Max's Final Evaluation

Media Studies Evaluation- Max Bromley

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

With our particular media products, we heavily researched bands in the indie/alternative genre with some of our main influences coming from groups such as “The Verve” and their song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” and “Oasis – Falling Down”. We gained many new ideas from the research which gave us inspiration to come up with something new such as the story of our main character on his journey home, whist also still conforming to the media conventions of our distinct genre.

Your typical popular music video will display some sort of lip-synching, band performance and lots of enhanced colours, just as in this picture on the right hand side of pop group Alphabeat. In contrast to that we produced a music video that was one-hundred percent narrative, featuring no band members. We also made the video completely black and white so that we could add to the gloomy mood that we’d established with the storyline. In addition to this the choice of location was essential as we needed to persist with the murky theme of the video. In order to do this we chose various sites in Newmarket that capitalised on this idea such as pathways and side streets. This is a common theme represented by the band “The Arctic Monkeys” in their music videos as displayed on the left. This is quite challenging to forms and conventions in pop music but comfortably fits into the indie/alternative genre that our song (camera obscura-if looks could kill) suits very well. Another point that was quite challenging to forms and conventions of a real media product, was that when we researched the band camera obscura and their video we found out that it was visually quite upbeat, exhibiting lots of mirror effects and shots of the two lead singers. Our video was distinctly different from this but still worked suitably as we found out the lyrics of the song were very flexible. For example, one of the lyrics of the song is “tell me where it all went wrong”. Now this line could be perceived in different ways, as such that in our video as this line is sung our main character is being picked on by thuggish young youths. This diverse visual difference from the original, results in bringing a whole new meaning to the lyrics that can even defy how they were meant to mean in the original song.

The advantage of a band or artist promoting themselves as alternative is that it means that they offer something a bit different to common mainstream music. We also continued these conventions through to our digipack covers and magazine advert, with indie photographs and black & white images such as the photographs we produced of the two girls, who we are portraying to be the band members, whilst we also kept it stylish and eye catching. Overall we managed to use other bands material to develop our own work into a piece that to a certain extent challenged the conventions used in the most common music videos.



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

As mentioned before the overall theme of our media products was to create a mood of loneliness and sympathetic feeling towards our main character.
We did this by continuing the black & white imagery throughout all three of our media products and then adjusting the affects on each one to stylise each piece. For instance in our music video we just simply turned the film into a sepia effect and combined that with a good narrative and a variation of camera shots. Proceeding that we then turned our attention to our dvd/cd cover. We continued with the black & white effect on the photographs we took and then altered the image so that the main character in the foreground of the shot stayed in focus while we then blurred out the lit up town high street in the background. I think this idea worked well, significantly adding to the sense of loneliness that was established in the film. Likewise on the reverse side of the digipack we introduced the two lead singers with an indie looking photograph with the two girls sat on a wall with an interesting graffiti image behind them. We then tailored the picture by de-saturating out most of the colour making the photograph appear to look dull but maintaining the sharp purple and yellow colour from the background graffiti. As this particular media item has to be seen and bought in shops and online it has to be visually appealing and enticing to look at. As a result simply having a plain black and white image would be far too dreary. By adding this affect we have increased the style of the product making it a lot more commercial. Finally with our magazine advert we went for a more hard sell approach by simply having a mid shot of our main character with an out stretched arm showing the dvd/cd in the face of the camera. The image is accompanied by large font reading “out now!” and a long list of tour dates. The affect of this advert is that you know exactly what the product looks like and sends the message as if to go and buy it right now. The continuity of this piece is that we’ve incorporated the digipack cover into the advert and kept the main character of the video throughout the whole media project.

Having the combination of our main product and our print product together makes the whole package appear to become a much more professional piece. Additionally the print products add new and different elements of style that could not be done in the video, for instance photographic effects and font style. Furthermore extending the product to more than just the music video allows you to show what you can do in the other aspects of media. Displaying your creativity and ability to make a simple photograph look as professional as possible, as well as making the band look marketable and appealing to the consumer. The music video alone displays all sorts of movie making techniques such variation of camera shots and ability to build up tension within a story, but combine that with the total package and you have every aspect of media covered. Something that overall tells you much more about the band and their image.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Generally speaking our audience feedback was very positive. Most people thought that our music video was interesting and a bit different in a way that set it apart from the rest. However both me and my group members are fully aware that our music video and ancillary products were far from perfect. We have discussed the critical points made and come up with how we would make it better if given the opportunity. One of the main problems we faced was time management, resulting in us hurrying to complete editing and rushing to finish our print product. In future if we had more time we would have concentrated more on our magazine advert in particular as in the end this was probably our weakest and most unprofessional piece. We also would have possibly proceeded with increasing continuity on our digipack as certain images on it were in total black and white and others were in colour, making it look perhaps slightly unfinished. More of an issue however was that our magazine advert was sufficiently lacking in important information such as reviews and release dates. What’s more was that the lack of time spent on the advert meant that titles looks rushed and colour schemes did not match. A further point that we would have adjusted would be the days in which we filmed. Because we had a pre set mood for our video it was crucial that we had the right kind of lighting despite it being in black & white. Unfortunately the only time we could film in relatively dim lighting was just as the sun was going down which sadly gave us a small window of opportunity to film once again adding to rushed factor. However with good team planning we could have avoided this problem and prevented us from asking for extra film time and hurrying to meet the deadline possibly resulting in higher quality end product.

Overall we have become much more aware of the importance of feedback, especially during the draft and concept stages of your production, media is an industry which relies heavily on consumer satisfaction and in order to maximise this you must take audience feedback on board and allow it to develop your product in a positive way.





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

Constructing our media products to the level of quality that we did, would simply not have been possible without the use of new media technologies throughout the project. First off, the project started with researching other bands material to gain inspiration for our own music video, such as looking at other artist’s camera shots, tempo and narratives. We did this by exploring such sites as www.youtube.com where you are given the opportunity to view enormous amounts of videos from every kind of genre. Secondly within the planning process we were given the facility to virtually blog our ideas in an online diary where everything is kept in order. You also publish draft material where you can receive teacher and classmate feedback which is vital for furthering your project. This is all through www.blogger.com via the college website. This is a good way to show others exactly how you’ve got to a certain stage in your project and sharing information is a good way not to copy other peoples work but to look at it and see how it could possibly develop your own work for the better. Thirdly was the filming, where we were given compact, easy to use cameras making it easy to operate quickly and to the best of your ability. Lastly and perhaps most importantly was the editing software on the available state of the art Apple Mac computers. This tool allowed us to change many different elements of the film such as colour, tempo and order of shots. Thus enabling us to set a precise mood and build tension within the video. In terms of the ancillary products we mainly used photoshop software which supplied vast amount of different ways that we could tailor our photograph to perfection. The large range of technologies on offer makes the project much easier to express your creativity and increase precision and correctness. Without the media industry developing in new technological processes and ideas the industry would become stagnant and halt the process of new media innovations.


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