Evaluation: Question 3 - Part 1

Although we are very happy with the overall mark (34 out of 40) that we were given, there are still some area's of the music video that could of been improved further. Each pair in the audience (20 people) was given an anonymous feedback sheet to fill out. This tells us what worked well in our video and what needs improving.

On the feedback sheet on the right it shows that they didn't feel there was enough variety of shots in our music video. This was an aspect that we were aware of during the production of our music video. Personally, I agree that there was a lower amount of close ups than seen in other music videos and the previous  A Town Called Malice video (Youtube). However, because the music video was a hybrid of a music video and a documentary of a location, we had to meet conventions of both media texts. Upon our research we found that documentaries use a lot of establishing and long shots (Example of researched documentary video - Birmingham Bullring 1985 (Youtube), a contrast to what we see in a performance style music video. To overcome this problem we used as many close ups as possible whilst the actor was performing and we weren't showing the surroundings of 'Malice'. As well as close ups of performance we included close ups of key props and surroundings. (Examples can be seen below)

                    

                      Close-up of performance

Close-up surroundings

One of the sheets also explained that they spotted some errors with lip-syncing. One of the problems that we came across during our production was lip-syncing with the addition of effects. Once we had edit our music video we ensured that all of the lip syncing was on time and to the best standard possible, however once we applied after effects on iMovie the syncing seemed slightly off. After some analysis we realised that it was the 'television bars' and 'Bump distortion' that had caused the problem. Because the video now looked like it was poorer quality and was distorted, some of the lip syncing seemed slightly off time or incorrect. This was an aspect that could not be helped, however if we were to do the project again we would reconsider the use of after effects or the intensity used on them. This was also a critique  mentioned as some of the audience members found the effects overpowering and over the top.

Evaluation Question 3 - Part 2

Using wordle I made a map of all the words in the box for what needs improving from each feedback sheet. In conclusion to what we can see on the mind map, we can gather that a wider variety of shots should have been used and the lip syncing needs to be corrected. One of the only problems with this feedback is that it isn't taken from a variety of people. Most of the audience members were 17 or 18 years old, meaning that some of the results could be biased if their opinions were a result of age. Another reason that our audience feedback could be biased is because the audience was all Media students. This means that they were critiquing our video from a technical point of view and not watching it from an entertainment standpoint.

Despite the possibly biased feedback, I feel that it is accurate. If we had longer on the production of our music video then we would look at the strength of the effects added post-editing. By doing this we would have resolved the problem of the lip-syncing that is hard to see and understand by slightly manipulating the shot lengths. As well as this,  we may have possibly been able to shoot more footage which would have included more close-ups and mid shots, adding the variety that was wanted from the audience .

Evaluation: Question 2 - Part 2

The existing web page for the Sex Pistols sells the band through using a video in the top right of our image. This is an aspect that we tried to include in our work, we placed the video in  the section along with the tour dates and band information. However, because the program we was using (iWeb) didn't allow moving pictures or GIF files we could not recreate what we wanted to. Instead we added a box that included the original video for A Town Called Malice (seen below, right).

The other album cover that we looked at was Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. The album art is very simple, with the main feature being the bands name. This is something that we should be relevant in our work. In some of the our first plans we had a very similar idea to this (seen above, left). With no artist featured on The Sex Pistols CD cover we thought it would appropriate if we did the same, however with nothing on the front that represented the band we felt it necessary to add an image of the fictional place known as 'Malice'. This can be seen in the image below this paragraph. 

Other aspects that we looked at on the website was that of tour dates. I feel tour dates are essential in the production of a website as it lets the audience know that the artist is doing something and further merchandises as they may see a date that they can attend and buy a ticket to the event. Because I feel tour dates are an important aspect to be included on a website homepage we dedicated a large portion of the information box to the tour date list. The overall purpose of our campaign is to promote the artist and the song that we have published and produced a video for. In addition to this, the purpose to our three production is conveying the documentary theme that we decided the project would be based around.

Evaluation: Question 2 - Part 1

Throughout our campaign we have attempted to keep a theme of documenting the fictional location of 'Malice' in all of our work. Whether it be the CD cover, website or final music video every aspect of our campaign in some way relates to a documentary theme or promotes the band and record in question. Below you can see our finished digi-pack which was created and manipulated in photoshop. As a group we all contributed ideas towards how to include the documentary theme of showcasing 'Malice' and this was our final outcome.

Front and back CD cover

Inside CD cover and CD

Webpage

This theme is present in our digi-pack through the images of 'Malice' and it's surrounds that we took. It also features images of our music video and the 'presenter' that is present throughout the production. This allows the audience to see a definite relation between the two media texts. As well as this, our Website conveys a similar look and theme, portraying more than one image of 'Malice' and it's surrounding that we are prominent in our music video. We also used a running colour scheme in the three media texts that we produced of: black, grey, white and blue. The reason that we chose these colours is because they are relevant to The Jam and can be found in their logo. (Seen right) We felt this was important as the bands image and style needed to be maintained in all areas of our work.

In our music video we carried on portraying the theme of The Jam's style and image. Whether it be through colour, the era in which the artist performed and produced music, or the genre in which they belong to. For example, in the first image seen on the left we can see that we use the word 'Malice' a number of times in our music video. This allows the audience to make the connection between the three projects that we have produced and the relevance of our 'Malice', which is heard in the song numerous times to our music video concept.

In the second image down, we can see the surroundings of Malice, which is once again conventional to the overall documentary theme present throughout all area of our campaign. These images of the 'Malice' and the surrounding areas contribute towards The Jam's 'British' style and image that we want to get across in our campaign. Because every shot or picture of the surroundings of 'Malice'  that we used are different, it allows us to use similar images in all ares of our work without it becoming overly repetitive. 

To accompany the surroundings seen in our music video we also added shots of vandalised areas adding to the gritty, alternative style that complements the artist's style. This can be seen in the images the to the right and below.

In the image to the left and below you can see that we used close ups to conform to conventions of music videos. This lets the audience know that the artist is included in the video and the image that they are showcasing to their target audience.

In the image to the left we get a close up of a shot of feet dancing. This also tells the audience that we are aware the music video isn't just a documentary of malice but also is their to promote the record and band as well.

In the final two images we took clips off already existing documentaries and added them to our own project. This gave our music video the final documentary look that we aimed to achieve. By doing this we eliminated any confusion in case the audience didn't know what we were trying to achieve with our video or the style of filming that we were trying to mimic. By making everything in our video convey to the aspects of a media text produced in the 1980's we aim to achieve a look that the target audience (younger and mainly middle aged males) will recognise or at least be aware of.

Evaluation: Question One - Part Two

Example of videos

 with/without sepia

Our campaign developed the existing music video's conventions into a more entertaining modern production by mixing it with a documentary style of filming. However, by keeping the performance of the vocalist in play during the video it still held some of the conventions of an existing video by The Jam. Although there was some performance featured in our production it did not reflect the bands image completely, meaning that we had to reflect the artist through use of mise en scene and camerawork  throughout our video. We did this by giving the video a working class, 'British' feel. This portrayed the bands image and style onto camera and also complemented our idea of showcasing a low class area of the UK during our production. Techniques such as the added sepia effect made the visuals gritty and true to the bands image and sound, with the additional dull surroundings that we filmed, the mise en scene complemented the bands dark and gritty style completely.

Example of a pan in our video

We stuck to conventional filming techniques from both a music video and television documentary in our production. We used shots of a longer length (around 5-10 seconds) as well as using numerous pans and zooms to convey to the style of filming seen in a  television documentary. Whilst simultaneously using numerous close-ups which is a convention frequently seen in almost every music video.

Our music video could be classed as postmodern through using the idea of a hybrid style video. This has been done before as a narrative is unconventional to the original music video's seen in the 1980's. In fact, narratives mixed with performance is seen in nearly all music video's released now days. A perfect example being Lady Gaga's Telephone (seen below). 

Evaluation: Question One - Part One

Whilst we were researching in the planning stages of our music video for A Town Called Malice, we decided that we wanted to stray from the look and theme of the videos already produced by The Jam. The main reason for this being that the original music video for A Town Called Malice (top left) was released in 1982, a time when technology was a lot less developed and music videos played a much smaller role in promoting artists in industry. This was mainly because they were rarely broadcast on daytime television and the internet did not exist. Thus, because the audience was not able to watch a music video, there was no demand for them. As a result of this most music videos of the same era were largely performance based with no narrative, and used only one location. This was purely done for convenience and because it was easy to create, especially if the live performance was already recorded as part of an existing television program. An example being The Jam's video for All Around the World (found below this paragraph) as it was recorded as part of the Marc Bolan Show in 1977. In summery, when the video for A Town Called Malice was released, it's purpose was to convey the bands song image to the audience on a less frequent occasion, and as a result was not made to be as entertaining as music videos of today. However, as the music and television industry has developed they have used synergy to market artists and there music video's to a now demanding audience. To accommodate the now growing demand to see music videos, we had to make the idea for our production more entertaining and relevant to the style of music videos produced today. This meant that we had to flout the original conventions produced by The Jam's existing videos to make our campaign more successful.

To make our idea unique we decided that we needed to combine our music video with another style of broadcasting, and after looking at more modern music videos such as the Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up  (bottom right) it became prominent to us that the music video doesn't always have to feature the artist in it to convey their style. After looking into various idea's we all decided that our music video would be a hybrid of a television documentary and a performance styled music video. With the influence being a old style television documentary about the Birmingham Bullring's opening (bottom left) and the original A Town Called Malice video (top left).

Audience Feedback Mark

I our lesson last week our video was showcased to the class for critique. This helped us with our evaluation and also identified problems that are prominent in our music video. Overall our feedback was very positive, the average score was around 34 marks out of 40 matching the level 4 criteria which is the highest you can achieve. We are extremely happy with the result for our music video and the marks that came with it. 

Youtube

Our music video is now on the Bilborough College YouTube channel, the channel lets everyone view the videos created by students from the college. So far we have had 36 views after the video being uploaded onto the channel which is pretty good. 

Here is the link to the video:


http://youtu.be/Bfbc3d_u69s

Lesson 24th Janurary

In todays lesson we will finish editing our music video as well as adding the after effects so we can export it to our blog. This will give us enough time to watch our final project an assess if any last minute changes need to be made.

Lesson 20th January 2012

 In todays lesson we aim to finish editing the of the music video in order to see what needs to be improved. Once this is finished we will able to ask for a response from tutors and other class members so we know what our weak points are and how to work for them.

Lesson 17th January 2012

In today's lesson we have continued to edit our music video and have worked past the 2:00 mark. We also showed our work to out tutor again and have gained further feedback that we need to include more close-ups. If we are not able to find enough footage in what we have already shot we are going to arrange to shoot additional footage later in the week in order to keep our music video at the highest possible standard.

Use of GarageBand In Our Project

In our project we have used GarageBand to make noise that accompanies the TV intermission, making the section more true to how it is used in it's real context. By using a low tone on a synth setting we were able to recreate the sound used when the television signal goes down.

Lesson 12th January 2012

In today's lesson we continued to edit our footage in aim to finish our video by next week before the deadline. We have also worked on putting existing clips from other television productions into our project, giving our music video a more documentary style and feel. Because of a few lip syncing problems we had the idea of using aTV interruption notice in order to cover them up. This allows us to carry on with production without having to wait to re-shoot as well as making our video seem like more of a television broadcast. In today's lesson we also added additional sound to our video that we produced on GarageBand to add effect when the 'TV signal' cuts out.

Lesson 10th January 2012

In todays lesson we have imported our re-shoot footage and have begun to start editing our final project. This features a new actor being Matt since we were let down by our last lead role. We have also spoke to Leanne who agrees that our new footage has improved however, due to the change of actor we now have an irrelevant picture on our CD cover. We are going to discuss this further in order to conclude and resolve the problem.

Lesson 20th December 2011

In the lesson today our main aim is to finalize our filming idea's for over the holidays. We have picked up the equipment for filming and plan to arrive in lesson next term with a new tape full of film ready to edit, which will eventually amount to the final film material that we will use in our final video production

Linking Up Our Blog To The Website

On our web-page we also decided to add a link to our advanced portfolio production blog. This will allow the audience to see how the video was made and the planning that was done to make the video a success.

Making Active Links On Our Website

On our website we have included active links to make our site more interactive and appealing to the target audience. This will also make our website more like existing websites for other music artists and keep our work up to a competitive standard.

Tour Dates On The Website

After researching other band websites we found that a conventional feature is that of upcoming tour dates. This could help with the bands merchandising and fan base growth as they will be advertised through the music and media industry. We felt that we should add this in to our work to make our website live up the a higher standard.

Website Development

Yesterday, in the final few hours before the deadline we decided to change the design of the website dramatically as the old layout wasn't working as well as we planned. We decided to make the features of the website more structured in to the design and change the background colour to black to make it more conventional to the genre and image of The Jam. 

Finished Website Design

This is our final website design, we added a YouTube video and linked all of the pages to the correct web pages. We thought that this fitted in well with our theme and so we stuck with it. The pictures were taken by Matt in our group and we thought that it would go really well in our website and CD designs and it looks fine in the end. 
I have checked all of the links and they all work fine, which we were a bit worried about before we did them but it all works fine. It's a great end product.