A2 Media Evaluation- The Script

A2 Media Studies Music Video Evaluation

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

We have kept within the genre characteristics for ‘Alternative Rock’. We feel we portrayed our genre in the correct way by use of natural looking lighting, costumes of the couple and editing techniques. This theory was also backed up by our classmate’s reviews. When we presented our final edit of our music video in front of them. We felt our print products (digital pack and magazine poster) that were both designed on Photoshop fit in with our Alternative Rock theme. The colours are very vibrant (yellow), which is a reflection of the band’s songs, which are generally uplifting.

- Research conventions of artist.

After researching the band thoroughly, a re-occurring narrative appeared that being a romance/love story. The band had beautiful locations for filming their videos for example Ireland. Lip-syncing was always contained within The Scripts videos showing a leading male role. Another key feature is the band performance, as the audience would see them perform in real life. We have three out of four of the artist’s conventions.

- Challenging Conventions.

As a group we decided it was not necessary to use band performance, as the love story was the main feature. After feedback from our classmates it proved as no one had picked up on the fact it was missing. Our target audience is teenagers/ young adults and Script fans. We tried to set this up through the use of young actors/actress and young costume.

- Theories.

We have used Andrew Goodwin’s (an established media theorist) theories. Who has acknowledged that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. We have used a romance story to portray this and at times within the music video supported the visuals to specific words.

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

Our promotional packages fit together well and fit conventions as they have a theme running through. Both the magazine advert and digi-pak link together by showing hands holding the same pocket watch which represents time standing still until he meets his loved one. This is the main focal point in both products this was taken from our research of The Scripts past album artwork, that they always have a main feature in the foreground.

We have taken on board the fact the artists such as The Script use one font across all their products as a way of making them more recognisable, which then creates a brand identity. We have followed this concept and used the font (Skia) across our work as its simple and very easy to read. We have tried to make our promotional packages realistic to real media products, by the layouts we have used and the positioning of logos and information.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

As a group we set up a questionnaire to effectively collect audience feedback from what they expect to be featured in a Script video or videos of the Alternative Rock genre.  Having a narrative within a music video was a popular choice from our audience feedback, which we then included in our own.

Whilst we were editing our video we were continuously receiving helpful feedback from our teachers and students about changing effects or clips to delete from certain scenes. Once we had a completed version of our music video we presented it to our media class at which they wrote critical feedback for us to take back and use.  Some positive thoughts were “good use of light from the sun and using its rays” and “I liked the use of surroundings such as the traffic lights and Ironbridge”. We received some negative feedback also for example “perhaps too many different locations”.

I have looked into some audience theories, such as Blumler and Katz and their theory of uses and gratifications, which was published in 1974. This theory describes ways that text is used for different purposes for example personal relationships which could be a way of portraying emotions and personal identity where you could find yourself in the same position of the texts.  Both of these relate to our music video as the audience can see the clear relationship between both actors in the video.  We have displayed the emotion of heartbreak into our video so our audience could identify with their past or current feelings whilst learning values perhaps by seeing themselves reflected in the video.

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

For our research we used ‘You Tube’ (www.youtube.com) to look into the conventions The Script have used in they’re past music videos. This helped up plan locations, props and narrative for our own video. We also studied the band own website (www.thescriptmusic.com)

We kept all our work we had produced for example artist research, DVD cover analysis and many more on ‘Blogger’ (www.blogger.com) to keep ourselves organised.  We were able to write our thoughts on how our project was going as well as putting pictures related to our project.

We downloaded the MP3 file ‘The Man Who Cant Be Moved’ By The Script legally from Itunes. By doing this first were then able to add separate video clips and start editing before the rest of the video had been filmed.

Digital cameras and a tripod were our necessary media technologies to film and get a steady professional look. The lighting used within our video were all natural and the camera we used caught the light well for example the sunlight’s rays in Ironbridge at 0:04

Our music video was edited using ‘Final Cut’ on the Macs at college as it was recommended to use, as there are hundreds of effects and sounds available which was also available to use in our spare time. By using this programme we were able to lip sync our video successfully. Some effects were needed for certain parts of our video.

We used digital cameras to take pictures for our magazine poster and digi pack, at which we edited further on Photoshop to get our final design that we felt was good enough for our project.

We were previously criticized for using images on our digi-pak from the Internet so Photoshop played a key role when it came to designing our digi-pack as it allowed us to use different images from varied sources to design a cover that we felt came together well in the end and created a cartoon feel as we have planned. We completed this look by using effects such as drop shadow, gradient overlay.

As our group wanted to create a professional feel to our music video we decided to use a green –screen at which we hired independently outside of college. It was fairly easy to set up and use which later on paid off, as we were able to use different backgrounds for example Ironbridge with the same front image of our lead role lip-syncing.

We used the social networking sight ‘Facebook’ (www.facebook.com) to upload our music video on to increase additional comments audiences outside of college.

Final Music Video

Here is our finished music video!