Note to examiner

Dear examiner 

Thank you for taking the time in looking at my A2 media coursework, I have really enjoyed the past few months of working on this course. I have been able to express my creativity and knowledge in many ways throughout this course. 

I hope you enjoy!

Final video

Digipak

Album cover advert

Album cover advert

Final Evaluation 1

Evaluation question 1 final. from GeorgeAnderton21

Relative theorist: Throughout my work I tried to follow the 7 conventions that should be included in a music video. These conventions were as followed:

1. Links between lyrics and visuals
2. Links between music and visuals (complimentary, contradicting or amplification)
3. Genre characteristics
4. Intertexual reference
5.  Notions of looking (objectification of women)
6. voyeurism (direct gaze, other people looking at artist, insight into artist life)
7. Demands of record label.

However, we didn’t manage to achieve all the conventions but it was important that we included some. For example, for number 1 in our draft music video we made the link between the lyrics “turning my milk sour”, by using a visual prop of us pouring milk over one of the artist. Number 2, we tried to link the genre of the music which is Indie/rock with visuals that match this. For example, the type of song and genre that we chose is very energetic, therefore, we decided to make the visuals of our music video verry energetic to challenge this convention. Number 2 links with number 3 as we decide to make our music video very energetic, but also, throughout my media products I used fonts that are commonly used throughout the indie/rock genre, as I wanted to make sure that I was challenging Andrew Goodwins theory. Also, I used colour pallets such as pink and black, which is commonly used throughout our chosen genre. The 7^th convention that Andrew Goodwin stated is that it is a must that I follow the demands of the record label. It was important to me that I followed this convention because I wanted to make my products as realistic as they could possible be. For example, one of the demands is that the record name/ logo is on the digipak somewhere, therefore I challenged this and added the record label logo at the bottom of my digipak. 

Before we started filming any part of our music video it was very important that we carried out research from previous media products, to help us come up with ideas for our own project.

When planning for our music video it was very important that we all chose which genre we wanted to base our product around. After researching and discussing the many different genres, it was clear to our group that we wanted to choose the Indie/rock genre. There were several reasons why we chose this genre. One of those is that we all have a good understanding of some aspects in this genre, for example; some of us knew about the different styling of which the artists wear in this genre, which we felt would come to a great advantage for us when choosing what clothes to wear in the final video. We also felt that other genres could be too challenging for us and could cause too many problems when creating the video. For example, the majority of our group listens to the Hip-Hop/Rap genre on a daily basis; therefore we felt that this genre would be the best to use. However, we realised that this specific genre would force ourselves to challenge too many of the existing conventions in the Hip-hop/rap genre which could end up jeopardising our final grade. Due to this factor we felt as a group we should stick to a genre that we could still challenge the conventions but also keep it noticeable to our chosen genre.

From our research in looking at the three different types of music videos, which are narrative, disjunctive and performance videos, we were able to come to the conclusion that we should create a performance video. This decision was prompted by various existing performance videos that other male bands, like ours, have created in the past. For example, the band Kasabian used this type of video for the song ‘Eez-eh’ and Oasis used it for the song ‘Wonder wall’. We decided to use this type of music video because we felt that the conventions involved would help us create an extremely good quality final video, as we would be able to experiment and challenge other media products that already exist. Also, as we had limited space and props to carry out the filming for our music video we decided that a performance video would be best for us. This was because we only have access to guitars, drums and whatever props we had at home or could buy for a small cost, due to our small budget. Having a small budget wasn’t a problem, as from a lot of existing Indie/rock music videos they seem to look like they have been filmed on a small budget as well, for example, in the Kasabain Eez-eh video they have used one studio throughout the whole video. This was an idea that stood out for us as this was similar to our own situation, as we were unsure whether to use an outside back drop or to use the school studio. Also, in the same video Kasabian used some wacky props. We took this into consideration and decided we wanted to follow the same conventions by using some of our own crazy, out of the blue props, such as the cars and baseball bat. We also decided to challenge the conventions the Indie/Rock genre by having wacky outfits. We felt that if we did this it would make our product stand out from existing products and challenge however, this was beneficial to us because these types of props, such as guitars and drums are used frequently throughout the Indie/Rock genre.

 The research didn’t stop there; we then needed to start thinking about what we were actually going to do during the video. Because we had already chosen to carry out a performance video we decided to take inspiration from big name bands in the Indie/Rock genre. For example, we looked at previous videos by Kasabian, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Snow patrol and several others. We pin pointed and selected different parts of existing media products and started to create our story board. From what we found out, is that many previous Indie/rock music videos are very energetic, and has the band members moving around and getting up close to the camera, such as the ‘Eez-eh’ music video by Kasabian. As a result of this we wanted to challenge these conventions and use some of these ideas in our own work by using a lot of movement in our video and getting the group to get up close to the camera. A big part of our work was that we wanted to express this through the use of facial expressions and over the top dancing to match the up beat rhythm. For this we wanted to add in some extreme close ups of our faces. For example we did this at minutes, (0.51-0.52) (0.59-1.04).

In any visual media product such as a music video, the camera angles are extremely important and we took this convention into account. We looked at what professional bands such as Kasabian and Oasis have done in the past and tried to challenge them. As a result of this we used a lot of hand held camera shots with different angles, and also we used several static shots. For example we have used hand held camera shots at minutes (0.24-0.32), (1.06-1.12), (1.16-1.22), (1.25-1.33), (1.35-1.53), (1.58-2.04), (2.20-2.29), (2.40-2.49) (2.51-2.58). Below is some visual examples of this.

The final stage of the production of our media product was the editing stage. At this stage we traced back to our research so that we could gain some ideas for different types of editing to help our media product stand out from existing products. During our research we came across a performance video which had used extreme editing shots with a lot of negative effect filters in. The use of these filters made the videos stand out and caused us to use them in our own media product. However, to make our media product stand out from our inspiration we chose to play around with the effect and use a variety of different filters and colours, to help ours stand out over the rest. An example of the use of these negative effects can be seen at minutes (0.18-0.21), (0.26-0.29), (0.42-0.45), (1.05), (1.15) (.127-1.28), (1.34) (1.40), (1.45) (1.53-1.55), (2.36-2.37), (2.41-2.43), (2.47-2.49).

 

Final Evaluation 2

Link to my prezzi - https://prezi.com/view/k7RV47xk7mjYJCyGAiVG/

Final Evaluation 3

Final Evaluation 3 by George Anderton on Scribd

Final Evaluation 4

Evaluation 4 by George Anderton on Scribd

Evaluation Question 4 draft

Evaluation Question 4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

There was a variety of technologies that we used throughout the process of making our media products. We began the whole course by setting up our blogs, we did this by using the website Blogger run by Google. Blogger allows us to share all our work with the teacher and gives us a chance to express our selves in different ways. 



(Blogger logo)

The next main piece  of technology that was used during the research stage was the search engine Google. I used Google so that i could research into existing media products, such as real adverts, digipaks and music videos. It was important that i carried out this research so that i could gain new ideas which would help me conduct my own media products. Once i had carried out my research i then uploaded the selected media products to my blog so that i could combined all the ideas together and analyse them to help me in the planning stage. 

(google logo)

Also, during the research stage i used Youtube. This was became very useful to me as i was able to research about existing music videos. I did this by watching existing music videos from all genres so that i could gain some ideas which would help me produce my own music video. Using Youtube was a great advantage to me as i had access to thousands of existing music videos, which i was able to analyses for new ideas. By having access to this source of technology it made the process of planning for my music video very easy, as without it i wouldn't of been able to come up with some of the ideas that we put into our video.

(Youtube logo)

As we were working in a team for this project, it was extremely important that we had good communication, especially when we were not together. Therefore, we decided to create a Snapchat group chat. Snapchat is a social media app that can be downloaded onto your smart phone, the app allows you to send written messages and photo messages to your friend. We decided to create the group chat so that we could share ideas and tell each other what props and equipment we needed to bring in for filming days. By having access to Snapchat it was very helpful to us, because it kept us organised, and also having good communication in the team is very good.

 (snapchat logo)

To help market out band and media products we set up a twitter account. By having this it allows us to stay in contact with our fans to keep them up dated on regular news, such as tour dates, when new albums are dropping, gain more research and etc. This type of social media is very useful to us because it allows us to engage with fans.

(Twitter logo)

Once all the planning was completed it was time to start taking photos for our album cover adverts and digipaks. For this we wanted to use a camera that took high quality images so that our media products looked as professional as we could make them. As a result of this we decided to use a Panasonic Lumix GH5 camera. This camera was extremly easy to use which was very good for our group as none of us are use to using a camera. By having access to this camera it meant that we were able to get some great shots for our adverts and digipaks.

(photo of camera)

After taking all the photos i important them onto my Apple Imac so that i could selected the good photos and delete the bad ones, ready to start creating my media products. This method was extremely easy as i all needed to do was insert the SD into the back of the Mac and click download. All the images then came up onto my screen and i just needed to put them into specific folders.

(picture of apple mac)

By having all my photos that i wanted to use in folders this then made it very easy for when i started using Adobe Photoshop. This is a graphics editor software that is downloadable for mac and windows. I used Adobe Photoshop throughout the whole process of creating my music album advert and my digipak. This is because i am use to working on this software as i have been working with it for four years now. The software comes with hundreds of tools that make it very fun and easy to use, the layout of the system is very simple which is why i like working with it.

(photoshop image)

To create the final video we used two different software's. First of all we decided to use to Imovie as  this was the default system designed by Apple, so we thought it would work very well, because we thought the link between the two Apple products (the Apple mac and Imovie) would correspond with each other, which was correct; as we found this stysem very easy to use when creating our draft music video. This system was good because it did everything we needed it to do, however, we gained information from other class members that another software, called Final Cut pro was much easier and better to use. As a result of this we decided to use it for our final music video. Final Cut pro was hard to get use to but after researching how to use it we found it much easier to use and it had a lot of effects/ tools to use. We thought it was important that the software that we were using had a lot of effects because this was on of our main ideas for our video.

(imovie & final cut pro image)

Evaluation Question 3 draft

 Feeback is key when creating a media product because it helps shape and improve the final product so that it aims to please the customers, in this case the fans. It also shows you that the customers are valuable to you as you are asking for their opinions.

Our first piece of feedback that we gained was for our pitch, from our teacher and peers. Our peers were both male and female, age 17-18. Our feedback was mostly positive as we were told:

 "You have the space to be creative"

"Good song choice"

 "Some interesting location ides and interesting band name"

 "Good styling ideas and song choice" x2

 "Ideas match the styling"

 "Ideas match the genre" x3

 "Well thought out idea"

 The negative feedback was:

"Rooftop shots may be difficult due to lighting and security issues" x2

"Security issues when filming on rooftop" x6

 We decided to ignore some of the comments from our teacher and peers as we felt that they didn't criticise or help us in anyway. For example; "You have space to be creative", this comment was nice but gave us something to work with. However, comments such as "Good song choice" let us know that our audience feel we have chosen a good song which means that we don't need to re-think about our idea. Also, comments such as; "Rooftop shots may be difficult due to lightening and security issues" made us think about different filming locations which would benefit us more. This then made us realise that we need a back up location.

We then gained feedback from our teacher about our draft music video. This feedback was really important to us as we wanted to take in and acknowledge everything that our teacher was telling us, in order to make our media product the best that it could be. As our teacher has great understanding and experience in this subject, which allows us to have the best feedback.

The feedback that we got was:

 "Consider opening with a bold fluorescent title card, like existing Indie/Rock bands have used."

"Negative effects shots fit genre."

 "Nice transition from George to Josh – why not include the whole band in this sequence?"

 "Avoid using the milk shots as this is too obvious on the ‘turning my milk sour line’."

 "we need a greater variety of props included in our video."

 "Outside (field) shots dont suit our chosen genre."

 "Look at the off camera shots in Oasis Whatever for candid band shots as well as close up Liam vocals (colour only) for Jack’s singing."

 "Avoid static camera shots, add more energetic movement shots in"

 "Avoid including a car. It doesn’t work."

 "Ensure video lasts a minimum of 2:30"

 The first comment that was given to us about "Consider opening with a bold fluorescent title card, like existing Indie/Rock bands have used." made us consider using this affect in our video because it is common component of Indie/rock music videos. As we a result of this we thought that it would be a great idea to use this in our own work, as we wanted to create a realistic media product. Therefore, this specific feedback given to us was very useful. Another comment that was very useful to us was that the "Negative effects shots fit genre." this indicated to us that our music video was following the correct conventions, which is exactly what we aimed to do. This is so that our music video falls under the indie/rock genre and not another genre that we didn't aim to match. A positive comment, such as "Nice transition from George to Josh – why not include the whole band in this sequence?" is always useful as we can extend from this to add in more shots that match these. As a result of this we decided to add in more transitions of the band to make a positive improvement to our video. Once we had seen the comments, "Avoid static camera shots, add more energetic movement shots in" and "Avoid including a car. It doesn’t work.", we decided to listen to our teacher and replace these shots with new shots. This is simile because we have belief in our teacher as he has a lot more experience in what makes a good music video. To follow the rules that the exam board have set us we decided to listen to the advice that our teach gave us about ensuring our video lasts a minimum of 2:30 minutes, we made our final music video around the 3 minute mark so that we didn't lose any marks.

 We also gained feedback on our digipak draft from our teacher. This feedback was again very useful as it helped me develop my digipak to a better standard, that also fits better with my chose genre. The comments that were given to me were:

"Include text on the spine (Catalogue number, record label, album title, artist)"

 "Take the album name off any panels apart from the cover"

 "Fill all the panels, have no plain ones."

"Improve the size of the fonts"

 Once we had uploaded our final music video to YouTube we then waited for the feedback. The feedback from our teacher included comments such as, “I enjoyed the use of filters and negative effects, i also like accuracy of the lip syncing and the tempo of the editing fits the song and genre better. Great improvement from the draft”. This reassured us that we had made a great improvement from our draft as our teacher knows exactly what to look for and what needs changing. As well as that, we also gained feedback from a YouTube comment by Tikikiti, this comment was "Hi George Anderton!  We liked your video of Eez-Eh by Kasabian "Eezeh" - Final Video.  Great camera moves, color editing, creative editing, fast-paced cutting, lighting, lip sync, music interpretation, overall creativity, special effects, and use of abstract imagery.  Look forward to seeing more of your videos.  Tikikiti". Again this comment gave us great confidence that we have created a good piece of work. The video has also got 6 likes and no dislikes.

Evaluation Question 2 draft

During the creation stage of my two ancillary products and my music video I wanted to make all my three products relate to each other in a certain way. I chose three conventions to link between the three products; these were the, costumes, fonts and the colour schemes.

Firstly, it was very important that I chose the right costumes that fitted with our chosen genre. This meant that I needed to take time in researching into what clothes existing bands in the Indie/rock genre have worn, before in their own ancillary products and music videos. During my research I found that the styling is very casual in which is what I tried to carry across into all three of my media products. This is so that I kept all the conventions of the Indie/rock genre realistic and recognisable. By keeping this element the same throughout all three of my products this will help the audience associate all of my products to one and other, as this is also a common convention used in existing, professional media products. For example Kasabian used this convention in their Eez-eh video, as they kept the same outfits during certain shots and then changed for another which involved different lyrics and camera angles, they then changed back into the previous outfits when they went back to the other shots.

Secondarily, too keep all three of my media products associated with each other I needed to keep the fonts that I had used similar throughout all of my ancillary products and music video, this meant that I needed to chose a font that was associated with the Indie/rock genre and used it on both my diggipak and advert. The fonts that I used were bold and in big sized writing for the titles. This was so that the words stuck out on the page and were easily recognisable for my audience. This is important because I want my audience to be able to see my products and instantly remember which album is coming out and that it is my band. During my research I found that this type of font is used throughout the indie/rock genre. This is another reason why I chose to use this, because I wanted to use similar elements in my work so that my products have the same conventions to fit in with the Indie/rock genre. On my digipak I chose to use a basic white colour over a very bright pink, this is because I wanted the words to stand out on the page. I then chose to use the same style of font for my advert and again use the same colours to help it stand out. For example bands like Kasabian and The Arctic Monkeys also used these sharp, bold fonts in their media products.

Finally, I wanted to use the same colours throughout all three of my media products, especially my advert and my digipak. This is because I want my audience to be able to see the connection and instantly recognise that it is a media product by The One Second Riot (my band). The colours that I used in were pink, black and white. These colours are traditionally used throughout the Indie/rock genre, which is one of the reasons why I chose these, because I wanted to use the same conventions so that my work could relate to the chosen genre. For example, Kasabian used pink and black for their 48:13 album and The Arctic Monkeys used black and white for their AM album digipak and advert. This wasn’t the only reason for my decision; I also wanted to use colours that are going to stand out to my audience’s eyes, as this is very import when marketing my product, as I want to sell. As I didn’t use these colours as much during my music video I still tried to add a small element of this, by using the negative effects with the bright colours, in order to link all three of my media products. I tried to link all three of these products in order for my audience to recognise all three product belonged to my band.

Evaluation Question 1 draft

Before we started filming any part of our music video it was very important that we carried out research from previous media products, to help us come up with ideas for our own project.

When planning for our music video it was very important that we all chose which genre we wanted to base our product around. After researching and discussing the many different genres, it was clear to our group that we wanted to choose the Indie/rock genre. There were several reasons why we chose this genre. One of those is that we all have a good understanding of some aspects in this genre, for example; some of us knew about the different styling of which the artists wear in this genre, which we felt would come to a great advantage for us when choosing what clothes to wear in the final video. We also felt that other genres could be too challenging for us and could cause too many problems when creating the video. For example, the majority of our group listens to the Hip-Hop/Rap genre on a daily basis; therefore we felt that this genre would be the best to use. However, we realised that this specific genre would force ourselves to challenge too many of the existing conventions in the Hip-hop/rap genre which could end up jeopardising our final grade. Due to this factor we felt as a group we should stick to a genre that we could still challenge the conventions but also keep it noticeable to our chosen genre.

From our research in looking at the three different types of music videos, which are narrative, disjunctive and performance videos, we were able to come to the conclusion that we should create a performance video. This decision was prompted by various existing performance videos that other male bands, like ours, have created in the past. For example, the band Kasabian used this type of video for the song ‘Eez-eh’ and Oasis used it for the song ‘Wonder wall’. We decided to use this type of music video because we felt that the conventions involved would help us create an extremely good quality final video, as we would be able to experiment and challenge other media products that already exist. Also, as we had limited space and props to carry out the filming for our music video we decided that a performance video would be best for us. This was because we only have access to guitars, drums and whatever props we had at home or could buy for a small cost, due to our small budget. Having a small budget wasn’t a problem, as from a lot of existing Indie/rock music videos they seem to look like they have been filmed on a small budget as well, for example, in the Kasabain Eez-eh video they have used one studio throughout the whole video. This was an idea that stood out for us as this was similar to our own situation, as we were unsure whether to use an outside back drop or to use the school studio. Also, in the same video Kasabian used some wacky props. We took this into consideration and decided we wanted to follow the same conventions by using some of our own crazy, out of the blue props, such as the cars and baseball bat. We also decided to challenge the conventions the Indie/Rock genre by having wacky outfits. We felt that if we did this it would make our product stand out from existing products and challenge however, this was beneficial to us because these types of props, such as guitars and drums are used frequently throughout the Indie/Rock genre.

The research didn’t stop there; we then needed to start thinking about what we were actually going to do during the video. Because we had already chosen to carry out a performance video we decided to take inspiration from big name bands in the Indie/Rock genre. For example, we looked at previous videos by Kasabian, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Snow patrol and several others. We pin pointed and selected different parts of existing media products and started to create our story board. From what we found out, is that many previous Indie/rock music videos are very energetic, and has the band members moving around and getting up close to the camera, such as the ‘Eez-eh’ music video by Kasabian. As a result of this we wanted to challenge these conventions and use some of these ideas in our own work by using a lot of movement in our video and getting the group to get up close to the camera. A big part of our work was that we wanted to express this through the use of facial expressions and over the top dancing to match the up beat rhythm.

In any visual media product such as a music video, the camera angles are extremely important and we took this convention into account. We looked at what professional bands such as Kasabian and Oasis have done in the past and tried to challenge them. As a result of this we used a lot of hand held camera shots with different angles, and also we used several static shots.

The final stage of the production of our media product was the editing stage. At this stage we traced back to our research so that we could gain some ideas for different types of editing to help our media product stand out from existing products. During our research we came across a performance video which had used extreme editing shots with a lot of negative effect filters in. The use of these filters made the videos stand out and caused us to use them in our own media product. However, to make our media product stand out from our inspiration we chose to play around with the effect and use a variety of different filters and colours, to help ours stand out over the rest.