Ruby Brown's Evaluation

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

Within our music video (Robots in Disguise ‘La Nuit’) we created some consistent links between the lyrics and visuals, for example ‘La Nuit; (meaning ‘the night’) gave us a base for a dark setting but incorporating a ‘party’ atmosphere as the song is written about a night out and partying.
Our use of ultra violet and fast motion scenes created a hyperactive ‘jolly’ mood for the viewer, linking with the songs lyrics ‘Oh night without end’ by just focusing our video on one long movement of separate people at a party. We used UV paint; close up shots and lip-synching face shots to produce a lively charismatic mood.

If a record company were to approach and analyse our video for production use, the ways it would typify with how they’d want it represented would be the atmosphere the atmosphere that’s created within the video, the hyperactive feel and fast to slow motion shots contribute to a consistent mood for all audiences whilst still showing an original idea. The music Genre of the track is ‘dance/pop’ so we based our developing ideas around the way motion and expression is perceived, producing movements, dance and light effects in time with the beat of the music.

Our inter-textual references varied but we used each video to increase our awareness on genre and atmosphere, which helped created a base on which we could develop our ideas. We studied three main videos. ‘Pogo’ by Digitalism (our first analysis) contributed to our already existing ideas, making our focus clearer, helping us create a main focus, rather than a set story throughout it would be a visual mix of colour and movement whilst still drawing the audience to the individual characters. We also took some of our main inspiration from ‘Gotta Feeling’ by Black Eyed Peas. In this video the group use UV and dance scenes, showing a consistent beat and movement towards the music. Floating by Jape is also another inter textual reference that incorporates a fast pace theme with soft/dim lighting. We varied the fast pace in our music video by using close up slow shots with occasional blurred focus upon flashing multi-colour lights.
To gain more knowledge towards the generic conventions within our music genre we took main references of camera angles and atmosphere from our inter-textual references. We found the most common camera angles are sharp and visually impacting. A lot of group shots are present in ‘Gotta Feeling’ creating a happy active mood that works with the song.

Our whole group decided on varied lighting, concluding it would capture the viewers’ attention with each lighting difference. Keeping with soft, dim scenes we simply added bright flashes of coloured light and used a large UV bulb to bring out the ultraviolet paint placed on the characters hands and faces, we felt this really increased the feeling of movement throughout.

From a first viewing, our use of mise-en-scene becomes obvious to the audience. We chose basic costume, dark or light shirts with dark trousers to blend in with the darker back setting of the scenes however our most eye catching prop would be the ultraviolet paint creating a persona for each character. We made sure that each drawing on the characters faces were not similar to the next, so when focusing on characters in longer motion shots the audience could start understanding the actions of each single character within the video.

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

Our digi-pack design proved to contrast against the theme of our music video and our magazine advert. The light back colour and simple coloured figures placed on the digi-pack show a vast difference in atmosphere however our group thought the change in colour and calming tones proved to be aesthetically pleasing towards target audience. To create minimalist links between the digi-pack and the magazine advert, we simply used bold fonts and drawing in the viewers attention with multi coloured portraits taken and edited from simply photographs. The similarities to other album covers aren’t obvious from first glance however when studying inter-textual references we gained ideas from The Maccabees ‘Wall Of Arms’ album design. Using a simple background and image, they then increased colour and used bold lettering to capture attention, we developed our ideas and toned down our images whilst still using big bold font. Our album also relates to almost all other albums, using a front cover, art on the inside cover and giving the reader information about production and the people involved in the making of the new album. We placed track listings on the back but didn’t overload the rest with too much writing but more visuals.
Our magazine advert developed into a style which appears within most generic adverts, bold headings and bright colours draw the readers eyes however the newly released albums information is lower down the ad, smaller but still easy and clear to the viewer. We used an image of the actual artists, but edited it to support links through our whole project (ideas, video, digi-pack).

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After a class viewing of our rough-cut video, we received feedback from both the class and the teacher. Our video was shown on different forms of Internet media, such as our sixth form blog, which every media student could view. We received a lot of feedback, from both students in our class and students outside our classes, the feedback proved to be really positive however certain criticisms were discussed in class, The most common being about the amount of light that’s used throughout and the fact we should have incorporated more daylight. However after reviewing these criticisms we concluded that for our final cut we should stick to our original lighting idea otherwise the theme, atmosphere and mis-en-scene could be damaged or altered by too much exposure of natural or bright lighting whereas our groups idea was to keep themes soft and much darker.
As a consequence to other feed back we decided to vary and produce different scenes, as the majority of our viewing audience from the class viewing stated that a larger variety of scenes was needed to maintain or increase the audiences’ attention. We produced more footage but keeping with our original themes such as soft lighting and increased movement.

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

For the majority of our research we focused upon YouTube, analysis inter textual references (music videos etc) for lighting, camera and mis-en-scene effects we could develop into our own style. We put our video up on face book to give an outside audience a chance to view our project whilst also keeping up to date with how the artist of our song produces their own style of work within the music genre.
For editing we mainly used final cut to produce, edit and focus upon our overall project whereas for our magazine advert and developing ideas we used Photoshop. Without either we wouldn’t have been able to produce our overall idea.
Our main editing process was pinpointed mainly upon cutting in between different scenes, to create a running story of every angle and character, Im really pleased with our final cut as our ideas and hard work were processed and shown through our final video.