Evaluation.

My A2 Media Coursework was to produce a Music Video and Digipak which includes a CD case with a promotional poster. We based our project on the song ' House Party', by The Midnight Beast, we chose this because of its political themes and issues that effect my life and thousands more however it does has a comical side to the video contrasts about real life political situations and who to vote for in the last election; the Conservatives, Labour or The Liberal Democrats. The outcome has since changed many peopls lives, including mine and some of my friends as the university tuition fees have risen to an unfordable amount, reaching up to nine thousands a year. The comical twist to the video which I will be talking about later on, it is to make the song and message more understandable to the youth so more people from the ages of 18-25 will vote and understand the change their decisions could have on Great Britain.


Whilst we made the decision on what video to choose we had some concerns, because the song already ahs an orignal video however we were told this would not be a problem therefore we carried on with our decision and we as a group can proudly say have created and formed an amazing video.





As these two close-up shots show, we have put a lot of effort into making our shots sharp and not making amateur mistakes such as cropping off heads. Apart from this we felt the orignal was a very strong video which influenced us as a guide line. We took a lot of inspiration from it as it was also made by three teenagers and showed us how good our own video could be.

To begin planning we studied the original video as well as other influential videos and began brain storming. What makes this particular music video funny is its clever contrasts in mise en scene to lyrics and actions. Our costumes are suits and locations are in work environments, mainly an ICT class room, we also use props such as our TNB (The Midnight Beast) posters and screensavers yet this is all contrasted with our comedic lyrics with play on words ‘We can sit around and have a mass-debate’ (you can guess what the play on words is referring too) and dancing. Some of the other videos we looked at included the works of Tenacious D, a famous comedic rock band, and Fall Out Boy, an American group with a similar target audience to our own. We used some of their techniques to improve our own work, such as Tenacious D's clever use of costume to provoke a sense of humour in their videos.

From here Alex had sketched out some Story Boards to show the narrative of our video which would follow the shot types we could use. We had a basic idea of a 'house party' bulging out into the office, wilst pretending to be new political party, called the TMB party. I decided, as the video progressed and the party got wilder the shots should become more creative, therefore to represent this we started the video with more mid shots then later used more interesting shots such as an upwards crane.


Before directing the video we all decided to do some research on other directors and their approaches for ideas. Whilst researching we came across the Auteur Theory which is practised by many directors, such as Phil Harder who has directed music videos for the Foo Fighters and Prince. The theory clearly states the director should have full control over his production and give the final judgement on everything. However having done all of the research on this poticular theory we decided it would not be a good idea to approach this type of theory any more because we are a group of three, a team and therefore we should all make the decisions together.
Filming was a tough but rewarding experience, consisting lots of hard work, dedication and refilming certain types of shots however overall it was very rewarding to be able to be aprt of something so exciteing and enjoyable. As a person who can be quite shy of acting and singing, I preferred being behind the camera more than being infront of it however when it did come to times of being infront of it, i dealt with it and gathered some confidence to gain as much experience and courage out of this as possible so i wouldnt let my team down. Even though being behind and being infront of the camera are completely different, they do provide the same amount of effort and courage to provide 100% achievement. Being behind the camera gave us all the oportunity to look at the different shots and what needed to be refilmed and what needed tweeking.

We edited our video on Windows Moviemaker which admitedly, is not the best programme on the market but it got the job done. With its simple controls it was user friendly and didnt take long to get used too. In the ending process we was able to put together the shots we had filmed and added in transitions this took hours but we all feel the final product was worth the effort. In this sequence we managed to smoothly edit together a reverse angle shot to show the journey of me down the staircase.
 




One problem we did come across whilst filming the music video was the size of the cast, in the orignal video they had a big open plan office with lots of extras in the background featuring in the party scenes which we didnt have. However this did give us some positives outlooks because this made us work more closely together and we had similier ideas to share and portray. Overall I am extremely happy with how our final video turned out and I am greatful for all the hard work everyone put in.

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

Our music video follows the conventions of music videos and its genre in many ways, and then not so much in others. In relation to camera work we do follow the conventions as we use a variety of shots to show us the artists and to establish the location. In  keeping with the genre, we use a close up with flashing lights during Liam's rap while he acts out the rap genre hand gestures.

Our Mise en Scene both follows the conventions of a music video and challenges them. We wear suits, as media theorist Richard Dyer said 'How we treat others is based on how we see them', and use work environments that complement each other, but then our actions such and dancing and the lyrics played are a stark contrast. This, as explained before, is to get our real world political message out to the young generation that will be effected. As we explored in my Star Analysis of Tenacious D, this technique has been used before in a music video but it is not the normality.

Our Lighting and Editing both follow the conventions of a music video. Our editing is fast using Jump Cuts and Quick Edits to fit in with the flow of our song. We also use some creative editing techniques to represent the party; these include the background morphing and upwards crane. The lighting is mostly natural but we also use synthetic lighting during our rap scene and all indoor conventional lighting.

Our sound is also conventional as we use our track and not natural sounds. There are examples of music videos having ‘movie’ style clips before or after the track that use other sounds, the most famous of these being Michael Jacksons’ ‘Thriller’.

How effective is the combination of my main text and ancillary text?

Alongside our Music Video we created a Digipak and Poster. From the beginning we knew we wanted to link all my work together to give it purpose and reliability. If we look at the syringe theory, my audience will be more inclined to view my work if it’s everywhere and all looking similar- artists thus frequently use signature aspects in all their work such as Michael Jackson and his single white glove. For my poster and Digipak we used an ongoing black and white and colour theme to represent the two mise en scene themes of my video: a serious political message and humour. For the inside covers of my Digipak we posed at the three political party leaders and imported those images onto the corresponding party colours. We think it’s important to keep this political message prominent throughout my work because that’s the key goal; to get this message out to the young people that can or soon will be able to vote.

What have I learnt from my audience feedback?

In my next post we explore audience feedback and the way media consumers might analysis my work; as there are many theories on how they could take it in. But how have we gone about questioning people to find their answers? 1^st off the blog in publicly available on the internet and a large unknown audience may have seen my work, but for friends we specifically asked them to have a look and report back to me on how they felt. In class we also looked at each other’s work in a peer assessment exercise. What we learnt from this feedback was that my video received largely positive reviews, with my audience liking our up-beat tempo with complimenting edits and dancing and that they found the jokes funny. In class it was brought to my attention that the lip syncing was slightly out in places which we would definitely correct if given another opportunity.

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

Research:

            For initial research we went online to analyses professional Music Videos and Digipaks. Thanks to the age of Web2.0 this was a lot easier to do then it would have been ten years ago as we can watch videos on websites such as Youtube and look at Digipak’s on artists official websites.

Planning:

            Planning was very paper based, making brainstorms and storyboards. Despite this I did take screen shots off the original video and uploaded them onto my blog to study their work.

Construction:

            We used the most technologies for this section of my work. We filmed ourselves on the school video-recorders and uploaded the footage onto Windows Movie Maker. Using Windows Movie Maker was basic yet user friendly- consisting of dragging and cutting clips and then editing them together. While creating the Digipak we used Photoshop to add the background colours to our political poses and to get the black and white effect of out outer covers.

Evaluation:

            My whole back-catalogue of work including this evaluation is on my blog; a relatively new media technology that just wouldn’t have been available a few years ago. It allows for people with internet access to view my media text and evaluate it for themselves, whether they’re involved in my course or not. We have evaluated each other’s work using the blogs and have become comfortable using media technologies.

Narrative.

Narrative is a text focusing specific participants. Its social function is to tell stories or past Events and entertain the readers.

Generic Structure of Narrative

A narrative text will consists of the following structure:

1. Orientation: Introducing the participants and informing the time and the place
2. Complication: Describing the rising crises which the participants have to do with
3. Resolution: Showing the way of participant to solve the crises, better or worse

we followed this generic structure very well in our piece as too begin we chose a selection of shots that would introduce all three members of the group starting with a tracking shot of myself "its election time for an election rhyme" in this shot i am holding a TMB poster which introduces our political 'party'. this shot then follows on to a mid shot of alex "we'll welcome you with the cheese and wine" in this shot again we had a TMB poster in the background to self promote our group. final the sequence ends with a long shot showing paige walking from the left side of the camera to the right side showing the comical satire of our work "we'll kill your kids if you decline". this follows the first generic step of orientation very well as we successfully introduced all three charcters and introduced what the music video would be about.

the rising crisis in our music video is not just affecting us in the video but everyone as the crisis faces the whole country this links is into the time period because when we were making the video there was the polictical election with the three main parties labour, conservatives and liberal democrates. and each trying to get into power to solve the economic crisis this is shown in our video well through a selection of shots starting with a close up of big ben to and how we will bring it into the future as to represent the outdated principles of the other parties. this outlines step two complication as it describes the crisis were facing.

finally step three is resolution we followed this step extremly well as most of our video shows the way we can solve the problems facing the country again linking back to the 2010 elections several scenes show this with the a group shot showing all three members with me and Liam saying what we will do to change the bus services "were making buses baby blue" this type of shot was influenced by the director of this is england the film and this is england 86 the tv series shane meadows who is famous for using shots that will include all members of the group to show a disfunctional family which is a message we try and create through our video.

other types of narrative structures we could have adopted from journalism and films are:

Basic structure:

Writing Coach Dick Weiss summarizes the essential structure of narrative: a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, where action moves through time. Each of these descriptions that follow is a variation of this basic structure.


Martini glass:

This story form, named by writing Coach Don Fry, starts out as a traditional inverted pyramid, giving the reader the most important news first in a straight lead, following with other news in decreasing importance, just like the inverted pyramid, which becomes the top of the glass. At the bottom of this triangle is an olive, the nut graph or set-up for a narrative. The narrative follows in a straight path, the stem of the martini glass. The story ends with a conclusion that wraps up the story, perhaps fulfilling a promise you made up in the olive´ paragraph or resolving the conflict lay out there. While an inverted-pyramid story can cut from the end, the martini-glass story needs this ending, the base of the glass. If you must cut, you probably will need to shorten the stem. This is a different description of what Roy Peter Clark of Poynter calls the hourglass, ´ structure, which turns from inverted pyramid to narrative with some sort of transition like It started with ´ this approach can be effective in using a narrative approach for a daily news story. You need to cover the news up high and give a few important facts, and then you launch into the narrative of what happened. Another variation on this is called the champagne glass the top before the narrative begins is a summary, but not necessarily in
inverted-pyramid structure.

Story arc:

Jack Hart of The Oregonian coaches writers to plan their narrative stories along the story arc Exposition, rising action, climax, denouement. The exposition sets the scene and introduces the characters, or at least the protagonist. The plot begins to unfold with the rising action, when the protagonist engages the complication of the story. (This is the conflict Fuson says is essential to a story). The rising action will be the body of the story, the unfolding plot. It must build tension, or at least pique curiosity. The rising action leads to a climax, the resolution of the conflict. The writer ties up the story and any loose ends in the denouement.

The Final Music Video.

The Final Digipak, Magazine and Evaluation.

I'm very pleased with how both our magazine and digipaks turned out. I believe our digipak and magazine advert worked well in several ways firstly as they display all vital information that they should for example the song name and band name the next way in which it worked well was through the way in which these details are displayed as we have chosen to use bright colours such as greens and oranges to contrast against the black and white background of the photograph this sets the composition of the piece perfectly as audience are drawn to the bright colours and take them in through the hypodermic needle theory (Adorno and horkeimer, 1970s)  as the model sees the digipak as injecting the idea and information of our piece directly into each individual who walks past and is drawn to the digipak. This is particularly useful in marketing our music as it will grab the audiences attention directly and make them want to buy the song. and finally i believe the digipak possesses great potential because we have stuck with our political them this is shown on the front covers as it shows me Liam and Alex in our suits to stick with the mise en scene of our production but the inside covers have us all standing in front of our political parties colour for example i am in front of a yellow screen that has been photoshopped in and the yellow symbolises the liberal Democrats and Nick Clegg. This is particularly good as it fits in with what most people in the country are focused on as we did this piece in the 2010 elections The cultivation theory ( Gerber et al. 1986:37) fits in well with this analysis of our use of recent stories as it suggests that television and other areas of media such as music production and there repetitive pattern on stories begins to cultivate the audience to look into other media sources about this subject and creates a symbolic environment. This is good for us as with our political agenda put into the music video it creates a larger audience to consumer our music video through the digipak and magazine adverts.

Star Analysis 2

Earlier on I have researched many artists such as Lily Allen and Kings of Leon, where they have been a huge influence to me personal whilst I was concentrating making this music video, however i have also been infleunced by a few others such as Madonna and Duran Duran they have been around way before i was born but that still has not stopped me being influenced by their amazing work. I have heard most of their songs through another inspiration of mine my mother, because her taste in music from when she was my age and younger has always been on around the household and this is how i have been attracted towards these artists.

This is the music video by Madonna it is called 'Give it to me' this video is one of her latests works however the one thing why I have been influenced by Madonn is because she always manages to renew herself and her work. Madonna always makes sure she is keeping up with the era that is around at that point. Each new single she releases has always and I think will always fit in with the fashion of musis that is around at that time.

Here is a video of her earlier works, where she has just began in this career industry:

In both videos it is easy to see how her music has changed throughout the years, however both videos have been extremely popular. Another reason why I have been strongly influenced by her is because she has always managed to aim at the same audience every time she releases her new singles.

Another one of my inspirations has been a group called Duran Duran, they have also been around for a long time and have now recently released their new album where i find they also have renewed their image, music and audience.

Whilst I have been doing some research on other artists I have been strongly influenced by these two especially because they have taught me a lot on how to renew something however can still manage to attract the same audience and still have a great population rate. Seeing both videos from new to old has clearly shown me how they change for their audience such as fashion, hair, lyrics and type of music. This has been a great focus whilst we have been creating a music video, because we are remaking the video to fit around us and how we are as a group doesnt necessarly mean we wont reach the same expectations therefore I firmly believe we have reached our target audience and our goals we have set during the time we had.

Windows Moviemaker

Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software application, included in Microsoft Windows Me, XP, and Vista. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be modified using XML code. Windows Movie Maker is also a basic audio track editing program. It can apply basic effects to audio tracks such as fade in or fade out. The audio tracks can then be exported in the form of a sound file instead of a video file.

Here is a review about windows movie maker i found at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/335710/windows_movie_maker_review.html

Let's talk about the positives. Windows Movie Maker has a very easy user interface. Their windows are well place: collections in the middle, help bar to the left, storyboard at the bottom and video preview to the right. It has a simple look that is easy to adapt to for beginners.
Editing the movie is easy too. You can split the video via the video preview. To change the look of the movie, simply go to the tools section and select video effects or transitions.

However, the video effects are very basic; you can't change the options and parameters to make your movie look "just right." You are stuck with the preset settings for them. In addition, the program can only output .WMV videos. You have to convert with another program if you want another codec output.
Unfortunately, that's the least of the problems for Windows Movie Maker. When starting the program, it takes twenty seconds to load; that is a very long time for such a simple program.
The long startup can be especially annoying because Windows Movie Maker crashes frequently. In fact, it crashes ten folds more than any other programs combined in my personal experience. You would thought that Windows Movie Maker may still be in the alpha or beta stages of development but, unfortunately, it is fully developed; heck, even alpha and beta programs run better than this.
Basically, the program crashes every time you try importing an mpeg-encoded video. Even though Windows Movie Maker listed the codec as compatible, it just locks the program up every single time. Basically, you have to go through the hassle of converting your video files to either .AVI (non-mpeg encoded) or .WMV for it to work.

Since we have began editing our piece i can say although windows movie maker is ver y easy to use and does not take long to get use too i do have to agree with the negative sides of the review as it has crashed almost hundreds of times on me whilst ive been editing which is very tiring to keep redoing and saving every minute. Another down side we found was that windows movie maker does not support the grenscreen effect which means our group have had to replan the opening scenes of our media piece.

Filming Update

I'm happy to say we have officially finished filming and we are now well into our way on editing the piece together. We will be using windows movie maker as our editing software which i will expand on in the next post.

Mood Board

This is a Moodboard I have created to show my own personal influences which have inspired me go through with making our own music video and digi pak. As you can see in the centre of the moodboard is shows a picture of three candidates to be prime minister at the time this shows a politcal side to the video we have chosen to do, it also shows the type of people we are portraying Liam being Nick Clegg, Alex being David Cameron and me being Gordon Brown. I have then looked at some other pictures which also provide this politcal influence, I have also managed to provide pictures that have been seen in the media recently being current political affairs this is an example of two step flow as the media is relaying this sort of information about the protests with there own political agenda and the audience receiving this are then going out and talking about what has happened in the media increasing the popularity and backing of the media hype. On the left hand side of the picture you see a student punching David Cameron this is symbolic to the current affairs as the students are currently protesting about the raising of student fees for universities as shown in the picture above it.

Even though the music video we have chosen as a group has a very strong politcal format there is also a very humourous side to things, this is why I have pictures of The Simpsons and the IT Crowd both from Channel 4.


My other influence and probably the most obvious is the The Midnight Beast themselves and in particular Andrew Wakely as this is who I portray in our music video, since Andrew and myself are completely different people and have different personalities I found it quite hard to portray him in this way however I have managed to reflect him well towards the end. I have also been influenced by Jay Z because he is a rapper he influenced me and the others with our rapping scenes during the video.

Filming/ Editing

We have now completed our filming apart from two short scenes and small tweaks. Through out the filming process I have kept to my Focas Points of:
      Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate
      Shooting material appropriate to the task set

We have all made sure the camera was always charged and ready fro filming, the tri-pod was set correctly and the tape was safe. While filming we made sure we used a variety of shot distances in our video aswell and more interetsing shot-types such as Birds-Eye-View. 
This week we have had a kep focus in Editing as we've loaded all our filmed work onto 'Windows Movie Maker' and worked on cutting out un-needed footage and putting in transitions bewteen shots.