Evaluation

As part of a group of 4 I directed, shot footage for and edited a music video for a song of our choice. We also had to design a digipack for our artist and an advert. Part One Initially, once deciding on a song for the pop video promotion we sketched a number of possible ideas and concepts connecting to the narrative of the song.
Real media products have to make sure they follow certain conventions for specific purposes, film and TV genre products are governed by certain predictable narrative features, dress codes, lighting effects and special effects , this is the same with music videos.

If you compare my video to 'Another day in paradise' by Brandy and Ray-J http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWjNFC-FinU you can see that they are very similiar in terms of they both have a 'ghost' character/s that are acting as if they werent really there. This is quite common on music videos that have a strong sotryline to them. In this video they are also comparing two different lifestyles, which is obviously very simliar to our video.

My advert could be compared to the 'Bloodhound Gang' being advertised on Kerang, although these are completely different genres, just like my advert they have focused more onthe text than the artist/band itself.

The music video and promopack which includes the advert and the digipack are all very similar, i did this because i wanted to make them all to be easily recognisable to the audience, they all have a link between them, for the advert and the iside left panel i used the same image, i used the inside image as this meant they would be related but they wernt exactly the same as the outer cover of the digipack.
Because the advert is a way of promoting the song and video, it is important that the audience will be attracted to it instantly at a glance, this is easily done with my advert because they will link it to the video, the font also stands out because it is against a strong colour of the brick wall.

Here as you can see they have made the text stand out and the artists are at the bottom of the advert, this is because they want the audience to focus on what the text is telling them as opposed to the artists themselves.

I think this is a very effective way of promoting the video.

To gain feedback on my project i decided to put the video on my facebook page, this is because i alot of my friends are of the target audience our video is aimed that, this meant i could get a response via email about what they thought and how it would attract the target audience.

Here is an example of a reply i had concerning the video.

Music video ( via Facebook )‏
From:
ben lee (b.lee@hotmail.co.uk)
You may not know this sender.Mark as safeMark as junk
Sent:
31 March 2010 10:24:25
To:
superchick03@hotmail.com
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Hi Charlotte,I have watched your video and i think there are some very positive points to be made,
The editing was well timed, the music was in sync with the vocalist, this made it look very professional.
The storyline matched the narrative and all of the scenes fitted in with the lyrics.
I think the way the video reaches out to the audience helps to reiterate the meaning of the song. I have seen the advert for this Video and i think it is a good way to promote the song because it matches many scenes from the video. You can also see that there is a link between the advert and the digipack.

However, i think the costume could have been more expressive in that it should have reflected her attitude which would also contrast against the theme of drugs.Overall i think this whole production is very effective in the lifestyle drugs portray.

Ben Lee

Receiving this feedback has helped me to view the video and the promotion pack, from the eyes of the audience, i am able to see how they would react to this video if it were real.

Although some of the feedback were in favour of the continuity in the advert and digipack i think if i were to do this task again i would vary them slightly but still keep some sort of link between them all. For example i may decide to keep the wall theme but change the images of Kelsey herself or keep the same images of Kelsey throughout but change the background.

I would also take more consideration into the mise-en-scene to make the video look more realistic, for example costume, although we tried our best to use the resources available to us i would have preferred to have more of a stronger image of each of the characters for example Kelsey should have been in bright colours to make a deeper contrast between her and the drug taking teenagers, this would make it easier for the audience to identify between the two extremes.

Media technology such as computers and cameras have been very useful throughout the whole production for many different reasons.
To video the production we used a CANON XM2 camera which at first we found difficult to use, we learnt ourselves how to work it and how to get the best of out it in terms of filming techniques, after all the filming was complete we used many different computer programs throughout the whole process, these included Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and Blogger.

Final Cut Pro was the first Computer Aided Program we needed to use, this was new to us therefore we experienced some difficulties, however, using this program to do the anamatic first meant that when it was time toedit we already had some skills needed for a successful project.

Throughout the process of the anamatic i had a great deal of control at this point and this meant i could help the other girls when it was their turn to practise using it.

The anamtic is used to indicate how your final edit will play back, this included the duration of each shot, when there are pans etc.

After completing the anamatic and we started filming we realised our original plan wasnt going to work, this meant that the anamatic as a whole didnt provide much information on our actual video but it did still give us the skills we needed to use Final Cut Pro.

We used Photoshop for every part of the promotional pack which meant that we also picked up many skills, i feel that i am now able to confidently use Photoshop with any task given to me.

The first stage of using this program was to upload the image you wantto use as a base, you do this by a tool called 'Place'. I decided not to use Photoshop to its full potential by experimenting with special effects as i felt it wouldnt match the type of advert i wanted. I then downloaded a font from www.dafont.com, which i used throughout the promopack, i kept the same font too, which was called 'Amsterdam Graffiti' i chose this because the background is a brick wall it work well with the theme. I also did simliar steps into making my digipack, they are both very similar which means they will be easily link to one another.

Overall i think this was a successful project which has given me many skills to use in the future, i feel confident that i could go on to produce further media products of many kinds.