Evaluation

 In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For our media product we had to create a music video, digi-pack and poster to advertise a new album release. My group picked the genre of heavy metal and chose to work with the song; ‘A Single Moment of Sincerity’ by Asking Alexandria. As a group we had to research our genre and record it on our blogs to ensure we knew the conventions of our genre and understood our genre thoroughly, which would enable us to do the best we could in creating our media product.

When researching music videos we watched a number of music videos from a number of different bands such as; Asking Alexandria, Bring Me The Horizon and Miss May I. We noticed that all of the music videos had some sort of band performance from the artist and we decided that this was an important convention, which we would need to include in our music video. We shot our band performance and used red and blue stage lighting for this in a black room however when editing it in finale cut we found the lighting to not look professional and the band performance to not have enough energy which we found during research to be an important convention of the performance. We decided to re-shoot and have another go at trying to make our band performance fit the conventions of our genre we used white lighting to give it more of a professional look and used an HD camera to give our footage a better quality look. We then made sure that our band performance was very energetic and enthusiastic, it came out a lot better and I think it is a lot more successful of showing our use of conventions from a heavy metal genre. Below is a video I created by putting three different clips of music video performances from three different bands in my genre of heavy metal. I also created another video with three clips from my own music video showing how we used the conventions of our genre to create a successful performance in our music video.

When researching our genre we found that the music videos have a lot of dark or strange imagery, especially in cutaways. We decided to develop this by thinking of some unusual shots we could take, one of our most successful shots is of the lead singer trying to sing but having black tape over his mouth so was unable to do so. This gives quite a violent, aggressive and angry look as he is being restricted; trying to be stopped from saying something he wants. It contrasts with the loud, harsh music of our song choice as when people’s mouths are covered they are being forced to be quiet, it could also represent that the song lyrics are what are going on inside his head and he can’t express his feelings out loud. Below is a video I created by putting clips of different successful imagery and cut away's used in professional heavy metal music videos. I also created a video with clips from our music video with our most successful imagery of using the black tape over the mouth.





Part of our music video challenges typical conventions; there is a bridge in our song where all the harsh instrument playing and scream-o vocals stop and it’s focused on softer singing. For the moving image at this part we decided to use the opposite conventions of our genre in by using slower paced editing and making the performance a lot calmer and relaxed rather than being extremely energetic. Below is a video I created with clips from professional heavy metal music videos that shows typical conventions of an energetic performance. I also created a video with a clip from our music video showing how we went against these conventions during a calmer section in our music video.

For our digi-pack and advert we used typical conventions of having a main band photo, for this we had to ensure they were wearing similar clothes as in the music video so they keep the specific ‘look’ that we researched and planned on our blog. When researching heavy metal bands album artwork we noticed that photos had been edited to give them a dark, rundown or evil look. We took this convention and used it when editing our photos on Photoshop by changing the contrast and exposure to make the photos darker and look more professional and then added a filter over the top that gave our photos a ‘rough’ look which helped it fit the genre.  We developed the idea of our genre by using white text for our band logo by using white coloured text so it would stand out over the dark photos and would be easy for the audience to spot and catch their attention if they are a fan of that bands music. We also took the convention of using dark, angry colours and used red and grey text on our advert as the grey represents the darkness of the genre along with the red which can represent blood, danger and death which are common themes in music videos and album artwork in other bands that we researched. Below is pictures of our digi-pack that we created and the album cover of the Asking Alexandria's album which is a band within our genre.

In conclusion I feel that my group worked hard in researching our genre to ensure we knew a lot about it and thoroughly planned what we wanted to achieve so we were confident when creating our work.  Also I think the fact we re-shot the band performance shows we worked hard to achieve the best we could and made sure our video was as successful as t could be.

How effective is the combinations of your main product and ancillary texts?

As a group we worked hard to research the conventions of our genre and to create a band, name and specific ‘look’ to work with when creating our music video and ancillary tasks. When looking at other music videos of bands such as; Asking Alexandria, Bring Me The Horizon and Miss May I we realized that the lighting and effects on the moving image are quite dark to give a sad, depressing, angry and dangerous look, this is also used in photos on their album covers and advertisements. We decided this would be an effective way to represent our genre so we filmed the band section of our music video in a completely black room and used blue and red stage lights however this didn’t create the look that we wanted as it didn’t look professional so we re-shot it and used white lights as stage lighting to show the people up. The contrast of the blacks with colours was good for this as the contrast looked really professional. We also used the idea of using dark effects on our photos for our ancillary task, we edited them on Photoshop by making the exposure lower and the contrast higher which made the blacks in the photo more predominant and gave the photos a darker look. We also added a filter over the top which made the photo look more professional and fit in more with the heavy metal genre. 

We chose three people to be in our band that we thought has a heavy metal ‘look’ about them. When researching we noticed that people in the bands usually have longish hair, tattoos, piercings, and where casual clothes with a lot of dark colours and some big logos. Two of the people in our band had medium swept over hair and one hand fairly long straight hair. When planning we decided that all band members should where trainers or converse, dark coloured jeans or skinny jeans and a top with a gothic-type logo or picture on it, they could also wear a dark hoodie or a leather jacket. We made sure that they kept this look in both the music video and ancillary task to ensure that it was constant throughout our work and that the ancillary task and music video look as though they go together and are for the same band.

Making gif

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When researching I wanted to find out what people felt about different genres and what they expected of them, also about what they expected to see from our genre so I created a survey and asked a number of people of different genders and ages to fill it in so I could get a wide range of information and opinions to use when planning my work. I learnt about the age range of people that enjoy heavy metal so I know the main audience that I am working towards interesting with my music video and ancillary task. I also learnt about the most popular bands to look at for inspiration and research. I learnt about the stereotypes of the genre in the type of imagery used, dress sense of band members and typical instruments used an associated with heavy metal.

When we got class feedback after our first draft a lot of people said we would benefit on reshooting our band performance which we also thought so we took this on bored and planned a reshoot to improve the parts in the performance that weren’t so successful, for example the lighting needed to be changed and we the band members needed to be more energetic and enthusiastic as it is a main convention of our genre. I think our reshoot was very successful as it looks a lot more professional and fits in with out genre more with a better band performance.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used a number of different media technologies during the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages.

• We recorded our research and planning on a blog website (Blogger). We had to insure we used good media terminology when writing up about what we have found out or planned to do and also we had to make our blogs visually interesting by including photos, mood boards, screen captures, gifs and videos.
• When doing our audience research I used google docs to create a questionnaire to find out about what music people listen to, how they listen to it and what they think are main conventions of my chosen genre. I had to write a set of ten questions such as; 'How often do you watch music videos?' and 'What do you expect to see in a heavy metal music video?' I then email it to a number of people to answer of of both male and female and a wide age range of 13 year olds to mid 30's so I got a veriety of differnet view and ideas. I have our results on graphs and charts to make them easier to view and understand. Below is a screen capture of some of the results recorded on my blog.

• When planning to create our music video I created an animatic from our storyboard to show how long each shot needs to last and when it comes in to what part of the song. I did this by drawing out a story board for out music video and then taking a photo of each picture and putting them on Imovie and editing them so they stayed on screen for as long as we planned that shot to go on for and put in the music we chose so we could see what shot comes in at what part of the song.
  
  
• During the construction of our music video we used final cut on apple mac computers to edit our music video. It was a more advanced program than using iMovie like we did duriong our AS foundation portfolio. I found final cut more efficient for editing footage and learnt quickly how to cut shots and add effects to the moving image to make it look more professional.
  

  

  
  
• When creating our ancillary task we used Photoshop to edit pictures to make them look more professional by changing brightness and contrast of the images to make them look darker and adding a filter over the top to give it a rough, grainy look. and used a website called; ‘dafont’ to download different fonts to use in the text on our album covers and posters that are more elaborate and look more creative so they our products look more professional.