A2 MEDIA COURSEWORK

Evaluation

When we got the brief, we began looking at the artists and the songs that went with them. We chose to challenge ourselves by choosing a club song “Dreamer” the brief was to promote a new artist “Dj Magma” and their new song, which consisted of a music video, poster and Digi pack. When we chose our brief we looked at the codes and conventions of a music video itself. Which is the performance of the singer or band, the narrative of the music video and does it work with the song. The use of props and location depending on what type of band or singer they are relies on there locations and props for example a rock band would need props and instruments to show off their music talents on a stage or arena, where as a pop singer would mime in their music video and consist of a narrative structure to their music video. After looking at the codes and conventions of a music video we went deeper looking at Andrew Goodwin’s theory and chose to follow certain theories but at the same time challenge it to.

Andrew says, “Music Videos demonstrate Genre and Characteristics E.g. stage performance for a rock band or nigh club based for dance music.” Which we followed by creating our own nightclub scene for the music video. Which was effective. Andrew says, “That there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals you are showing.” We also worked to show this by making our artist sing certain lyrics, which matched our narrative and what was being shown. Andrew also talks about Voyeurism and how it is used to increase the videos attractiveness, particularly to males, so we chose to follow this by getting actor for the video that was female, pretty, and full of energy to perform and create the effect needed to make this type of music video. He says the Demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the Artists and the developments of motifs. We tried to challenge this by looking at many different music videos that never really show the Dj/ Artist in their videos, but use actors who are creating the narrative and energy of the video they are purely to get the song out there and create a vibe in night clubs and holiday nigh life areas. As there music is dance and entertainment it plays a big role in the nightlife industry.

The purpose of the whole project was to promote a band/artist and their single/album, so when it came to creating a Digi Pack and poster, I began to look into his name “Magma” and how I could incorporate this with his new image, so I began designing the Digi Pack and poster using textures of volcanic rock, the colours red, yellow and orange the colours of magma and volcanic laver to the designs. And transforming all these elements and integrating them with colours of night club lights and strobes, then creating a font for the cover that looks like a hot poker that they use to brand cows in fields with. This to me related to creating the red hot magma text, and showing he is the new brand on the market. I named the album “1300 degrees beneath the surface” which is a true fact. I feel it works as an album name. Looking at Bass Hunters Poster he shows him self on the poster and his album cover I feel this follows the codes and conventions as this promotes him as an artist and Dj. I chose to show him in a yellow and red shirt to flow with the rest of the cover, and posed in powerful pose as if he is possed by the power of the music. Also I have over done on retouching the images to fit in with music video style and idea of over done and perfect. I feel this targets the audience of the nightlife and Ibiza party animals.
I have learned from the audience feedback the negatives where the audience didn’t like the ending to it they felt it didn’t complete the dream narrative we wanted to show. And looked rushed and seen as the easy way out. So we took out the ending where the glow sticks were being thrown and copied the shot of the actors eyes shutting then applying the reverse effect on it to show them as if they were opening also decreasing the speed of them opening to work with the music this then looked as if she had woken from the dream, which we felt looked and worked better. The audience also said that there was too much of the colidascope effect in the music video and that it looked “ like windows music player visuals” But because we had not finished filming our last time lapse the colidascope effect was in its place so when we shot the final time lapse we replaced most of the colidascope with the new road time-lapse which really changed the pace and effect of the music video as we hoped it would. Our Audience also spoke about why our actor was dancing alone, the reason for this was we wanted her center of attention and as it was a dream we could get away with this as dreams are believed to be 20 seconds of random and unexplainable events in your mind which I hoped we have shown through the video. The last concern was the slight issue with some of the lip-synching which we have edited best we can. The positive from our audience feedback was the time lapses we have used and the chosen time-lapse shots of iconic London, the pace of the video that matched the music and the fast cutting and editing work.

I feel we have used the new media technologies in our research, construction also in our planning and evaluation stages. At the beginning of the project we had researched music videos on you tube looking at styles, effects and codes and conventions as research for music videos. As Time lapse was a major part of our music video we then looked on you tube for existing time-lapse and possible time-lapse ideas as part of our research and the construction of our own time lapses. Google search played a major part in our research into music videos, and artist research. Giving us quick answers to the questions we needed to know. We used Imovie the basic video editing software to create our animatic, which is an animated storyboard.

During production and filming mobile phone technology played a big part on film shooting as it became a camera to document our film shoot, but also with the GPS on my IPhone every time we took a picture it located and stored the location on a map so we had a plan of all the shots taken. Then when we had to shoot the actor we played our chosen song on the phone so we could lip synch the song with the actor.

Photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop played a massive role in making my Digi Pack and poster as the layout and design of my Digi pack could not have been made possible.

When we came to edit our music video Final cut was what we used as it is one of the most professional and affordable software’s available, to save time we used the laptops to upload then process the clips into QuickTime files to save time and keep organized.

Having abit of experiences using final cut we had the advantage to get a bit more in depth with what it can do so we began taking our film footage and creating effects. With out this software we could not of created our music video in they we have done.

The different ways new technologies have contributed to the blogs creating new ways to show research and planning on to the blogs, IPhone was useful to email other
Group members pictures straight away Through the social networking sites such as Facebook, this has give us the free service to advertise and link users to YouTube and gather audience feedback.