Evaluation

Our task was to create a music video, a DVD cover for the video and a magazine advert to advertise the DVD. When we first started our coursework we agreed as members of our group are in a band, called circuit chase, we will use one of their songs to create the music video. They are an indie band and most of their songs use indie conventions, especially their song ‘I can’t live without you’.

When we were planning our video, we knew we had to include indie rock conventions. Most indie rock bands like muse, arctic monkeys and the killer all show a variety of narrative and performance and shows a balance of the two cutting between shots, like in the killers - human and kasabian- empire. In our video the narrative is a guy being followed by the band and only he can see them, until he meets a girl, who can also see them. There are shots with just the band or just the protagonist, but they both usually are in the same scene or location, this shows a balance between the two but the band are part of the narrative, so this is a little different towards a normal indie rock convention.

Also most indie bands are a band of four or five young guys wearing dark clothes. When planning our video the band thought wearing black shirts and dark jeans is the best style for an indie rock group, making it easy for the audience to realise the genre of the band.

When people think of rock bands, they usually have an image of them trashing a room or building. Different to an indie rock, but mainly rock. When planning this we were very persistent including a scene of our main protagonist trashing a room, which we did manage to include. He goes into his house and finds out the band have been there and gets angry and throws everything on floor and breaks plates and cups. We wanted to use this scene as well because it flows with the narrative, which makes it easy to understand. We have shown a stereotypical indie band, therefore using conventions of real media.

Indie videos as well as other genre usually use a range of shots, in particular close up of the lead singer to advertise the band. We did use a few close ups of Thom (the lead singer). However most of our shots were more long shots and mid-shots, so we didn’t use this convention and portraying it in our video. This has showed us that we should have organised ourselves better and re-filmed some shots with close ups of the band. Also the shots of the main protagonist were usually mid-shot and long shots, to allow the audience to be following the main protagonist, other than using point of view to make the audience part of the video.

Circuit chase are a group of three young guys and are all still part of youth culture. The video portrays a young guy of similar age, being followed by the band. By the end he finds a girl who also can see the band and which shows a theme of love. This shows our music video is representing youth culture because there are similar situations that young people encounter like love. However through the media, stereotypes of youth culture are not how we have established the band. People see young people being a problem in society, smoking, drinking, and drugs. Our video has none of these conventions, so it shows a different side to youth culture.

At the beginning of the video, you see two guys playing the Xbox. This is an example of youth culture because Xbox and other game consoles have developed further than ever before and most young people own or play an Xbox, showing a representation of youth culture. Also one of the location shots is set at the back of the school; this connotation also affects and represents youth culture.

Our main product has shown some good conventions of indie rock and youth culture. Whilst the ancillary text uses a lot of bright colours and an outline effect making it stand out, making it different convention as the video. However we have kept the same idea of youth culture connation to draw attention and keep the same target audience. Thom got the idea from shoot the runner – kasabian and used the stylistic approach for the colouring. He also used album covers from Paulo Nutini and iTunes to give him the idea. They convey a down to earth mood with the colours and a relaxed feels to it, which isn’t always used by indie rock bands, but popular with the young people. The combination has not been as effective as it could have been because they are quite distinctively different with the video more indie, showing dark colours and the ancillary text bright colours to portray a mood and grab attention. Therefore if an audience saw the ancillary text they will most likely be surprised to see the video as they are very different in the conventions but both work well and effective separately. This has helped me realise if completing this task again to keep the video and ancillary text a lot more similar helping the audience to understand the genre.

Most music videos are shown on music channels, but rock is becoming less popular with hip-hop, rap and pop becoming more popular with the public. Therefore there will be limited institutions that would distribute our media product. But some magazines that mostly would advertise the band are NME or Kerrang, as they are more popular with rock bands. These magazines are usually dark colours and very rock convention, so seeing our DVD advertisement in the magazine will make it very distinguished, which doesn’t create the same idea as we hoped. Music store’s with wide variety of music like HMV is most likely to sell the DVD, as they sell all genres. However most people, especially young people, such as students and teenagers download songs rather than buy them at the shop, so ITunes are also a good distributor. We could also consider using small independent distributors, which are likely to sell indie music like ‘Holier than thou records’ who promote new bands of rock, indie and alternative genre. I also need to consider most music videos now are uploaded on YouTube where hundreds and thousands of people can comment on, this is a good way to get feedback for our video in ways to improve.

There would be a range of audience who would listen to indie bands, as said before, pop and hip hop are more popular in the charts, but the same people are more likely to enjoy a range of different genre.I believe teenagers and students would have been the biggest audience for our media project. Indie music is more popular with young adults as the band members are usually young adults. For circuit chase as they are unsigned band and have been started by a group of friends, people who listen to them are their friends of same age and more young people notice new bands rather than adults. We have used connotation of youth culture with the setting and mise en scene like the clothes and products used, to relate to a young audience.

Denis McQuail theory of audience using the gratification model, that the audience is motivated and more likely to enjoy the media product if they can relate to it. I think this theory we have used because one of the ideas of the video is love and teenagers always can relate to this situation. I think the shots used show a good narrative, which helps the audience enjoy the video more as they understand what is happening. Teenagers would rather enjoy the music than to find the extra meaning in the video, therefore making it more enjoyable for them. Herbert blumer theory of mass audience is to involve the audience in the film or this case the music video. This keep the audience more involved and helps them to listen or watch the media product more carefully. We have done this sometimes by using a point of view shot of the main protagonist, to make the audience feel a part of the video but haven’t incorporate this as much as we could have, which is where we may make it difficult to attract the audience.

After completing our video, we asked our peers to watch are music video and got their opinion’s, of it, which they were impressed with the video. They thought the narrative and story was different to an indie rock band and worked well with the idea. There were a few problems like with one scene, could have been edited, but we didn’t get round to changing this. This was most likely because communication wasn’t that great with our group which let us down. This has helped me realise we should have shown the video to a range audience getting different opinions rather than our peers. This I because our peers are more likely to be positive about the video even if they don’t agree, we should have gathered audience feedback from people we didn’t know to get honest opinions. We uploaded the video onto YouTube and so far have had 200 hits and an average rating of 4* which is good but doesn’t help us with how to improve as we don’t know who commented. I realised we shouldn’t have been asking the audience throughout the project which I personally failed to do, as the video is for the audience so they need to enjoy it.

For our music video, we used a SD camera and tripod, to film all our video. This wasn’t too bad, as we made sure the camera was steady enough, but we spent a long time filming the same scene through different angles and shot types. This could have been improved with better organisation. The different programmes we used to edit our video was premiere pro and Photoshop. When using premiere pro it is always tempting to add extra effects and transitions. But indie band videos are simple with cross cuts and not using jump cuts. We did however at the end of our video speed up the shot to double the speed, making the shot look effective and fast paced to show how protagonist was feeling, which we wouldn’t have been able to do without Premiere pro.

Throughout the project we used the internet to gather our research of existing bands, which are similar to circuit chase. We also used blogger.com to upload everything we have been doing, allowing our peers and other members of the group to see each other’s work. This was helpful in showing the stages we were up to with our planning, but because of poor communication we could have used the blogger more to our advantage.

After completing this coursework I feel that planning and research is a major part in the coursework now as I didn’t do enough of planning last year. Even though the planning was adequate as a group showing the shot types I think we could have planned more. Some members of our group did do more work than others which shouldn’t have happened and after this I have learned to be more communicative, so we can share out the jobs needed. I have learned new skills with new programmes like premier pro become and familiar with Photoshop. After completing the music video I have learned that time efficient is needed and good time management is the key to getting everything complete and not rushing it on the deadline day.

anciliary text

Above is our complete anciliary text. The member of our group who completed this was Thom. He got his ideas and inspiraitons from kasabian - shoot the runner, Paulo Nutini and itunes as tips to help with our dvd cover. After researchig the differnt DVD cover, i think he went for a differnt aproach to an indie rock band as the DVDs would be more darker. He went brighter colours so it can stand out in an magazine and the audience is mainly youth, which this would be eye-catching towards a youth.

DVD cover measurements

DVD cover research

My first thought when researching different DVD covers was to find indie rock bands because circuit chase genre is indie rock. This will help the group and me to use the examples and see similarities between different bands and the connotations and what they are trying to portray for our own DVD cover. However most band don’t release DVD’s they release CD, so finding examples was harder than I thought. The DVD examples I did manage to find were more of live performance on stage and a concert rather than of singles.

I managed to find four bands that have released DVDs. However this DVDs are of the bands playing in concerts and gigs. They do not include the video of any singles. From the four above, they are all dark colours for rock bands e.g. black. This is to portray darkness within the band. Stereotypes of rock bands are usually dark colours. So this will help us with our own DVD cover for the video.

Complete video

Here is our final cut of our complete music video. We think it went very well, using a range of differnet shots and most of the editing, which keeps the continuity for the production and the narrativeis easy to understand. After gettting feedback we should have changed one of the scenes where a pillow is being shown and ruins the continuity and one of the cuts needs to be edited better. But we didnt get round to doing it unfortuantely, mainly because of time mangement.

The next job is the ancillary text of a DVD cover and advertisment for the band.