Final Evaluation - Daniel Collinson

At the beginning of our coursework we were asked to either produce a music promotion, a film promotion or a television promotion. My group chose the music promotion. Through research and in depth searching we found a song that had a good rhythm and the narrative was simple and so it would create a good video. We found the song on http://www.jamendo.com/, it was originally by Dan Byrke. I worked with Blake Blackburn, James Hamill and Ashley Hartley. In this production I had many roles. I performed in the video as the bands guitarist. I played the role of the camera man, many significant times and came up with some creative and original ideas. I also took part in the editing where I helped to cut unnecessary shots that were not required and I also helped to sync up the video with the song. For the ancillary tasks, I created five album covers (extra back cover for backup) and the magazine advertisement, using photoshop. Also I helped to draw up different styles and types of shots in the storyboard, to make the video more visually interesting.

When we finally decided on the song 'Discount Store', Blake and James came up with the idea of calling the band we made up fellow, this comes from the idea of fun but mellow.

I believe that the audience would be extremely affected by this product because it highly relates to the Maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs.

The protagonist in the video is deeply depressed. He hates his job so much and has to put up with horrible customers every day, and so he has low self-actualization, low self esteem and finally he has a lack of belonging.


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

First of all we had a song that had a very popular and common genre, rock pop. We have shown this through conventions such as camera work and narrative scenes in the video. Although most rock videos just show the artist or band on a stage or in a room, we had narrative and performance shots, the narrative is usually seen in a pop video, and so we have placed both elements together to create a good rock pop video. Also we used the idea of placing shots of the band's guitarist playing guitar to add another rock genre element. I believe it is vital to use these typical elements because it creates realism and understanding in the audience. The shot below shows these elements combined.

The power point below shows the ancillary tasks using and developing the forms and conventions of real media products.

Album Covers Powerpoint

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Although we used typical conventions and elements we also added something different. We used transitions in the video, since not many rock pop or any music videos use transitions. We used them because it helped the video and song flow better and also it would become very difficult to sync up the song and the video. I believe it is vital to use and do something new in the video because it is refreshing for the audience and also keeps them interested. I think the innovation were likely to prove successful because it is a mixture of new type of editing and shots as well as old, well known and recognizable shots that the audience can relate to. I believe the choices we made, especially the choice of camera shots did work. For instance, on the questionnaire/audience feedback 3 out of 10 people said they liked the cctv shot (where we used a long shot high shot to create a cctv affect, the shot is then modified and placed in front of a shot of a computer monitor). Also another 5 out of 10 said that they liked the close up of the protagonist stacking up fruit juice on the shop shelves.

(Below is the CCTV shot and the protagonist stacking up fruit juice on the shop shelf)

For the ancillary tasks, 6 out of 10 said that they liked the idea of desaturation, colour filters and the effect of the black and white used in all of my album covers and my magazine article, one audience member wrote that 'they were quite well produced'. (As shown below).For the ancillary tasks, 6 out of 10 said that they liked the idea of desaturation, colour filters and the effect of the black and white used in all of my album covers and my magazine article, one audience member wrote that 'they were quite well produced'. (As shown below).

2) How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

The brand image for this artist is laid back, mellow and easy listening. We wanted to make the logo for the band simple but with some style. (As shown below)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


I continued to use this style and font of writing in my ancillary tasks. I also kept the same elements in colouring. I first made the original photo black and white. I then desaturated the image to give it a cartoon like style. This also shows the band image. They are not really serious if they are going to have a album cover that is mainly cartoon. (I did this by using the adjustment tool from the image tab on photoshop). Also for the band's name and the album's title I used dark purple for colouring whilst everything else was black and white. This added good effect. (As shown below).
 

We also kept the same style of clothing in our music video and ancillary tasks. In both the pictures and the video the protagonist and the guitarist are wearing laid back clothing such as jeans and a simple shirt. I believe it has kept the same image for the band and established the brand image.


To push the brand image we kept the same clothing throughout the video. We used clothing that everyday people can afford and wear. This is as mentioned before, laid back clothing like jeans and simple shirts and T-shirts. We also kept this style and branding in the ancillary tasks where the band members are wearing the same clothing. This is reflected by other artists who keep up a brand image for their fans to follow and recognize (which is what a brand is suppose to do).

Michael Jackson is the perfect example for branding and ideology. He made the idea of a Stetson hat and wearing a glove covered in diamonds an icon representing him. (As Shown below).

We also used a medium paced editing to go with the song. On two points of the video we sped up the shots to keep the story going and also keep the audience interested. These two points where when the protagonist gets on the bus and when he is just walking from the other bus stop to the entrance of the shop. (As shown below).
 

As said in my research our product/band would probably get signed by EMI records, since they sign many artists of the particular genre of rock pop. Artists such as The Beatles, Lily Allen, Beastie Boys, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry, Pink Floyd, queen and Robbie Williams. Obviously the genre of rock pop is clearer in some of the artists than others.
 
 
This is the EMI record company logo. I used this logo on my back covers of my ancillary tasks. (Below).
 

 
A budget is a big matter in creating a music video. When a producer and director is allocated to create the video, the producer draws up a budget, which is approved by the head of production. This is submitted to the client (record company) who may wish to negotiate or to modify the idea, to fit a manageable budget. Once agreed, a deal memo will be countersigned on director and budget. At this stage the production company is committing itself to expenditure as the director and producer need to put together the production unit, the main team of creative personnel.


The recent economic downturn in media industries has led to both a reduction in available budget for music promotion and a far greater degree of corporate involvement in many products. Despite the brevity of the planning period, record companies are often reluctant to green-light a project in case they make a mistake. At Sony for example, six different levels in the company have to sign off (approve) video budgets before shooting can commence and the head of the label has to approve any project over £20,000 (ours would probably not cost that much). The production company may need to apply considerable pressure to get the confirmation needed to proceed.

It is said that the majority of the music is now created for the young people and generation. And so I believe this product would make a profit because it stands out and it is special because the performers are the same age as the listeners and so the record company would value from this profit. Also the performers dress the same and have the same average low paid jobs that teenagers get, working in a small discount store. This product supports the teenage generation.


3) What have you learned from the audience feedback?

Here is the first page for the discount store music video questionnaire.

Audience Feedback Charts And Graphs

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Here is the audience feedback below.






Our target audience for this product was teens and upwards, around 16 to 25 year olds. Looking at the socio-economic scale in the demographic profiling, I would describe the best group for this particular product to be E to C1 (Basically, the subsidence’s like unemployed students to the lower middle class, such as trades and supervisory jobs). However the product definitely relates to the audience who come under the class of D because the protagonist in the video is a shop assistant (manual worker) or the lower working class.

Looking at the psychographic profiling and the young and rubicam’s cross-cultural consumer characteristics, I would place this product in the group of the mainstreamers. I would do this because this is 40% of the market. This is the largest section of the market. This group seeks security in conformity and thus tends to buy well known brands. I believe this large portion of buyers would buy this product because it is a mainstream genre.

The audience we have got for our product is a potentially large mass audience and so it is bound to make a good financial profit.

We are likely to have a secondary audience. Because this product is a hybrid genre, meaning there are two genres. Rock and pop. That is why other bands such as the beatles for example were so successful because they appealed to a lot of audience. They would have songs like 'Twist and Shout' for the rock lovers and then 'I saw her standing there' for the pop lovers. (As in the link below).

TWIST AND SHOUT (1964)
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I SAW HER STANDING THERE (1964)
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Our product must appeal to an audience. That is why we need good advertisement and marketing. Here we can use AIDA (acronym used in marketing that describes a common list of events that are very often undergone when a person is selling a product of service:

A - Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer = To do this I used the effects of photoshop and made my ancillary tasks black and white and also desaturated. I also used a thick purple font to attract the customer to the band's name and album name.

I - Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising) = On my front cover for the album, I did not use a image of the band. The picture I chose was the shop where the narrative takes place. I believe the shot makes the customer focus on the album and makes then more interested when they are not 100% sure who the band is until they read the font.

D - Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs = Here I used the interesting photos to convince the customers, it also depends on the customers music taste.

A - Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing = Here I used logos such as HMV's logo on the magazine advertisement to entice the customer in the store to buy the album.

S - Satisfaction: satisfy the customer so they become a repeat customer and give referrals to the product = Once again this depends on the customers taste in music and whether they would buy this brand or genre again.

We knew from the start that the song was not up to much, and so we were going to have to attract and address the audience some other way. We did this by using various interesting shots in our video. The questionnaire shows that 50% of the audience believed the close up of the protagonist stacking the shelves with fruit juice was a very creative shot. Also another 30% of the audience believed the cctv camera/computer shot was a good feature to the video.

Also to attract the audience I used similar elements in all of my ancillary tasks. As mentioned before, on all tasks I turned the picture black and white and then desaturated it in photoshop. I liked to use this element because I gave the pictures a continuous style and also they looked quite like a cartoon. This also goes with the bands style, 'fun but mellow'. I also used the same style in font, a bold but deep purple text to give the band logo some character. This also helped the album and the magazine advert stands out because everything else was black and white whilst the band name and album title was in colour. (As shown Below)

We have used audience research throughout the project. We have used questionnaires for both the ancillary tasks and also the video and we also have a video recording of the audience explaining their answers for the questionnaire. This was a good idea because it saves the audience having to write every little point down and also gives our group more evidence and backup.

In our project we have used still cameras, video recorder cameras and also apple mac computers. All have them have affected our project in a good way. The still cameras allowed us to choose a good location as well as selecting photos for our album covers, website and also our magazine article. Also obviously we would need to use a video camera for our video. This was effective because it allowed us to get experimental and challenging shots to make our video visually interesting. Also the use of the camera stand was good because it allowed us to get the really high cctv shot. (As shown below).

Also the use of the mac's has been very effective because they have allowed us to use specialized programs such as photoshop and also complicated industry standard editing software programs such as final cut express. From using photoshop last year in one of my projects I was able to think of different styles of camera shots and the effects I could use. I had to go through a tutorial with final cut express but this allowed me to understand the program and realize the effects I could use in the project.

Looking at the feedback, we have done very well in our tasks. The audience has said it is well paced and conforms to the elements of a pop video. They have told us that it is for teens and the song lines with the story. They say that the camera shots are effective and help to pace the story. Also for the ancillary tasks the audience has said that they liked the desaturation, the colour filters and the colour grading as well as the black and white effect (80% of the audience said this). One audience member said that they liked the one of the middle picture, the one with the lyrics on the receipt. This positive feedback is very gainful and has shown me that I could use these photoshop elements in the future for further projects.

Reflecting on the feedback, I would definitely add more performance shots in the video and also get more serious acting in the narrative scenes. Also I would try to use final cut express to make the lip synching absolutely perfect.

4) Use of creative technologies - Skills you have learned

How did you use media technologies in Construction, Research, Planning and evaluation stages?

In this project I used two main programmes/software. I used photoshop and final cut express. I have used photoshop before, last year for my film project I used the program to edit photo's I took for a storyboard. Although I had some knowledge of the programme this project helped me to develop it. However the programme final cut express was completely new to me. Last year we used the apple mac's own editing software imovie, which is a lot simpler than final cut. I took the tutorial of final cut and began to understand it, but it did take a while.

The advantages of photoshop allowed me to do my ancillary tasks. However I do believe I could have done more if I used the programme indesign to make the magazine since it had better layout functions and is a programme designed to deal with making magazine covers.

In Photoshop I first uploaded the photo and then turned it into black and white. I then used the hue and desaturation effects on the image tool. This allowed me to get the effect I wanted. I also used the brightness tool to get the best exposure of the picture.

In Final Cut Express, we captured and imported the images and shots we got on the video camera. We then imported the song from http://www.jamendo.com/ and placed it in the sound timeline. We then began placing all the performance shots in synch with song. This required a lot of editing and close study of the image to get it as synched up as possible. We then placed the narrative shots in chronological order to give the video a story and make it look more visually interesting as well as make sense.

The use of the mac's was very efficient because they are media related hardware it allowed use to create what we needed to and it had the programmes on it that we needed. Obviously we needed camers at first we had problems with them because the batteries would randomly lose power after about five minutes of filming. We were going to use my camera but having two different models which used two different kinds of quality would make editing difficult.

We used multiple websites for our project. I used mainly www.google,com to find pictures to illustrate my points and http://www.youtube.com/ to show video's of examples. As mentioned before, we used jamendo.com to find the song we chose.

Also we used http://www.soundeffectsdownload.com/ to get the alarm sound at the start of the video and of the song. (As shown below).

Blogger has been good to use because it has helped me keep track of my research and helped me to figure out what to do next. However I find it difficult sometimes when I upload a picture and have to drag all the way down past the text and other pictures. It would be more useful if the picture uploaded where you click on the page.


In Final Cut Express, we used the colour grading tools on the colour corrector video filter menu to add brightness to the shots that where in the store. This made the video look quite cheerful yet the song and the protagonist in the video is quite depressed. This added a great contrapuntal element to the video. Also we could modify the images to make images appear over other images. (As shown below).

However I stilled had problems with lip synching with Final Cut Express and so this came at a disadvantage to the project, in the end though it worked out.


I decided to use photoshop for my magazine advert instead of indesign because I already had a year’s knowledge of the programme and so I saw that as a advantage and used it to make the magazine advert. I used the modifications on photoshop to get the magazine advert at to the right size. However it might have been more proficient if I used indesign since it is designed and developed to create posters and newsletters. However I still got the image and effect out of photoshop that I wanted.

Overall the technologies I have used have been very proficient. They have allowed me to complete our project. Although we had problems with finding our location to shoot our video we had no major problems with the hardware or the software we used.

I believe that I have made progression from last year because the camera work was more creative as well as the ideas. Also we were using much more complicated programmes and software like fiinal cut express. I think that this project has had much more creativity put in it. Also we had much better research and planning. We found it easy to place a genre on the product, even when it was a hybrid.

I believe I did a good job at research and planning. I researched rock pop videos as well as record companies that would possibly take our artist under their wing. I also researched magazines that would publish the magazine advert.

The overall product was pretty good. Although I do believe the acting could have been better and the lip synching could have been more accurate. However I do believe it comes close to the real article. It has creative cinematography as well as a realistic narrative.

In conclusion, I have tried my best with the project and contributed by giving and using my ideas with both the video and the ancillary tasks. Although I could have found the location for the video quicker, once we did start filming I tried to contribute to the project as best as I could by performing in the video, research and planning, camera work and post production elements like editing and the ancillary tasks. I believe the ideology and the brand image are well portrayed in both the ancillary task and the video the image being a laid back, casual, fun but mellow band. I believe the product is successful and the audience would easily be able to recognize the artist through the use of the same iconic elements used in the ancillary tasks and video.