Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get our original audience feedback back for our rough cut, we had to show our video to the class as a whole, and each person was given a bit of A4 paper on which they wrote the positives; the negatives and points for improvement. The main criticism of our rough cut was that it was too repetitive and this led us to introduce a storyline. However, we did have other criticisms, such as the quality of the lip-syncing between the music and the images. This was a time consuming procedure, but we managed to edit it to perfection for our final cut.
To get the feedback for our final cut, we showed the video to a select group of both A2 Media students and other A2 students. After this, we took them into the side room and filmed their reaction to certain question asked.
This was then edited to allow for an easy understanding of the video.

Untitled from Alex Newcombe on Vimeo.

From our audience feedback, we have learned that the storyline could be improved as we have left a couple of viewers of the video became confused about what happened to the girl, and although this was partially the desired effect as we wished to leave the video on a cliff-hanger, the confusion was in a negative way rather than the attempted positive way which would leave them curious as to what happens, and this would hopefully lead to them wishing to see the next video. However, we were told by the people who would perhaps have a better understanding of the skills and techniques used in filming and editing that it was "difficult to pick some negatives" from our music video. Furthermore, it seems that the overall view of the music video is positive, as the majority of people that viewed it found it to be of a good quality, with it of a similar standard to mainstream music videos.

Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 4 from Alex Newcombe on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our group decided to do the song ‘Winter’ by Joshua Radin. This song is of the apparent folk music genre as albums written by the artist have performed well in this genre chart. However, the song is more commonly considered to be an acoustic song as it has nothing other than the voice of Joshua Radin and an acoustic guitar. This meant that we would be filming a music video for a song with a very slow tempo and therefore we would have to plan our video accordingly, for example a performance video would not be suitable as it would be too repetitive, although our rough cut came perilously close to this.
We believed the lyrics to be of a very down and depressing tone, as we took them to generally mean that the artist has lost someone, whether this be through death or through a breakup we are unsure. However, personally I assume it is a breakup because most songs of this genre tend to be about love, as they are most akin to the traditional ballad form.
Reading the lyrics, we decided to create the idea of a breakup and perhaps to leave the video itself on a bit of a cliff-hanger, similar to the style of video used by Don Broco in their videos ‘Dreamboy’ and ‘Top of the World’, as these carry on from each other.
We begin with Glenn and Lucy, the only two characters in the video, appearing to be very happy together. They joke about and take pictures in situations together that they seem to want to remember. All in all, it allows for a very upbeat tone to the beginning of the video. This is slightly different to the conventional videos of this genre as they seem to be more based around the constant mourning of a loss they have experienced. In this sense, the beginning of our video challenges the typical media conventions. However, we do adhere to the stereotype of the genre, as we have Lucy alone in a white dress with red ribbons round her wrists and she is holding a red rose. This imagery hints towards depression and perhaps even death, and this contradicts the original happy image we see of the couple.
We then see a twist in the storyline as the couple begin to argue in the car scene, which suggests that we are beginning to move towards finding out what happens to the girl to leave her alone clutching at a rose.
The audience then sees Glenn trying to win back Lucy, by taking her roses to her door. This is not filmed in a way that coheres to music videos as a whole, as we used a first person shot so that the audience can emphasise with Glenn, and see it through his eyes.
Finally, we see Glenn throw the roses down as he admits defeat and after he storms off, Lucy bends down and picks up a single rose before turning inside and leaning against the door. This then cross fades into Lucy in the woods holding onto the rose, linking in with the storyline, but not solving the viewer’s questions about what happens.

We used a variety of camera angles in the filming of our music video, and we tried to not use too much camera movement as the tempo of the song and the genre of the music do not generally allow for too much movement, as that is generally more suited to a faster paced song.
This is the predominant shot used in our music video to show Glenn lip-syncing to the song. This is a common shot used in all types of music videos as it is a medium close-up, and allows for the artist or star of the video (who is normally the marketing point for the product) to be exposed to the audience more.
This shot was directly linked to the lyrics in the song, as at this point in the video we hear “I could've lost myself in rough blue waters in your eyes”. This is a very common technique in music videos as well, as it allows the video to be linked back to the song. Furthermore, by linking the video back to the song, it can be made into a potentially memorable line, which means that when the song is being listened to the audience would remember that shot.
The shot in which the camera rotates clockwise around Lucy, whilst she turns counter-clockwise looking confused and dazed, was designed to add to the element of curiosity we hoped the audience would be feeling as they would wish to know what she seems so frightened of, and why is she so alone in the woods? In relevance to the whole of the video, it helps add to the cliff-hanger ending as it could have been the moment when something potentially horrible happened to Lucy. It adheres to the conventions of music videos to an extent, as it displays similarities with the previously mentioned Don Broco music videos, although they present their work in a more satirical manner.
This shot links the entirety of the video together at the end. It allows the audience to understand how Lucy got the rose, and why she would be depressed, but it fails to explain how she reached the woods, what happened to Glenn and what happens to her. This is why I believe the final shot to be so effective because it leaves the audience asking many questions, which if I were to do another music video by Joshua Radin I would continue this storyline on.

We filmed our music video in many locations. Primarily we used the woods and surrounding fields in West Kingsdown. The woods were very effective as the dull natural lighting provided by the British weather adds to the eerie nature of the music video, and it also helps keep the tone of the music video depressive.
Furthermore, a lot of the filming was conducted at my house, as it was convenient. It allowed us to effectively portray the couple as being very happy and content together in the early memory shots, and the lighting in the house was the normal house lighting so it added to the genuine nature of the music video. The only lighting we did fake was in fact for the television shot, when we turned the room lights off and used a bedside lamp to replicate the light of a television.
The only other places we filmed were opposite my house, in which a streetlight provided the lighting at night-time; a park for the swing shot and a cul-de-sac which allowed for us to film the shot in the car without disturbance.

The editing proved to be the most important part in trying to adhere to the conventions of our genre. We had to use slow editing techniques because a fast paced video would not fit very well with the tempo of our music. This is why we predominantly used cross-dissolves as these are much slower than straight cuts and they allow for slower transitions between shots.
Furthermore, we used slow motion at a couple of points in the video, slowing it by up to 50%, as this helps add to the tempo of the music and it suits the music video quite well, adding a dramatic effect at times, such as when the beer bottle is slammed down.
Finally, we used edge blur and motion blur for the memories as this allows for the audience to clearly see what is a memory, and the motion blur also conveys the idea that perhaps Glenn is starting to forget these memories.

To conclude, I believe that our music video adheres to the conventions of the genre and of music videos in general, but in some places it challenges them, but I believe this just adds to the whole memorable nature of the video.


The ancillary task was difficult to plan as we struggled to find many real life media representations of magazine adverts for CD digipaks. However, in Metal Hammer, a magazine from a different genre, we found several. We tried to keep to the styles and conventions we found in these, and we attempted to include all that was included in the real life magazine advert.





For the CD digipak, we researched many album covers that allowed us to create an idea of a product that fits in to a real world convention. We discovered that there are normally two types of album cover, ones with some sort of picture of the artist on them, and ones with no relation, but normally are memorable. We decided to go for a picture of the artist, as we could then easily link this into the music video, and this allowed for us to complete the creation of our multi-platform brand.

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Evaluation Question 2

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

I believe that the combination of our main task and our ancillary tasks is very effective. It is very easy for the audience to make a link between the music video and the ancillary tasks. This is due to several things:
• The continuity of the font, i.e. we used the same font style of ‘Sweet Confusion’ on both of our Ancillary tasks.






• We use similar colours in the Ancillary tasks, such as with the font which is very alike in both tasks, a bright gold/silver colour. Furthermore, the predominant tone of both the Ancillary tasks is dark, and this helps link to the music video as well, as the tempo is slow and the interpretation is moderately depressing.
• The images used in the Ancillary tasks are directly linked to the main product of the music video. The CD digipak has a picture very similar to a shot we used in the final cut of the music video, which is a shot of Glenn standing in front of a pond with a cigarette in his hand. Although this is heavily edited, to make it stand out more, the camera angles are very similar and the contents of the shot are the same. Moreover, the relation between the magazine advert and the music video was more evident in the rough cut video as the picture on the advert was taken directly from the rough cut. We planned to overlay a faded image of Glenn onto the shoulder of Glenn, but this shot did not make the final cut. However, the mise en scene used in the advert is evident throughout the music video itself and the same camera angle with Glenn in the same position is used multiple times.
• Furthermore, the Ancillary tasks are both linked through images as the magazine digipak has a picture of the CD digipak front cover on it, so the audience are aware of the product they could potentially be buying.
  


• Another point that links the main task to the magazine digipak is the fact that the use of faded shots is a major feature of both. The main focal point of the ancillary task is the picture of Glenn with his hood up looking down, and during the video there is a point in which we have used the original overlay idea, but not with the original picture that we choose for the magazine advert.

This has all led to what can only be considered a house style being created. This house style led to the same font being used along with similar images and this allowed for all of the tasks to interconnect. The main product is the centre of the ancillary tasks, as the ancillary tasks derive directly from the main product, which allows the link to be clearly seen by the potential audience.

Furthermore, whilst creating our product we aimed to create a multi-platform brand that would allow for our product to achieve the maximum amount of publicity and would lead to maximum revenue. The creation of our ancillary tasks linking to the main product of our music video has created the theoretical multi-platform brand, and it allows for maximum reach to my ideal target audience.

Final Cut

Group S.A.G FINAL CUT from Alex Newcombe on Vimeo.

Final Ancillary Tasks

Magazine advert for the Digipak Final

CD Digipak Final

Animatic

Animatic from Alex Newcombe on Vimeo.

Here is the Animatic. This was made previous to our Rough Cut, and in hindsight we can clearly see that the audience feedback that we recieved was correct and our video was in fact going to be very repetitive. This lead to dramatic changes, which included the introduction of a storyline and the construction of a video generally less repetitive and more entertaining than the original.