Evaluation

Question1. In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge conventions of music videos?

The first convention that we chose to use was to use performance shots of our artist singing the lyrics of the song and playing a including an instrument. This is one of the most important aspects of Indie videos as the artists want to be portrayed as credible musicians. Much like the David Grey video that i have previously analysed (insert link) we have created performance shots from lots of different angles to highlight the artist’s skills as a musician. We wanted to have close ups of the fret board of the guitar as well as the sound hole to show both pieces of a guitar. We also have a lot of close ups of our performer holding and playing the guitar. Also including the instrument is a very important part of the Indie genre because these artists want to be seen as convincing musicians. We thought that it was necessary to include a guitar to emulate this. We took this one step further by having our artist switch from an electric to acoustic guitar towards to end of the video. This adds variety and interest as well as highlighting that our artist is a versatile performer.

                               

Another convention we used was Steve Archer’s theory of integrating the performance aspects of our video with a narrative such as John Mayer’s Shadow Days (http://youtu.be/daGcpvxPbCo1) . This will help relate the lyrics to the visuals of the video and will give the audience something to relate to. It also gives the artist a sense of identity. We decided to amplify and illustrate some of the lyrics in the song. For example “pass it up into the sky” is portrayed with a kite being thrown up into the sky and the use of slow motion editing emphasizes this. We also had the artist saying some of the lyrics to the girl in the video, again illustrating the meaning. We also chose to amplify some lyrics such “whats the point in this mystery”. The whole video revolves around the idea that nobody knows why she is leaving. This follows the enigma code and keeps the audience interested.   We chose to have cross cuts between this story and performance shots as well as adhering to Steve Archers theory it also creates binary opposition between him being alone and with the girl. In one particular scene we chose to use adjacent cross and additive dissolves which fades between these two opposites making it more obvious.

We have developed the idea of the digipack showing our artist in more details. We in fact have made our artist more mysterious as we haven’t got a shot of his face in a single CD photo. As we have seen from typical CD photo booklets and digipacks, including the John Mayer album I have previously analysed, there is at least one shot where you can see the artist’s face. This helps the audience to identify the artist and almost get to know him. It also makes the album seem more personal. We decided that we didn’t want to do this. We wanted to still have that sense of mystery that can be seen in our video. Our artist is included in our CD photos: we see him from the back and from a slight angle, but never from the front. 

A convention that we have developed is the use of intertexuality. We wanted to use the basic conventions of Romantic Comedy movies. The way that we challenged this convention was to change the ending of our narrative to contradict the usual convention of a happy ending. We wanted to do this so that our audience would expect a happy ending throughout the video but then surprise them by having the girl walk away and leave the boy. Much like certain rom coms we wanted our video to reflect the “happy montage” scenes that are typical in these movies. We did this by having our video in chronological order from the morning to the evening. The use of the “home video” hand held shots on the camera phone also give more of an insight into what seems like  a happy and playful day.  We used fast cutting rates and mid shots of the two characters together to emphasise this. To then contrast with this we used a slower cutting rate and more additive and cross dissolves as well as a lower key color filter to highlight the problems between the couple and create a more melancholic atmosphere.

A convention we challenged was the use of point of view shots. Most music videos will have an to objective to help to audience identify and feel closer to the artist  like in the Joshua Radin video where the subject is very personal to the artist. We took this a step further by introducing “home” handheld footage shot by the artist. This allows the audience to see exactly what the artist is seeing and help them feel closer to him. It also makes the audience feel sympathetic towards him as they get to see what he is losing; seeing him at his most vulnerable  The use of the overlaying flashing credit identifies the footage as being on a phone and we also lowered the resolution to make the footage less high quality. This creates a contrast to the rest of our footage. This is different from most music videos where the footage will be filmed in the third person and the main focus will be the artist whereas we chose to focus on the girl.

Another convention that we challenged that was also picked up on by our audience was the absence of the remaining instruments featured on the track. Even many solo artist have a band featured with them if there is a "band-like" arrangement in terms on instruments on the track. We decided not to have to so that there was sole focus on our artist. When we originally started planning our video we were going to include shots of a drumkit and other guitarists but then decided that it would detract from our artist and may also give the audience the impression that he was part of a band. This can be seen in the David Grey video that I had previously analysed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqIFYv1_yHI) where a drummer is featured even though the artist is solo. To compensate for this however we chose to use a variety of different camera angles including close up and mid shots of the acoustic guitar and then close ups on the bridge of the electric guitar. We thought it was important to emphasise the fact that the video is for a solo artist and we wanted to focus to be on the storyline.

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Question2.

Question3.

As well as showing the video to peers from our target demographic I also showed the video to my family to get some initial response. Like some of our other audience members they were slightly confused as to what story we were trying to tell and were left needing to watch it a second time to understand it. Looking back, I think that we may have tried to convey too complicated a storyline and should have stuck to something simpler that we could have portrayed more effectively. They did however like the home footage that we shot as it gave a new and different perspective to the video. My mother in particular thought that some of the transitions we used could have been smoother or more thought about in terms of what dissolves we used as she found it a little repetitive.

Overall we have had mixed feedback, some audience members found it to be a very effective and well executed music video that they would watch again and some found it a little confusing. Obviously it is impossible to please everyone but I think that there are minor adjustments that we could have made to overall create a more authentic music video.

Question4.

Overall I used many different media technologies to plan, create and evaluate our media product. Some of these technologies I had used before such as blogger and the HD cameras and final cut express but now I feel that I have developed these skills and have learnt new and more effective ways of using them such as opening numerous sequences in final cut express and adjusting the settings on the camera. Using photoshop was a new experience for me as I had never used it before. Watching tutorials on youtube helped me understand the more advance skills that I would need to learn but ultimately playing around with the programme and creating practise images is how I got to grips with it. I now feel that I am pretty competent in using this programme. Sliderocket and Slideshare were also new websites that I used and they became particularly useful in keeping all my presentations in one place and it made it easier for me to embed this information into blog posts via an embed code in the HTML box in blogger.

Ancillary Texts

Digipack Photos

Front Cover

Inlay 1

Inlay 2

Inlay 3

Inlay 4

Inlay 5

Back Cover

Advert

Digipack Dimensions and Layouts

There are different templates that can be used when creating a digipack booklet/inlays and each one has there advantages and disadvantages

This is a new way layout of CD where the CD case it integrated with the covers and inlays. This creates a continuous line of photos with the 3 inlays but the still keeps the back and front cover separate  allowing for some subtle differences in fonts and colors without it looking miss matched. This caters for 4 inlays (one behind the disc), a front and a back cover.

 This inlay booklet does allow for a continuous line of images as the whole booklet folds out into one. This is good if you want to display lots of images of your artist or if you want to display the lyrics for all of your tracks. I think that this type of template means you need a running theme throughout all of your images. This caters for 6 inlays, a front and a back cover.

 This is the standard booklet that you would find separate from the CD and the front and the back cover. This would be typical if the album was being sold as a hard CD and not a digital download. It is a very common template used by popular musicians. This allows for 8 inlays.

This is a more basic form of digipack booklet used for albums with minimal images. It only allows for 2 inlays, one behind the disc and a front and a back cover. This kind of template could be used by artists who pride themselves on being minimal and simple and could be good for an Indie artist.

Creating a Contact Sheet- photoshop tutorial

For one of our inlays of our digipack we wanted to have a contact sheet of behind the scenes shots of the overall production of the music, video and photoshoot for the digipack. This would allow the audience to feel more connected to the audience and would also show that he is involved in all aspects of the album making process and is a credible artist.

We did not know the best way of creating a contact sheet so I found a tutorial on youtube explaining photoshop's default setting for creating one.




 

Digipack- practice wallpaper

Having come up with a concept for our front, back and two of the inlays of our digipack, we decided it would be good to test out the wallpaper idea. We bought some brick wallpaper and wrote the lyrics on it. More wallpaper was then stuck over the top ready to be torn off.

Digipack Font Research

OUR ALBUM TITLE

Photoshop Tutorial - Filters

For one of the inlays of our digipack, we are creating a production montage. For this particular inlay we want to add a sepia type filter to all of our photos. Having not had much experience with Photoshop, I decided to look for a tutorial to find out how to add filter layers.

Filming

Unfortunately we have been unable to film over half term like we had planned because of various reasons from all of us. We plan to therefore film this coming Saturday  In the mean time we will start working on our digipack as we are not using any shots from our video to do this.

Jack Johnson Digipack analysis

In Between Dreams was the debut album from Jack Johnson. The cover is very simple using only 2 colors, the yellow and green. It creates a silhouette like image with the yellow being the light from the sun. Johnson is only seen very small compared to the tree and we cannot see his face making it more mysterious but also gives the impression that he is less about his image and more about his music. He can be seen with his guitar a prominent feature in his music and this gives him the credibility as a musician. The font is relatively small and simple again reflecting the simplicity of his music. The slight view of the sea in the background represents his home town of Hawaii but also adds a sense of tranquillity and relaxation. The image of his guitar emphasizes the genre of his music and is a running theme throughout all texts by Jack Johnson. 

The back cover again is yellow and black creating the silhouette effect and the font is simple. The composition of the texts mirrors the branch and creates a balanced layout.
The spine also follows the theme of the whole album. The small print offers the audience other platforms to find music and special features; something that we would ideally like to mimic.

This is a contrasting inlay compared to the one seen above. It shows a collage of photographs from the music making progress and it almost a "behind the scenes" look. It confirms Johnson as a credible artist and someone who is involved in all aspects of his music. It also has a "thankyou" section which helps connect with the audience.

John Mayer Digipack analysis

This is the cover and one of the inlays of John Mayer's album "Room for Squares". Compared to the last album of his tht i looked at you can see that this one has a much brighter color pallete using orange and yellow tones. On the front cover there is no eye contact with the camera which is not challenging to the audience. He is also dressed very casually making him seem very relaxed and laid back. Also Mayer is featured in the left third of the screen which again does not challenge the audience. He is sitting down which adds to the relaxed approach of the cover. His guitar is featuerd which imidietely links the artist to the Indie genre. The division of the cover into smaller squares links to the title of the album "Room for Sqaures" and creates an interesting way of dividing up the page. The black emboldened writing contrasts with the stark white backgroud that it has been placed upon but lso contrasts with the warmer yellow color scheme that is seen throughout the rest of the digipack.

The inlay includes thankyou sections which helps the artist connect with their audience and maybe even thank them for buying the record. The photos follow the color scheme and again the guitar is featured. The overlapping photos creates a square linking wit the title. However in the lower photo we see Mayer directly adress the camera but in a playful way with a slight smile so again this is not challenging the audience. The lighting in the photos seems natural and bright which is more suggestive of happiness.

This is the back cover of the album. Again we see the black writing on the plain white background which makes the song titles easy to read. The squares that can be seen make up the shape of the periodic table which links to science. This I think implies that there is a science to art and music but also includes the sqaures that are mentioned in the title of the album. Even the colors match those of the color scheme. The legal small print on the album is inbetween the two sections of the table where there would normally be writing on a scientific version of the table.This creates an almost accurate representation of the table. However the squares are empty which creates a simpler and more basic pattern and almost reflects the pattern on the cover of the album. The barcode is situated in an unuasual place (we would expect to find it at the bottom of the cover somewhere). This may be so it does not interfere with the table of sqaures that we see.  

This is the CD artwork and again shows the periodic table but this time in its entirity with all the elements being labelled in the boxes. Also although the orange keeps the color scheme it is brighter and less soft and against the black background creates a greater contrast. The text is also in orange making it stand out against the black background. The black background itself creates contrast witht the rest of the album which contains very little black. Even though this is the case it does not create sadness as one may thinks. The website is displayed on the disc showing the other platforms that the music can be consumed on. There are also lables and small print round the bottom of the disc which confirm its credibility as a CD