digipak and print advert?

The combination of the music video, DVD Digipak and print advert is very effective as they all complement each other. The music video is the best way of marketing and promoting the artist ‘Ben Drake’ as it is eye capturing and unique. Each product has the artists name on the cover. The print advert is a brilliant way of advertising the artist but also the Digipak. The Digipack includes the Video and also includes loads of information on the artist. It’s a cycle of advertising. The print advert and the Digipak have the same picture and title which makes it obvious its from the same artist. The pictures of a guitar which shows that he has an acoustic genre to the song. The beginning of the video has the same style as the cover from the other products, having black background. This dark background has leaves covering it which keeps the theme of nature which is the main part of the dream sequence in the music video. The leaves are in a clolour that fits with the guitars colour on the front cover. The Digipack booklet has pictures from the animation part of the video which shows they all interlink.

Big title of artist, guitar image and leaf’s

Artist and animation interlinking with music video

Picture of artist with leafs

The black and white footage and the black background have the same theme

The animation of the video goes with the theme of some of the photo’s in the booklet

Throughout the three pieces I have a constant use of back ground colours and writing style. I tried to get a good balance between his acoustic moody side, and his playful creative side.

Through the three pieces I have promoted the artist by using images of a guitar which symbolises the style of his music. I promoted the artists name in huge letters across each of the products.

Media Evaluation part 3What have you learnt from audience

feedback?

The majority of watchers were teenagers

Survey monkey results

Most people liked the animation the best

90% thought it was aimed at teenagers

Some people wouldn’t change anything, while others would make slight adjustments

100% thought the video worked with the tempo

Everyone thought the video suited the style of the track

100% liked my music video

100% thought the video was clear to understand

The animation and narrative seemed to make the most impact.

Comments leftThe comments I've had back have been very positive, these are

some of them:

I think you've done

a really good job

here, especially

putting a narrative

into the video

makes it more

intriguing and the

combination of

animation and

filming is great,

well done!

I thought the black and white film at the beginning helped to set the mood of the piece. The location that it was filmed in seemed just right. I liked to see some of the song words in different colours appearing too.

Really impresse

d with

both the idea behind it,

the quality of th

e editing

and Michael's

acting :)

I cannot think of a change I would make.I liked the spinning

flowers, the trees

sliding into place

and the friendly

creature

appearing. The

colours were

wonderful.

I really like how you've

combined both plain

filming and animation.

Collate feedback and reviewsBy looking back at the results of my questionnaire I can tell that teenagers and adults both enjoy the style of my video.

I can also see that the majority liked the animation best about the video and made the most impact

100% of the viewers thought the video suited the style of the track, was clear to understand and also liked my video.

When talking to people about my digipak, booklet and advert I had very positive reviews. The majority of the people liked the style of all three and could tell they were all part of the same product.

They also thought the imagery was good as it showed the style of the music whilst also having a quirkiness to it.

They photo the advert, digipak cover and advert were clear in what they were advertising whilst also being appealing.

Media Evaluation part 4How did you use new media technologies in

the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research and planning I used loads of new media technology throughout the project. For my

research and planning I used a blog to keep all my research organised and easy to view and present it. I used you tube to look at a range of music video to help inspire me. I used Jamendo, an music website for unsigned artists, to find a song that would be good to work with. Once coming up with the idea to make him look cartooned I watched tutorials on creative cow to learn how to create the Juno effect. I also looked at a Monty python website to get some inspiration for the movement of the animation I wanted to do.

construction The first part of my construction was taking photographs of all the objects I want in my

animation such as the tree’s, cloud, flowers and fruit. I then cut them out using Adobe photo shop CS3. Later on in the project I then took a photography shoot for imagery of the artist.

Once planning the video I moved on to filming. I filmed all the footage with a Sony A1 DV camcorder. The first bit I filmed was the black and white footage. I chose to film at night in a town with street lighting so that the footage would have a interesting effect of shadows to highlight the depression in this part of the track. Next I filmed the green screen footage in the T.V studio at college. We had to make sure the lighting was just right to minimize the amount of shadows to make sure the keying out would be smooth when editing.

From this

To this

To key out the footage I used Adobe after effects on a apple mac. It keyed out the footage incredibly accurately and meant I could incorporate it with animation more accurately. I then transferred the footage onto final cut. Because the quality of the footage was so good I had to cut the footage into 30 second to transfer it as the memory couldn’t cope. I then imported all my images I'd cut out in Photoshop into final cut. I put the background of the video together and then added the green screen footage. The last thing I did was adding the layers of animation on top.

Overall, after looking at responses and listening to feedback I can tell the my music video was a success. I contacted friends over facebook and email to ask them to complete a questionnaire. All of my viewers enjoyed the video and found it easy to understand. They liked that its was unique but still had a strong narrative. From looking at feed back I can tell that the strongest part of my music video is the animation. I’m pleased with this as I intended the animation to be the most important part of making my video standout. When asking what people would change about the video the only comments I really got was to change some of the timings and make it a little smoother. I’m happy with these comments as I agree with them. I would have made these changes myself if I hadn’t have had the technical difficulties with the Mac I was working on.

Because of these difficulties there are imperfections with my video. But i’m pleased with my video as I know that I couldn’t do anything more. I put in all my effort and did everything I could to make my video as appealing as possible.