media evaluation on the music video, digi pak and advert I created

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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

5. The exterior of the album is used to match the advert with only slight differences. This uses the conventions of music artists as they use this to sell their albums also. This keeps a familiarity with the audience. The font used for the band name “The Killers” has been used from the band itself as this font can be seen on all of their albums. The digipak cover follows real media product conventions as it has the exact layout of CDs in the market. The title of the album placed under the band name, the image to help the audience recognize the album immediately, the track listing on the back cover, the band website address and record label logo and bar code underneath this.

6. The advertisement for the album is based on the digipak cover. To create both of these we used the same image of the main character throughout the trilogy of songs. To create the blue background we used an image that we overlaid onto the background image. The same two fonts were used for the title of the album and band and the record label logo used also. The advert has more of the overlay effect added as it is larger in size explaining why the image has a darker blue. The release date is included at the bottom of the advert as what is usually seen on adverts such as this, as I found in my research on other digipaks and adverts. The digi-pak and advert stick to the conventions of real media products as they carry out the same images and fonts. We developed this by changing the angle in which the character is sitting and changing the inside of the album to a different image completely.

7. Camera work and editing Camera shots: Long shots were used to show the fighting taking place at the riverside and the very end scene when he disposed the body into the river. The last shot was used in this way, to give the feeling of him being watched. The fighting scene was used as a long shot to give the feeling that someone has seen everything. Close ups are used a wide amount to show facial expressions to convey emotions and show the props used. Examples of this can be seen in the interrogation room when the suspect shows his nervousness and also when the voice recorder/photos gets placed on the table. This keeps the audience involved in what is happening. Another example would be the feet walking across the riverside, this at first places a mystery into who these belong to and what they add to the storyline. Point of view shots are put in place to show the suspects point of view of the interrogator as he walks in. However it could be seen as the interrogation room scenes are all point of view shots from what the ghost has seen. An over shoulder shot is used again to show that the suspect is being watched. This takes place when he is strangling his victim a crucial part of the storyline that shows he is in fact guilty. Camera angles: High angles are used quite a large amount throughout this video. An example being when the main character is being questioned. This shows he has less power than the interrogator, but also the ghost who is watching over him the entire time. Eye level is used to show the couple at their happy stages, in the park they each have the same amount of power and nothing is happening that can be linked to action, keeping this angle shows the peace . Editing: A matched cut is used when the hands are seen clenching into a fist in the flashback and in the interrogation room, showing that the suspect has remembered back to what he has done also shows the tension in the character. Motivated cuts are used in the form of flashbacks that help the audience guess that the suspect is in fact guilty for the crime of murder. Camera movement: Crab movement has been used at the very ending of this music video to follow off the suspect. Not much else has been used in the way of camera movements, as this would take away from the storyline which we focused on.

8. Mise-en-scene: Locations Usually in The Killers videos they set a storyline in one location. The main location that we used was the interrogation room. The other locations were necessary to the storyline showing the flashbacks to what had happened for those who had not had the knowledge of the first two songs. This then may interest them in the other songs which are featured on the album, linking all three of the products together digipak, advert and music video. Although this does not follow the codes and conventions of other media products, it helps to combine the products made and tell the story of the song which is a convention used a majority of the time in music videos, especially on the artists we focused on, The Killers.

9. The costumes we used for the actors were reflective of the character, the band The Killers and the target audience for indie music. The Killers are known for wearing suits and ties in their music videos. The interrogator therefore wore a suit and tie this fitting to his job role throughout the song also. The main character was in casual clothing as is seen on the indie kids below, this helps the target audience relate to the music video better. The dress worn by the victim was made to seem ghostly, the brown I thought reflected that the body had been lying in murky water, as it is told in the second song of the trilogy that this is what occurred. Mise-en-scene: Costumes

11. Narrative structure:

14. I attempted to find as much audience feedback possible. To gain this I used the websites www.youtube.com , www.facebook.comand www.surveymonkey.com . The feedback I did obtain is viewable on the previous slide. As can be seen I managed to only get five comments on a Facebook status I used to ask friends for opinions and advice. The other two ways of feedback unfortunately were unsuccessful. However although I achieved no luck on gaining comments on the music video through YouTube, the 89 views and 1 like in comparison to no dislikes shows that the video is a success. Some of the feedback is unreliable. The reason for this being that the opinions given were not in detail. It is clear that the video is well liked from what has been said. The YouTube video was not posted too long ago meaning that more views/comments would give much more insight to what the audience think of the final product. I was unable to receive any feedback of how the combined products worked together and about the digipak and advert. Because all the comments made about the video were good this shows that because the products are combined as a package that they would too be successful. Throughout this process I have learnt a lot more about the use of technology especially through programs such as Photoshop and premiere pro. This means that in future the products I produce will be even more advanced than what I have created here and will therefore get much more of a range of feedback. Because I couldn’t achieve gaining feedback from a wider audience outside of my friends this means that the comments made were unlikely to criticize. In future I will get the products into the public eye earlier giving myself more of a chance to gain the feedback I need to improve the product.

15. The technology I used through this project helped to enhance the final products. At the beginning of this project I used the internet to research the band The Killers, the target audience and other music videos, as well as digipaks and adverts o help create my own. To do this I used YouTube to collect the videos, Google web and images for the research and digipak and advert images and Wikipedia to collect more research and information. The blogger account I created helped to record the information I found in an organized manner, as it enabled me to import images and videos. The videos firstly however had to be converted to an mp4 file and downloaded into my account. To do so I used a convertor I found through Google web called No.1 convertor. The second part of my project that included working with technology was the shooting of the video. A video camera was used to capture the footage and mobile phones were used to help us keep in contact with other members of the group. The mobile phones were also used to take pictures that were needed for the music video as the camera we originally were going to use ran out of power and was therefore unreliable. To complete the three final products Photoshop and premiere pro were used. Photoshop allowed us to create a digipak and advert through editing images and using effects such as changing brightness and using overlay features to give them more of an impact. The images used were taken on digital cameras or taken from Google images for the overlay. The final stage of this project was to gain feedback. To do so I used three different web addresses. YouTube, survey monkey and Facebook. Without these technologies it would have been a challenge to have completed any of this project. Some of the technology I did use was less than 10years old. Blogging which is ten years old itself, if it had not been created yet would have left me to write my research on either a word document or hand written. This would not have enabled me to use multi-media and would not have as great as an impact. YouTube which is only five years old helped to find feedback, distributed our video and helped in research. This shows how advanced technology has become and how dependent we are on it. Real media products use a lot of technology also if it had not been invented they would have far less quality.