We chose our song because it was fast paced and energetic. We felt we could make an interesting video out of it. The song genre is pop punk, and therefore we wanted to incorporate conventions from both these genres. This is shown with the random mayhem and destruction in our video, which signifies the punk part of the video. We also show pop by having energetic performance and dancing scenes. Overall I think our video is quite conventional because it has the usual conventions such as cutting on the beat and being fast paced. The video also links to the lyrics, such as 'down and up up' and Ben is shown bouncing up and down in synch. We also break some conventions, such as consistency. In our video we are not always wearing the same clothes and this usually isn't the convention for music videos. We also have a bright pink guitar in a dull woods background, which is uncommon, especially in punk videos.
Our ancillary products didn't come out as well as we had hoped for, but at the same time I think they do convey the same sort of character as our video. Our magazine advert has a production shot of all the band members and also all the main objects used in the video. This was made by Ben in Photoshop and I think the shot itself works quite well, although the text on it may be too dark for our sort of video. In my opinion I think that bright colours would have worked better. Our DVD cover is unfinished but I think it would have looked good if we had finished. The plan was to make a small photo collage on the back of all the funny shots in our video, and the front would have just had something bright and colourful on it. I think this would have complimented our video very well.
Audience feedback was key for us in the making of our video. Our rough cut was left mostly unfinished, but the feedback we got from the parts we had done all said that the shots were too long and it needed to be faster paced. Thanks to the feedback we managed to pull through and make a good music video, by adding in more shots at random times so that the video had a much faster pace to it. In terms of how difficult it was to synch the shots, we were quite lucky in the fact that a lot of the shots seemed to synch themselves without much effort, which is how we managed to get such a great looking video made in such a short amount of time.
We used a lot of technology in planning and creating our music video. We used this blog to record all the planning we did, and we also used Final Cut express to get all the clips of our video together and create the video. I think creating our music video would have been a lot harder without the use of the computers. We also used Photoshop as mentioned previously, to create our ancillary products. We filmed all our footage on cameras, with which it was easy to transfer the footage onto the computer, and import it into Final Cut. This helped ease the creation of the video.
In conclusion I think that a combination of good media technologies and audience feedback helped shape our video, and some quick thinking and editing managed to create a video I am proud of.
Evaluation
When we chose the song, the fact that it was a pop punk song intrigued us, we planned on having a fast song that wasn’t too serious. We decided to keep to convention and base the video on punk/pop music videos. If we broke out of the convention by making the shots slower, it would not work as well.
In true pop punk style we tried to incorporate as much destruction and chaos the environment we settled on filming in gave us. The good thing about working inside this genre is that a lot of the props used and footage was opportunistic and didn’t need to be as well planned. For instance running about and having fun didn’t need to be planned down to the last detail, as there were many improvising opportunities. This is true of youth culture. Young people don’t worry and run around un-afraid of a consequence, which suggests what audience the video is aimed at in terms of audience. If we had made the video too destructive we would scare away the audience, which in my opinion is mainly teenage girls and younger teens in general.
Our audience feedback from our rough cut gave us a lot to think about and improve on in preparation for our final piece. Without the feedback we received, the product wouldn’t be half as good as it is now. Our main problems after our rough cut were that the shots were too long; seeing as the song was fast paced we needed to cut the duration of the shots down. Another problem was the lack of good angles types and shot types as they all seemed to be pretty static. We took all this on board and re-shot a lot of footage.
When the final cut was uploaded we got more compliments than criticisms, the main one being that it had improved on the rough cut, which we can all agree on. Another criticism was that the video had no narrative whatsoever. We agree with this and we said from the beginning we didn’t intend to have a narrative, as the song type did not demand it.
The Internet played a crucial part in helping us make our video. Updates during the video creating helped us keep a check on where we were with deadlines and progress. Also it helped us find images for our digipack and compilation board in the planning stages of our products.
Final cut made our video, including cutting clips together and syncing the video with the music track and ultimately putting everything together in our production stages. YouTube helped us out also through the Internet, it helped us to find our inspirations from videos which have already been created for instance “Get smashed, gate crash” by Hadouken and “First date”, Blink 182. The partying and messing around influenced the themes of our music video, which were mayhem and destruction.
In true pop punk style we tried to incorporate as much destruction and chaos the environment we settled on filming in gave us. The good thing about working inside this genre is that a lot of the props used and footage was opportunistic and didn’t need to be as well planned. For instance running about and having fun didn’t need to be planned down to the last detail, as there were many improvising opportunities. This is true of youth culture. Young people don’t worry and run around un-afraid of a consequence, which suggests what audience the video is aimed at in terms of audience. If we had made the video too destructive we would scare away the audience, which in my opinion is mainly teenage girls and younger teens in general.
Our audience feedback from our rough cut gave us a lot to think about and improve on in preparation for our final piece. Without the feedback we received, the product wouldn’t be half as good as it is now. Our main problems after our rough cut were that the shots were too long; seeing as the song was fast paced we needed to cut the duration of the shots down. Another problem was the lack of good angles types and shot types as they all seemed to be pretty static. We took all this on board and re-shot a lot of footage.
When the final cut was uploaded we got more compliments than criticisms, the main one being that it had improved on the rough cut, which we can all agree on. Another criticism was that the video had no narrative whatsoever. We agree with this and we said from the beginning we didn’t intend to have a narrative, as the song type did not demand it.
The Internet played a crucial part in helping us make our video. Updates during the video creating helped us keep a check on where we were with deadlines and progress. Also it helped us find images for our digipack and compilation board in the planning stages of our products.
Final cut made our video, including cutting clips together and syncing the video with the music track and ultimately putting everything together in our production stages. YouTube helped us out also through the Internet, it helped us to find our inspirations from videos which have already been created for instance “Get smashed, gate crash” by Hadouken and “First date”, Blink 182. The partying and messing around influenced the themes of our music video, which were mayhem and destruction.
Written Commentary
Written Analysis of The Media Products.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I think our music video both uses and develops both ‘scene’ and ‘punk’ genre of music. It uses both genres, e.g. the bright colours and alternative clothing style of ‘scene’ and the destructiveness and mayhem and performance elements of ‘punk’. It also challenges these two genres of music by using them both in the video, this can be seen in certain shots such as when the balloons, which are bright and colourful, are kicked around and jumped on, or when the chair is broken apart by me in a bright green hoodie with fluorescent pink and yellow trainers, which is a well constructed fusion of ‘punk’ and ‘scene’. There are very few, if any, real media products that try this sort of combination as it is hard to pull off as I now know. I feel that our ancillary products do not help this fusion of ‘scene’ and ‘punk’ as they fail to combine the bright colours with the mayhem and anarchy that the ‘punk’ genre is primarily about.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I believe the combination of our main product and ancillary texts works well yet still leaves a lot to be desired. I think that the magazine advert should have been more colourful with the texts and background and should have shown more of the ‘punk’ side of the band. It also lacks a leaf with the price and a puff to say where it can be bought, it does however carry a release date but I just don’t think it’s enough. It does show the band and really sells the artists as it has some good shots of the band each doing there own ‘thing’. The DVD digipak is a really big let down for me as there just isn’t enough information and pictures on the cover. In my eyes it needed a track list, more special features, e.g. outtakes from the video, free band poster, etc. On the whole I do think that our ancillary products help to sell the band and would create interest for fans of the band and convince them to buy our product.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We learnt a lot from our audience feedback. After they saw our rough cut video the general conclusion was, more footage needed to finish the video, faster shots and more construction with the footage itself, we took this into account and went out and filmed as much footage as we could to rectify this problem, then went on to finish our piece and make sure it lived up to expectations. After the final cut was viewed our audience feedback had changed dramatically. They said how they thought we had ‘definitely improved our rough cut’ and managed to ‘bring out the full potential’ of our video. They suggested using shots from our video on our magazine advert and our digipak. Which we did, however it is more noticeable on our digipak than our magazine advert. After showing these product to our audience the general feedback was that it was well put together, helped to sell the artist etc. We were happy with the feedback as there were almost no negative comments.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many new technologies with our piece in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages. During the research we used the internet, we used websites such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘Google’, to help us decide how we were going to get our music video to feel, we had influences such has Hadouken’s ‘Get Smashed Gate Crash’ and Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘Can’t Stop’. In the planning stages we used Blogger.com a lot as it helped us share ideas when we couldn’t contact each other and it let us post our mood board and video research on so people could see what we were going for with our video. At the construction and evaluation stages of our piece we were mainly using handheld cameras, which have only been around for a few decades, and used the Apple Mac computer, and a program known as Final Cut Pro, where we could upload, edit and refine our music video and the Photoshop program were we could edit and create our ancillary tasks. These systems were essential as it really cuts down the amount of work needed to do to create a music video.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I think our music video both uses and develops both ‘scene’ and ‘punk’ genre of music. It uses both genres, e.g. the bright colours and alternative clothing style of ‘scene’ and the destructiveness and mayhem and performance elements of ‘punk’. It also challenges these two genres of music by using them both in the video, this can be seen in certain shots such as when the balloons, which are bright and colourful, are kicked around and jumped on, or when the chair is broken apart by me in a bright green hoodie with fluorescent pink and yellow trainers, which is a well constructed fusion of ‘punk’ and ‘scene’. There are very few, if any, real media products that try this sort of combination as it is hard to pull off as I now know. I feel that our ancillary products do not help this fusion of ‘scene’ and ‘punk’ as they fail to combine the bright colours with the mayhem and anarchy that the ‘punk’ genre is primarily about.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I believe the combination of our main product and ancillary texts works well yet still leaves a lot to be desired. I think that the magazine advert should have been more colourful with the texts and background and should have shown more of the ‘punk’ side of the band. It also lacks a leaf with the price and a puff to say where it can be bought, it does however carry a release date but I just don’t think it’s enough. It does show the band and really sells the artists as it has some good shots of the band each doing there own ‘thing’. The DVD digipak is a really big let down for me as there just isn’t enough information and pictures on the cover. In my eyes it needed a track list, more special features, e.g. outtakes from the video, free band poster, etc. On the whole I do think that our ancillary products help to sell the band and would create interest for fans of the band and convince them to buy our product.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We learnt a lot from our audience feedback. After they saw our rough cut video the general conclusion was, more footage needed to finish the video, faster shots and more construction with the footage itself, we took this into account and went out and filmed as much footage as we could to rectify this problem, then went on to finish our piece and make sure it lived up to expectations. After the final cut was viewed our audience feedback had changed dramatically. They said how they thought we had ‘definitely improved our rough cut’ and managed to ‘bring out the full potential’ of our video. They suggested using shots from our video on our magazine advert and our digipak. Which we did, however it is more noticeable on our digipak than our magazine advert. After showing these product to our audience the general feedback was that it was well put together, helped to sell the artist etc. We were happy with the feedback as there were almost no negative comments.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many new technologies with our piece in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages. During the research we used the internet, we used websites such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘Google’, to help us decide how we were going to get our music video to feel, we had influences such has Hadouken’s ‘Get Smashed Gate Crash’ and Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘Can’t Stop’. In the planning stages we used Blogger.com a lot as it helped us share ideas when we couldn’t contact each other and it let us post our mood board and video research on so people could see what we were going for with our video. At the construction and evaluation stages of our piece we were mainly using handheld cameras, which have only been around for a few decades, and used the Apple Mac computer, and a program known as Final Cut Pro, where we could upload, edit and refine our music video and the Photoshop program were we could edit and create our ancillary tasks. These systems were essential as it really cuts down the amount of work needed to do to create a music video.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
video commentry
Well as we speak jack is sifting through our footage (as always - chris) he is doing well like always and working hard (or hardly working - chris) he has done some great work with what we have got. methinks we have a good team here. So. On that note I am going back to help jack (or hinder lol - jack). good times.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
bens thoughts
very good work on the dvd cover and magazine advert, i think that it shudve been more colorful on the magazine ad and more pictures on the dvd but however excellent work guys and very sorry about being ill (jack) xoxo