A2 Media Evaluation- Music VideoBy Dan Eavis

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

My media product both uses and develops media products which are currently on the market conventions. To do this I did some research into the artist I chose ( Coldplay) to see some of the key techniques they use within their videos. I also did some research into similar music artists who have similar genre of music as Coldplay, this allowed me to apply certain features into the music video.

Using Goodwin’s theory as an analysis of my music video, it is easy to see that the video falls into some of the categories he used to analyse videos.

The first point of the theory is that the music video demonstrates genre characteristics; generally videos done by Coldplay around the time of ‘Yellow’ were seen to be to evoke emotions from the viewing audience as visuals were shown with the actor reflecting on the past, this builds a relationship with the song as it has a slow tempo to go with the lyrics which helps evoke emotions. We decided to use the same idea to evoke feelings by putting images such as graveyard and also fade ins of the female character in order to give the idea that she is an illusion. We also challenged this convention by using a band as well in the footage, as Coldplay generally don’t add live performances to their music videos, this adds a sense of rawness to the video which helps immerse the audience in the video.

Another Goodwin theory is that video’s contain a lot of shots that are centred around the artist. After doing research on other Coldplay videos, they include a lot of shots of the actual band who also act in their videos. We had to develop this idea by using a different a band to Coldplay who did a cover for the song we chose. However we weren’t able to get their version of the cover a part of the video due to restrictions and problems we ran to when producing the video, we choose a local band ‘Seismic Activity’ as the video would help boost their popularity as we included a lot of close up and long shots of the band during a performance.

The third theory of Goodwin, is that music videos contain a relationship between visual and lyrics.

In some Coldplay videos we researched such as ‘Every Tear Drop Is A Waterfall’ Coldplay used on screen lyrics in order to show a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics. We decided to develop the use of a relationship between lyrics and visuals by using actions to animate the lyrics being said in the song, this allows us to engage with the viewer and also helps us produce a more effective narrative.

The fourth and fifth elements in Goodwin's theory are:1. Voyeuristic views of women2. Intertextual references in the videoAfter researching Coldplay videos we found out that they didn’t use voyeuristic views of women in their videos, however they often used a female actress in some of their more narrative, so we decided to use this idea to in order to show a powerful moral to our story.

We also looked into if Coldplay used Intertextual references in their videos, we found that they didn’t really use many if any within their videos, so we decided not to use products intently in our video, however we do have branded clothes in the video to suggest some product placement within it.

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

I believe that the combination between the main product and ancillary texts are effective, I believe this because we decided to used an image taken from the main product as the front cover for the digipak. This shows a relationship between the main product and the digipak as we haven’t used an alternative image from the main product which also saved us time for taking another picture.

As our story is simple, we decided that the layout for our digipak and advert will also follow the same structure by having the back of the digipak just a plain yellow with the name of the songs on. The use of the colour relates to the title of the feature song emphasising the combination between the products, as the back is often only a guide for the potential buyer of what is included on the CD.

For the text, we decided to use a font similar to that from Coldplay’s original album ‘mylo Xyloto’, this shows a creative aspect to our digipak in order to show relationship between the band and the new cover song performed by someone else.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

At the beginning of the project, we used a questionnaire to ask people what they thought about Coldplay and our song selection of ‘Yellow’ by them. After collecting the results we found out hat most people believed that the song would have a story that suggested about love and the pain of it, so we decided to try give what the questionnaire told us by using this as a template for future porduction.

After we did our first cut of the video, our media teacher asked for it to show to a lower media class in order for us to gather some feedback on what we had done already. After creating another questionnaire for this, we found out that what we had done was good and that there was some lip synching issues, so we went about to correct this issue in order to not ruin the feeling of the song with poor lip synching.

Finally, for the 2nd cut, we had our media teacher give us feedback. We found out that there were some pointless scenes so we cut them out and extended others so that other sections of the film didn’t suffer. He also suggested turning up the brightness and contrast on the first bedroom scene because he felt that it was to dark, so we tried adjusting it to suitable levels to a point where it didn’t look artificial. (All questionnaires and feedback on blog)

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

Song Vegas- We used the program Sony Vegas in the editing of the video. To being with I found this a complicated piece of software, but after some guidance from my teacher and also some time practising after downloading it for my home computer I found myself comfortable using this software by the end of the project as things like implicating effects in the footage and lip synching became an easier task.

InDesign- We used this program in the production of the magazine advert for the ancillary product. After using this program in previous years, I already know how to use this program effectively. This was also useful in the planning stage as it allowed us to plan out the magazine before using it. After using this program for the advert we created, we used a tool called gradient feather tool in order to give to highlight more of the text than the other to give it a more creative feel.

Photoshop- We used this in the editing of pictures we were using for out digipak and also the magazine advert. The program allows us to edit pictures to accurate detail allowing a professional look to it. However I found this program quite problematic as it is quite complicated with what you want to do. But over the course of the project it became better to use.

Blogger- We used this in putting together all of our coursework in one place which is easy to edit and add work as we go along the project. After years of using this also, I have became very comfortable with this and after recent years with this software, the updates that been used to update it have also made it a more comfortable experience.

YouTube- We used this to help with the research stage of the coursework. YouTube allowed us to look up videos of the same genre to Coldplay and also other Coldplay videos in order to help us plan out our own video. We also could have had the option of putting our own video on YouTube in order to have feedback, however after writing to the record company for allowing us to use on YouTube we never got a reply so for copyright issues we didn’t put it up on YouTube.

Slideshare- I used this program in order to be able to upload slideshows onto blogger in order to give variety to my coursework. This is a very easy program to use especially for it being the first time I have used it.

Scribd- I used this program to be able to upload word documents I had completed on to my blog. However after updates to Blogger this program became obsolete and no longer worked with uploaded documents so had to find other ways to put these documents on the blog.