Ali Hunter Evaluation

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

My media product (a music video for the single ‘Shark’ by Indie-rockers Ash) used and developed forms of real media products but struggled to challenge conventions of music videos and short films within its genre. But before we even started the researching and planning phase of our project, we asked ourselves if we would make a video that would be alternate to the mainstream videos, in other words, challenging conventions. We didn’t hesitate in deciding that our video would use and emulate ideas that we gathered from researching existing videos. From then onwards we set about gathering research in the form of similar media products to the one we had planned. This ranged from similar music videos to just similar music, films on the theme, still images, short YouTube clips and even album covers and lyrics that accompany the song. After listening to the song a couple of times the group acknowledged the tone of the song as to be very aggressive and quite a tough gritty rock song. We also acknowledged that the target audience for our song and band would be mainly male rock fans aged between 15 and 30.

It was this that made us start researching the rock genre and looking into gritty songs that we felt were similar. The lyrics of ‘Shark’ (particularly the words ‘Violent Mind’ and ‘I Go Where I Want To’) suggested to us that the music we were making a video for was quite rebellious and rough. Particularly instrumental throughout the planning and researching process, Justice’s video for the song ‘Stress’ jumped out at us as inspiration. The group knew of it before we even came up with the idea for a rebellious youth narrative, and when we viewed it together we knew that the original idea of having a performance and narrative based story of young boys causing trouble was the idea we were going to stick with. Although the music of Justice’s song was pretty dissimilar to that of Ash’s it still gave us a chance to base ideas around conventions in the video. For instance, we planned to keep the gritty tone in our music video by making the whole video black and white, which developed the form of the ‘Stress’ video as that was shot and edited to look dull and grey monotonous. The work we started on the ‘Stress’ video propelled the research process and it helped us onto our second set of research, the film ‘La Haine’. ‘La Haine’ and Justice are both French so we could work out the link between the two styles. ‘La Haine’ is a film about a French estate in which 3 young lads find themselves in the grip of a gun war. The film was very similar to the ‘Stress’ video and we gained valuable camerawork and mise-en-scene techniques that we emulated later in the shoot.

It is evident in our music video that the tone and the vibe of our final product used and developed the conventions of the music videos and the films we looked at. Secondly we looked at the mise-en-scene of our research. We gathered that the youths wore ‘hoodies’ and jeans a lot, generally dour attire, so we matched that in our video too. Finally we decided to develop the people in the video and the way the people in our music video acted. We decided that it was going to involve ourselves as we were the sort of age group we were targeting. We also planned to match the way they walked and reacted to others and even the way they sat and hung about. Overall, we developed and used conventions of real media products but struggled to find a way to challenge the conventions of our research.

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

On review of our final ancillary texts (A magazine advert, a membership postcard and a competition leaflet) I am very pleased that they match with our music video. We were concerned after shooting the music video that we wouldn’t be able to match the gritty and rough tone of the video, with ancillary texts that could provide our audience with the same sort of quality. The music video, in its entirety, was shot in black and white and was fairly aggressive. Scene upon scene and location upon location we planned to give our video an edge, and an underlying social commentary. We planned to make a competition leaflet, a membership postcard and a magazine advert. This wasn’t a hard choice to male as we wanted to stick with the conventions of normal rock bands, not challenge them by making stickers etc. This is because we felt we needed to connect with our target audience as much as possible to ensure that the final product spoke to our fans. So after looking at some more existing ancillary texts, 3 of the group headed out for a photo shoot. When we uploaded the images from the shoot, we were all delighted to find a set of professional shots. With the DigiPak in mind, Rob took images of Jon and Matt (two of the band members in the music video) and strategically made the final shots black and white. However, there is some confusion as to whether our images are in contrast to our video, as the photographs are set in a rural location and the video is shot entirely in an urban location. This maybe the only downside to our photographs. But on the other hand, the images combined well with each other, and when we overlaid text the images really stood out.

Our main product involved ourselves as the band members and as a group we decided it was only usual for the band to front their own advert and DVD DigiPak. From this we decided we’d have a competition leaflet and a membership postcard to go with the DVD case. We landed on this after studying several DVD Digipaks and seeing that a constant for Indie-Rock bands (who targeted the same target audience as ourselves) was chances for buyers of the product to see them live or get involved in the band in some way. We also gathered that every band had a signature font or logo, so we set about making our own for the name Standard Meeting. We finished producing our logo just before we set about taking our shots and we realised that the bright orange font we used to create our logo would stand out very well against the dull black and white images, so that was a major plus for us. And when we produced the ancillary texts the orange did stand out extremely well. After this we started to plan what we’d say on each of the DigiPak products.

We planned every little detail to make it more professional, this meant choosing the correct form of language (informal), how we’d set out asking the question for our competition and even the price for joining the band’s members club. We chose to ask a question anyone could answer correctly, making it multiple choice, and making 2 of the 3 answers seem ridiculous. This would allow the competition to seem easy to win, therefore attracting as many fans. We also decided that the prize for winning the competition would be to win tickets to see the band (only proxy to existing ancillary texts). When we chose a suitable photograph for the background of the competition leaflet, we moved onto making a membership postcard. We felt the postcard should be devoid of a photograph, making white and stylish. It was also choice to make the logo of the band orange, every time it was mentioned in large print, to make it clear who it was for. I feel in general the ancillary texts partner the music video extremely well, and keep a constant check on who the target audience is and what the tone of the video is as well.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Fellow Media Studies students took the time out to comment on our music video and partnering DigiPak and gave us numerous feedback on what they thought of the products. Given that the video was aimed at males aged between 15 and 30, we were happy to hear what some in that bracket thought of the video. We were happy to hear that most of the feedback was positive and that we were praised for keeping within the tone of the music, picking our narrative and performance well, a task we had thought of as a tough one before we started to plan. One set of individuals had this to say; “Good camera shots and mise-en-scene. Excellent performance, [it was] enthusiastic. [We feel] 1 or 2 shots are a tad too shaky.” The group were happy to hear that we got some good camera shots and that the mise-en-scene was good because we worked hard researching these things and we were also pleased to learn that they liked the performance side to our music video. However we were displeased to hear that they thought some of the shots were ‘a tad to shaky’. Although we agreed with them that this was the case, we felt the handy cam type approach to the video was in keeping with the video and we learnt that although it may look adequate we should have checked every shot for how shaky it was and what was on shot, to provide a strong form of continuity.
Another group had this to say about our music video: “Gritty in its tone… so suits the music you've chosen. …It would have been better to see the singer with the band during the performance to build up the idea of being gang. It's odd that the band are the hooligans so that could break with conventions…” From this reaction to our video we learnt that although we felt we cast who was in our video appropriately, we should have asked more people to be in the video, so band members from the performance didn’t have to double up as gang members later on. We were glad to hear from this individual that we had got the tone correct as we tried our hardest to match the music and the video appropriately, which according to this comment, we did.
We were also given comments on our ancillary texts, which partnered the music video. Rob was highly praised for his photographs as many groups commented that the shots looked “professional” and was “effective”. One group even commented “Beautiful photography”. It was extremely satisfying to hear that our photographs and the accompanying text looked professional and that it was in keeping with the tone of the video. For our DigiPak, we didn’t really receive any negative feedback which was nice, but we also felt we could improve and no one could put their finger on what was not quite right. However in general, we felt our ancillary texts, as a whole partnered the music video we made really well, and the combination was perfect in making a gritty, rough, urban product.

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

We couldn’t have made our music video and its partnering DigiPak without the use of new media technologies. Our video wouldn’t have been half as good as it is without the use of Youtube and Last.fm websites that helped us research our chosen genre and gain helpful advice to ignite our planning. Without the use of Final Cut Express and Photoshop we wouldn’t have been able to finish our project.

Particularly instrumental throughout the research phase we learnt the importance of the search engine Google, as without it we wouldn’t have found similar videos to that of Ash’s and also similar clips on the video sharing web page Youtube. We were lacking ideas before we used the Internet and it helped us with our planning majorly. Google Earth was useful to us as we used it to scout for locations and give ourselves a chance to pre plan where we’d go with the camera that we rented. Google Earth allowed us to scout for locations, with clear satellite images of the areas we had chosen. A subsidiary of Google Earth, Google Street View also gave us an idea of how busy the streets were and how easy it would be to shoot a video in the areas we had chosen.

Along with the Google Street View and Google Earth, we also used Last.fm and other music websites to locate similar music styles, of which we found and then typed into Youtube to see the partnering music videos. From there we found ‘Stress’ and gained valuable camerawork, editing and mise-en-scene advice, which was so helpful during the shoot for the video. After finding the ‘Stress’ video we moved onto the aforementioned ‘La Haine’ film. Without this research we definitely wouldn’t have got the ideas we had before the shoot.

When we acquired the shots we needed we moved onto using Final Cut Express. Final Cut allowed us to grey scale the shots and gives it its gritty tone and vibe. We also slowed down and sped up some shots, including the shot of the bridge, which opens the music video. Also we cut and pasted some shots to combine with others either to keep continuity or to give it a fast pace. The Final Cut software also helped us edit our video evaluation, making it smooth and interlinking with clips from our research.

Finally I have learnt that new media technologies are vital in the planning and research process. As we would never have known where to go to shoot our video and of course what we would have shot. Although we would have had a vague idea, we wouldn’t of had the developed ideas that we had, with the use of Youtube and Last.fm