EVALUATION QUESTION 4

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

CONSTRUCTION

To construct our media product we used a variety of different medias (as shown above). To film the footage we used mainly the Pentax camera as it had the best quality however when we couldn’t get hold of it we used a Fujifilm DSLR. One memory card was used throughout so we didn’t get any footage mixed up. Both of the cameras were really good quality and produced some great footage that we later uploaded onto the mac. The Macs had iMovie and iTunes which we used to create the final product.

By using iMovie the footage was edited together to create the final music video, it took us about 6-7 weeks to actually finish the project but overall we managed to get a really good finalised video. By transferring the song onto iTunes from a disc, we then uploaded it onto iMovie which made the video ever so slightly more easy to make from then on as whenever we added in a clip, the rest of the song carried on from where it left off rather than us having to add the song in piece by piece. We opted to use a black and white effect for the music video as it gives it a sentimental feel and adds a bit more emotion. We had a lot of experience from AS level on how to use iMovie so it made editing a lot easier and gave us a lot more time to play around with what worked and what didn’t.


RESEARCH

YouTube was the main tool we used to research the indie/folk genre, we looked at loads of music videos and picked which ones we liked, which ones we didn’t and which ones were the most similar to our song/ideas for music video. However a lot of our research was done in sixth form, where Youtube is blocked, so we had to settle for VEVO which actually had all of the music videos we needed. We focussed on Ben Howard as our main influence as he has a very similar to C.A and when we interviewed the artist, they said that they have been compared to him many times before. Google was also the main tool in researching everything like album covers and music videos and provided us with pretty much all the information we needed to know. Obviously Google was the main search engine in providing us with genre conventions and information about artists that C.A compared themselves to – a lot of the time Google lead us to an artist’s main page that gave us an depth analysis into their genre and why they used generic conventions in their products.

EVALUATION
During the evaluation stage, we used cameras to film the audience's responses which i have included on a post entitled 'audience response'. By having a camera enabled us to be more creative and use editing tools when evaluating our video. A video is a lot more exciting and interesting than just a written response - it also enables the audience response to be a lot more thorough as when they are writing things on paper, it may not be as detailed. We also used Facebook when getting an audience response, which was really useful and it was good to hear what our peers thought of the video. Having the use of social networking sites is important as people can 'share' the product which enables you to get more feedback from people that you wouldn't necessarily contact directly. All in all, it helps publicise the video.

EVALUATION QUESTION 2

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE MAIN COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

Both the music video and the digi-pak work well together as the black and white colour scheme runs throughout them. The colours of the video and the digipak is the main thing that link them together, we chose to use these colours as they represent nostalgia and give the audience the impression that the artist is reminiscing and thinking deeply about events. It is clear which image is the main album cover as it is the only one to have the colour red featured on it, which clearly stands out as the rest of the pictures are all black and white. The lyrics are on the side which has a hand written title suggesting that the artist has written it themselves.

 After researching digipaks from other artists, we discovered that most of them are cohesive. For example, Rihanna's Talk That Talk album is cohesive with her music videos as the colour scheme (black and white) is consistent and she is also blowing smoke out of her mouth in the You Da One/We found Love video and on her album cover.

The front of the cover looks more like her character in 'We found Love' and on the back of the digipak, it looks like her character in 'You Da One'

Another example of a cohesive music video is Jake Bugg, as in his videos he used a black and white effect and the cover of his album is a portrait picture of him in black and white.

An example of visual cohesion in our music video and digipak is the font that appears at the start of the video when presenting the name and artist, which also appears on each of the sides of the digipak in the bottom right hand corner. The font we used was Baskerville and the main colour scheme we used was black and white. The theme of black and white runs throughout both the digipak and the music video, which links them together showing signs of cohesion.

Our video is classed as an illustrative video, as the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals exists. For example, when the lyrics 'come and go' are sung, the female character is shown going down a set of escalators, implying that she is leaving to go somewhere. A lot of the filming was done in London, which supports the idea of the girl leaving as whenever the artist is shown on his own he is in the studio whereas the female is always walking to different places. When the key change occurs, the couple are shown together for the first time however they are arguing which presents their relationship as negative. Another example to support the fact our video is illustrative is the ending, "where do I start, i'm tripping over my head and my heart" portrays a montage of the female which suggests that the song is about her.

TIME SHEET

http://www.slideshare.net/evawt/call-sheet-29808468?utm_source=slideshow02&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=share_slideshow (complete slideshare)

EVALUATION QUESTION 3

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Audience feedback is essential in the music industry as it determines whether or not the produced music video is going to appeal to the target audience or not. It helps to realise what the producers have made and determines whether or not they have managed to achieve what they set out to do. It helps to improve future projects however a lot of the feedback received is solely based on opinion. Feedback is also important as it enables the producers to see faults in it (if there are any) that they hadn't noticed before. All in all, audience feedback helps create the perfect music video.

Our target audience was to appeal to teenagers/young adults who listen to indie/folk genre music. E.g. maybe guitar players, people that listen to acoustic music... the theme for the music video is a love story, which could mainly appeal to teenagers as they are exposed to emotions everyday. It's important to have a clear target audience so that you can market the product a lot easier and it enables the producers to narrow down the aspects of what to include in the music video. Also the producer can get specific feedback from the target audience of what they want to see in the music video, what works and what doesn't work. Ignoring audience feedback would basically result in a terrible music video that wouldn't appeal to the target audience - majority of the time audience feedback helps to improve a music video as the audience know what they want to see in one.

Positive and Negative feedback

To gather audience feedback we put the finished music video on Facebook and asked people to comment their opinions and say what they thought we had improved on from the mid point review.

This is a screenshot of the amount of feedback we received, people mainly commented on the lip syncing as we had explained to them before that it was a hard task to do. One of our aims was to make the audience remember a time where they had felt loved/been in a relationship and whether or not it was difficult. Another of our aims was to make the audience feel nostalgic, maybe reminiscing about a loved one and what their relationship was like - this was a success as one person commented that they did feel a sense of nostalgia and that the song fitted the lyrics well. 

Other feedback that we have received for the music video included:

" It lacks a narrative, it’d make it more interesting if the story behind their relationship is explained" 

We are able to learn from this comment that we could have possibly used some of the space where the male character is filmed in the studio/establishing shots, to create more of a narrative - portraying elements of the two characters relationship and enabling the audience to make a firm decision on whether they thought the couple were good together or not. We decided to not show as many elements of the couple's relationship to make the audience feel more intrigued and think about why the couple are arguing/why they are apart and also think more into the lyrics of the song and how the video relates to them. However I do agree with this comment to some extent as the audience like to know everything and it would have been interesting to know the basis of their relationship.

"everything is timed so well! all the clips fit the songs rhythm"

Our aim throughout editing the video was to ensure that everything fitted in time with the lyrics and the rhythm of the song. If you watch the video, you will see that the establishing shots are timed with the beat of the music which makes the video a lot easier to watch, this is inspired by Ben Howard's videos as in most, if not all, of his videos he uses the beat of the music to time when a different shot is presented.
None of the positive feedback particularly surprised me, it was all things that we had worked on (lip syncing, shot being in time with the rhythm of the music etc) there wasn't really any positive feedback that stood out. However the majority of the feedback we had was very good and useful.

Audience Theory
The audience theory suggests that when watching a video, the audience could become influenced by what they see. For example, the 'Bobo Doll experiment' supports the idea that once a video is watched and then the audience member put in that situation, they will copy what they saw on screen. Our music video tended to have a dominant reading, some of the members thought that the couple were going through a break up and others thought they were in a rocky relationship - the storyline was understood and the audience thought it was clear that the couple were not completely happy. A reason for this could be because of the age range of our target audience, it is likely that they understood/had experienced the story line in the music video which could have influenced their thoughts.

EVALUATION QUESTION 1

IN WHAT WAY DOES THE MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

At the beginning of our project, we researched what the main concepts were that were included in music videos that belong to the Indie/Folk genre. We discovered that they mainly use Narrative based videos, which portray a story usually linking the to the lyrics of the song. For example, we have chosen to link the lyrics to our music video by showing the two characters in several different locations (hense 'Come and Go').
A lot of the time, indie/folk songs are about loving someone or the artist's relationship with someone - which usually means the music video involves a boy and a girl as the main characters.

GOODWIN THEORY
We applied Goodwin's theory to our media work as when the lyrics 'Come and Go' are sung, the female character is shown travelling through locations in London, implying that she is going somewhere and leaving the male character. At the end of the video, a montage of the female is shown, implying that the entire song was about her and a specific ending is not given. Showing the male character in the studio singing the song, also showing him writing the song which implies that he has made the video/wrote the song to declare his love for the female character.

BARTHES THEORY
Having studied Barthes' theories on myths, we decided that we could apply it to our music video. The representation of sexuality is shown through the music video as it is clear the two characters involved were/are in a relationship. Our video would be an open narrative as the ending is left so that the audience can decide themselves what they think happens to the pair. They are in control of whether they think the couple have broken up or are just in a very rocky relationship.

POSTMODERNISM
The theory of postmodernism is included on the CD cover(s). We chose to use the aspects of the Gorillaz - Demon Days album by making the covers seem like mugshots. However we chose to challenge the album by instead of having all four images on the same page, we allocated one image per page so the picture would be more intimate.We developed the idea by having the colour scheme in black and white, which linked to the colour scheme of our video.

Another example of using/challenging/developing we used was from Lorde's video to 'Royals'. In the video the picture changes alongside the beat of the music, which is what we did in our music video every 1.2 seconds (roughly). Lorde's video, like ours, is both performance and narrative based - showing her singing against a blank wall. We chose to challenge this by showing our male character performing in the studio whilst recording the song. We developed the idea of the video by again, using a black and white theme throughout to create a sense of nostalgia.

 In our video we have used the artist as the male character and an actress posing as his lover, the female character. Throughout the video, stages of their relationships are shown when they are together and when they aren't. In a lot of music videos that portray a love story, the couple in focus are shown arguing at some points in the video - so we chose to include this in our project to enable the audience to understand that the two characters in focus are a couple rather than just two random people.

The main scenery associated with indie/folk music videos is greenery and nature so we included establishing shots of trees, Hyde Park, Bristol Harbourside and shots from around London. By using a well known British landmark we hoped to engage the audience a lot more as we discovered from one our audience feedback interviews that an audience like it when  they recognise places in music videos/films etc. Also, a lot of music videos are filmed in and around London so we chose to use that aspect of a real video.

We filmed the artist  in a recording studio, this challenges the forms of real videos as we chose to make it performance based as well as narrative based - this enables the audience to gain a connection with the artist and see the emotion on his face when he is performing the song. When a music video is both narrative and performance based, usually the artist is seen performing infront of a crowd, or just singing into a microphone/to the camera rather than actually being filmed in a recording studio with all the recording equipment.

At the end of the video, there's a montage of the girl played along to the lyrics that are sung at the start - this develops the idea that the girl is what the artist wants and is a group of clips bunched together from throughout the video, thus suggesting that the entire song is about her and that the artist is completely in love with her.


How does the video work well with the song? We did our best to ensure that editing was done so that some

of the clips (mainly the establishing shots) were in time to the beat of the music. For example, the first instrumental of the song involves several establishing shots of trees, sunlight, a boat etc. and each are shown on every fifth guitar strum.



We linked the lyrics of the song to the video by implying that the two characters are in a relationship and are very temperamental - we show the two characters separately at the beginning of the video and then towards the middle, show them arguing to make it clear that they're in a very 'rocky' relationship. We didn't include a clear ending, so the audience can make their own minds up about what happens to the pair- ending it on a montage of the girl implies that the atrist is still in love with her and can't get her out of his head. This goes against the conventions slightly as in most indie/folk music videos there is a clear ending.

INITIAL PITCH

Aims for music video:
- Relating the video to the lyrics, for example - 'Come and Go', filming the characters in both Bristol and London.
- Having two characters (male and female) suggesting that they are/have been in a relationship
- The two characters having issues in their relationship, scenes of arguing/walking away from each other?
- Show process of the relationship; the two characters shown laughing together and then arguing
- At the end of the video show a torn up photograph which has been shown earlier in the video (but as a whole...) OR have an ending where the audience can make up their own mind whether the couple stay together or not
- Film the artist in a music studio, recording and writing his lyrics - adds in performance as well as narrative
- Scenes in London just of the female character, portraying that she is the one coming and going suggesting that the male character is heartbroken
- Film the artist with his guitar, clearly stating that he is the artist
- Both characters to be filmed on bikes in different locations, this being a link to the lyrics
- Film some of the artist at one of his gigs (taking inspiration from music videos that have performance in them)

Filming in Bristol and editing

Pretty much have all of our footage done however we do have to re-film Fergal in the music studios as the shots weren't as clear as we'd hoped. Issues with the lip syncing as it's quite hard to get it in time with the song. The lighting's also a minor issue however we can always edit this on iMovie.
Filming done in Bristol
Establishing shots of the harbourside and Queen Square, both locations have beautiful scenery and we plan to include them in the instrumental parts of the music video.
Used a living room for the scenes where the two characters are arguing, shows that they're in a homely environment - suggests living together...
Filmed Tilly walking along the train tracks by M Shed, linking to the lyrics (train being transport, coming and going etc.) also it is very beautiful scenery.

C.A ARTIST

"Charlie Green and Adam Heaton, musical duo consisting of 2 acoustic guitars and an egg shaker. Currently working on new material" - Soundcloud

C.A are a musical duo from Bristol, posting their sounds on music sharing site 'soundcloud' is how our group came across them. They have two of their own songs posted on their page, one being a cover of Bon Iver's 'Holocene' and the other, their original material 'Come and Go'.
Both being quite young and still in education, they have told us that it's harder for them to produce new material than other artists as they don't have a lot of time to do it, however when they do get the time they play together and try their best to come up with some new stuff.







C.A aren't signed to a label, however if they were they would probably be signed to a small independent label that produces indie/folk records, examples: Jagjaguwar or Bella Union. 
I'm saying these two as they are both labels that similar artists are on (Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes). The duo have sounds very similar to Bon Iver and they have told us that they like to compare themselves to them aswell as James Morrison, however James Morrison is on a much bigger label and has had lot of publicity.

MID POINT REVIEW AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

VIDEO ANALYSIS 2

BON IVER - HOLOCENE

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE

FEATURES TO LOOK FOR	GENERAL EXAMPLES	DETAILED EXAMPLES
Genre Characteristics	Filmed in Iceland, showing the beautiful and weird nature e.g. glaciers and greenery in the same place.	Young boy, displays innocence and sweetness of the music
Relationship between lyrics and visuals?	2:03-2:06 "I can see for miles, miles, miles"	2:21-2:25 "where we learned to celebrate" boy throwing rocks into the air as if to celebrate
Relationship between music and visuals?	During the instrumental, the boy is shown walking around	3:12 - the stick splashes in the water when the pitch changes
Are there close-ups of the artist/star motifs?	No close ups of artist, however there is closeups of the young boy in the video	3:16-3:18 - the camera pans around the boy and it is a close up 3:56 - close up of boy smiling
Reference to the notion of looking?	0.54-0.59 - Boy looking out of the window at something	3:40-3:44 - the boy is shown looking out into the distance
Intertextual references	----	----
Performance based/Concept based/Narrative based - how much of each?	Narrative based	telling the story of the boy enjoying life, thought to be the artist when he was younger and is now realising he is not as free as he once was

VIDEO ANALYSIS 3: The Script - Man Who Can't Be Moved

FEATURES TO LOOK FOR	GENERAL EXAMPLE	DETAILED EXAMPLE
Genre Characteristics	Band are shown performing with a microphone, guitar and drum set (typical indie band)	Artist in narrative part of video is shown wearing a hoodie and jeans, stereotypical outfit of an indie/rock singer to wear
Relationships between lyrics and visuals?	The band are seen performing in what looks like an empty car park and are singing along with the lyrics (throughout video)	2:40-2:52 - shows the artist singing along however visuals present as if he is on a news channel being interviewed
Relationships between music and visuals?	During guitar at the very beginning of song the artist's footsteps are in time to the music	Towards the end of the song when the chorus begins for the third/fourth time, the editing is sped up showing that time is passing
Close ups of the artist/star motifs?	When band members are performing there are a few close ups of them (throughout the video)	2:00-2:04 shows the emotion on the artist's face 3:18-3:20 - close up of artist in the rain showing he is upset
Reference to the notion of looking?	0.14-0.16 - Danny looks right into camera	2:00-2:04, camera pans and the artist follows it. This is also linked to the above as it's a close up shot to show emotion
Intertextual references		Used when the artist is "featured on the news" - there is a news reporter and the screen says "BREAKING NEWS" implying that the artist is actually being interviewed on the news
Performance/Narrative/Concept based - how much of each?	Narrative and Performance	Just about equal; the video is both performance and narrative. The band are shown a lot whilst performing in the empty car park as well as the lead singer being shown acting in the narrative.