Eleanor Dawson evaluated her media project which included a music video for the band Two Door Cinema Club, a digital album cover, and a website. She summarized how each component used, developed or challenged conventions of real media products and genres. Feedback from audiences was generally positive and noted elements like the house colors, story, and editing being effective. New media technologies used included movie editing software, desktop publishing, blogs, and website design software.

1. My Media Evaluation By Eleanor Dawson

2. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products Our media products has developed and challenged the forms of conventions of real media products in many ways such as : Two Door cinema Club are a alternative indie rock band ,we have kept to the genre characteristics and have created a performance/ narrative based video to suit alternative and indie rock genres. We did research beforehand into this genre to gain ideas and keep to concepts from the genres style which is shown on our blog . We have made ours similar to the alternative genre by using a concept and manipulating whilst telling a story. We have even adapted the same clothes changing scene as All American Rejects in our video. We have made our video keep to the indie characteristics by showing the artist performing in a relaxed setting of a range of different angles and views of the instruments and artists . Here are some similar screenshots from our video matching to the two different genre characteristics. Alternative idea : Indie Idea: Ours All American Rejects Ours Razorlight

3. We have used and developed Goodwin’s principals of establishing a relationships between visuals and lyrics in two ways. The first is basing the story/narrative shown from what is said in the lyrics which we have annotated on our blog http://ellieda2media.blogspot.com/search/label/Music%20video%20research. The second is to actually show the lyrics in the video such as the images below. Lyrics on the cake about to be thrown and main character/actor at the same time said in the music. Picture which we held up as a sign and filmed across as the word is exaggerated in the music to the same timing we pan the camera.

4. I have used star image motifs and close ups of the band and characters used to represent the band , to fit the conventions of a music video in order to help brand the music and artist image like in real media products. I have used the star image motifs of a clown, heart balloon and smiley heart air freshener as they fit the simple happy sun setting Ideology I pictured for the band and would attract to the target audience as being ‘cute’ ,’fun‘ simple’ and outgoing which was the aim for the video and outlook of band. The heart balloon shown in this picture and the picture below is featured across all three products and is our main star image motif. Smiley air freshener used throughout video, as a star image motif to this track represents the romance element of this track compared to others. The clown and main character of narrative based story our also featured throughout. The Clown is used as a motif itself to help represent the main characters reactions in order to the story. This is a close up of the band instrument as in alternative indie rock bands the instruments they play promote the image aswell.

5. I have developed a visual style and brand identity across the three products through matching the typography between the album cover and Website , the house colors, band logo and similar mise en scene across all three products. I have also included the star image motif of the red heart balloon across all three products. Same logo for band name House colors of red , white and blue. Star image motif Same use of text font candy buzz keeping to two fonts to brand artist image. Same mise en scene, one picture landscape and further away and one close up portrait.

6. We have also created a set of characters/actors in the music video which represent the band and video in characters and act for someone for the audience to relate to . Clown Girl Spends most of video rejecting the main protagonist in our video, until accepting his offer and falling in love at the end. Boy Main character tries to continuously attempt to get the girl through a range of actions and gestures such as giving her gifts, changing outfits to her liking and trying to get her attention by webcam and meeting her. The clown is used to represent the main characters feeling towards the girls, it adds a element of humour to keep the video light-hearted and is a unusual character and can be used to represent the band. Fallout boy use a similar idea with a moose character in sugar we’re going down.

7. I have also created brand identity by keeping to house colors of blue white and red from what the characters wear , the instruments they play ,props and the same two door image in the ancillary task. The heart icon is used visually and as a star image motif. The characters help to create brand identity as they are used all three tasks aswell as the star image motif which is the use of the red balloon. We have also kept a similar setting with the idea of nature and green hedging, grass, outdoor sunny feel to create a mise en scene. Below are images that show this. Red heart ,icon and house colour aswell as the characters. Mise en scene setting, clown in red main character in blue ,heart balloon star image motif. Characters in heart again, heart balloon ,red slide and mise en scene setting. Mise en scene setting house colors of blue and red, heart balloon star image motif. Same image setting as the website background Guitarist wearing red tie and white shirt using red guitar drummer in white both in house colors filmed in a blue room . Blue and red cars , using house colors.

8. We have also used Goodwin’s principle in the notion of looking and voyeurism. Using a screen within a screen and another screen within that to create the notion of looking and engage the audiences attention and create relationship between artist and audience. Using appealing actors to create sex appeal and voyeurism to promote the band brand image. It appeals to the target audience and makes more people likely to watch it. Like Green day’s when September ends using the actor Jamie Bell. Or the concept of selling an artist based on their image like Jedward with twins wearing the same and quiff hair or other x factor artist Matt Cardle, both selling for image rather than quality of music.

9. The type of editing uses includes fast cuts and transitions to keep the audience interested. Click on the hyperlink below to see a clip of our video and how our editing has made use of the conventions of a music video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oInx0nWYm_w

10. The conventions I followed to create the Digi- pack . No white space allows for one main image to introduce and set album. Band name larger than Album name to sell band rather than album. Simple image text only ever featured at bottom or top of inside cover. No writing necessary as main focus on cd package with plastic casing on top. Artist information and thanks usually featured on either this side or back of album.

11. Simple image used to not drag away emphasis of cd back purpose which is to show song lists but keeps brand and imagery to album. Barcode featured on all Cd backs to establish as a product . Song lists featured on backs of Cds to identify name of track with number on track and show content of Cd. All rights reserved and copyright information Record label logo to identify artist and sell artist through label.

12. The conventions I used to create the web page . Rule of three fonts. House colours of red white and blue Artist name logo positioned near header at top Header link bar Album release and where to buy. Latest news Here is the link to our website http://www.twodoorcinemaclub.angelcities.com Mise en scene backgrounds

13. 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks? I think the combination of the three pieces of media are very complementary to one another. They strongly promote the brand identity and give the audience a strong idea of imagery , forms and actions to recognise this brand with. We have created this with house colours of blue white and red shown across all three types of media. We have created this with typography of candy buzz and another font called TPF Rubber ducky from www.cooltext.com we used the rule of three fonts and using only these fonts to promote across the product.

14. We have created this with image motifs We have created this with genre characteristics shown in slide 1. We have used the use of industry information at the beginning of our music video, the back of our album cover and at the bottom of the website using the record label logo to brand them . We have also used a similar layout design in ancillary tasks which are compared in slide 5 . We have used a range of still shots from the video in our digi –pack and website and have used image motif and imagery from the video to create the website and digi-pack using the same and edited image between the album cover and website to create a difference between album and single but keep the artist brand . Red heart balloon and clown Audio Commentary

15. 3.What have you learned from your audience feedback ? Feedback is key to making a media product it is useful to know while making media products what you’re target audience will like and dislike. We managed to get feedback twice while making our product, once when we were planning and we pitched our idea to the audience to see what they thought. The Video of this can be found on our blog . We also showcased and posted our video online and asked people to fill in surveys online and on paper to say what they thought here is and overview of the feedback. Here our some of our results from survey monkey.com 1. What did you think of the video ? i liked it :) a very well put together amateur music video demonstrating a strong use of story telling backed up with well placed performance pieces. main actor was fantastic. timings of the video all fit in very well with the music showing it has been edited together very well. I like the story and the performance parts 2. Did you think the editing was fast and effective ? did you ever find yourself getting bored with the video? yes. no. I thought there were lots of editing to keep you interested :) never get bored!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the video was well paced throughout 3. Did you understand the narrative of the video ? if so what was your impression of it ? yes. that the guy was trying to get with the girl but kept failing but got her in the end. the narrative was well put across allowing for character development I thought the story worked really well with the song and genre of music

16. 6. Is there anything, if you were making the video , that you would do differently ? maybe make some shots brighter? some were quite dark and hard to see. more close ups of the gorgeous main actor Maybe in the chorus have more effects? 7. Were the shot transitions/cuts in time with the music? Even yes and mostly 8. House colours are colours that appear often to brand the band ? looking at the video what colours would you say were our house colours ? red and blue although not put across in the strongest manner through out i would be pushed towards choosing red. red and blue? Red, yellow and blue 9. Were there any shots/images that stood out from the video e.g. : featured allot/were quite remarkable/repeated clown and balloon The shot which was slowed down when the music changed I thought worked really well 10. What did you enjoy/least enjoy about the video ? enjoyed: cake throwing and heart drawn around couple least enjoyed: webcam bit as it was hard to see The music to visuals and lyrics to visuals :) i enjoyed seeing the clown dance :) the opening shot was good. Here is a word cloud link to the majority of responses from the paper survey "http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2981739/ellie_is_gay"

17. Feedback from our video Most of the feedback we received was positive, which is good as it show a large amount of our target audience will like our video. There was negative feedback but was constructive rather than criticising such as the comment about the lighting on the webcam or using faster editing in the chorus. I agreed with the faster editing and made some of the cuts between shots faster, I did not agree with the webcam footage as we had tested the light beforehand and looks fine to me and was the only comment on this. Comments like it was funny, humorous comical were all quite obvious responses from our video as that is exactly what we wanted the video to be. There were some unexpected responses like the storyline was confusing which was strange as we also have several responses saying that they liked it and was easy to understand, so this made us re-think our strategy to putting the storyline across but we kept it in the end as the majority understood and the storyline is only meant to feed through and not be present all the time. If I create the video again I would take into account to make the storyline more understandable and use further character development and make sure that all the shots were visible . From the comments I am particulary pleased with the editing and most people being able to pick out the house colors of red ,blue and white and I am also pleased with everyone enjoying it and saying that it used effective variety of shots and angles. I am most pleased with the feedback of the storyline and props saying that it was ‘cute’ ‘funny’ ‘romantic’ and ‘sweet’ because this is the exact feedback that I wanted and overall think I gained positive constructive feedback that helped to make sure the video was right for the audience and was effective.

18. 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research ,planning and evaluation stages? We used the movie editing software ,I movie. On I movie we explored the effects available and used them to change the colourisation ,feature transitions, precision editing to create lip-synching and instrument synching ,edit time and speed of shots and to reverse shots. We were sometimes limited using I movie as we had wished to use split screens and text across the film to create an effect of reality and expectations in different split screens to add to the narrative like in the film 500 days of summer but these features are not available on I movie. Split screen effect we wanted to create. Editing sound on shots. Editing colourisation. Editing speed of clips. Editing transitions. Print screen of us moving shots into video timeline.

19. We used desktop publishing software to create are ancillary tasks. We used Serif Photo Plus and page plus. We used Serif Photo Plus to edit the image taken for the front cover of our digi-pack and background to website , to crop the picture and manipulate the photography by exaggerating and brightening the two doors and redness of balloon. We also used still cameras to capture images for our ancillary tasks and images of filming to update the blog. Here are some of the pictures I took :

20. We used the canon digital cameras and tripod We used the tripod for all shots where it was appropriate but we had some difficulty with some shots, such as the high angle shot in the first picture , where we didn’t have enough space for the tripod , so we would prop the camera on a steady surface instead or handhold in cases where it was appropriate. The cameras were difficult to use at times we found that a lot of the time the atmosphere was a lot darker than the actual setting so we chose to film most of our filming right in the middle of the day to get the best effect. There were also shots where we could not create the same effects e.g swing, roundabout where the camera needed to move so these shots would be handheld, but this was not a problem as it created the effect we wanted. Overall I think we found a variety of ways in using the camera to its best ability.

21. We used weblog (blogger.com) as an online diary to document decisions and changes throughout the filming and planning process to keep an up to date account of research. I Used blogger to organise and tab posts to different pages of criteria. I also used software within my blog such as Slideshare/flickr/youtube/wordle/imageshack.com which enabled me to post images, slideshows, world cloud and videos to add to the planning process and helped to extend and display my blog. Using youtube to embed a video. Slideshow from images on flickr Using blogger- editing posts.

22. The Web design software we used was Serif Page Plus to create our website which we used to create a template of our background, hyperlinks and videos. We originally had problems using this as we had to have an account space online to publish live through the Serif. We then found a host site, http://www.angelcities.com where we didn’t have to but a domain and could use for free. However we still couldn’t publish live through the domain settings, so we exported the document in serif as a picture and uploaded it on angelcities.com and managed to get our site live. We originally tried using bandzoogle www.bandzoogle.comuntil we found out that it was not a free service and after a month you have to pay membership fees , it was a useful process to use the templates and plan the idea we had of setting up a webpage. We have featured our usage of bandzoogle on our blog .

23. If I could create this project again, I would use a different website-design package such as Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is another package program but specifies in webpages and has more themes , animations, and embedding software .Serif Page Plus cost us a lot of time and problems and was not easy and effective to use. I would also think about breaking the conventions a bit more as most of my work sticks to the conventions and doesn’t push them but as music videos develop nowadays you find that they further push the conventions and I would like to do the same. In creating this project, I think we used the time effectively to edit and film a good video with lots of footage to choose from. I am also pleased with our ancillary tasks especially the album cover. I think if we had more time to get the website right then it could have been better but I still think it is effective and sticks to the conventions and purpose of a website. I think my blog is effective and like how I have managed to sort out different posts to different parts of the sight, and think I have included a wide range of ICT skills to show off my project and am overall happy with the outcome of my project.