A2 Media Evaluation

David Goodwin

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video is performance-based but unlike many principally

performance-based music videos, such as the “Robert Randolph & The

Family Band - Nobodysoul” (1) music video, our video does not include an

audience as it is filmed as if it is a rehearsal. However, we still edited the

video in the conventional style of mixed narrative

and performance music video (2). For example, at

around 0.12 minutes into the video (near the

beginning), there is a tracking shot around the lead

singer to give a dynamic feel to the video, before he

starts singing.

Unlike many promotional music videos, we used longer takes rather than

a rapid shot montage. (3) Whilst many music videos use sounds and

dialogue at the beginning of the video, our video only uses the music

soundtrack. The intention of this is so that the audience is not distracted

from the music by sounds or dialogue at the beginning of the video.

Instead, we featured an enigmatic opening - a candle being lit, with a

special flaring effect (setting up the use of this effect for our narrative

sequences to follow. We used a close up of the woman’s face near the

beginning of the narrative part of the video to create a sense of intimacy

with the viewer and so that the viewer sees events from her perspective.

Although we used a number of medium shots of the members of the band,

we did not use the kind of close-ups that are characteristic of many music

videos because we didn’t want to distract the audience from focusing on

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Robert Randolph

the narrative. The band also wanted to be shot in an informal “rehearsal

feeling” way, deliberately deciding not to look directly at the camera, as is

conventionally the case.

Unlike most music performances, which are held on a stage in studios or

outdoor stages, our video was performed in the music room of a hotel, the

Grim’s Dyke Hotel, which is a nineteenth century manor house, once

owned by William Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. This allowed us to

bring a sense of “underplayed” grandeur to the video.

The music room Grim’s Dyke Hotel

We used minimal special effects in the performance scenes with cross-

fades between the candle shot and the performance part and between the

performance part and the narrative part. We did this to preserve the

impression that the video is of a rehearsal.

However, we applied a cartoon effect to the narrative parts to differentiate

these from the performance part of the video and as these are there to

illustrate the song and did not have to follow the rehearsal style of filming.

Our use of this cartoon effect was unusual so it would provide our video

with a unique selling point, enhancing the exposure of the band. This can

also be used to provide a sense of band image, similarly to the

“moonwalk” dance created and used by Michel Jackson.

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

texts?

We used a photograph taken at the filming location as the cover for this

DVD with relatively little image editing, to echo the rehearsal style of the

music video. Unfortunately we had colour balance issues with the camera

we used for this photograph, which we were able to repair to a degree. We

considered changing this to black and white to eliminate this problem but

felt that it would stand out less due to the black and white colour scheming

of the rest of the cover and advert. We attempted to use different effects

for the cover image (also used in the advert) such as applying a cartoon

effect to the reflections of the band in the piano and rotating it in order to

confuse the viewer, but found that the intended effect was unsuccessful so

reverted to the original concept.

In both the video and the related DVD cover and advert, the band were

dressed casually to appeal to our target audience as this music video is

intended to be informal. This contrasts with the formal elegant setting in

order to enhance the informality of the video.

We created an A4 magazine advertisement to

advertise our music video, which would cover

one page of a magazine. We used a lot of the

same content as used on the cover to provide

a visual link between the two so that a

customer will be able to recognise the cover

of the DVD from the advertisement. We used

the same fonts and colour schemes as well

as the same cover image to provide this

consistency.

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Magazine Advertisement

We did not use any screenshots from the narrative part of the video as this

would distract the audience’s attention from the band and would be likely

to create a cluttered feel to the cover. We also didn’t use these images in

the advertisement as it would ruin the consistency of design between the

cover and the advert.

After creating a number of designs and having a lot of discussions, we

created a very simple logo based around our fictional company name

Exceptional abbreviated to EXCP with “Exception Productions” below it.

We did this to provide a simple, memorable logo although it was shown in

a small font to avoid distracting attention from the band (since “Exception

Productions” refers solely to our group rather than the band). Our group

was originally going to be called Diramvid, incorporating our first names

(Di-wah, the a and m from Imran and Da-vid) but we considered it too

hard to pronounce or remember and it didn’t sound very effective.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our music video is aimed at young adults of about age 16-25 of both

genders and all ethnic backgrounds. It was aimed at people of our age

because we felt most able to relate to what interests them. We wanted it to

appeal to anyone of our age group rather than one gender or a particular

ethnic group so that it had universal appeal to increase the exposure of

the band.

The majority of our audience, when asked, considered the colour and

mise-en-scène to be different and, though a smaller amount (5), colourful

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Old logo Current logo

and a portion (3) romantic, showing that the response from the audience

concerning our use of mise-en-scène met the effect intended.

7 of the respondents considered the mise-en-scène in the performance to

be entertaining and 6 considered it to be eye-catching, again fitting in with

the effect intended. A smaller portion considered it to be professional and

confusing, suggesting that it still lacked elements to make it professional

and that perhaps the technique was made the video a bit hard to follow for

some respondents. When asked, 6 of the respondents described the

camerawork (for both parts) as professional and with a varied use of shots

and the majority of the respondents considered the handheld camera work

to be professional and steady with only one considering it a little shaky,

approximately matching the intended response from the audience to our

video.

The response from the audience concerning the use of music was largely

positive with 7 of the respondents considering it entertaining and 5 saying

that it fits in perfectly with the video and 2 liking it although one respondent

said that it does not fit in with the video, suggesting that our choice of

music in conjunction with the other elements of the video such as the

narrative largely suits the audience. When asked what they liked about the

editing, the majority (10) of the respondents said they liked the cartoon

effect applied to the narrative, showing that this is a particularly important

feature in our video.

When asked, the majority view (11) on the digipack and magazine cover

was that there was a good use of colour with other views considerably

less. No one said that there was poor use of colour. This suggests that we

made a good use of colour in the digipack and magazine cover. The

majority of the respondents (11) said that the products followed the forms

and conventions of existing products with 4 saying that we did partly.

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The Band members of Domino Theory, and the characters in the narrative

part of the video are young so this would appeal to an audience of a

similar age. Similarly, the romantic theme of this video would appeal to

this age group, with a simple plotline in the narrative part of a romance

between two (male and female) young adults.

All the band members are white males but the man and woman in the

narrative part are Asian so this video appeals to people from both ethnic

backgrounds. The narrative part of the video focuses slightly more on the

woman than the man so women will be more likely to relate to this.

However, she is attractive and will appeal to the male gaze. Laura Mulvey

(1941) argued about the objectifying treatment of women in the media

through what she called “male gaze”, in which the viewers are made to

look at women on camera through the eyes of a heterosexual man, often

with the camera lingering on the curves of the woman’s body. This denies

them human agency “relegating them to the status of objects, hence, the

woman reader and the woman viewer must experience the text's narrative

secondarily, by identifying with a man's perspective.” (4) For more

information on Mulvey, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze#The_Male_Gaze_and_Feminist_th

eory for more about male gaze and feminist theory.

The narrative part was filmed in Central London with exterior shots of a

London street, also indicated by a red London bus in the background and

the illuminated displays. We also filmed a station on the London

Underground, indicated by the recognisable London Underground roundel

in the background and the underground train leaving the station.

Londoners (indeed, any city folk) would be able to relate to this setting and

it represents a vibrant city full of life- something appealing to our target

audience- the excitement of a night out in the city lights.

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We regularly switched between the narrative and performance elements in

order to keep the audience’s attention as using only the performance part

of the video may cause the audience to lose interest, as they are the

generation that is accustomed to a lot happening simultaneously (e.g.

advances in technology allowing people to perform multiple functions at

the same time).

4. How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning,

construction and evaluation stages?

We used Adobe Photoshop to create the static graphics for the music

video such as the DVD cover and advertisement because the software is

very flexible and capable of a multitude of professional editing techniques

and has a large range of fonts to choose from. In addition, I had prior

knowledge of this software due to my use of it outside of college.

We also used Final Cut Pro (Apple Macintosh) to import, compile and edit

the video due to its similar professional editing and compilation abilities,

and the speed of the new computers compared to the previous older

computers accelerated video-rendering time considerably. Within this, we

used additional software to create the outline cartoon effect used in the

narrative parts of the plot and briefly on the candle at the beginning. This

was to combine both the cartoon and real elements of the video, to

contrast it with the performance parts of the video in which this effect is

not applied.

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We originally intended to create an animated title with the letters of

Domino Theory on each domino (i.e. D-O-M-I-N-O T-H-E-O-R-Y) in which

the domino letters topple in the style of dominoes falling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKNOlcn1Xg4.

We attempted different methods for achieving this. We first tried using

Flash to create this clip using simple domino images constructed from

rectangles with the letters overlaid. When this proved unsuccessful, we

attempted to use Adobe After Effects to create this effect. We even tried to

use Blender, a free 3D modelling and animation software, to try this in

order to use the 3rd dimensional advantage but unfortunately our lack of

knowledge on the software made this feat too difficult, since we did not

know how to add the text to the 3D dominoes. In the end, we decided that

the dominoes animation idea was impractical and we created a simpler

graphic in Adobe Photoshop, which we did not use, as there were

compatibility problems with Final Cut Pro in the final video.

The simpler title design

Sources:

1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUZnlxuXaG4

2: http://www.slideshare.net/guest60af28/media-music-video-codes-and-

conventions-presentation-1994185

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3: General Forms and Conventions (own work)

4:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze#The_Male_Gaze_and_Feminist_theory

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