This is my A2 Media Evaluation created by Lewis Parkinson

1. The technology I am presenting this media evaluation on is called Issuu. Issuu is an
online free application that changes for example PowerPoint documents in to a
magazine type format.
Lewis Parkinson

2. Our product uses many music video conventions and many genre conventions, our genre
being alternative/indie, probably the main convention is the fact that the music video is
narrative and that is common in alternative. Alternative music videos usually tell a story
either through lyrics or a graphic story, this is more common and is the approach we went
for. We added in some performance to make sure it wasn’t all narrative; this is because
performance is used as a way of promoting the artist as a star, the more you see of the
artist the better. Another convention we felt strongly about and making sure we stuck to it
was matching the video action with the tempo of the song, for example we didn’t to use a
street chasing scene for our song Biffy Clyro – Machines because it’s a slow song which
originally tells a sad story. So we used the tempo to our advantage and used small and
smooth camera movements like the pan or focus pull and the artist most of the time made
little or no movement whatsoever and it turned out really well. Basically the whole of the
song is at a fairly slow tempo but later on in the song, about the last 40 seconds, the
tempo dramatically picks up and that’s where the action in out video changes massively as
well. The artist begins to tear down the newspaper on the walls frantically and in enraged
and once again works well with the tempo.

3. Although the music video is mainly narrative there are 2 small sections of performance.
This includes another convention of music videos which is lip syncing, lip syncing is the
movement of lips in synchronisation of the lyrics of a song, at one point we had particular
difficulty ‘perfecting’ this, we were not satisfied multiple times and instead decided to sing
to the song and just mute the sound on the clip when we edited the video which as we
intended, worked perfectly.
As far as editing techniques go, we mainly used jump cuts, we tend to blend each clip into
each other so that the camera was never still, this made the jump cuts smooth and
appropriate to the tempo of the song, it also made it seem like a jump in time, we managed
to fit in two triple jump cuts which emphasised a long period of intensity in a small amount
of time. We also used an action match when the artist was getting out of bed. We had many
flashbacks throughout the song as it represented the main theme of the video. The idea of
the music video was simple and it was that the actor is suffering from heart break and he
doesn’t know how to cope so he resorts to alcohol. Flashbacks reveal throughout the song
the reason as to why he is so lost, the actor eventually finds himself exploring religion to
help him cope.
The shot types we used were all similar and we aimed for them to be as smooth as possible
to fit the type of song. We ended up using a lot of pans, maybe more than I would have
liked to but it still worked in my opinion. We also used focus pulls, they were our main 2
shot types as the location was tight therefore had no room for anything else apart from
medium or close shots, this is something we were aware of when we first put our initial
ideas together. We also used some low angles these represented the constant mood of the
artist throughout the video, so using the camera down low represents how that he is
feeling down and depressed.

4. As part of the course we have to create two other pieces: An album digipack and a poster
or magazine advert. When we took the photo the two ancillary texts (both of them are the
same picture just edited differently and of course the album is scaled down and in 2 pieces,
the front and back) we used one lamp so it was quite dark anyway, when I managed to get
on Photoshop I decided to dramatically darken the image and it instantly became quite a
dark and depressing looking image, just bottles of alcohol and takeaways added to the
lonely effect. I changed many things such as blending options, opacity’s, saturations and I
played around with almost every possible part of the image until we achieved what we
thought suited it.
The image was taken in the same place as the majority of the music video was filmed
because the location was dark we didn’t need much lighting to get the ‘lonely’ effect and it
also had the all the newspaper from the music video filming on the wall still so it gave a
very a sense that the owner was living in a very degrading and depressing lifestyle which is
what we tried to accomplish an maintain all the time in all pieces of work. We also took the
image quite late in the day as well this ensured only a small amount of light would get
through the newspaper on the window and that we would maintain the darkness in the
room and minimised complications with the lighting as we wanted as little natural light as
possible.
We decided not to have the artist in the album digipack which strays massively from the
common convention. Although it strays from the convention it is not uncommon for artists
to do this. Not having the artist on the front cover is done for various reasons, our
reasoning was that throughout everything, the music video and ancillary texts, we wanted
to create a lonely and empty feeling and we felt the absence of the artist presented that.
We did try some images with the artist but felt nothing worked, we didn’t feel the need to
desperately promote the artist and instead we thought the image of just the alcohol and
takeaways were a much more of a powerful message that we were trying to send in both
the music video and the images the whole time.

5. Audience feedback is vital in any product research as it will be that audience that will be
buying the product, or in this case viewing the music video. As a group we created a
questionnaire on an online site called survey monkey where you can upload questionnaires
to get research from real people who anonymously answer the questionnaire, the good
thing about it is everyone who answers your questionnaire will be interested in your
product as they have searched for it on the site therefore you learn about a specific
audience. We put 2 types of questions in the questionnaire; the first were questions that
would tell us more about who was answering the questionnaire such as age, ethnicity, and
favoured genre. The second type of questions were ones that would help us choose what
we would feature in the music video, such as mise-en-scene, editing techniques and
lighting, this would ultimately help us to decide on how to make our video appeal to the
audience. This questionnaire was also helpful in the development stages of the music video
as we could refer back to it if we were indecisive on something.
The feedback played a massive role in the planning and production of the final product as
we constantly looked back at the audience’s answers to ensure we could accommodate the
needs for the genre and age group as they would be the ones consuming the product; if we
lost track of what we wanted for the final product we would go back to the audience
feedback and remind ourselves of what the audience is interested in and what they want to
see. A good example of this is when we first started filming 2 of us wanted dark lighting
and the other one of us wanted the lighting to be light. We didn’t make a majority vote
because we all wanted to go be happy with the product, so we went back to the feedback to
see what the audience preferred and they preferred dark lighting, so we all happily agreed
to use minimal lighting to create a dark image. Throughout planning and production we
would always ask peers to give an opinion on our ideas and current work and they would
give us constructive criticism that basically shaped our product throughout the course.
Twitter was also a massive help for advertising the questionnaire as I have 250 ‘followers’
who could then see the link I posted which then would lead directly to the questions, even
if a few of those 250 answered it was a big difference and a big help.

6. By the time we got about 30 sets of answers we already had a rough idea of what we
wanted in our music video, the genre, the costume and type of music video such as
narrative, surreal or performance and we were hoping that the audience would be
interested in roughly the same thing, which luckily they were so we could begin structuring
the product around the feedback.

7. During the initial research and blogging stages the group used various types of media to
present the work in an interesting way and still be informative. We used various
applications that came on the computer and online applications to either present work or
create the product, an example of that would be using Photoshop to assist the creation of
the album covers. Some of the applications used that came with the computers were:
iMovie, this is a free local application that is video editing software, PowerPoint, this is used
to create presentations and slide shows which is exactly what we used it for, Final Cut Pro,
which is another video editing software (this was used to create the final music video),
Word, used to create scripts, plan ideas, and make drafts this was really one of the most
useful applications and Photoshop CS5, this was the only photo editing software used to
create the ancillary texts. We only used online applications to present our work on our
blogs, some of those applications were: Issue, which used PowerPoint presentations to turn
into easy to use magazine style presentations, Share slide, which is the same concept as
Issuu, Prezzi, which is a highly interactive and interesting way to present work Vimeo and
YouTube, which are both video hosting sites where you can upload videos and is it is where
we uploaded a some videos of work and it is also where we will upload out final product
(Youtube).

8. During the research of conventions of music videos we used basic technologies to present
our information in a less than interesting ways, we used word to create the scripts and then
YouTube for example to present it, we just used a camera and tripod setup and sat in front
and spoke to the camera presenting our ideas and findings. As we progressed with our
research so did our use and understanding of available applications, we started to use
applications such as iMovie which is more interesting to view and we also used Final cut pro
where we used music and effects to present the information. But we then decided that
more people will be interested and more inclined to read the information if they interact
with it, this is when we started to use programs such as Slide Share, Issue or Prezzi, the
first one I used was Issue because all you have to do is make a PowerPoint and then upload
it to the site and it does the rest for you, it’s such a simple site and it makes your work so
much more interesting and presentable as appose to a word document.