EVALUATION: What have you learnt from audience feedback?

I interviewed people and wrote down their responses to my video to get a feel for my audience’s opinions of my clips. I tried to get a mix of people in and outside my genre, along with those who have knowledge of media to create a more diverse opinion.

My interviews, which were effective primary research methods, suggest that while my music video is slightly unconventional it matches the song itself and does have some links to the genre overall. Some improvements were suggested such as having more screen time using people or actors, which I do think is a valid point, and I could of managed without having to reshoot too much of my video.

I asked my friend Matt Driver about my music video first, as he is a fan of music in this genre and has a lot of specific knowledge towards the punk music genre. He is a fan of Frank Turner, and has met him at a gig, so knows a lot about his songs and style of music, which is useful for me as he can asses my video as a comparison to his work. Matt claimed that while my video is an unconventional one for the genre he liked the style of it and saw obvious links to the content of the song within the video, which is a key part of many music videos. I asked him how I could improve this to be more similar to other types of music in the genre and he claimed that more performance was normally used, but there are quite a few videos which are completely absent of an artist, citing artists such as Alkaline Trio and The Wonder Years as having videos with little, if any actor interaction.

Once I had gained an opinion of my video from a person who had a specific knowledge of the genre I decided to ask a person who would be more knowledgeable about the technical aspects of my video. I asked my friend Rosie, who does dance and drama A-levels, giving her a knowledge of many technical aspects of pieces. She said the music video was simplistic, but good. The songs upbeat nature matched the brightness of most of the scenes (a happy coincidence) and that while there was little actor screen-time, it was still an interesting and different type of video.

Overall this has shown me both negative and positive features of my music video, which was expected. It has shown me that, while my video is unconventional in some forms, it sticks to some conventions of the genre, such as the video having a link to the song itself.

EVALUATION: How did you use media technologies in the research and planning, construction and evaluation of your coursework?

Media technology evaluation from chriswaltonasmedia

Video done!

I finally completed the video, and it is now uploaded on here, as you can see

Digipak design

I have also finished my digipak now. I used a similar image for the front cover of it, and used a stock photo of cardboard with various other pictures for my back cover. I found pictures of gig locations around the world including the Camden Barfly and New York's Joe's Pub to put on the cardboard and elsewhere in my digipak. I also used pictures I had taken while travelling to university open days to give a more obvious sense of travel, as the places used may not be distinguishable to a viewer as being on separate continents

The centre piece of this is my front cover, which shows similar fonts as my poster for the album, as well as having the same photo and same editing done to it, with the sketch in the top left corner spreading across the image. On the right is my back cover, with a track list and images to keep the page from being bland and on the left is an inside page, with a picture of large open spaces, to show the aspect of freedom in the album

The central piece of the inside of my digipak is my CD holder, and is the reverse of my front cover. I was going to put a media tray template in here, but I could not find one that did not have a background and would sit on this with the card behind it still visible. To the left and right of this I have placed images of places where gigs are held, the Camden Barfly on the left and Joe's Pub on the right. As stated earlier these are both on different continents, with the Barfly being in London and Joe's being in New York. I feel this helps increase the idea of travel having a key part of the album and links with the rest of my tasks well.

Album poster

I've finished creating a poster for my album as part of my ancillary tasks. I used a similar text font and position to keep continuity between the poster and my album, and used the picture of the front cover of my album as the image for the poster

I have tried to create a sketched effect in the top left corner of my work, and had it meet with a section that I had blurred to try and make it meld more with the image, as I felt the image on its own was quite boring

Music Video Ideology

During a lesson we discussed ideology, which is a system of meaning inherent to a specific culture that allows us to define the world and make value judgements about it.

We also discussed the idea that this ideology allows us to 'normalise' media texts, accepting the behaviour or values it holds as part of its conventions. An example of this is the media representing social interaction and social institutions. Because these representations are repeated they are reinforced into broad social definitions.

For example, a video I put on here for 'Headbutt' by The King Blues has a very 'British' style to it, due to low production values and being filmed in grimy/run down areas, which are conventions of British cinema. It is also reminiscent of communist principles, especially those of Vladimir Lenin, due to the video showing that the people in it are happy living in run-down areas, and that it is good to be a part of the lower classes. While it is easy to tell the style of music is linked to punk, it is only loosely related, as there are more links to other genres such as folk, by singing about love. There are also influences from rap music, such as the type of hat the singer wears and the way he moves his hands while singing. This shows that while there are many ideological conventions taken from other genres, the feel for this type of music is very low production values and simple video styles.

A different viewpoint in this genre could be shown with the video for 'London Is The Reason' by Gallows, which leans more towards the heavier side of the punk genre

This video is again based in grimy, run down areas, however it has lost the folk aspect, as the song is not about love, with the chorus being:

We have no fear, we have no pity

We hate you, we hate this city

 

This shows that the song is not about love, its about anger, which is more in line with punk ideology. The lyrics are also sung with a much deeper tone, which makes it sound more violent. The video itself is based around the normal people rising up against a police culture, showing the police as animals such as pigs to dehumanise their actions of attacking people in the streets. This sort of view on the authorities is definitely in line with a punk ideology, which makes this video far more simple to assess, as it doesn't fuse genres like the King Blues one does. The video for this song still uses conventions of British cinema, but there is very little influence from anywhere else but punk music videos.

One Take Videos

While looking at various types of music video I came across the One Take video. TVTropes.org explains a "Oner" as it calls them as:

One very long continuous shot. The camera moves, the actors move, things happen, the camera keeps shooting. Difficult. Expensive. Rarely makes it out of the editing room intact. It's also an expensive pain in the ass on film cameras, many of which hold no more than 5 minutes (if that) of film for a shot.

While this is very colloquial it does have a truth in it, it is difficult to create an effective one take video, as it requires a great amount of precision and timing. There are a few artists in my genre that use One Take video.

Perhaps the most well known One Take video is Ok Go's video for 'This Too Shall Pass', showing a very complicated process across the whole video

While this is very impressive, it is not representative of all One Take videos. For example, a singer in a similar style to my artist, Jonny Craig, has created a One Take video for his song 'I Still Feel Her Pt.3' which is a very simple video, just following him around a house.

While this is very simple, there are more complicated One Take videos used in this genre. For example, a band I have previously made a post about, Motion City Soundtrack, made a One Take video for their song 'True Romance' where the first half is filmed in reverse, and the second half is shown in reverse

While this is a technically impressive type of video, I feel I would not be able to create a video in this style as it takes a large amount of precision and planning to get correct, and any mistakes ruins the entire take, and has to be restarted from the beginning. As much as I would like to create a One Take video I doubt it would be possible unless it was very simple.