Patrick Hallett- Evaluation.

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

In a sense, I think our media product uses, develops and challenges convention depending on which aspect you look at it.

Our media product is fairly conventional in the scene that it shows the band performing the song- a performance video. Performance videos are a good way of ‘putting a face’ to the artist, a performance video can help sell an artist’s music. A standard performance video might show the band in any environment from one of their live performances to video filmed in someone’s front room.

One way we challenged conventions of real media products was with the concept of our music video- we wanted to show the ‘The Whip’ performing but not as The Whip, we thought it would be an interesting way to differ from existing products by having the band pay homage to other artists that we thought might have influenced them when they were writing the song. We wanted the video to although not be a ‘comedy video’ if you like, but rather a playful, lighthearted way for the band to be able to poke fun at themselves whilst also selling the music. I think that The Whip’s music although modern, has no doubt been influenced by older artist from in particular the 80’s. So we wanted the band to pay tribute to some of these artist in an interesting original way. Another way we challenged convention is by making a video that is not meant to necessarily overtly funny, it will still hopefully make people laugh. The entire video has been shot very seriously, we are not ‘messing about’, so it’s like the band has been asked to perform their music, and they are also having fun dressing up. The band do want to be considered a joke, but at the same time they do not want to take themselves to seriously or risk appearing boring.

One way we developed existing media conventions is how we chose to ‘replicate’ some existing music videos. If you take for example the opening shot of me (as the frontman/lead singer of the band) playing David Bowie (0:00-:43) we used many techniques give a convincing feel of a David Bowie music video. With regard to camera work, we used his ‘Life On Mars?’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ) music video as a template- the fist shot pans down from above the character and then down and rests at an extreme close up shot showing from below the top of the forehead to the mouth. The life on mars video is shot in a white studio, as this was unavailable to use, we were able to use a green screen to reach the same effect. The make-up we used was to whilst replicate the same make-up Bowie wears in the ‘Life On Mars?’ video it is do with a ‘modern twist’- this is again a figurative way of showing how the music by The Whip is modern, it is heavily influenced by other artists before them.

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

I think that the combination of our 3 products work well to compliment each other sell the music. The main thing you’ll notice about the 3 products is the picture of me playing David Bowie. A similar image is used on both of the ancillary products that is the opening shot of the music video its self. I think this is an effective way of establishing a relationship between the 3 products. Similarly, we used the same blue and pinks on all 3 products that uphold an electro feel that is present across all 3 products as well as The Whip’s musical style and David Bowie’s. The image used contains me in my David Bowie costume and shows me in the same make-up across all 3 products. I think that a customer could become aware of the song/band though any of the 3 medias and know that they were all the same product. I.e. if a consumer saw the music video, they would know that it was the same product as the digi-pack on the shelve in the record shop as well as the advert in a magazine.
When we were deciding what image/images to use for our ancillary products that would best support the video. As a group as well as though external feedback we decided that the shot that best represents the music video was the David Bowie shots. Also, as the first shot you see in the video, we agreed that this would be a good shot to use for both of our ancillary products. When we were filming the David Bowie section, we a small photo shoot to make sure we had good images incase we needed them, partly in anticipation of using them for the ancillary products. The image we used was very representative of the footage taken and therefore the video and product as a whole.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We received a lot of very helpful feedback from the screening of our rough cut. Much of it positive, the David Bowie shot and the Vanilla Ice 'Ice Ice Baby' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE) shots got praise in particular, someone said that the David Bowie shots “looked very professional” and people very able to identify him as the artist. Other aspects of the rough-cut however very not quite as polished, and received some helpful constructive criticism that helped us improve in time for our final cut deadline. For example at the point of the rough-cut, the shot of ‘The Beatles’ or ‘Ringo Starr’ we’re unidentifiable they it just appeared to be a shot of a generic drummer. People said that they could not tell who it was supposed to be. Learning from this feedback, we went out and re-shot some bits and edited a background from a club that The Beatles had famously played in, and edited the video to black and white. As a result, after showing our final cut to the group we had better results. People said that they were able to identify the character as Ringo Starr. Although in hindsight, I think we should have spent more time working on costume and make-up to make him more identifiable. Another improvement it would have been good to include would be a shot of the 4 of us playing The Beatles collectively.

YouTube also played a useful part in our audience feedback process. After our rough-cut was finished, we uploaded it to YouTube and so were able to show family and friends at home. It was useful to get the views of other people who aren’t media students and is a far better way of broader representative demographic.

Another form of feedback that I found vital to improvement was feedback from within the group. The Footage of me playing David Bowie was the first filming we did. I remember finding it hard to lip sync, but as we did more and more filming I think as a group as well as personally we all learnt how to improve our own performances. I have Experience as a theatre director so I was able to apply skills I'd learnt doing that to this project. As a result, as the filming process went on we all got more conformable with the performance factor and this meant we got better footage.

In hind sight, I think if I was doing another music video I would have invested more time and thought into the construction of the mise en scene. This is because mise en scene in particular the costume and make-up is the most important part of establishing the character and vital for the audience to be able to identify who they are supposed to be playing. I thought that we did not give this enough thought when we were filming our video, making it harder in the edit.


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

The use of some new media technologies was useful in multiple stages of our research and planning and vital to the construction of our product.
After we decided on the concept for our music video, we needed to research existing artist music videos to decide which artist would be good to feature in the video. Among others, we used David Bowie’s video for his song ‘Life On Mars?’ as reference. In this case, YouTube was an in invaluable for us. At the planning stage, I used the YouTube video to see how i was going to do my make-up and costume etc. And even in the construction stage, I had the ‘Life On Mars?’ video running when we were shooting, studying it between takes, to try and get into character and get my mannerisms accurate to David Bowie’s.

It was not possible for several reasons mainly practicality and budget to shoot in some of the locations that we were hoping to set some of the shots of our video in. In one particular example, ‘The Beatles shot’ where the drummer is in a club in the 60’s replicating a live performance. As we were unable to actually do this we booked the use of the music room on site at Long Road, and used a green screen behind all our shots. We then used the internet to source an image that was then edited in Photoshop to our requirements- cropped and put though some filters including a black and white filter. At this point, we used YouTube again to watch online video tutorials for final cut express, to make sure we knew how to use the green screening tool. Once ready, we imported into our final cut project and used the ‘blue & green screen’ tool to remove the green background and then laid the footage over our image to create the effect shown in the video. WIthout the use of the green screen and the other relevant technologies it would have been very difficult to achieve the effects we were able to.

The use of final cut pro's 'key frame animation' was helpful, we used it to fade a shot in at 0:39 in our video and again to increase the amount of an affect in a gradient at 0:23-0:37. This is an effect that until recently has only been available in high-end professional products.

Though our music video, because we were attempting to give our video the feel that the footage was shot at different times- some footage was supposed to look older than other shots. One way we achieved this was by applying video filters to our raw footage in final cut express, using some knowledge that I’d gained from previous projects as well as again, tutorial videos on YouTube I added ‘hues’ and ‘noise’ filters etc. to give some parts of the video the effect of being old.