Josh Read Evaluation

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our digipak we decided to use the same motif from the front cover on certain other panels. We did this to show the consumer that this is part of the artist's brand image, with this logo being established in the digipak it can then be used as a recognisable symbol synonymous with the artist. This also ties in with Goodwin's point of selling the artist as creating a brand image helps to sell the artist by making them and their products recognisable. In the front cover of the digipak we used the yellow and grey circle to contrast with the black and white picture and the colour picture but alternating to overlay the opposite.

For our magazine advert we decided to use the same picture from our digipak but without our motif, this creates a recognisable link between the two, without feeling like we just re-used the same thing. We also decided to use the same font as was used in our artist's logo because this adds to our brand recognition and as it is far bigger than any other text on the picture it stands out and is immediately recognisable as a part of our artist's brand image. I decided to use the 5-star reviews as they help to sell the album because it shows that reviewers think that the album is good and it is a common and successful marketing technique. The Spotify and iTunes logos show the customer exactly where they can buy the album and therefore they do not have to look around for it, oft-times you will see an advert but not have any idea where to get the product and you have to search for it, this eliminates the issue. 


 

In this shot you can see our character rising from between two bins in an alleyway, this is the starting shot of our music video and we decided to do this because it introduces our narrative of the homeless busker character. We focused on our narrative heavily in the video as it is a convention of folk rock to have more of a meaningful video rather than a flashy video with no real narrative, and also because it links with Goodwin's point of linking the lyrics to the visuals. In the song it says ''I knew a man with nothing in his hand'' this is talking about a homeless man with no possessions, and links well with our visuals, as our main character is homeless and his only possessions are his guitar and the clothes on his back.


We used a lot of live performance in our music video as it is a convention of folk rock music videos as well as being used heavily in the official video for Holes by Passenger, which heavily influenced our video. Performance from the artist is also one of Goodwin's points so we thought that combining this with the live aspect would meet conventions and Goodwin's analysis making our music video recognisable as a folk rock video.

Between our rough and final cuts we decided that the thing that we could use to influence our narrative the most was colour correction, as you can see in these two images. The original shot looked very warm because of the orange light in the alleyway, we wanted the shot to have a more sombre and lonely feel, as this is towards the beginning of the video when the busker is homeless and jobless. We also felt that once the colour correction was done it made the video have a lot more of a professional look to it. Giving the music video the letterbox effect makes the final cut look more professional and follow convention but it also cuts out unnecessary screen space so that the viewer's focus is on the main character more than his surroundings, even though his surroundings are important to the narrative it is more important to focus on the character and the fact that he is completely alone.


We used cutaways to the artist's guitar several times in our video, as this is convention of folk rock and it is good to couple cutaways to instruments with performance shots. In both shots we wanted it to be while our character was performing and therefore would have his gloved hand in it, as the fingerless gloves is a trademark of our busker character.
The close ups also give us a chance to show the guitar-playing aspect of the song in the visuals which links in with Goodwin's point of linking the visuals to the music.






Many close up shots were used in our music video because it helped us to show good quality lip sync in better detail. We made sure that the close ups were used during the performance shots because this is conventional of any video with performance in, and helps to more clearly link the video to the music with well edited lip sync.


We chose to end our music video with this shot as it offers nice narrative resolution to the viewer by tying up the main character's story and is a fairly conventional way of ending a performance in and out of music videos, especially for a musician. This shot also links visuals to lyrics as in Goodwin's analysis, ''we've got holes, but we carry on'', the busker is still not set for life therefore he still has holes, but he is now carrying on with his new career path and new life.



 Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 



Q3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

 



Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Henry Smith - Music Video Evaluation

Question One:

As you can see we decided to include live performances into our video, as it can be seen numerous times throughout the folk rock genre. The video we found most influential was the original video to Holes from Passenger, as he also had live performance shots that seemed to not only fit with the genre but to also match the lyrical content. Despite not being able to gather a large crowd like Passenger we framed it well to make it look like there's an audience present, this can be seen a lot through our video. Folk Rock is a very Acoustic based genre, which is why we decided to include the guitar within our video. The guitar also benefits towards the performance shots as it makes it seem more authentic.

                                                                   

Narrative wise we decided to use the 'Rags to Riches' theme, which we thought suited well within the Folk Rock genre due to its acoustic quality, which is usually affiliated with busking. Trying to tell a story and providing performance shots meant we had to combine the two together, Hence the Rags to Riches and busking combination. To show the narrative mise-en-scen played a large part, as we had the performer dress in typical homeless clothing such as a large dull coat, fingerless gloves and a beanie. This was helped with the first shot being located in a dirty, dark alley where the character emerged from between two bins. This also creates a juxtaposition with the final sequence therefore making the overall effect of the narrative much stronger. With the final sequence you can see that we tried to make a contrast with the rest of the video, to do this we had the character dressed in a
clean white shirt that represents the idea of happiness and proudness. Going from dark to light clothing creates this feeling of improvement
and development within the narrative.

Colour correction played a large part in presenting our narrative and also linking it with other folk rock music videos. We found that in other videos within the same genre had this warm, bright colour scheme that emphasised lyrical content and fitted in with the music style. For example in Passenger's video the colour scheme is very bright and colourful which helps to create positive emotions that fit it in with the songs content. This influenced us to use a similar colour scheme where we emphasised the yellow and reds, as this helped to portray the warm joyful feelings we aimed to show.
 You can see the difference in colour when you compare the rough cut with the final video. For me it fits it in with Folk Rock music video conventions, therefore making the video more relatable for fans of the genre.

A convention that's not only found within folk rock videos but in almost every music video, is close ups on instruments. This is a key quality within music videos as it keeps the flow of the video and makes the performance shots seem more authentic. Even though our performer didn't know how to play guitar we managed to frame it in some parts to make it seem like he was playing to the music. Although we did get a lot of comments stating how some of the strumming was out of sync, it was hard to fix this without effecting the quality of the lip-syncing so we just showed less of the close up shots. When you watch a video that includes closeups you get a verity of shots that can make the video more watchable as you're not just watching the performer singing, this was key to making our video more durable and professional.
           


With our magazine advert we decided to use the same image as the digipak front cover, as this helps the audience see the similarity between the two products, therefore adding to our brand image. The text is also the same in both of our products as for the same reason it adds to our brand image and reflects the music style. The name of the star is the largest writing on the magazine advert as this gives a clear sign of who it is and to an extent the type of genre. This method is used numerous times throughout the music industry as for the same reason it provides a clear sign of who the artist is.
We also added the logos of well known music companies as this is a modern convention for magazine adverts that have only recently come into play.



The digipak was made in a way to reflect our artists brand image and relate to the music video through colour scheme and photo location. In our eyes the locations we chose reflected the music genre well and fitted in with the typical conventions usually found within CD covers. All artists use this method of making the CD cover reflect their image, as it sells the artist and creates the link between them and their product. This relates to one of Goodwin's points of selling your artist. In typical folk rock conventions you will rarely see the artist being exploited with their body as they usually represent fashion and style. Due to this convention we had pictures of the artist in clothing and representing fashion.

Question Two:

Question Three :

Question Four:

Evaluation question 3 script

Music Video -

We wanted to start our music video with something to show the narrative of the song visually, hence the alleyway shot with the bins. The visuals for a lot of the video linked well with the lyrics of the song, helping the viewer to understand the narrative and the locations we shot in also helped to emphasise the theme of the character’s progression from rags to riches and gives a clear indication straight away that he is poor and throughout the video you see his gradual rise in success.

As you can see the lip-syncing is generally ok but at some parts it’s out, this doesn’t really affect the overall outcome. After our rough cut the main bit of feedback that we received was to improve our lip-syncing, for our final cut we fixed this and now most of our video is perfectly in sync.

A lot of our feedback was praising our narrative so we decided to focus on this and develop it further, making it the focal point of our final product. We had a number of transitions in both our rough and final cuts which helped for the narrative to flow throughout the video that allowed the viewer to see the character’s gradual rise to fame.

One piece of feedback was that our actor didn’t change chord on the guitar enough and we found it hard to improve on this without re-filming the whole video and paying extra attention to it, which could possibly take away from the quality of the lip sync.

Colour correction was a strong subject within the feedback so as you can see the final has a vast improvement. We tried to incorporate editing on the beat into the instrumental part of the song, as this fits with music video conventions and helps the video flow smoothly.

We used a lot of live performance shots because we felt it fit with the genre conventions of folk rock music, the use of an acoustic guitar in front of a live audience was inspired by the official music video for Holes, although we couldn’t actually have a live audience, we used lighting and camera positioning in a way that would give the illusion there was an audience present.

Ancillary tasks –

Throughout all of our products we tried to include our chosen themes and messages. To do this we used conventional fonts and colours that are usually found within the same genre to give our artist an individual look and so customers can relate this font to the artist.

Both our digipack and magazine advert used the same font and images, which linked them together and allowed the customer to see the relationship between the font and images and the artist. We tried to create a brand image that would help us to sell our artist.

Final Magazine Advert

This is our final piece for our magazine advert. We tried to use things in this that were also used in our digipack so that people who saw this poster could make the link between the artist and the traits that have been put into both the advert and digipack. We used the same font in both our poster and our digipack so that the consumer could associate this font with the artist and their image. 

In our advert we really like the font we have used for both the artists name and the album name as it suits the 'Folk Rock' genre our artist is based around and it also helps the text to stand out to the public. We also like the white font on the black background as it gives it a simplistic feel which is a common trait in the 'Folk Rock' genre but it also helps to make the words stand out and to link in with our digipack.  

The below images show our inspirations for our magazine advert. The Jessie J advert gave us an idea for the layout of the album cover picture, album title, and artist name and their positioning. 

Final Digipak

Throughout the digipak we tried to represent our stars personas, through the means of colour and font style. We felt that folk rock would be best represented with a colour scheme that was mainly yellow with hints of red this contrasts with the black and white, running through our whole digipak.

Magazine Advert Cover

Digipak Front Cover