The student created a music video for an indie/rock band to promote their album. They researched conventions of the genre by watching other music videos online and on TV. Their first idea was a stop motion video but they were advised it did not fit conventions. Their final video took inspiration from indie films and featured a model dancing and picking flowers outside, matching the upbeat song. Feedback was mixed but generally positive, praising the fun, random acts matching the music. The student learned new technologies like video editing software to construct the video and used social media for feedback.

1. Evaluation Louise Huntley

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? When creating my music video I had to look at many other videos to ensure that my own met with the correct codes and conventions. This would further aid all production stages of my video. In addition to this I had to think carefully about the genre. There was little point in taking inspiration from a rap video when the track I chose fits into the indie/rock genre. It is important to remember that every genre of music video has different codes and conventions appropriate for the target audience. For example, rap music portrays a lot of male power and female sexuality where as rock music videos tend to be more performance based focusing on the music rather than the narrative. It was important for me as the director to make sure that I created a music video to my own taste. Although it was important for me to keep to codes and conventions of an indie/rock genre, however indie is an abbreviation of the word individual so I took this as an opportunity to create a music video to my own liking.

3. I took inspiration for my music video from Florence and the Machine’s video for Kiss With A Fist. Florence and the Machine is also an indie/rock band and I liked her enthusiastic fun loving dancing an wanted to interpret this in my music video. I also took inspiration from Laura Marling. She is a young girl who performs indie/acoustic music and she is very soft and sweet. I wanted to interpret her style into the video as I felt that the model represented a similar style. Furthermore I looked at another female indie single called Lykke Li. She is a very strange character with an odd and fresh style. She reminds me of Edie Sedgwick in which I asked my model to be inspired by.

4. My first idea was very different to my final music video. I created a very artistic video in which looking back on it now didn’t particularly meet the codes and conventions of the indie/rock genre. I created a stop motion music video which while was individual to me perhaps was not the best idea for a music video. I was advised to try and different route for my music video, my main inspiration was not just from the indie/rock music videos however from indie films one short one long. The first short film I took inspiration from was called ‘another magazine’ by Chadwick Tyler who created the film using Marc Jacobs models. The short film features models acting very odd and doing random things. I really liked this short film, I really wanted to interpret the aspect because I felt it fitted quite well with the fun and happy track that I chose to create a video for. It is important to build familiarity within a genre and I believe kooky behaviour is a well known trait in the indie genre.

5. The second film I took as inspiration was Factory Girl a film about Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s muse for his short films. She was a bold character who I showed to my model before filming. I believe that Andy Warhol was a huge inspiration to indie film makers as he made a lot of short arty films which weren’t very common in the late 60’s and 70’s. I wanted to interpret this into my video once again because of the mood of the music. The mood is very happy and vibrant and I think that Edie Sedgwick’s style moulded perfectly with the bands music.

6. I took the inspiration for my digi-pack from the album cover by Kings Of Leon for their album Because Of The Times. I liked this cover because it was very simplistic yet effective. Kings of Leon are a huge indie/rock band and are leading the genre at the moment so I had to look at their album cover as inspiration. I also looked at covers for bands such as Florence and the Machine and The Killers. These bands are all part of the indie/rock genre and are very popular in the charts so are great inspiration to my project and are inspiration to the bands music.

7. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? To complete my project I created a digi-pack and a poster in order to promote my band and their album but mainly my music video, this is called synergy, which means the promotion and sale of a product. Within creating synergy it is important to create familiarity within the product. To do so, my poster promoting the album by the band features a dark photo of some white flowers. I edited the photograph to look old fashioned with less of a rich colour scheme and more of a burnt, sepia filter. I did this to represent the combination if indie music and rock music. The indie music is represented by the quaint white flower and the rock music is symbolised by the bold and dark shadows.

8. Furthermore to reinforce the floral and dark pattern I took the image I created for the poster and I re-edited the image to make it a bit less orange and more lighter for a less bold feel. I don’t think that such a bold and luminous image would be appropriate for a digi-pack. I basically cut parts of the poster to make the different sections of the digi-pack. I was going to think about using a similar image however I felt that cutting the image up created still a familiar sense without completely mimicking the poster.

9. I created synergy within the music video by filming the video outside. I thought carefully about my location and had different thoughts for example I was thinking of using a typical teenage bedroom, however I felt it was too plain of an idea. I thought more into the indie genre and how sometimes it can be quite hippy themed and free, then a linked this with my digi-pack and poster and thought a garden would be an appropriate location. I was lucky that my models garden was in good condition with plenty of flowers to work with because this is what I was going to use as a theme to create familiarity. I used a variety of different shots that interpret flowers. For example at 1.00 minute I did a sequence where the model picked flowers similar to the ones I used in my poster and digi-pack and the model throws them into the pond. I really liked this idea of a sequence because it was quite slow and easy going like the pace of the music at the time.

10. What have you learnt from your audience feedback? Getting audience feedback was a lot harder than I thought. I got personal feedback from peers at school however not many decided to physically comment on the video. I posted my video on facebook with a youtube link in hope that people may comment the link. I got a few likes from my friends and a nice comment. I believe that due to facebook being so popular on mobile phones not many people really access it from a computer so when a video pops up on the news feed they don’t actually view the video. I was quite disappointed with the response via facebook. I also posted a link to my survey that I created trying to get more feedback from my audience in hope that I would get some more reactions.

11. These are some of the comments left on Youtube. There is some critical feedback that I can learn from. For example the first comment says “could be improved if the band perhaps appeared at least once” I think if I had the oppertunity to get the band involved that would have been better for the video and also for the audience. In the second comment says “the simple upbeat and random acts in the video match the upbeat and fun feeling to the song”. I’m glad that my intentions were executed and notice. When I was planning my video this is exactly what I wanted to achieve. The third comment says “much improvement from your last idea” I feel this is very true. My vision using stop motion was not very successful and I’m glad that this video has had positive reactions and works well.

12. These are the comments left on my survey that I created. I asked what the viewers liked about the video and one said the slow motion shot and how it fits with the music. I am glad this shot got some credit because it was very difficult to put together all of the different shots and fit them with the pace of the video. The next comment I like because it says “fun” and I like that this word has continuously been used throughout the feedback because that is the over all theme I was trying to go for.

13. In this question I asked what don’t you like about the music video, this is so I could get some more critical feedback. The first comment said that they would have preferred more people in the video. I think looking back on the video maybe a few more people doing random things would have made the video better. The second comment has suggests HD, the video is shot with a HD camera and unfortunately to upload it onto Youtube I had to compress the file which meant loosing some of the quality. The actual video looks a lot better.

14. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? In the research and planning stages of the project I used a very wide variety of new media technologies. I took advantage of digital television and watched a lot of music channels that aired indie/rock music such as MTV 2, NME TV and Kerrang. This helped me a lot because I could sit and make notes on the videos and compare them to find the conventions. In terms of the internet I used Youtube quite a lot to watch videos or look at them again. I used Google images to explore album art work for inspiration for my digi-pack task. I used facebook and Myspace to look for unsigned bands and to contact my band.

15. The image on the right is of Canterbury’s myspace page where I found their contact details to email them. Myspace is a very popular place for all bands to display their music for free. Myspace has always been popular for this reason and now is mainly used rather than for social networking. The image on the left displays the email with the bands consent to use their song. It is clear the band are very friendly and kind. I used Myspace messaging to contact them as this would most probably be the quickest as they use is quite a bit to keep their fans updated.

16. For construction I had to use a variety of different software in order to make my product as good as possible. I firstly had to use I-Movie to upload the footage from the camera onto the laptop. Then I imported the footage into Premier Pro in which I did all the post production work in. I find Premier Pro is a suitable and easy programme to use. I did not want to do any difficult transitions or add in any special effects, otherwise I could have used Adobe After Affects. I used Audacity to edit the music track to go with the video. I edited it because there was a couple of seconds at the begining and end of the track where there was no music so it just made the song even longer. I once again used I-Movie to compress the file to make it accessible via the internet. I-Movie had merged with Youtube because I-Movie uses Youtube as one of their share options and suggests different settings to save as to make sure Youtube can take the video file size.

17. This part of the screen is where you will find all the clips that you have imported. In this box you can edit clips individually for more precise editing. This is the screen in which you can video the video that it on the timeline. This is the timeline in which you can structure the video and create the layout. There are different levels for audio and video .

18. For the evaluation part of the project I relied a lot on social networking, mainly for my feedback. I used facebook and displayed links to my video as my status’ asked people in private messages to comment on my video and take my survey. I used survey monkey to create my survey as it is quick and easy to use. There are a lot of different structural options to choose from and it’s free. The most important new media technology would be Youtube. Youtube is the website in which displays my video for everyone to see. It would be very difficult to get any feedback without Youtube. I also used blogger to display my video and ancillary tasks. Blogger was a very important part of the project. It displayed all my ideas, all of my drafts and was basically a digital version of a book. I was able to review all my inspiration and all my ideas. Compared to last year I have posted over double the amount of times. I think this shows my progression and how I have grown from the task last year. I think it is that I worked on my own so it was up to me to note down all my ideas and remember them all. I think Blogger has been very useful to me and my project and it allows anyone in the world to see my project, also the band can see the progression with my music video.

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