Question 3: What have you learned from your feedback?

The main ways in which I gained audience feedback was through the use of Facebook and a discussion. I filmed two friends whilst I asked them a number of questions and recorded the results. in doing this I gained an outside perspective on my video, which allowed me to evaluate more effectively. This is the video:



Can you tell what happened in the narrative?


The people we interviewed generally said that the narrative was clear and easy to understand. They picked up on the main genre conventions, gangsters, guns, drugs etc. But they also picked up on the fact that we were trying to parody this by making them seem more childish through the use of props and mise en scene. I feel that we made the narrative clear and simple enough for the average audience to understand and to read the text in the way we had intended.

Does the performance look convincing?


Our audience seemed to say that the performance, on the whole, was convincing. This was mainly down to the actors that we picked. Picking the singer for the band was a difficult process, finding someone that could pull off the singers voice without it looking too out of place was difficult, but I believe we made the right choice. In my opinion I feel that the performance with the rest of the band members could have been more convincing, but our drummer and guitarist both pulled out last minute, forcing us to find anyone available to fill in their roles. The audience also said that our band members looked " very involved " and "as if they wanted to be there", we really wanted this to come through in the video, to make them seem genuine and at the same time fun. I feel we succeeded with this.

Does it remind you of any other music videos or media texts? 


Our feedback group told us that the video seemed more like a film than a music video. I think this is somewhat true, we tried to make our video quite story driven, whilst still keeping an element of fun. They felt that our video had many of the conventions of the gangster genre, adding to the film like feel of the text. I feel that our video is also quite unique, I haven't ever seen a music video like this, which I feel adds to the appeal.

If you could change one thing, what would it be?


When we asked this question to our audience we got two main points, more shots to explain the story, and that the lighting was sometimes a little out. We tried to keep the story side of the video strong, but we obviously needed more shots. I feel that if we had storyboarded more strongly then this aspect would have been stronger. The lighting was also difficult due to the fact that we shot it in the winter, so there wasn't a lot of daylight. This made filming difficult as we had to do lots of short shoots, which made keeping continuity hard. We also found out that the indoor strobe lit shots were not as effective as we were hoping, due to the rate of the strobe and the framerate of the camera clashing. This meant that every so often, black bars would appear randomly on the screen, meaning that we could not use all the shots.

What genre of music do you think this video is appropriate for?


Our audience told us that our video suited a reggae/ska genre. Which is definitely what we were aiming for. They also mentioned that it had elements of hip-hop and rap, through the use of microelements such as props, costumes and location.

All in all I feel that the music video went well, there were a few slip ups and continuity errors to do with lighting, but out audience seemed to enjoy it. We achieved most of the goals that we had set out to do with the music video, making it very effective.

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

I believe that my product challenges the stereotypes of the reggae genre, we do include the drugs, guns, violence etc. but we turn it on it's head by replacing them with stereotypically childish things. I think our product is quite unlike any other things I've seen, I believe it's a relatively new, entropic idea.

For me, the inspiration for the idea came from watching other reggae/rap videos. The majority of them seem to contain drug use, violence, gang culture etc. The song that we created the music video for had an anti gang-culture message, so it seemed perfect to take these conventions, and turn them around to parody the genre. The research we did into the genre really helped us to form our ideas.

I  believe that challenging the forms and conventions actually helped with the success of the video within our focus group. The audience that we were aiming for enjoy new, interesting things. This really came through with our focus group's feedback. The video was not so entropic that it was difficult to understand, but not so redundant that it became disinteresting, which is what our focus group seemed to enjoy the most. I believe combining elements of the classic conventions, and the childish elements proved a good move as it was interesting and eye catching, yet was still identifiable within the intended genre.

When editing the video, we also tried to keep to the conventions of the genre. The editing is relatively slow during the beginning of the video, mimicking the editing style of slower paced reggae videos. When the faster paced, drum and bass part kicks in, the editing style quickly speeds up. This creates a more exciting feel, especially in comparison to the slower editing.

The song itself challenges the conventions of the reggae genre, the style of singing in somewhat different, and the integration of drum and bass in the end is also a big change of pace to the genre, so the product also had to reflect this.

In summary, our target audience enjoyed our product. We were told it was different and innovative, and none of them could compare this to any other music videos that they have previously seen, as they had not seen any of a similar kind. I think the new ideas were welcomed as they are interesting and different, so they are quite effective in drawing in attention.

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

The original brief that we were given for the project is as follows:

A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with:
A cover for it's release as part of a digipak.
A magazine advertisement for the digipak.

I tried to keep a consistent house style throughout the creation of my poster and digipak. I kept the exact same background throughout the poster, I felt that the lined paper reflected the childlike connotations that I was trying to put across, I also incorporated the childlike themes into the main video, creating a clear link between the two. I also kept the house style by using the same basic colours throughout, I made sure this was possible by using the dropper tool to select the same colours, I would have liked to have been able to use something like this in the video, but would just not have been possible. I also kept the use of the stencil style across from the poster to the digipak. I feel that this adds to the reggae/rap theme, but still allows it to work within the child-like themes.

I also used the logo's of a number of websites and magazines on the poster, this adds authenticity and creates a sense of realism. This combined with the BMG logo's and a link to the Skindred website are quite effective. I tried to use a fitting font on the front of the digipak, I think that the font that I used helps connote a sense of childishness, also relating to the video.

I feel that I could have created a stronger house style between the ancillary and main tasks if I had incorporated more of the elements from the main video into the print work, such as the trikes, locations, cards etc. But the house style is still fairly strong, especially between the two print tasks.

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planing and evaluation stages?

I used a number of different media technologies in the creation of the video, the most obvious one being a video camera. The kind of video camera that we actually used was a Panasonic HD DV, I think this style of camera was perfect for the job. The quality was good, and we made use of the manual focus with pull focus. The camera was light and compact, so it was easy to transport from location to location. I also used a Nikon D60 DSLR camera, to take my still images in the planning and research stage, mainly when creating my Digipak, and the advert. I used a combination of auto, and manual focus settings on the camera to achieve the best possible results. The camera had a large number of settings and functions which I did not make use of, these could have helped me to achieve better results.

I used two computer programs to edit the photo's and videos. Photoshop for the Photographs, and Premier pro for the videos. I only know how to use photoshop at a basic level, there are many tools that I didn't know how to use, as it is a very in-depth program. The filters and tools I mostly made use of are:
Move Tool
Rectangular Marquee
Crop
Rubber
Lasso and magnetic lasso
Paintbrush
Blur

I also used a combinations of tools to create the smokey effect on the digipak. I drew white lines against the background of the picture, I then clicked "Effect" Then "Liquify". I used the liquify tool to drag the lines about, this created a smokey effect. After this I clicked "Edit" then "Fade Liquify", I faded down to about 50% each time, this helped to make the smoke appear softer and more realistic. Here is a short video of me drawing some smoke on photoshop.



I also used a number of websites to help with organisation, research etc. Facebook was very useful to help organise the cast. I created a group named " A2 Media Studies " and added the cast. I mostly used this for organizational purposes. I mostly used the group to post shooting times, to ensure my cast were available to help but this was not it's only function. The group also helped me to acquire props and costumes from my cast. For example, the location for the band sections is owned by my uncle, who I contacted through facebook. The trikes that were used in the chase scene were also found using facebook. Another function of the group was to help me gain feedback ( I invited people that weren't involved in actually making the video ), I posted a Youtube link to the group and allowed people to comment on it. I recorded their comments and use them to find out how I could have improved on the end result.

Another website which proved very useful was Youtube. I used this site for a number of reasons. Youtube proved invaluable for my genre research, it allowed me to find music videos within the genre quickly and easily. I had no problem using Youtube, I use it a lot out of lessons, and it has a simple, user friendly layout. I feel that my genre research would not have been anywhere near the level that it was at if I hadn't used Youtube. I also used Prezi to help me create my pitch. Prezi is a very unique website, it allows you to make multimedia style pages, which you can create a path around, similar to Powerpoint but on a larger scale. Prezi was very useful as it created an interesting and simple way to present my pitch. The technology was easy to understand, it had a simple interface and I was able to learn to use it quickly.

The one piece of technology that I feel didn't work as well as it could were the computers. For a while the sound on the computer I was using would keep cutting out. This slowed down the editing process as it was very difficult to actually sync the audio with the video. The computers also didn't have a lot of RAM, which made it lag whilst editing, and meant that it took a long time to conform, import clips and export files.

All in all, Technology played a very large part in my project, the use of Web 2.0 was vital, in conjunction with quite a lot of software and hardware. The project would definitely not turned out so well if I did not have all of these tools at my disposal.

Finished Video!

The video is finally finished, it took a while but I'm generally pleased with it.

Storyboard Animatic

Extra Cast:

These are some of the extra cast that will be used in our music video, this will almost certainly be edited a few times.
 Jake.
Kyle.
Alfie.
Kieren.
Ella.
Barney.