Evaluation 5.0

Evaluation:

Our task was to plan and produce a music video for an unsigned music band, that we had to find independently in our individual groups. In this evaluation, I shall talk about the positives and negatives associated with my final video as well as discussing other aspects of the project, including; planning, researching, designing of practical parts and also the ongoing blog associated with the project.
The band my group used were peers from our school, who go by the name of 'Crayolar', and they class themselves as an “Indy/light rock” genre. The band itself, consists of three musicians; Max Sander, Joe Rudd and Corey Hall. My role in the group was Co-Director / Producer, Co-Editor and Managing the actors and locations for our video.
Before creating our video, we researched and analysed three current music videos to help identify what trends and conventions are in modern music videos and just what makes them effective and popular.(See Fig 1.0 on blog), and I also wrote an essay on the history of the music video to help get a background on the theoretical side of it rather than just as a consumer enjoying the video.
After doing this, I obtained a copy of one of the band's songs that we had chosen to do – this being “Just Maybe” and to begin with we as a group went through the lyrics and just started bouncing ideas off each other to set the wheels in motion. After coming up with a few ideas we created a storyboard, which incidentally is on the blog (under Research and Planning 2.0), and began thinking of potential locations and actors to use. After finalizing our ideas, we go to work on filming our scenes and producing our music video: “Crayolar – Just Maybe.”

The video itself, is a performance/narrative and depicts a story of a teenage couple in a relationship. We have a stable state of equilibrium at the start of the video where 'Jake' (Jacob Perkins) and 'Chrissie' (Rosie Fairweather) are happily in love and spending the day together. However, when Jake leaves for the bathroom, he receives a text on his phone from a mystery girl, that Chrissie reads. This is the disequilibrium as Chrissie thinks its from another girl who Jake is cheating with, where as in actual fact it is from his sister. When Jake returns, Chrissie drops the phone in a rage and storms off with Jake chasing after her. Later on in the video, the pair meet up and Jake explains everything thus creating the new equilibrium where the pair consolidate and forgive each other, before leaving as a couple once again.

I think that our music video uses current forms and conventions of real media products but also slightly challenges them as well. One way that it uses conventions of real music videos is our ranging variety of camera shots. Throughout the video, we use lots of close-ups of both the band and the actors as well as the instruments as well. We thought this was important to try and engage the audience more and give them a sense of relating to the narrative more coherently. We also have long shots and mid-shots of the band performing to help set the scene and establish a location for the band. Incidentally, the location we used to film the band was one of the member's houses. We thought this would be appropriate as it symbolises what the band is about; 'a small time band just wanting to showcase their music with no gimmicks'. I also think that this type of location also conforms to that off their genre of music – Indie/Light Rock. One of our main ideology's was to put as much emphasis on the music in the marketing aspect, as well as in the video, however we still wanted to portray a story to show how related to real life the song actually is.

Throughout the video, we continuously switch back to the band playing as a group , for the establishing shot and to provide a bit of stability for the audience. We used the 'fade in – fade out' effect to switch between the band and the story, to help break the sequence up and I feel it is very effective in how it looks. However at one point in the video, we had to use a dissolve effect for when Jake follows Chrissie out the door, this is because when it came to editing our footage, the camera jumped and we lost the beginning of Jake walking, if we didn't put the dissolve in, you would have seen a big jump between frames which didn't look professional. Upon reflection I would probably use a different effect in the future, as initially it gives the impression that Jake is a ghost, which obviously he isn't.

One difference our group decided to do was add some graphics to the video to try and make it look as if the video was being shown on one of the music television channels such as 'MTV', 'The Box', 'Viva' etc. We created the orange leaf style graphic on a programme called “Live type” and imported across onto our editing programme (Final Cut). I think the graphic does look authentic and it received positive comments from our peers. However I do maybe think we took it a bit too far when we added the second graphic in of “new entry [no.5]”. This makes it look a bit unprofessional and next time I would not be tempted put it in.

As well as producing the music video, we also produced some ancillary texts which were a magazine poster advertising our chosen band's single, and a digipak that will contain the CD.
It is essential that there is a strong advertising/marketing campaign to support any band, especially a new one that is only just entering the market, so it was important that I created two good, effective pieces of work to ensure that the band become known on a larger scale. To begin with, I created three rough designs to base my final design around, for both the digipak and the poster.(see fig 2.3 and 2.4)

To get the templates for my digipak, I went onto the following website, www.duplication.ca/printspecs/digipack.htm, on here there are twenty-seven different layouts/designs, all free to download. After browsing through them all, I chose to do a “6 panel, 1 CD digipak” as this is the one of the most common forms of digipak currently around in the market. I then got to work creating my final design for the digipak on 'Photoshop', which allowed me to edit the style and characteristics of some of the images as well as favouring the more detailed aspects of creating the product with the use of the “magic wand” tool, which just wouldn't be possible on programmes such as 'Publisher'. I decided to base the colour scheme on fairly bright but mid-range colours of blue and green. I think it works well, as it will stand out on the shelves but it is not too overpowering that will put consumers off.
Apart from the photo of the band playing, which is a primary source, the other images on there, including the bar code and copyright logo are sourced from 'Microsoft Clip Art' I took the original images of there and then edited them to make them more suitable for my product. I decided to do a stage and curtains as it symbolises that the band are about to take their first step as it were into the music industry, and that the audience is waiting for them. The blue and green rectangles on the front cover is my re-creation of a synthesiser style shape that is apparent in music recording studios.
Overall, I am very happy with the final outcome and I think that it fits in with the band's image well and is too a fairly good standard. (see fig 3.0)

A magazine poster is designed to advertise a band/artist's new single or album and is what you see flicking through your magazines, ranging from NME, Heat, GQ etc. I wanted to make my poster bright and bold to jump out of the page at the potential customer and so they remember it when they go out into a music store or supermarket. I feel I have done this, by including the thick, brightly coloured stripes as the background and the thick, black text displaying the name of the band and the the single in the speech bubble. The microphone is a scanned in drawing that I did and then coloured, in 'Photoshop'.I have also included the release date and where consumers can get the single from in the top right and bottom right corner.
Again, I am happy with the overall result and it suits the purpose that a magazine poster is suppose to do as well as suiting my vision of making it stand out and memorable to a customer. (see fig 3.0)

Throughout the project, I have used a range of media technologies, varying from computer programmes such as “Photoshop” for my designing and planning process, “Google & Youtube” for my research/planning and music video links, “Livetype” for creating the text to import onto my music video, “Final Cut” for editing our footage to create our music video, “Blogger” for keeping track of everything I have done through the project and obviously, cameras to actually film our footage on.
There were inevitably challenges to overcome with aspects of technology, for example; when editing our footage on “Final Cut”, we had to sync the actual soundtrack, which was imported as an MP3, with the lip and mouth movements of the band playing, as well as the instruments playing especially when we had shots of close ups of the guitar, drums etc.
Another problem we faced, was running out of footage for the video, in the end we had to recycle some of our clips to fill the spaces, luckily though, we had that many close-ups and different angled shots we could break the sequence up to stop any prolonged visual continuity.
I also used skills learnt from doing last years AS foundation portfolio throughout this project. Our task last year was to produce a charity website using "Webplus 10". Some of the skills I developed including 'Photoshop' construction and using an online blog for the first time. I found this useful throughout my project, as it kept me organised and able to stick to deadlines and time more effectively. Part of last years project was learning about the different camera shots and if a photo is right or wrong positionally, (rule of thirds, vanishing point etc). This was essential in filming our footage so that the actors were in a suibtable position in each shot.
I have also learnt how to externally link other websites into my documents, last year I linked to other charity websites, which was related to our task of creating a charity website, and this was repeated agin this year with my links to current digipaks.
Finally, last year I used windows movie maker to create my video for the charity website and found that it is very basic and that the effects you can apply are very limited, this time around I used "Final Cut Express" which is a more advanced programme allowing for more creativity and flare.

Through this project, Audience feedback has played a major part in our decision making process and my final deign outcomes. (see fig 4.0) Without it, then I feel that our final video wouldn't be as strong as it is and my final designs wouldn't be as effective. One thing I have learned from audience feedback is that I shouldn't try to overcomplicate things and that I should go with my instinct a lot more, rather than follow the crowd. A lot of the time simplicity works best and I think that is reflected in our final video. I have also learnt that you can't please everybody, if something was done to suit one particular group of people, then another group will probably not like it, and it comes down to who is more your target market. At the end of the day it is them who you are trying to cater your product for, which sometimes isn't necessarily the mass market.

In conclusion, I have enjoyed doing this project and feel I have learnt a lot. In particular, the creation of the actual music video has given me the most satisfaction in terms of enjoyment and practicalities learnt. I feel I am more skilled in the editing process of footage making, and feel more confident in creating a strong final piece. I have also developed my team working skills and my organisational skills, because of all the planning and cooperation that was needed for this project.
If given this task gain I feel I will be able to cope with the constraints and applications more confidently and coherently, and I think that everything I have learnt during this project will only benefit me in the future, but ultimately, it was advertising the band as strong as we good, which was the most important factor to me of this project.