The finished product...

We decide to premire this to a select group and asked if they would fill in a questionaire these are the results from each questionaire:
The link below goes to my group partner Simon's blog for the result table and analysis.
http://media-bell-h540.blogspot.co.uk/

                         

 

EVALUATION Q4

EVALUATION Q3

From our audience's feed back there were multiple feelings toward our piece, overall our target audience did not like the some aspects of our music video, such as some 'rough' editing, and the lack of multiple camera angles, others said that the 'speed' and actions performed by the characters should be changed to suit the pace of the song. , most of the feed back comments we received were how to improve, which although helpful and truthful, seemed to give me (not sure about Simon) the feeling that we hadn't done well enough in some aspects of the piece.

Our audience seemed to like how different we had made our music video to most conventional videos, we received some comments

Some sugestions that were raised were:

• The use of special effects such as smoke have been suggested
• The band
• referencing specific instruments used by band - drums and guitar
• The band members usually have long hair
• The band often destroys instruments such as guitars near the end of the music video
• A lot of focus is on the singer
• That the band members should be performing actions such as head banging
• 
  

Myself and Simon had agreed that if we were able to go back and change some aspects of the music video to  improve its quality, we would need to 'bite the bullet' (so to speak) and ask our target audience what they would change to improve the music video.

In response to this we had decided that we would change the following:

• Increase the speed or actions performed by the band members to better suit the pace of the song
• Add fluidity between shots perhaps by using more transitions
• Use a wider range of shots and use different angles
• And take more time when it comes to lip syncing the singers mouth to the words of the song

EVALUATION Q2

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

Music video

Because neither myself or Simon had produced an animated music video we didnt know how it should look we asked questions such as how should it look? what should happen?, and because we were drawing the product from scratch we had a wider spectrum in where we could go with the video, but by applying basic (and in some cases it was very basic) composition rules to the text we had created a basic style that our video would follow.


As there are very few music videos, in our chosen genre that are animated this made it quite difficult to relate our music video to others (in a way I guess our video is a large shade of grey in that respect) and say that it does or doesn't look like a typical music video from the rock genre. However our video does resemble some of the conventions from typical music videos such as using a range of shot types such as close ups, mid shot etc. to add a little variety to the shots we used.


Digipak/CD Cover


The CD cover for the most part does look similar to most conventional CD covers used by real media texts. I feel that this has come out almost how I expected it to however I feel that there is a lack of colour and there is too much empty space. However the CD cover does look like the original planned image, but my CD cover does have distinct differences in some aspects such as the text font and the how busy the images are. I believe that if I were to make a few 'tweaks' to the cover such as making the front cover more colourful or have the cover look more busy then it might look a little more like a conventional CD case. 

Magazine Ad/Poster

With my magizine ad/poster for my digipak I didn't have a plan as such other than for it to mirror my CD cover but on a larger scale, instead of being CD sized for it to be approximately 2/3 the size of A4. Like with my CD cover I feel that it is too, well boring the background is empty there is little colour, and isn't very busy. I feel that this task although finished doesn't look as good as I had hoped, however I also feel that this task and the digipak from my point of view are of a reasonable standard.

Do they look like they're all part of the same product?

I feel that all my anciliary tasks along with the music video look like the same product, because of how they all share similar themes such as animated characters and colour schemes used, I also feel that this creates the band identity allowing each task to work together.

EVALUATION Q1

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

When we were in the research phase of this unit we asked a selected group of people in which there were 10 males and females to complete a questionnaire based around the conventions of rock and what they expected to see in a rock music video.

(results here)

The information we received showed that our audience had mixed feelings about what the video should be (in this case live action or animated). Everyone asked listed highest and lowest values on each choice of convention trends found in rock music videos, from our results we found that the audience wanted to see long hair in the video, as long hair is a typical rock convention.

I feel that our final product uses and conforms to multiple conventions of the rock genre, such as including long hair, facial hair, etc but also challenged some other conventions such as having a female band member.
In performance based videos such as our we found that another convention that we conformed to  was a lack of narrative and often rely on a variation of close ups and wide shots to progress the video.


We also found that there was often an average of 4 band members: 

• A vocalist (often has a guitar)
• two guitarists
• and a drummer

We used this convention in our video by having at least two guitarists, one drummer, and a vocalist (as seen below).

Another convention that wasn't mentioned that often was the location used, in most not all rock videos (The Pretender music video show this) the band is performing to an audience at a gig for example, typically performance videos are in concert halls or at an outdoor concert. I feel that we conformed to this convention.

• A few other conventions that were raised and were conformed to were:
• Close ups and fast cuts between shots
• The use of conventional instruments such as guitar, etc
• Long hair

However we also challenged some rock conventions, we felt that by doing so we had created a new media product and gave the ausience a different experience to our target audience.

One of the most common conventions in rock videos we challenged was the destruction of instruments (often a guitar), the main reason for this was that our skills in Adobe Flash wasn't too advanced as we had basically learned how to use the program over the creation of the video. 

What Song to do?

As Simon had joined me in creating an AMV over the break from school, we began to discuss a range of songs these were:

• The Pretender -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjQ9tuuTJQ&ob=av2e  
• Breaking the habit - Linkin park -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acgvRle07GI&ob=av2n
• Papermoon -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a-8fl0_1ew
• Resonance -   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUN9tpZhnzA
• 1000 words -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4voJjkJevs
• Houki Boshi - a Japanese song Simon suggested  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHjWZpiT_bo

From these song choices we decided on focusing on the following genres:

• rock/alternative genre  
• Japanese pop genre

Ideas:

• Fight scene narrative
• Performance based
• Animation
• Live action

We had both decided to base the drawings on anime/manga art styles as a result we will we try to involve munerous anime references from shows such as soul eater in the design of characters.

The Song that we are the most inclined to used is The Pretender, by the Foo Fighters.

I like most of the other songs but I feel that The PRetender is a more feasable option.

Filming, Editing, and all that jazz

                  (Pic of re-imagined Dave Grohl here)

When it came to 'filming' our music video we had decided on a feel that we wanted the characters to have for example we wanted to keep a link to the Foo Fighters other than just using the music track, so we decided that the vocalist should be based on Dave Grohl but more cartoon like and not as serious as he is portrayed in the official The Pretender music video.

We also used references from other anime and manga characters that we both liked and re-designed them slightly but still kept distinct references to the orringinal character for example the female guitarist who was based off of Maka Albarn from Soul Eater, the main reference we kept here was her signature long coat outfit, but changed the hair style.

During the main filming/creation process we both learned to use Adobe Flash to animate our designated characters my characters being the female guitarist based on Maka Albarn and the drummer who was added at a later date. Animating the characters was reletively straght forward as we had used different layers to draw our characters out and then as we imported them into Adobe Flash each layer was seperate and allowed us to animate each character with a minimal errors, ok there were a few small errors such as one character having only one arm etc but in general it went pretty well.

Editing

During the editing phase we followed these steps:

1. Import the animated characters into Adobe Premeire Pro.
2. Cut the clips to size and put them in a basic order along side the audio track.
3. Make use of various cut-away we had made (Speakers, Audience(es?) etc)
4. Reflect back on previous ideas, begin to structure the clips.
5. Look into various transitions
6. Begin Post Production
7. Look into using Ultra Key on each clip.
8. Clean up the video
9. Clean up the video some more...
10. Make small alterations if needed and finish.

After step 5 we went into post production but instead of using the luma key tool to add our backgrounds in we used the Ultra Key which was a much more strait-forward and easier tool to use. In order to do this however, we had repeat a process of drag and drop the ultra key onto all of the desired clips, this must have taken at least 4 hours to accomplish and was very, very (emphasis on the very) unenjoyable but we knew that it was nessecary to do this so we could use our background images and finish the piece as a whole.

Questionnaire Results

From this graph we have found that from the people asked 80% want or feel that the video should follow traditional conventions of the rock genre, and the remaining 20% want or feel that the video should challenge the conventions of the rock genre.

From this graph we have found that our target audience prefered Foo Fighters compared to other groups such as Nivarna, My Chemical Romance and Green Day. From this choosing a Foo Fighters song might be in our interests.

From the results of this graph we have found that our target audience feel that the Vocalist, Drummer, and guitarist are the three main key elements we need to incorporate into our music video.