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

Media Project: Evaluation 2 from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we had finished our video we embedded it onto a social networking site 'Facebook'. This allowed an audience to both watch it and leave responses and feedback. Hopefully it would reach its potential target audience and the feedback we would receive would be appropriate.  

Here are some quotations demonstrating the feedback that we have received:

> "A really good music video. You can really see the emotion of the character through the imagery of the video and the lyrics in the song."
> "The video shows an excellent visual presentation to accompany the theme of the song."
> "I love the underlying thematic representation of rebelliousness reflected by the grittiness and quick cuts of the shots which impairs the clarity to the audience. The playful interchanging colour saturation's kept me visually stimulated and satisfied my needs as the audience."
> "Really well made! Love the band shots, but if you changed the main singer for a professional actor it would be even better!"
> "Overall, I really liked the music video, I think the story really followed the lyrics of the song and they both fitted really well together, I particularly liked the band shots. The use of costumes and setting were appropriate for the song. The transitions between the band and the rest of the video worked really well, and kept you interested during the video. The content of the video was appropriate for my age group and was thought provoking."



I was really pleased with the great response we received. It contained a mixture of appreciation and constructive criticism. There where no bad reviews which shows on the whole it was a successful project. I was particularly pleased with "the use of costume and setting were appropriate for the song" as this was something which we found difficult to decide originally. Small elements of mise-en-scene such as costume could completely alter the audiences perspective on the main character, whether they sympathise with him or not. So to be successfull in our choices was very satisfying. We could have chosen to post this on a site which is particularly attractive for metal and rock fans. However by choosing something more generic it broadened our potential target market and allowed more diverse sub-groups to view the video, particularly those who appreciate the footage if not the music.

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

After completing our video we needed to decide how we would like our media product to be distributed to its consumer. We produced a CD package and magazine poster. The ancillary task needed to conform to the genre of our video in order to attract the target market. It also needed to be clear what we where advertising or presenting and also needed to sell the product.

Our music video contained two key parts, the narrative and the band performance shots. We wanted to incorporate both of these within our CD package. The front cover was narrative based and featured the same actor who played the role of Ricky in our music video. We took a photograph of him spray painting the wall to show his rebellious side. The boy is also on his own to show his individuality which connotes individuality on the musics behalf. This is also a reflection of the Independence the character experiences during the narrative. This connotes rebellion to our audience and conforms to the metal genre. We also used quite dark colours such as the strong black shadows in order to incorporate the metal/rock music genre. By using photoshop to give the effect of Ricky being spray painted onto the wall this showed that there is a narrative element as he is not a real representation of a boy. This makes it easier for the audience to engage watch as they will not need to get too emotionally involved but instead can just enjoy the good music and storyline.

Our poster image consists of a close up of a spray can. This becomes an iconic image which is associated with rebellion which conforms to our genre and relates to our target audience. The poster is also the key place where we can incorporate our chosen institution with our product and our distribution platforms. The image includes small logo's to give our audience information. We chose the spray can because that too has space to be written on and we chose to put the institution and name of the song and artist. To keep a relationship between the poster and our video we photographed the image in front of a brick wall which reflected alot of the shots from our video. we also included a small incidental image featuring our CD front cover. Not only does this tie the two products together but it also shows a second representation of Ricky to its audience.

I think the ancillary task and media product work really well together. In both we used a similar selection of desaturated colour and selective colour to highlight certain aspects. We also used a vignette effect on the ancillary task images to reflect the darkness we filmed alot of our shots in.

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

Media Project: Evaluation 1 from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.

In response to this question we have created a video.

Ancillary task

Here are our final ancillary task texts. We used photoshop to edit the images and add texts. The first image is four differerant images including the fron, back and two inside covers of our CD package. The second image is the magazine poster.

final Video

Skid Row/ 18 and Life - Music Video from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.

Studio band shots.

We returned to the photography studio one more time to get some shots of the band members playing the instruments in more dramatic lighting. These shots have had a particulalry powerfull effect when placed during the instrumental parts of the music. They reflect the lonelyness that we see in Ricky, our protagonsit, and the shots referance the original music video which featured a similar thing.

 

Below is a lighting diagram which shows how we mapped out the studio. It was difficult at first to achieve the selective lighting we wanted which highlights parts of the guitar without lighting up the guitarist. We lowered the light and pointed it towards the back drop which gave a silhouette effect.

Re-do lyric shoot

After reflecting on the footage we got from our lyric shoot in the photography studio, we've decided to do it again. This time James (our singer) has learnt the lyrics properly.

Lyric shoot (Photography studio)

We booked out the photography studio after school and went and set up the studio lights. We used a black backdrop as it gave the shots a more serious and aggressive feeling. James stood in the centre of the backdrop and the camera was on a tripod opposite at chest height. We started off using one light on a dim setting to give strong shadows. We then varied the angle of the light to achieve different amounts of contrast on the subjects face. We also explored different camera angles, some with and some without the guitar in shot.

Final Narrative Shoot

We have finally finished all our filming. We filmed an argument scene between Ricky and his mum in the phone box. This was an interesting setting to work in as it was difficult to get good clear shots.
We then went on to the skate park when it was dark and got some more nightime shots of Ricky being alone and smoking.

We should definatly now have enough footage to fill the few remaining gaps in our video.

Skid Row Album Art Work

As the album covers for Glam Rock artists where so diverse it felt difficult to interpret what sort of things we should include in our album cover. Here i have looked at previous album covers of Skid Row. Most of the album covers have a much more gritty feel with a strong emphasis on pattern and texture. They have a red paint effect title which is used on  most of their overs but not all.

For our ancillary task we will need to produce an album cover and a magazine advert. Here are some examples of album covers of artists from the Glam Rock era. There is quite a range in designs and choice of colour. However one thing that is present in all of them is the theatrical feel. This was one of the key characteristics of Glam Rock.

Next shoot

After editing our band shots and including them in our video we thought it would be interesting to add more emphasis on the lyrics of the song as it has a strong narrative. In order to do this we have decided to do a shoot in the photography studio. By using controlled lighting and a plain backdrop it will exaggerate the facial expressions of our singer and therefore the lyrics. For the shoot we will need to bring a microphone for the singer but other than that the scene will be kept quite minimal in order to make it most successful.