The evaluation

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

We were tasked with making a promotional video and two ancillary tasks comprising of a digipak and a magazine advert. To do this we were asked to choose an unsigned band, one so we were not able to just copy a video that they may have made already for the chosen song and two to not get any complications with copyright etc. All three elements of the task are promotional and are designed to promote the band/artist. The promotional video would be something that is extremely creative and attached to a specific song, in our case this would be specific to the song “As long as you know” by the unsigned artist named SCAR. The video will also be very dependent on the genre of the artist/band, having very specific content (mainly mise en scene) that relates to the artist, and will overall affect all three final products. The digipak, although it may be a less favoured method of purchase in the current “digital age”, will again be a promotional piece that is aimed to entice people to make a purchase of the album. The digipak features additional information and “goodies” over the regular CD case, things such as artwork, bios of band members and maybe even some specific memorabilia. One of the promotional methods that will be present throughout all aspects of the task will be a reoccurring theme or themes that relate each piece and will again encourage people to have an interest in the band. Lastly the Magazine advert, again featuring reoccurring themes from the other tasks, will be a fully promotional piece as it is literally promoting the release of the album which again is mainly influenced by both genre and representation of the band, something that someone could easily recognize and even relate to would be considered a successful promotion (along with the millions of purchases on day one of the release).

The video itself has a repertoire of elements that are needed to make up a promo video. These will be things such as camera work and a mix of narrative and performance. Firstly is the narrative, a music video doesn’t necessarily have to have narrative within it, it could be a video that is purely performance however this is unusual of a music video promo. This mix of narrative and performance can be of a few different types these are amplification, illustration, disjuncture and finally intertextuality. Amplification will be taking one idea, usually part of the lyrics and then amplify this throughout the music video and have it as a reoccurring idea for the whole of the music video. Illustration is what it says on the tin, it takes the lyrics of the song and literally illustrates what the song is about and will follow the lyrics within the narrative, this does mean that a video can also be purely narrative however again this would be unconventional of a promo. Disjuncture is almost the opposite of illustration where by the video has no representation to the lyrics and did an assortment of random shots. Intertextuality refers to the idea of taking what another video has done and then remaking it in either a pastiche, parody or homage.

The main factor that takes both the focus and style of all three tasks is the genre. The genre is the first step in choosing what the digipak, poster and the promotional video are going to look like and how they are all representative of the band. In our case we had chosen the band SCAR, under the category of rock on the unsigned.com website, and when listening to their music we easily picked up on the genre being rock and instantly related them to other bands in our initial thoughts. Bands such as Sum 41, Blink 182 and Bowling for soup where the three main bands that we said had similarities to this type of music and we then set out on finding inspiration from these bands, all three of these bands were a prominent part of our research and planning and are all featured on my blog. When looking at other similar bands or artists for inspiration we looked at the conventions to start with, firstly we listed what we felt the conventions of a rock band are and then we looked at the videos to add to this list and develop further on the ones we had. The rock genre has many conventions, usually darker colours for the more serious video which is usually associated with the heavier rock, tattoos, punk/thug looking members and a lot of performance in comparison with narrative is the usual rock video. However we decided our chosen song “As long as you know” followed suit with the more light hearted, micky taking videos that many of the bands we looked at, such as Bowling for soup, have done.

General music video conventions are things like pace of the clips shown will be equal to the pace of the song. There will usually be a good blend of both narrative and performance and the typical music video will be illustrative or amplification. There will usually be a mix of many shot types but then again this will be more dependent on the genre e.g. a more personal slow song will feature more close ups to show emotion etc. All conventions will be very dependent on the genre furthermore many of the music videos specific to a genre will have a specific set of stereotypes associated with them and these will often be seen. Bands that have broken these conventions will be bands such as Arctic monkeys with their florescent adolescent video which features pure disjuncture right from the outset and doesn’t follow the music. Our chosen inspiration bands also break conventions to an extent, in terms of genre conventions the vast majority of videos made by the bands Sum 41, Blink 182 and Bowling for soup are videos that go against the usual conventions of a rock video however they have sort of created their own conventions for a subdivision of the rock genre music videos, which would be a comedy/parody music video.

When using another band for a comparison and ideas for conventional shots we found it best to take a still shot and base ours around these. 

The band Blink 182 with their song and promotional video “first date” had a huge influence on our overall products. We chose to look at this band as they were in the same genre and have been extremely popular so when looking at the responses they receive it was more likely we would be able to find more information. The band is well known for their videos as they are usually comical parodies of other bands music videos or popular film/TV. We felt that this would be both easily doable and successful; however we decided to use the concept of stereotypes to make it a funny video instead of doing a parody. As seen above we used plenty of their ideas and conventions within our video from the comparative pictures above. This band was our first inspiration after we did a “first thoughts” write up when we chose our song and artist, we thought of similar bands that we felt sounded similar to our chosen song bands such as Sum 41, Blink 182 and Bowling for soup all came up and therefore we based our research on these.  

Bowling for soup also follows the comical parody route when making their videos. Videos that we were influenced by were things like 1985 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K38xNqZvBJI and Bowling For Soup - Girl All The Bad Guys Want all videos intended to make the target audience laugh and creating strong links that allow the audience to relate to the band. We also realised that there were some reoccurring themes throughout all three bands that we focused on and that was the theme of relationships, we then also realised when looking at the lyrics (Scar - "As long as you know" lyrics) of our chosen song that it was also about a relationship, further confirming that we would be able to produce a similar video that would follow the conventions of this sub-genre of video.

Further looking into successful videos for inspiration and ideas to put into our promotional video, we looked at more videos that where generally popular and not always specific to our genre for a more broad understanding of the general successful conventions seen in them (conventions of music videos). A huge variety of general conventions cropped up that are all part of making a successful promotional video, things to do with camera work such as low angles and close ups are all conventional shots within music videos, features of the editing such as fast pace cuts and finally mise en  scene and character conventions like popular yet representative clothing and locations that are very much related to the lyrics and genre. 

In terms of location we were looking at local settings that we thought would be conventional of both a general music video and a music video of the rock genre. When looking at other videos we had seen that outside urban areas are often the setting for a rock video. As seen in the video “florescent adolescent” by Arctic Monkeys there is the urban environment but with some natural mise en scene in there as well, in the picture you can see the concrete floor, metal fence and buildings that show an urban setting however you can also see grass, leaves on the floor and trees that add a natural feel to it.  In the picture of the outdoor stage at Tolethorpe hall that we used you can see the similarities, we had the grey concrete and manmade structures giving the urban feel albeit hard to see in this picture we also had the trees, natural light and leaves on the floor giving the contrasting natural feel. 

Darker lighting and colours for the more serious video.

Many of the videos I have talked about previously feature the urban setting and it seems to be a convention of the rock genre to be set in these areas. The mixture of narrative seems to not have an effect on the setting as both are usually still set in an urban setting/ within a building. Usually these places would be slightly darker as darker colours are associated with the rock genre, however we were looking at bands that produce funny rock videos and therefore they use the lighter colours yet still in the urban setting. This is illustrated in the stills and we used this idea within our music video, using natural daylight when filming outside and artificial light when inside to make it brighter.

This use of bright lighting and “cheery” colours to lighten the mood and portrait the light hearted funny side of the video was an intentional and is very specific to this “sub-genre” of music video. Albeit unconventional to the rock genre yet conventional to a smaller sub-genre we did use a darker lighting and setting when it came to the serious parts of our narrative that depicted an actual relationship and not an imaginary relationship that was intended to be funny based around stereotypes.

Costumes as mentioned before were based on stereotypes that we thought could be the main focus for our video that was aimed to be a funny video based and influenced around those of blink 182, bowling for soup and sum 41. These bands had videos that still followed many of the conventions of the genre that they are categorized as however they use humour and normally the idea of parody videos to appeal to their audience. Many of these videos are also based on the lyrics of the specific song made by the band, songs such as “1985”, “girl all the bad guys want” and “first date” are all songs that try to tell a story about a relationship and that’s what we aimed to do within our music video. The music videos for these songs are all “Mickey takes” of situations that happen in real life however over exaggerated, in our music video we decided to take this idea but instead of taking either another music video or a situation we took the ideas of stereotypes and made funny remarks based on these stereotypes but within the context of a relationship.

Following the rock genres conventions we decided it was crucial for this music video to be a band based music video with both a mixture of narrative and performance that revolves around the band members. This can be seen pretty much all rock music videos and is probably the key conventions of these videos. In all the videos we looked at this was a prominent feature, again referring to the same videos “1985”, “first date” and “girl all the bad guys want” as these were our main inspirations and influences, all contain band shots for performance with both focus on the whole band in long shots and extreme long shots, and focus on singular band members in two shots, mid shots and close ups with low angles and high angles thrown in on occasion. The band members are also the prominent feature in the narrative either by playing themselves or a character and a variety of camera work and editing help to do this. A good example of this is the song and music video for “fist date” by Blink 182, it shows the band playing characters in both the band performance shots and in the narrative helping to link the two and reduce confusion.

We took all of these points on board and were able to get a band together using our media group members (Groupings and Cast). This allowed us to have the running convention of a rock video by having a full band that we could use to get both performance shots with the band as a unit and singular band members, and use the same band members in the narrative very much like in “first date” and most other rock music videos out there. We also had to have the typical props that most, if not all, rock music videos have in them, these of course including the instruments which are again an extremely prominent and conventional concept that is featured in all rock music videos. The drums, bass guitar, lead guitar and lead singer with a mic is what we decided were the basic four things that were needed to make a rock music video and a convincing video, all rock bands have these four things and many have additional instruments. Through our research both by questioning people and looking at plenty of other rock videos we noticed that we would get nowhere without these and so we included them, the “band shot” is probably the heart of a rock music video it will show all band members playing their instruments and producing the song. It will usually feature quick edits between band members and give the video the conventions that are linked to the rock video.

Conventional editing in music videos is usually very basic with the majority of the cuts being straight cuts that makes the music video very snappy and is usually based around the rhythm and pace of the song; because of this the rock genre music videos have very quick cuts between each band member playing an instrument. This Foo Fighters “the pretender” music video illustrates how a rock videos’ editing is usually fast paced and follows the rhythmic pattern of the actual song. Some ideas from this video have been used in ours as illustrated in the stills further below. (Click the image for the link).

Conventional editing in a music video also includes the transition between narrative and performance. Whilst there is the performance shots that use quick straight cuts between each shot there will also be, in the majority of videos especially in the rock genre and the specific bands we have researched, narrative shots and transitions. These are often not necessarily tempo following (tempo of the song) and include a different variety of shots, edits and mise en scene compared to the band shots. Because of the bands we researched we realised that many of their videos if not all had this balance between performance shots and narrative, we decided that we should do the same, and through target audience research and feedback this seemed like the best thing to do to make our three pieces successful.  This video below, Bowling for soup “High school never ends”, is a good example of this. (click image for the link)

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

As a whole I believe that the combination of all three tasks, the music video, digipak and magazine advert/poster of ours fits together extremely well and they all complement each other. As a promotional piece they all do promote our chosen band and genre as all three pieces feature genre specific and band specific themes that help the audience to relate and recognize the band and the genre they represent. The Digipak features images from the actual music video from both the narrative of the story and the performance parts of the promotional video. Using the same images from the music video allows the audience to relate both pieces together easily, if the music video was successful in promoting the band then if the hard copy digipak was bought then the audience will instantly link the two and this overall makes the full package more digestible. The advert again uses an image from the music video and that is featured on the digipak (centre bottom of the Digipak). This was a still taken at the music videos performance location, Tolethorpe halls outdoor stage, as we did our research into a location that provided us with the “feel” or themes that we believed represented our genre we felt that we may as well use this to our advantage and take some stills that could be used within the ancillary tasks. This was one of our favourite stills that were taken as it provided depth and height and we could visualise it in use within the ancillary tasks. The image could also be easily manipulated using Adobe Photoshop as in this image there were high amounts of light reflecting of off objects such as the chairs and it was filtering in from the front through a tree line, enabling us to get the effect that can be seen in the poster.

All of the stills seen within the digipak are actual stills taken on both days of filming the actual promotional video, the only image seen that isn’t from anything is the inside centre pattern. To us this meant that the audience would again be able to easily link each of the three pieces we have made and then when seeing the video and the two ancillary tasks they would be able to easily distinguish what band it is and what genre they are in. To help with representation of the genre this track and band are in we used themes that we had seen in similar bands digipaks and posters. When looking at these we saw that the black and white contrasting colours were often used thus we should use this within our tasks in some way, using this we took it a step further and used other contrasting colour schemes. With the digipak, as seen above, we used the sepia effect to make it stand out from other rock digipaks but still following similar ideas and concepts. With the poster/advert we modified the black and white idea slightly by adding in some blue, there was no reason necessarily for choosing blue other than we felt it added to the piece making it more aesthetically pleasing and it gave a colder/harsher feel that we felt represented the rock genre to a degree.   We also picked up on the re-occurring theme of a full band shot being the front cover, or sometimes the lead band member being the focus of the front cover. Our front cover design, again still using the sepia effect, followed these ideas as we used a full band shot as the front cover. This image was taken on the day of filming and whilst we were wearing the outfits we had chosen to feature in the video, it is a high angle image that features the urban/foliage mix we used throughout the video and the full band standing in the position they were standing when filming the performance, again creating links between the tasks. 

This is the image I mentioned earlier that we have used for both a tile on our Digipak and the main image on the poster. The original image (bottom left) was originally taken to illustrate where we were filming our performance however we could see this being a good still image that could be used on our ancillary tasks that is both easily editable and would link all three pieces of our overall task. The digipak version of this image has been put into sepia, firstly to fit in with the rest of the digipak and secondly because our research showed us that the contrasting colours of black and white are often used on promotional pieces for bands in the rock genre. Our version of this was the sepia effect, we felt we should use something very similar however we should have something different from the rest and the sepia effect gave us this. With the poster we did use black and white and the posturize effect to make it something similar to the album cover of the sum 41’s underclass hero, it is also similar to posters that I have placed above by Kasabian and Blink 182 both in colour schemes and layout. Again we wanted to add a difference of our own to separate it from the rest, so in ours there is the additional colour of blue and it is posturized making the stage almost not visible by making the light brighter and highly posturized.     

Exhibiting these pieces would also be a huge part to making all three of these pieces successful however there are two ways in which this could be done if this were a true scenario. There is the traditional way where the hard copies would be sold in the shop, with the digipak having its extra features being very enticing for collectors and true fans of the band. The promotional video would only be seen on the original music channels and programmes such as top of the pops or MTV and be less accessible to as big an audience as the current methods of exhibiting the three pieces. The poster again would only be featured in magazines and as a poster on the wall meaning it also has a focused effect on only those who take a massive interest in music and that would buy a magazine. In the current day this may be a popular method as it is seen as the traditional work hard ethic that fans of bands like to see especially in the rock genre however the current methods could prove to be a better method as it enables the three tasks to be viewed by a wider audience. These current day methods I am referring to are things such as social media/networking sites including Face book, twitter and YouTube.  All three of these named sites allow you to make a channel or profile and upload images and videos; this proves to be very helpful in promoting a band as it enables anyone anywhere in the world to view the bands page or channel and therefore have access to the promotional video and advertisement. This current day also allows people to purchase tracks and albums via internet pages and download them to music devices, websites such as iTunes, you simply click and pay then you gain access to the download of the track/album. This is good in one sense as again it allows the bands material to be easily accessible to many people around the world however it will undermine the effect of the digipak as less will be sold in the shops and more will be sold over the internet.

In terms of representation of the band it could again either go two ways depending on the method of exhibition. If the band were to be exhibited via the traditional methods they may be seen as a traditional rock band that likes to interact with their fans and allow them to purchase physical items and memorabilia related to them. However I believe that this may have worked in the past and may still have a fairly successful effect now yet because of lack of area covered due to reduced accessibility it would only work for “hardcore fans” and collectors. On the other hand there is the current methods of exhibition and distribution, this would involve the band making announcements on social media and interacting with their fans via twitter, Face book and YouTube allowing them to interact with a wider audience form the comfort of their homes. The selling of hard copies would be reduced and therefore making the digipak less effective however the potential for millions of digital copies of albums to be sold is far too persuading and would probably lead to this being the chosen method of distribution and exhibition.

Promotional strategies research

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During the process various audience research methods were needed to make the final three products. These research methods and the feedback received were very important because ultimately it would be the audience that decides whether the three pieces are successful, therefore y using this research we could tailor the three pieces to what the audience want and thus make them successful. In the very beginning of three processes simply looking at the audience feedback that actual bands get and the responses they get for their official videos, album art and posters, was a very effective method. Looking at similar bands such as Sum 41 and Bowling for soup and what most of their target audience expect and like from the bands was a good starting point as we were able to get an idea of what generally works and what doesn’t necessarily work for the audience and how successful bands of a similar genres pieces are.

To do this we looked at comments that bands receive from fans on social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter and see the responses they receive to parts of their promotional packages and what would be expected from their work. Looking at these responses allowed us to have a starting point, things such as running themes that link all three tasks (video, poster, digipak) and a funny/comedic video where only two of the many starting points we were able to gain from this type of research, and that were based on similar conventions other bands in the same genre received good responses to. With the ancillary tasks this was a bit harder to do as many of the fans of specific bands in the same genre as the one we had chosen would only really comment on things like the video and the actual song, however some comments that suggested the extra features and panels of the digipak and how the video and digipak are linked seemed to get a mention a few times and this became more apparent for “hard-core” fans and collectors of band memorabilia. The poster on the other hand was also a bit of a dead end, we were able to look at posters made for bands and that are real promotional posters however finding audience feedback for these was near impossible. We gathered that we could get our own audience feedback for the poster, so asking fellow school members questions like “what makes a poster attractive or eye-catching?” and “what sort of conventions would you expect to see from a rock bands posters?” proved to be more helpful, although many people said that posters/magazine advertising is a less frequent and successful method of promoting band in today’s world especially with the likes of the internet and smart phones around.

When creating our products we tried to keep a consistent flow of audience feedback throughout to make sure our promotional pieces would be on task and would become successful. Towards the beginning presenting our ideas and plans (Pitch for idea no.2 and Pitch for idea no.1) for our music video and ancillary tasks to our media class was yet another simple yet effective way of getting some good feedback from both people of our own age group and our most likely target audience and media teachers that would instantly have points to add and have constructive comments that would allow us to improve and refine our ideas. Because this audience feedback was pre-production of any of the three tasks it would give us plenty of time to drastically change or completely rethink our plans if the target audience didn’t like or agree with them.

We also created questionnaires to get ideas and an understanding of what we needed to include as suggested by our target audience. This was very helpful as it was a frequently used method throughout the research and creation of the tasks and allowed us to be adding in factors that we wouldn’t have done without the audiences input. Throughout the production we would also show them each of the three tasks when they were a work in progress and allow them to pick points they liked, didn’t like and what they would like to see added, again extremely helpful when pushing for the completed project that would be fitting for the target audience.

After all three pieces were finished we rolled out more questionnaires for our target audience to get a response for the final product. This was received very well and we showed them all three pieces to see if it was something that would be successful as one promotional piece. These questionnaires were again asking what they liked about each piece, whether they complimented each other and whether it would persuade them to invest into the band both as a fan and as a consumer. Another method of getting good feedback was to ask our media teachers of their opinion and professional view of the pieces as a media task, we allowed them to watch the video and give feedback. From this we were told that the video worked very well and achieved its purpose, negative feedback being that some of the framing was off and one of the intended shot reverse shots looked a bit odd as it broke the 180 rule. However all in all it was decided that the video was good and well put together and there was no confusion as to what was happening. 

Another issue we had that was pointed out was copyright issues within our original digipak design and continuity issues. When showing the original digipak/draft digipak to both the target audience and our teachers it was recognised that the pictures included were not ours and therefore could cause copyright issues. It was also noticed that we planned to use ourselves as the band members however on the digipak it showed the actual band members on the front cover and therefore the pieces didn’t link and caused some continuity issues. 

Another method of getting feedback is to exhibit our three pieces. We did this in three ways one by posting the video on YouTube allowing virtually the whole world to see it and post comments if they wished to do so, this didn’t work that amazingly as few people commented and none of these comments were that useful. Via this they could also like the video or dislike the video, we had a mixture of the two which made it quite inconclusive and very people actually viewed the video because you either had to be following the person who posted it or have searched for it, and I doubt many people go onto YouTube looking for A level students media pieces. Another way to do so and probably a better way to do so was to post all three of the pieces onto Face book, this was a better method as it really only allowed our friends to view it and they were more willing to comment, as seen by the image below. This also allowed anyone who saw what we posted to “like it” and we received 60 likes on the first day it was posted. Another good reason this was an effective place to exhibit our final media products was because our friends and family were more willing to “share” it meaning people we didn’t know and were “friends” with could view it and again give some more feedback. Finally we also posted them on blogger (obviously as you will probably reading this off of my blog) this again was a fairly good way of receiving feedback as people could yet again follow your blog or view your blog and then comment on the blog. This was mostly helpful when it came to receiving feedback from teachers as they would view your blog and then post a comment saying what’s good and what could be added.

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

The first step of the task was to find a band to make a promotional music video for. One problem that faced us when looking into this was the idea of copyright issues; obviously we couldn’t just take an artist’s song that they have made and claim it as ours, make a video for them and two other promotional pieces and treat it as official as the task asks. To overcome this issue we used media, in this case the internet, and a website that is used to get unknown bands recognised and become more successful without their songs being copyrighted and “un usable” due to copyright issues as these issues are very prominent when we exhibit the pieces via other media. This website is called www.unsigned.com and is a fairly basic yet useful piece of media for both bands that are trying to become established and for us media students trying to avoid copyright issues and actually help promote artists songs. This use of media not only allowed us to avoid these issues but it also allowed us to easily navigate and distinguish the different genres and sub genres, this is because the website design has all these different bands in their categorised genres making the task that little bit easier. This was mainly the key component for our research but the categorisation of the genres also allowed us to start somewhere with our video ideas and conventions. Another extremely useful part of this website was the social media additions to it, seen in the image below, you can browse not only the artists but also browse fans and there are featured artists giving a good idea of what music is popular and upcoming. The “browse fans” was a very useful feature allowing us to research the responses to songs and the artists, get an idea of how the bands and genres are represented and the fans perception of the bands.

Another more popular type of media in recent years is the social networking apps/sites that allow people to view and communicate with each other. This proved to be very helpful in research, exhibiting and feedback as it allowed us to see what our target audience are watching and liking within the music industry and base our plans on these 

YouTube was probably the heart of our research. It allowed us to view any video from any band and we used this to see what response they received and get ideas for general music conventions and more specific rock conventions. On this we were able to see what people liked about the videos we researched by looking at the comments that have been left and see whether a video was overall successful by looking at the viewing numbers and numbers of “likes” or “dislikes”. This became a very useful and by the end of the project a well used tool because of the research capabilities it allowed us to do. It quickly became apparent when looking at the videos what conventions lay within a music video and this allowed us to begin planning and constructing our music video.                                                                    

Other research facilities included using the web for searches on bands to get an idea of their reception and representation, search engines like Google quickly gave us lots of information on the bands we were influenced by and gave us a good idea as to what their genre was and how they represent that within what they do and wear. This information could then be placed into the construction process, for example we discovered the idea of comical videos and numerous parody videos within the genre we had chosen and we then felt that this would suit our chosen song from unsigned.com and applied that to the planning and construction.

Other sites such as Face book and blogger were the most useful tools for exhibiting our media production. As I have previously mentioned the capabilities of receiving feedback was excellent due to the capability to comment and “like” what you’ve seen allowed us to see if other bands were liked and what was liked about them, and finally allowed us to see if what we made was successful and if the overall feedback was good.

Editing software was also a vital part of the construction process. We needed it to make all three final products and without it we wouldn’t have been able to do any. Firstly was Adobe Photoshop, this allowed us to edit still images and text for both our digipak and poster/magazine advert. There were numerous amounts of tools that could be used and were used to make both products. The image to the left is a list of the entire alterations made to just the poster on Adobe Photoshop, these include changing the hue/saturation and using the posterize tool to give our poster the look that it now has. Magazine Advert - Ancillary task. We also used this program to edit our photos that we used for the digipak. The theme of our digipak was the sepia effect that was provided by Adobe; it also allowed us to cut and crop images and edit the text to make it what we wanted. Without Adobe we would have been extremely limited to what we could do with the digipak and we may not have been able to design our poster and digipak to not only have its own look and style to separate from the others out there but to also please the target audience.

Secondly was IMovie on the Macs we had provided to us by our school. This program allowed us to put all of our shots together and make the final music video product. It is a software that is designed to string together all of your shots to make a video that makes sense, it also allowed us to add sound to the clips, remove the original sound the clips had from recording, shorten/crop clips and shots to the length we wanted and finally add In any specialist transitions such as our blur effect. Because of iMovie we were capable of making a video that worked well and both followed some conventions and broke other conventions. It also allowed us to make a video that fitted what the target audience wanted from a video of that specific genre, without this program we would have had an unprofessional looking video that wouldn’t get the response we wanted and overall fail the task we were set.

Shooting the actual video also required a certain amount of technology. We used a high quality SLR camera for shooting the actual footage; some shots may have seemed bad quality in the video though due to editing and the process of uploading, this was our own camera meaning we didn’t have to rely on cameras from school allowing us to have a more accessible camera. This camera also had many different lenses for both close up images and images at a distance. We also had the charger ready for instances when we ran out of battery as we were filming for lengthy periods of time, this included with tripods and extra SD cards allowed us to not have any issues with the actual filming and also allowed us to get the most out of our two filming days. Other pieces of equipment included lighting equipment and rig borrowed from our schools drama department, these along with our gallant efforts of making a dark room allowed us to get both stills for the digipak (top left and top right) and footage of each band member alone for a more personal feel and focus on a specific member. This lighting equipment improved the quality and professionalism of the video, especially because we had two very powerful lights including a profile that is used in various productions. 

My final point of this evaluation is the skills that I have learnt and improved throughout the production. Preparation and planning skills I feel has been the biggest improvement, my last production in AS media wasn’t as thoroughly planned and wasn’t as successful because of this. We had far fewer influences and research methods and far smaller storyboards and shooting scripts, this led to unplanned and unprofessional shooting which then further affected the rest of the project. This time round a lot more planning and research has taken place and I feel this improvement has led to a more successful media production than the last. Lengthy storyboards and shooting scripts have been made, location planning was more thorough and we even had a daily planner for our filming days that meant we were on schedule and on target with the production. We also used our research and feedback more effectively and re-planned or designed accordingly, allowing us to reach the target audiences expectations.

Actual shooting skills were also developed. We had to use a larger variety of shots and angles this time to get a video that worked and would impress in terms of shooting skills. We could no longer have minimalist shots that were pretty standard for any production but have shots that are more impressive and have more thought behind them. Because of this larger variety and a greater amount of thought behind each and every shot I believe we made a successful and skillful production.

Editing skills were again developed. I believe this was probably the least developed skill as once you can edit you are able to do it again just as effectively, however throughout this production we definitely planned each and every transition and effect more efficiently and made sure that each shot had no continuity issues with the shot previous to it. The largest part of the editing skill that was improved was the timing of each and individual shot, we played around with this for hours making sure that the music synced up with the video and each shot was the right length to show what we wanted but to also fit in sequence and timing.

Research skills and exhibition skills were another hugely developed skill. I have learnt to use a variety of sources for researching each part of the task from the video to the ancillary tasks.  It has also come apparent that many of these sources can be used in more ways than one and a lot of the ideas from them, such as the influential videos, can be taken and recycled or added to. Exhibiting the production has also been a more prominent feature of this task as it allowed us to receive feedback and without YouTube, Face book and blogger (plus many more) it would have been much harder to design the products around the target audience and achieve a successful production.