Evaluation Question One

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

To start off our investigation into our music video we firstly looked into suitable songs that were not signed to a well established record label, this would make it easier for us as a small group to gain consent from the organisation and band to use their song. After looking into this and receiving a fast response from ‘bud fox management’ we then decided as a group to look at other music videos and music video products to gain knowledge of the market and to give us the opportunity to develop our ideas.

When looking at other real media products we picked up a few techniques that we thought would look effective within the genre of our music video – ‘Indie rock’. 

Example – Kickstarts                                                   

When viewing this media product we were interested with the idea of feet tapping to the beat of the music. We felt that it would both fit in with the genre of the music and our target audience. To challenge this convention as a group we decided to only have one pair of feet tapping to the music (so there is no split screen). I feel that the outcome of this technique is very effective as we could use it through out the open sequence of our music video. We were able to split the opening sequence so that it alternated bewtween shots of the protagonists' face and shots of the feet. We wanted to inclded fast edits thorugh out the music video so that it linked and resembled edits with in the 'Kickstart' video. Unforunatly due to the bad quailty of the SD camera it is not as good quality as we first thought. Another factor was the dark lighting in the room. It would have been more suitable if we had lights to light the area. I have included a screen shot on the left from out music video to show how the shot challenges that of Examples.

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Another technique that we recognised with in the music video was the split screen just after the foot tap. Again we felt that this technique was very effective and would fit into almost everything in our music video. We particularly liked how the frames multiplied as the music progressed. To challenge this convention we chose to start with a black screen (bottom right) we then took clips from different sections of our music video that were significant with in the video and separated the verses. We made each clip gradually come onto the screen to that in time it would create a 9 way split. We then selected the frame we wanted and it would come out to reveal a full screen. The music video would then carry on. We did this in ever interlude.  Although the concept of the technique is the same we have modified it so much to fit the needs and opinions of our target audience that the link between the technique isnt that reconisable which is disapointing. However i feel that the outcome of this technique is excellent and adds aesthetic values to the overall macro effect of our video.

In terms of our digipack we looked at various colours, techniques and layouts that could be used. However we felt that it would be best to create a digipack that had strong relations between our music video. The strongest aspect to use was books - opens out, and we could design our own front cover. I had seen the 'Kaiser Chiefs' album cover before and remembered the distinct album cover of a book. As a group we felt that it would be an excellent idea to design and create our own book cover to fit in with the genre of our music video.

To challenge and develop this we decided to change the colour of the digipack to reflect the genre of the music, and also so consumers would buy our product due to the eyecatching colour. We also decided that it would be best for the title to be hand written so that it linked with the vynil at the beginning of our video. In comparison to the 'Kaiser chiefs' who have used black as the background colour and yellow as the label, also this stands out very well we felt that it would make the band look more like a rock band instead of indie rock. As a final outcome i feel that or digipack is the most successful aspect of our ancilary task as it has been well thought about and shows in our final outcome.

In terms of our poster we didnt look at specific existing media products when desinging it. Originally we had planned to look at music magazines etc but unforunatly due to issues eguarding our music video we didnt get round to doing this. I already had a few magazines but none of them included the type of content we were looking for to create our poster. As a group we decided to go forward and create our poster on photoshop and i feel the over all outcome of it is very effective.