Evaluation - 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning, and evaluation stages?

The construction of the video we used the technologies for the shooting and editing of the video, which we made with final cut editing software. The camera we used was good for videoing and re-recording the scene instantaneously as the camera's playback button allowed us to see the video we recorded and if the camera angle or quality of the video wasn't good enough then we recorded the scene until we got the right angle and quality. Also, we were able to use a lot of editing techniques to help make our video fit the target audience we wanted to make the video for, some of the editing included fast cutting and speeding up scenes to create the right effect to match our music beat.

The use of final cut pro let us edit the video, at a very good standard and to make the video look very realistic and the use of special effects let us, make the video suit the music we had chosen, as special effects were put in the video on the beat. The camera we used was a Canon and Canon's are known to be very reliable, the battery life let us be able to video for long hours, and also the camera quality let us video in bad conditions but the shots came out good. Such as videoing when the lighting is too bright and also when the scene is too dark, but this made us be able to video scenes we wanted and overall the camera was a big help. Also the tripod let us video at different heights therefore giving us different angles and also different types of shots, in the music video. Overall the equipment used helped a lot to achieve a video such as ours, the final product came out very realistic and smooth, whereas using equipment that wasn't as good as the editing program and the camera would of made the video look unprofessional.

The editing techniques we used, were made out to make the video look unique and quirky this was achieved by using special effects, such as earthquake scenes and also the use of negative made the video look modern and urban, we did this on purpose as this editing technique was used to suit the music choice and make the video look more interesting. Also the use of fast-pace scenes and play-back scenes were used to make the video look weird in a good way as our story line was to make the characters performance seem unreal and this was achieved by using fast motion scenes and also the editing technique of reverse play-back. The editing technique used when the character jumps through the wall and a fast transaction to the other scene where he jumps straight through and transports makes the video look crazy and funny, also when the other character tries to jump through the wall and copy the other character we used editing techniques that made the screen red and this was done to make the character look mad as he didn't achieve what he wanted to achieve to transport as efficient as his partner.

The research we put into the video, when we planned it was done by the use of many different things, such as researching current dubstep videos that have been produced officially. Also research used such as finding locations, was done by the use of Google Maps, we found destinations to shoot our video by looking on Google Maps and found back streets in the city centre that would look good for our type of video and to match our music type. We wanted to make a unique video and therefore our research ended up finding dubstep to be the music type we wanted to use for our video, as we have a creative group and dubstep videos need creative ideas and therefore we brainstormed as a group and came up with many different ideas and then chose the best ideas out of all of the contributions made. And came up with what we put in the video, we had many different ideas as we researched thoroughly by watching videos on Youtube and analysing them in depth.

In our planning section we used our research to help us as a outline, to achieve what we wanted. Our planning section consisted of watching similar videos that we wanted to match our video, so therefore we put more creative ideas into our planning and tried to compared it to what it would of been compared to a official video. In the planning we had to make our visual effects suit our music choice, and also the performance so we therefore did this by making the video of two men looking for a imaginary rabbit and this planning was used to make the video look unique. The use of the story board helped us put together and come up with the video we wanted to make, and this helped a lot matching our video to the music choice, also we planned out that we wanted fast cuts to match our dubstep music choice as this was very important to us.

Evaluation - 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience that have watched our video, have given lots of positive feedback and our media production has made to look like an official video. We have been given positive feedback such as, the beat is made to look well with the visual aspect such as the change of effects and cuts on the beat. Also the use of locations and the different types of shots, were noticable as extreme close-ups and zoom was used on different shots, which made the video look unique and different to other dubstep videos we have seen in the past. We have had critiscism such as no lip syncing but we replaced this with text and also the performance, that we did in the video. Also we have had comments such as the concept of the video suits the type of music as it is urban and modern, as the video is done in the inner city.

Comments from our audience such as the texture of our video, the special effects, and also the way the video is portrayed have been very helpful as it has helped us improve the video, we tried to portray the video to be insane and crazy, due to men getting angry over a fake rabbit that doesn't exist, the performance we put in the video were men being powerful and able to transport and have special powers. We did this by the use of quick cuts and also how we shown the men moving from different destinations very quickly and also jumping through a wall, into a cut of the man jumping through it. The audience said this made to look very real and was cut to perfection as there were no errors in the transaction of this transportation. Also the audience mentioned the mise en scene as the representation of the men, were hiden and had balaclavas this was due the men thinking it is some sort of illegal stunt to get the rabbit, and they believe it will give them a advantage to life possibly, the audience believe this as the men are hiding and trying to get away with what they are doing, but at one point of the video secruity talk to the men about this and this shows that they need to hide their identities and it is very real to them.

Us as a group have learnt, to be creative no matter what due to the music chosen, and we didn't want to make the story of the video too stereotypical and we wanted to make it strange and different compared to other videos have previously seen in the past. We want to portray our video to be different and unique, and most of the audience who watched the video have said that the video was weird and quirky. And the use of all the different shots were noticed such as on the feet when running and also long-shots and close-ups make the video more watchable and not boring, the audience says we have achieved this and it is made to be strange in a good way.

Overall the audience we have asked, to watch our video believe that our video is edited well, it is very different and unique and quirky in its own way. The ideas put into the video are very unique and not a copy of any official video out there, which makes the video creative and overall a very strong video with the use of technology available, one criticism point was that we did not use green screen, but we believed that the shots we had taken are unique and green screen wasn't needed as it didn't suit our video to make it weird and creative. Also we have had feedback saying that some of the special effects are too dark which make the video look grimey and modern but we did this on purpose as we wanted a contrast of colours to make the music video varied and interesting.

Analysis

Analyse representations in your music video. How does mise en scene and performance contribute to representations?

We analysed our video and the use of mise en scene was made to be different, as we made the two characters in the video to look strange and dodgy, this was made to be true as we used balaclavas to make the men look weird and strange, also the use of hoods to hide their identity were thought of as the men were made to perform like they wanted to hide their identities, and not to get caught by whatever would catch them when looking for the imaginary rabbits. The use of mise en scene contributed to representations as we wanted to represent the men to be crazy and therefore by wearing retro types of clothes and the use of hoods made them look different and unique compared to normal urban people who dress modernly.

The performance contributed to repsentations as the performance was edited and made to look like the men had powers and this represented the men to have amazing powers and to be supernormal, For example teleporting through walls and transporting from one place to another very quickly. Also the performance of the men being crazy and jumping off walls and becoming mad over a imaginary rabbit, represented the men as strange and also not normal. But we wanted to represent them to be this as this is what dubstep is about, it is strange, abnormal and not right in a way, and this is how we represented this. Dubstep music is not liked by everyone and we tried to make people pay more attention to this type of music through the video choice and tried to make the video appealing to multiple ranges of people, and by the use of mise en scene and performance we feel like we have achieved this and will allow more people to listen to dubstep and people can learn the ways of how people are portrayed and represented in music and also the way young people think and imagine how things should be.

Evaluation - 2

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

The aim of our cd cover and advert poster was to be kept consistent and this is done from the use of colours and designs that was repeated, the background was black to create a sinister feel that dubstep gives, and also to make the rest of the images infront to stand out such as the two characters, rabbit and the colourful glow effect. This will differentiate us from other covers which are generally plain or have significant object or person that will make it stand out whilst we wanted everything on the cd cover to be eyecatchy, enabling us to attract our customers when placed on the shelves in stores. The glow effect is created in different colours to match the video effects and give that party feel that dubsteps sends out. The rabbit wasnt shown on our main video, but we still applied it onto the cd cover as the song title was called, 'Misshin Wabbhit', and the whole concept of the narrative was about finding a rabbit. The rabbit and the two charcaters on the cd covers are wearing bandanas, giving that gangster feel that we wanted, this was also complemented from the urban location that this video was set in; these features made our target audience being younge adults. The language that we added to the advert poster was important to be kept simple and this was done from the size of the text which was reasonably big and clear to attract our audience attention. On the advert poster, it clearly shows the names of the stores and download site where the music can be purchased. The colour of all the texts is white which again makes it easy to read and it also compliments one of the characters who is dressed white, depressing colours represents the characters emotions for not finding the rabbit. We also designed a CD for the cover and for this, we decided to put the main features of the video, which from our questionnaire it stated, 'the two characters and the colours', that people remembered most. We decided that the advert posters background should be white, this will allow the white text and images to be highlighted as their is a black rectangle shapes behind them. Also, from our research, we noticed that many advert posters tend to be hunged up in lighter colour walls, as a result our text and images will stand out even more and it will differentiating it from other dubstep posters, by it giving that disorder look which our main video portrays. We decided as a group to use ' OUT NOW IN STORES & AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD', persuasive language which draws the consumers to look at the poster.The use of the video, magazine advert and CD case complimented each other very well as our group came up with unique ideas to market our music and match it to what our video was all about, the use of images on the CD case was the same as the video, so this makes the audience want to watch the video due to seeing the CD case. We wanted everything to match the video whilst appealling to our audience at the same time, and with the use of different colours on our magazine attracted our audience eyes. We wanted to represent dubstep to be urban and modern and different to other types of music and we believe that we have represented this as we have made everything compliment each other from the use of colours, images, typograpghy and composition. We wanted to reach a big target audience and most people like dubstep so therefore we believe that we have achieved our overall goal to portray dubstep using its conventions in a unique way.

How effective is the combination of our main product and ancillary text?

Our video, magazine advert and CD case complimented each other as they all had rather bright colourful design also the fact that we wanted the rabbit in all three created the link between them also we used the same type of colours when designing all three. Moreover, we used the advert to attract our target audiences of young and older children to buy our product also the way in which the CD cover was designed made it look attractive, to stand out from other CD covers so this we felt also helped to make our product sell faster.the CD cover and the advert made the product sell better as the both were there to attract and encourage the audiences into buying the product, for example simple things like adding the available at itunes and HMV and other shops encouraged the audiences to buy as they now know where to buythe video we had two characters hunting a missing rabbit that was said to worth a lot of money and they went around town in search of this rabbit this we used a lot of different editing and camera angles to make our video fit and then we had to use more equipment in the studio to help us with our end product, as for the advert we wanted to make a CD with the words missing rabbit which is pronounced with an accent of the character from our video and the we made the costumes consisting of the jeans or track suit bottoms and a jacket to help with our dupstep image, furthermore the use of editing made our video more attractive to the target audiences. Also, the idea of advert was to catch the people’s attention so the colouring was very eye catching and really good bright colours to make easy to see. Also the use of colour effects and the use of colouring in our video editing and the colouring of our advert were similarly in the way that they were all rather bright and eye catching making our video and advert good for our target audiences of young and older children.

Evaluation - 1

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


Our music video was inspired by other music videos due to the type of music, we analysed music videos of similar beat to ours, and then found ideas and visual effects that we put into our work. the music videos we analysed were the similar genre as our song was dubstep and the music videos were drum n bass and modern urban music. Our video was different to most music videos as we used many different effects and cuts as this matched our type of music chosen. Our video broke away from conventions and was original as the types of shots we used and the speed of the video was varied compared to other typical dubstep and drum n bass videos. Also the use of location and the venues we shot at made our video unique, and the use of fast transactions to show teleportation. Our music video has similar conventions to videos such as Pendulums videos and also Loca People as our video as we have lots of fast cuts, but our video is different due to different content which makes it unique.

Our video has major conventions of a music video as Goodwin's theory was followed, but the lyrics and visuals were not used as our music video consisted of performance and visual narrative. Also our visuals in our video were not contradicting as it was made to be very strange and weird. The genre characteristics were not a typical dub-step one, as our video was made to be very ab-normal and crazy as the performance was two men looking for a imaginary rabbit and this makes the audience think what is happening. The intertextual reference is strange as the text for the music video links to what the lyrics are saying, and this is said with a right scene to match what is said. Voyeurism is used as two characters are in the music video and one character is competing with another to find the rabbit but the character tries to copy what the other does and fails, for example teleporting through a wall. Also the notions of looking are basically the men are hooded up and trying to hide their identities as they want to find the rabbit, but they are crazy and are imagining things which are not there and finding a rabbit that does not exist, so therefore the men have balaclavas and are well hidden with their hoods up.


Overall our media product use has been to a professional standard due to the use of editing and the amount of effects used, and the program used is used by professional's, and developing a music video like this means we have challenged forms and conventions of real media products as the time used in this project and also the locations and performance was at a high standard.

The final video

This is the final edited version of our video.

What went wrong with our designs?

Magazine Advert

CD

Cd covers

1) Back cd cover
2) Inside (Right)
3) Front cover
4) Inside (Left)

Location Shots

Over here we went into the centre of Manchester Town however we filmed in the back streets and alleyways for some parts of the video. this gave the video an underground look showing how Dubstep is an urban genre.














































We also took shots around Manchester Cathederal in town, the grass, leaves and trees gave a nature view in the video which links in the missing 'wabbit'. The greeny look was also influenced by the looney tunes cartoon of the song. The trees shows the audience how we are looking for the rabbit in the right places as one of the characters is runnin around the tree.

Questionnaire feedback

We asked about their age to make sure they are whithin the age group of the audience we are trying to attract which are 16-24. Asking 15 people altogether can be quite biased to make an overall decision, however we felt as a group that it will be enough to get useful opinions which we can then later change. Only 10 of the people we asked had an interest of Dubstep and according to our questionnaire, the most helpful information came from the ones that didnt have an interest so we thought that we ask the people who had an interest in Dubstep after. This will allow us to change the video and ask if its improved, making sure the original video is saved just in case the change didnt go well. The quotes we received from the 10 who had an interest were positive, these were, 'as a whole, it is a very good piece' and 'the effects that were added made the dubstep video'. The drawbacks they said were, 'an effect should have been added when the character is looking out the window' and when Hamza was sitting down and it cutted to the beat, they thought it was 'boring'. These are little features of the video that could easily be chnaged. We took the advice and changed it by removing the effect out and adding a vibrating movemont inbetween the cuts which made it less boring and more interesting. For the window scene, we decided to leave it blank due to the narrative, not having any effects sets a depressing mood because they cant find the wabbhit. After the change, we asked everybody again and they thouhgt it was better thena the original so we decided to keep the improved version. Both gender had an interest in Dubstep and we got mixed positive comments from both. As a group, the only big improvement that we wish could be changed was the footage quality.We asked the same eople to view our cd case and they thought the vibrant colours that were applied complementedthe video which was our main objective to get across to attract the audience. The improvement they said was to 'add a glow effect to the colours' and this is exactly what we did. As a group, we thought that the texts should stand out more but the colours were restricting the focus of the text. The graphic designer of the group tried his best to play around with the composition of the text so it can be more eyecatchy to the audience. The same problem occured for our advert poster as they said that 'the text was difficult to focus on'. He decided to add a dark box behind it to make the text stand out even more, and overall, the results were good.

Feedback from Questionnaire

We asked15 people to answer the questionnaire, 9 were males and 6 were females. Most of them like listening to Dubstep and took an interest in it. Only a few have bought albums however they have songs from varied artists such as Magnetic man but most of the people tend to go to Dubstep based events at nightclubs or parties. This shows how it is more of a nightlife genre of music played in clubs and large energetic galleries. Most of them share their music with their friends showing how Dubstep is a widely listened to genre amongst youngsters. None of the people who answered knew about the history of Dubstep neither where they interested as they see Dubstep as a more modern and urban type of music that has in the recent years increased in popularity.

Questionnaire on Dubstep

1. How old are you?

2. Are you Male or Female?

3. Do you like listening to Dubstep?

4. Do you know any Dubstep artists or albums?

5. Have you ever bought Dubstep albums or songs?

6. Have you attended any Dubstep events at nightclubs?

7. Would you recommend Dubstep to your friends?

8. Does the history of Dubstep interest you?

9. What is your favorite dubstep song?

10. What age group would you recommend dubstep to?

11. What do you think of our Dubstep CD case?

12. Do you like the choice of colours of the CD?

13. Did you like our advert poster or not and why?

14. What would you change about the advert poster and why?

15. did you like our music video or not and why?

16. What would you change about our Dubstep video and why?

Narrative

Our narrative for Misshin Wabbit is straightforward, where basically two characters are trying to find a rabbit; this was also the narrative for the original video. The narrative is zany and has a disjuncture to it by these two protagonists travelling in different locations such as the park, bus and the outside streets. From it being fast paced, the audience may find the narrative very hard to follow, but this is the whole concept of a dub step video where they can have their own perspectives of what the songs about, questions asked like, ‘ why are they in this particular location?’ The narrative does have an ending where one of the protagonists shows himself; no effects on him, which is how this is portrayed. However, the beginning and middle are jumbled in a random order, which is done deliberately to reinforce the confusion of the two protagonists finding the rabbit. Their is performance in our video which is the two characters looking around for the rabbit, but you don't see much of them as they both quickly disappear from the screen, this is crucial to show how frustrated the characters are.

Equipments

This is the Canon video camera which we used to film our music video. This video camera was convieniet by it being small and easy to hold. As for the camera being small and light weighted, it was easier for us to gets shots from unusual angles such as a low and canted angles which was essential for us to have in our dubstep video. In addition , the camera had a zoom making it easer to get the low angle shots of the lights on the bus. Another advantage was that the camera had a good battery life when fully charged, so their werent any worry's about leaving the camera to be left on, especially on our establishing shot of the busses and people walking past in our video. Living in Manchester was a positive factor for us as any weather that we film in could make our narrative seem more clearer, showing the time of how long they searched to find the rabbit.The worry that we had for the camera is that by it being small and compacted means that it can easily get damaged which may ruin the quality of our footage. Most of our video was filmed handheld, to give our dubstep video a more realistic narrative, in comparison to the original which was animated. Few of our footage were quite long so when tranfered onto the computer, it took an whole lesson which was very time consuming, however, as a group we thought it was best to do more blog work during this time. All our filming was done outdoors so we didnt used the green screen studio due to our narrative.

This is the tripod we used to attach our video camera onto to get a steady shot without the camera shaking in our hands.The tripod helped us greatly in creating consistently well positioned shots due to its ease of use when putting the camera in obscure positions. The adaptable legs and adjustable height have helped us create some interesting angles for shots to be used in our video. On our first day of filming, we didn’t think the tripod was relevant so we went to do our shots without it. After viewing our footage in the editing room, we felt that some footage that needed to be still was wobbly which made it look unprofessional. For this reason, we reviseited our location to film particular shots like the first one in our video with a tripod and the footage looked much better. An negative point about the Tripod was that it took a lot of time and effort to adjust the tripod to the position you wanted it move. We were restricted to do a birds eye view show with the camera so our only option was to film thme shots handhled. Despite this, the tripod was a very useful tool to have, especially to make the camera as still as it can be, making the final footage look proffesional.

These are the pictures that i am going to use for the CD cover. I drew a variation so
we can choose as a group which image will suit best. The rabbit was drawn first time
good but the footstep which is the logo was drawn more than once because it is
important that its accurately drawn and it should be eye catchy to our audience
which are younge adults. The photo on the right is the flames that we added onto
our CD Cover. By using Photoshop, I took a section of the image and applied
different colours onto it, also adding a glow effect that will make the
cover appealing to the audience, plus giving it a USP when displayed on stands
in stores.

Final Cut Pro

This is the software that we used to edit our piece. The software will allow us to take sections of our clip and apply it onto our timeline, which then as a group we can decide on the different effects that we would use, this is very important when making a dub step video. It is also crucial to use ‘mark on’ to get the shots on time with the music, so we all decided to do this at the start before we started to drag the clips onto the timeline. This software will also allow us to add effects and change the dimension of the clip so it can look the same.

Photoshop

When creating and editing the cd covers, I will use the computer software called ‘Adobe Photoshop’. This piece of software will allow me to resize and crop images, change the colour of various different fonts and shapes, overlap layers to form a new image, add effects to a image e.g. Glow effect. I will be doing some drawing, which I will be scanning in, and adding effects such as the colorful flames that I designed. All these features within Photoshop will help me to create the covers and the magazine advert to make it look as professional as possible.

Adaptation to project

We took our shot list aswell as our ideas with us so we all could have a clear understanding of what we needed to be filming. On the day, we knew we had to get as much footage as possible so we recorded clips of signs (DANGER) and lights, after we can add effect on to it so it can flow with the fast pace video. Our initial aim, as a group was to add, as many effects as possible to the footage to make it look like a dubstep video. We decided not to add the green screen footage as we started to edit because we realized we had lots of quality footage that we can put together. We wanted to make our video stand out to the original therefore adding green screen would make it look childlike. To enable for the video to be in the target range, which is young adult, we didn’t applied any animation onto it. As we were walking to our locations, we thought that we could film interesting shots, just like the birds flying and the bus shots that were showed towards the end of the video. We weren’t going to add as many effects that we actually did, but we added it onto every shot except the last one, to not only make it interesting for our audience but also to give the video a narrative that the protagonist wants to finally show himself.