Media Evaluation

Lauren Pollard

For my media project, I worked in a group of 4 with; Myself, Lauren Widdop, Muhammad Patel and Hannah Tabor on a music video based on the song Angels

by Allison Crowe

Question 1In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My music video was based on the song Angels By Allison Crowe we named her group as Harlow Winter as we saw it to have some based on the Experimental genre, of the indie pop side of music as we felt this market was not completely filled within the music industry and felt there was a gap here that we could fill. We based our project on Pete Frasers idea that a music video is ‘A distinctive art form which can allow really interesting creative opportunities’. As Music videos are divided into 3 categories, Narrative, Performance and Experimental.

The target audience we specified was • Aged 16-24• Female• Filling the gap in the market• Teen to young adult

ConventionsIncludes:-Lyrics -cinematography -Narrative and performance-music -Editing -Genre -IntertextualityThroughout our music video we used many different conventions to help gain the closest effects to a video that you

would expect to see on TV channels such as MTV or VIVA. As our music video and song choice was one not regularly heard on the radio we decided to use this to our advantage

on the conventions side as we gave the actress who played the singer and individual look to represent the genre of music by putting her in odd style clothing and short dresses in the snow.

We also reflected the genre in the music video itself by having it not flow and not be a narrative but instead be a experimental

- This meant that it was unique and different to what you see regularly on the TV and so it stands out, this meant that each single clip was no more than 2 seconds long in order to keep the effect flowing throughout the video. This agrees with Goodwin's theory that particular genres may have their own video style.

- However we did match the lyrics to the song to establish the feeling and mood rather than offering a coherent message, this meant that key lines play a part in the visuals associated with the song, such as when the lines are depressing the actress/ singer represents and copies this.

Goodwin also had many other ideas of what conventions should be involved in a music video some of which we followed according as well, such as showing the relationship between the lyrics and visuals as I stated before hand, as this shows the visuals illustrating and amplifying the lyrics, to create the right atmosphere and mood.

According to Pete Fraser a music video ‘allows a more varied access to the performer than a concert’ by this he means that you can use mise en scene and props etc, we explored this in our music video as we have many costume changes which may be hard to conduct in a live concert and also we used many locations to create the right atmosphere, which is extremely hard to copy on a stage, (unless you are a big time artist with huge budgeting funds to pay for this, such as Take That)

We use typical elements as they give the audience what they want to see, and entices them to come back and re-watch the video. However if you use a video that has many over the top conventions so there is too much for the audience to watch at once.

- They will also re-watch it as they will not have seen everything the first few times around. This gives the audience something new to watch each time and helps to keep them entertained.

How our group applied genre to our Music Video

ComparingHere are two Album covers. The first being mine and the second being Florence and the Machine’s Album - Lungs

Here you can see that both Album covers have clear focus on the Band/ Artists name. I have used this convention because I believe that this is the most important factor on an Album cover as it is what promotes the singer/band, therefore helping them to gain there way to success. As if people see the name on the shelves they may be inclined to buy it.On both covers the choice of font is similar and colour, this was not intentional. However I believe this font and colour are the best to stand out and grab the readers attention as the backgrounds on both covers does not include white therefore white is an obvious colour to stand out. - The way in which the font is slanted was used to give the idea that the singer has a different edge and a slant about her music showing it is different to most on the market currently As you can see from looking at the pictures , I have also put quite a focus on the singer themselves as well.-

Here are the back covers to both albums.

Here you can see clear focus on the songs within the CD. - I chose to put focus on this (as most albums do) as it helps the audience. - i.e. A person walks into a music store such as HMV, looking for an album from the artist with a certain song on. The albums don’t have a song list on? How will they know which to buy, and so may not buy any. therefore I came to the conclusion that solve this problem and to help sell more albums a song list is crucial as the audience want to know exactly what they are purchasing before they hand over money for the product.Also included on both are barcodes. This is essential on albums available to sell, so that they can be sold within stores. At the bottom of both are the credits to the main producers of the album and the record company, so that the buyer knows exactly who has produced this. This keeps them in the know and so they can research the company, this may encourage them to check out other artists by the company. Bright colours have been used to represent the Albums name ‘Sunshine Lemons’ this links the whole album covers, this is representative of Florence’s cover also, as the name ‘Lungs’ occurs quite a dark and dull theme.

BrandingMusic videos are there for the purpose to promote the singer and the song as well as CD and download sales,

are seen as a promotional tool for the artist and recording companyBrands can range from anything the artist sells with their marker on it such as CD’s, posters, T-shirts or books,

this helps to establish the artist and promote them giving them their personalitySuch as Take That are seen as a quite cheesy boy band, with each singer having their own role within the band.Everyone uses branding such as Heinz as we immediately associate these with beansThere are 8 elements to a brand being:Brand slogan , Essence, Personality , values, appearance , heritage , Emotional benefits and Hard Benefits.

Our logo

Here is our artists logo initially, in the end however we decided to remove the kite from the end of her name as we wanted a more simplistic and unique look to it. We chose to remove the kite also as we wanted the logo to be Harlow’s signature, amplifying her brand once again.

Question 2How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

BRAND: A brand is not the same as a product. A brand is the particular make of the product. For example instant coffee is a product but Nescafé is a brand.

Our logo fits our brand image as most artists and bands go for this idea of using their name in the logo to promote themselves as we felt even though we want out artist to be of the experimental genre and unique, the best way to put her out in the world and get her noticed is to promote her in the regular way that sure to get her reconised. Other people such as Amy Winehouse, Florence and the Machine and Goldfrapp each use this idea within their promotion :

Showing that it is quite popular among the bigger and well known artists.

We have maintained this throughout the products including the CD covers, both inside and out and the Magazine advertisement by making sure that the logo is bold and stand out, so that it is not overlooked. If the logo was overlooked, then it is to my understanding that the audience would be puzzled as to the type of Artist and even the artist/band’s name .

Here once again are the logos!

Black, bold clear.Easier to read, easy to remember, attracts the audiences eye

Also Black, bold and clearRepresents the style of the artist, free flowing, light and quite girly.

Also!Black, bold and clearThis is different, unique and looks more harsh from the thicker larger writing.Representing a harsh music beat?

Thin, wispy and clearUnique to what is on the current market.More intricate, relating to the artists style. However in the end we took the kite off to create a simpler look

How else did we create and maintain Brand Image? Variety of Images - Walking - On the bench - Against a wall - Sat on the rocks

Through the editing - Pace/ Speed - Saturation - Slow-Motion - Black and White - Sepia - Brightening colours

Related FeedbackFor us to find out what sort of response we would get from our audience we put together a

questionnaire and handed it out to the rest of our class (as they were all between the ages (16-24 – our target audience), who had once viewed our completed project and ancillary tasks, where asked to fill in.

From this we gathered that :

The most successful point was

Green screen Black and white memories - This included 100% of our answers stating “extremely good”

However, the least successful point occurred was:

The song. It did not seem to be overly enjoyed by the audience or well liked in the feedback. This shows that the song had an acquired liking that is unique and so may not do as well on the

main charts. However saying this, it fits our niche market perfectly as this was what we as a group were aiming for.

Question 3What have you learned from your feedback?

Target Audiences:

You can define a target audience through the use of GRASSG- Gender - FEMALER – Race - ALLA - Age - 16 - 24S - Socio- Economic - C2/E (Skilled manual workers, semi skilled and unskilled i.e. Pensioners)S - StatusHowever it may have a secondary target audience being males, younger or older, in a higher socio-economic

status.

Our music video was focused on a niche market as we saw a gap within it and focused upon this, as we felt that the music industry was missing a big section of artists who build themselves up and are not as well known as others, focusing on indie/pop and folk music genre. As apart from Taylor Swift being a Country singer this side of the market is not very well covered.

We aimed mainly at 16-24 year old females and therefore in turn aiming at the ‘E’ category of the socio-economic status. This is as it is mainly targeted at students in college and university. We wanted our video to be reached by all races and not just one specific.

Question 4How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and

evaluation stages?

Media Technologies usedThroughout our project we have constantly been using many different media technologies such as :• Final Cut Express• Indesign and Photoshop• Digital Stills and DV Cameras• Internet and various websites• Blogger• Green Screen• Jamendo

These have all helped and contributed in some way to our final project.

Final Cut express was used to place our video footage onto the computer and to edit them into the timeline sequence to create the overall video. This technology had both it’s advantages and disadvantages. Firstly the disadvantage of using final cut express over imovie to edit our video was that i had never used final cut express in AS and so it was hard to learn how to use the software and this took quite a while to understand and be fluent in knowing which specific buttons did certain things, this meant that it slowed down the speed at which we created the video, leaving less time at the end for my 2 ancillary tasks.

However the training and help booklet on this helped me to overcome this and slowly understand it, however I do believe that if we had used i movie it would have been quicker and simpler to us. On the other hand by using Final Cut Express it gave a more clear cut finish to the finished product and once I knew how to use it, I found that it had many advantages to it, such as more and better effects/ transitions and in more detail you could edit these to how you wanted them to fit to your work. For example when we used the sepia effect, we was able to edit the colouring of the sepia and tone it down so as not to add an orange clip into our video sequence, we edited to look rustic and old to give it the clear effect that we had wanted. Another advantage however was that the digital still camera was not very professional and so in the end we opted to use Hannah tabor own camera for our ancillary as we felt it produced a sharper picture.

Photoshop was then used to edit the pictures as well in order to be able to add clouds to our front cover to make the sky seem more realistic and also to edit the lighting in the picture to make them brighter so they stand‘s out as when the picture was taken it was quite a dull day , however I came across a disadvantage here as it took some time remembering how to use Photoshop. Indesign was then used in order the create the page layout on such tasks as the Magazine advert

Video CameraThis was useful in many ways Easy and quick to set up Captured moments easily such as unexpected scenes - The image we wanted to create within our video The LCD video light – helped to light up dim and dull conditions useful in many situations we

filmed in such as the basement scene.

However: The fact we had to share camera with other classes and people meant we had limited access to

them, and cut our filming time down. Though this meant that whenever we did have the camera we were more focused on finishing the project filming and so we could just focus on the editing side

Including all these together it gave a more professional look to our overall content.

Editing!For this we used an application found on most and also created by Apple Mac’s called Final Cut

Express:Disadvantages: This was a hard piece of software to get to grips with at first An extremely complex layout, meant that it was difficult to locate the devices we were

searching for to use within our coursework I feel this let us down slightly, as starting to edit our coursework with never having used this

software before, slowed us down dramatically and caused us to make many many various mistakes!

Advantages:Comparing Final Cut Express to iMovie: Without a doubt in every respect Final Cut Express wins,

(Except for iMovie’s simpler design) A lot more advanced Allowed us to create a more realistic final product with the detail we had set out to include.

PhotoshopWe used this in our ancillary tasks to create a magazine article also a front, back and inside covers

to an a album. Advantages:It enabled me to edit my pictures to a high standard and blend them together with other pictures.

It also allowed me to be able to add texts on and edit any imperfections that were unwanted in my picture.

Such as on the Front cover of my ancillary task it was extremely dim light and a dark day, with the tools that Photoshop provided we were able to create a brighter sky and add clouds in the background to make the day seem nicer.

Disadvantages: Even though I used Photoshop to edit my pictures in my coursework last year, it was still hard to remember as it extremely complex in the detail it contains. I feel that if i was more advanced in Photoshop myself I would have been able to create a more advanced and edited ancillary tasks, that would have been easier on the eye.

PowerPointI have used PowerPoint to create my overall evaluation of my entire coursework:I believe this has been to my advantage as I have been using this from a very young age and so I

am able to work my way around it easier than most softwareHowever I do see this to be a very outdated piece of software as it does not have many tools

included which has limited me to some extentOn the other hand I do feel that by completing my evaluation on this software could be to my

advantage as the rest of my group has opted to do their evaluations on www.blogger.com.

BloggerThroughout the whole project blogger has played an important role. This has been to update and

describe each set of the way, from our introduction, choosing the song to adding the completed video onto.

This has meant that we have been able to keep track of the progress we have made at each step of the way.It also meant that we never lost track of thought as we always knew we direction we were heading in with each scene shoot or editing.

Finally! Jamendowww.jamendo.com

This is the site on which we initially came across our song of choice. All music on this website is free to download, and royalty free. Licensed through one of the many Creative Commons licences. This overall means that it is legal for us to use in our project.

This Website was a huge advantage to us for many reasons:It was freeHad a huge variety of musicIt was all copyright free & finally it was well recommended

Overall...I feel that the project was a huge success, it created the exact image we had in mind from day one and

looked the way we wanted it too. However in the end there was a slight mishap with the timing along with the music, but by then it was too late to fix.

In my opinion I believe that the best and most successful parts to our project has to be the choice of song:

Even though the majority of the feedback we got from this was not great, I feel that this was what brought the whole project together. This is due to the fast pace of the song, let us include the fast paced editing we had wanted, it let us create an e entirely experimental video in terms of not really following the lyrics, it also allowed us to have a uniquely styled model as our artist. As we felt that this also enticed an audience of its own, as we now look at people such as Lady Gaga, and she has an entirely separate fan base, based upon her unique style, expressed by herself. However many do find this odd, but many also feel that this is what creates her style and it is brave that she feels able to do this.

I also feel that mine and Hannah’s ancillary tasks were a great highlight receiving extremely good feedback, due to the way in which they all link together and show a consistent theme throughout.

The use of bright colours and the outdoors, matched the song well in terms of uniqueness and quietness. The way in which the artist looks forlorn and lonely on each picture reflects her feelings within the song.

In my overall opinion I am very pleased with the whole finished product and feel that I and the rest of the group have worked extremely hard to get to this point!