Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies helped us not only to film the music video but also helped us to formulate our idea of our band and to then follow that up with research. It also helped us create the album cover and website that is linked to our band and the technologies helped ensure that synergy was created across all three platforms.

In our early research and planning stages, one of our tasks was to create a technical presentation explaining how we wanted to approach our music video from a technical point of view. This was ours:




Cameras:

The Sony V1E:

Me using the Sony V1E.

Our music video was shot on this camera. It was easy to handle and had manageable settings that we could manipulate to achieve the look we wanted. For our performance we wanted the "infinite black" look and the quality of the camera helped us to gain that look.













The Canon 5D Mark II:

We used this camera to take the promotional photos of the band for the website and album cover. This was professional camera with different settings we could experiment with to get the right look.








Web 2.0:

In our research and planning stage, we explored YouTube in search for the song that we wanted to use for our music video. It was also used to eventually upload our finished music video.

A piece of qualitative data I found said that in 2012 64% of surveyed teenagers said they preferred to use YouTube to listen to music

To create the band's website, we used a flash based website called Wix. It was easy to use and navigate through and had all the basic components of a website given to us. A challenge we faced was wanting to incorporate more functions into the website but the site did not have them.

To do that we had to use HTML. For example, to put up the band's Twitter feed and to create a mailing list section. This helped us to think of creative solutions around a problem.


Programs:

We used Adobe Photoshop to create our album digipak. We also used it to create the band posters that are shown in the music video narrative.

Adobe Premiere was used to create our music video. The audio track was layed out on a timeline and once the things we filmed were exported, we could drag and drop them into the timeline and place them where we wanted. The program was simple to use and had opportunities to add effects to our clips however, we didn't. This is something I might have changed in hindsight.








Social Media:

In the Research & Planning stage:

In order to plan and research outside school hours but stay connected at the same time we used Facebook to message each other and contribute ideas. We created a group and its purpose was to discuss anything related to our project. As Facebook is easily accessible, we were able to communicate well through and used it as much as possible.

As part of creating the band's image:

On the website & album cover:

To keep our campaign fully integrated interactively, we made sure our website and album had features to emphasise social links. There are links throughout the website to social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. There is an opportunity for fans to sign up for the official mailing list for The Defiance which will keep them updated on tour dates, competitions, meet and greets, special offers etc. The album has a QR code for fans to explore even further into the band via it.

How new media technologies were used in the evaluation stages:

Our evaluation stage required feedback from audiences and to go about doing that we created surveys on Survey Monkey.

It was simple to design the survey, then a link was provided for us to be able to share the survey out and collect results and finally Survey Monkey provided charts and graphs of the data collected for us to analyse.

For the sharing stage of the surveys, I distributed the link via forms of social media I had in order to get as many respondents as we could.

I sent this message on Facebook to several people who had attended the screening of the music videos that we had had previously.

A post I made on Tumblr.

I also tweeted the link to my Twitter followers.

New media technologies has also helped me to present my evaluation in an interactive manner. 

Click to enlarge

Overall, I believe I exploited new media technologies to a great extent. In the production stage of our music video, I think we possibly could have made use of the technologies even more. For example, we could have added effects to our music video when editing on Adobe Premiere. In the evaluation stage, I used the new media technologies to help display my analysis and research in an interesting manner. Some that I had not even considered and I will definitely be making more us of in the future such as PadLet.

Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

Our main new media hardware were cameras, both for video and photo shoots, and lighting equipment (including studio lights and portable lights). The software used in post production were mostly Adobe products (outlined in the Prezi), and Web 2.0 was crucial in our marketing campaigns; especially as we needed a fully integrated multi-platform marketing campaign; and evaluation stages.

The following summarises how each stage of this project made use of new media technologies.






The studio

We were lucky enough to have access to a fully equipped studio and received training on the lighting deck. All the performance shots are lit with studio lights that we decided on and set up ourselves.

Here, I am setting up the lighting for my solo shots

Here we could choose which lights we wanted to use, the intensity and also the colour. The lights could only be moved manually however, so it required at least 2 people collaborating at the same time to set up quickly and efficiently. The most effective preparation for shoots were when one of us controlled the lighting deck, and the other 3 Group 5 members moved the lights manually. It was also useful to actually use the camera to check if lighting looked good.

Without opportunities to use new media technologies or the relevant skills to use the equipment, the actual footage may not have been as we wanted it e.g. we may not have been able to get performance shots if we couldn't use the studio lighting. A fully narrative rock music video would not only be boring, but would also not fit the rock genre. Hence audience appeal would be reduced. In addition, if we did not use Web 2.0 for a fully integrated marketing campaign, such as the Facebook and Twitter pages, we would not have been able to raise awareness of our brand and artist prior to the music video release. New media technologies also enabled us to share the video and collect online audience feedback. Therefore it is crucial in every stage of our project.

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We chose as a group to use the rock genre for our media product and we did frequent amounts of research in order to find out the typical style and form of rock music videos, some videos we looked at included 'Hall of Fame' and 'Drops of Jupiter' . There are many ways in which our media product conforms to the conventions of music videos, but also many ways in which we developed and in some cases challenged the forms and conventions of real media products of the rock genre.

Director's Commentary

Here is a brief commentary about some of the forms and conventions we used both in the narrative parts of our video and the performance parts. We also talk about things we did in the music video that challenged or developed typical forms and conventions.

Influences of our Band

Below is some images of how we portrayed our band

These are some bands we were influenced by:

Paramore



We believe this is a rock band that was very similar to our desired representation due to them also having a lead female vocalist and a band image that we wanted to resemble, cool and fun while also being passionate about rock music. They have a wide audience primarily 15-25 year olds of both genders, and a wide range of successful rock songs such as 'Misery Business' and 'Monster'. Our desired primary audience was similar being both genders 15-22 years.

Fireflight



This band is the band that had the successful song 'Unbreakable' that we used for our music video. We learnt a lot from the way they presented themselves and took aspects from their image into creating the rock persona of our band. Such as wearing dark styled clothes which we liked and so developed to wear some dark clothes while also adding a bit of colour to our band image.

Hey Monday



This band was a cool rock band which we like the style of. We found them a little too colourful for our desired image and so chose to wear darker clothes as well as some bright clothes of the style Hey Monday wore. We also used a darker lighting set-up and backdrop when we created are music video.

Music Video

 

Narrative

Our narrative consists of three characters resembling each band member, who have individual problems with there lives. The guitarist is a passionate player who wants to be successful in music, but is stuck busking. The singer has a stressful job and wants to to do something she enjoys as such as singing. While the Drummer wants to find and opportunity to play the drums as a career out of the way of his frustrated parents. They come across an band audition poster providing them with the opportunity they have been looking for. The narrative ends with them meeting and entering an audition room.



Hall of Fame was a video that strongly influenced the story of our narrative. When we listened to the lyrics of the song 'Unbreakable' we like the idea that it was about having problems and finding a way or solution to return stronger and over come these problems. Hall of Fame has a strong narrative in which two characters from different backgrounds had difficulties and big aspirations. The girl had a hearing problem and wanted to dance and the boy wanted to be better at defending himself.

  The Script- Hall of Fame ft. Will.i.am

We also really liked the way the narrative followed multiple story lines and this helped as create ours as we wanted to focus are narrative on each individual band member. The audition scene helped give us the idea of how each of our band members could achieve their dreams of becoming successful musicians by coming together and trying out for a band audition.

Todorov's Narrative Theory

To help us form a convincing narrative we made sure we followed Todorov's Narrative Theory. Below shows how are narrative follows the theory.

Performance

We looked at a wide variety of music videos so we could learn to make our performance convincing and conform to the forms and conventions rock music videos.

Camera Movement:          
     

                                                                     

Were learnt from this video on how much camera movement was used in Music videos. It allowed us to help the music video flow and follow and trace the band through a using shots  pans and zooms. We also learnt to include a wide variety of shot types from long shots to close ups. As well as to show peoples emotions, we chose to use close ups to also create convincing lip syncs when focused on the singers face.

Miming Instruments Convincingly:

This was the video we watched after realising we didn't mime convincingly on our test shoot both singing and playing instruments. This video included lots of performance from about 1:30 onwards and were learnt to exaggerated movements and large gestures while playing helped improve the overall performance and made it look more realistic.

Gifs of Conventions we used from rock music videos 

Camera Movement

Exaggerated playing of Instruments

Head banging and large gestures to the music

Website

I have compared the forms and conventions we have used to create our Website with the bands we researched in order to help us make ours. 

Album Cover

I have compared the forms and conventions we have used to create our album cover with the similar band Paramore, for their album cover for 'RIOT'

So in the end we made sure our media products used good conventions of the the rock genre, so our products could be appealing to our target audience, but also have unique things such as our unconventional narrative to make our music video stand out.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

To make the combination of our Music Video, Website and Album Cover effective we created synergy across our three platforms. To do this we included multiple connections between each media product such as branding, colour schemes and themes.

Branding and Design    

Paramore's website, pictures and album is a good example of the strong use of branding synergy across all 3 platforms.

It uses a similar font and branding style across the three platforms. The website toolbar font and font in one of the pictures shown on the right is exactly the same The colour scheme across the platforms is shown to be bright solid colours.

• You can see above how we created synergy across our media products by including in bold large capital text the words 'The Defiance'. 
• The specific logo on the website home page and on the drum kit is exactly the same, which meant the audience would have a greater chance of remembering our band, through repeatedly seeing the logo.
• To create even more synergy we used a blue-black and dark colour scheme. However we could have included a bit more colour in our website as it was mostly just black, to further increase the synergy.
• We also wore the same clothes in the website and album cover, and similar styled clothes in the music video. 

Themes and Meanings

We also created synergy through the combination of our media products with meanings and themes through the use of colours, text and performance. 

Each band member has a different coloured backlight on them, which connotes a different representation of the band members characteristics. 

• The red colour was to represent danger and warning, to resemble the guitarists crazy and thrill seeking nature. 
• The blue colour is a cool calm colour and so symbolises the cool relaxed nature of the drummer. 
• The purple colour is quite an exciting colour and was chosen to represent the quirky and fun nature of the singer.

We continued to connote the representations that we showed by the lighting in the music video in our website. The meet the band section allowed us to write about the way we wanted to present each band member. Each profile described our similar hobbies like our passion for music, but also our individual representations. Daniel was presented as being a cool relaxed guy, Shobnam as a quirky and exciting person, and Aidan as a thrill seeker who liked to travel.

Below you can click each band profile to enlarge the image. Please click the 'X' button at the top right to return to Blog post.

We tried to use synergy through the use of imagery logs and information across all three of our media texts, to connote the message, themes, style and genre of our rock band. By doing this I believe we were very successful in combining our media products, in question 3 we obtain audience feedback on how clear are genre and style was.

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience Feedback

After creating our video,  we organised a date for a large screening of our music video where we invited many people through Facebook to the event. This allowed us to get more people to watch our video and as a result able to provide us with useful feedback.

As we wanted to get feedback for our website and Album Cover as well as the Music video. We created three short online surveys (Monkey Survey) with key questions that we wanted to know about that were sent to people to fill in their answers. Each survey is shown below via the link.

Audience Surveys

Below shows the three survey templates created to ask and obtain feedback from our audience about our music video, album cover and website.

We managed to get feedback from 18 people for each survey.

Music Video Audience Feedback

 Below is the results of the survey of the 18 people who took part in the Music Video survey. I have split the data up into separate sections.

Q1 On a scale of 1-10 what would you rate our video?

Q2 On a scale of 1-10 how clear was our narrative 10 being very clear and 1 being not clear at all?


Q3 On a scale of 1-10 how convincing and appealing was the performance 10 being good and 1 being not good?

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Q1,Q2 and Q3 | Create infographics

The darker shades of blue show a higher rating on a scale of 1 to 10.

For the first question there people gave a very high ratings out of ten, which shows that in general people thought our video was very good.

On question 2 about how clear our narrative was. Most people gave good ratings of around 7 and 8, but unfortunately some people gave lower ratings of 5 and 6. This tells me that the narrative of the music video was not as clear as it could be.

Question 3 was a very positive result as all 18 people gave high scores the lowest being only 7. It shows that people thought we looked like a real band, and performed realistically and connoted to the style of a rock band.


Q4 Would you recommend the video to a friend?

Q5 Would you say that the video is a Rock genre music video?

Q6 Will you find and watch the video again?

Data for Q4, Q5 and Q6 | Create infographics

The feedback from question 4 shows that the majority of people claim they would recommend the video to a friend. This shows that are video must be interesting as people want to share it with their friends.

For question 5 everyone said Yes, meaning either we did a good job in making sure we stuck with some of the typical rock genre conventions. Or this question was a little flawed should have been more detailed in order to make the person more indecisive when answering the question.

Question 6 gave more positive feedback as it gave evidence that a lot of people found are video enjoyable and would choose to take the time to look it up and watch it again.


Q7 What was the your favourite and least favourite parts of the music video?



Here is some of the results of Question 7

The positive opinions of our music video seemed to vary some saying they liked technical things while some liked parts of the performance. However frequent comments occurred about how the narrative wasn't as clear as it could have been. This tells me that we may have rushed the narrative a bit or made it a little too complex for the audience to understand. We could have included a few more scenes to slow the pace of the narrative down a bit and make it easier to follow.

What I learnt from feedback for our Website and Album 

Below is a Prezi that shows the results of the surveys for the Album and website and what the results meant in relation to our media products and our audience.




Overall the feedback is quite positive and shows we were successful in creating our band image and each of our media products for our band. If we had more time we could use the feedback to further improve our media products and make them more entertaining for our audience.

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

We used lots of new media technologies during all of the stages when making our media product. These technologies allowed us to obviously help in filming and making our music video, but also in stages of planning, research and in the creation of our website and album cover.

New Media Technologies during Research and Planning

During the research and planning stages of our project we used social media websites and applications such as Facebook and Skype. This helped us discuss and share ideas outside school to contribute more to the project.

 The Facebook screenshot on the left shows
how we were able to share information such as the location and date for the narrative shoot.

Below shows a Skype log between myself and Daniel calling each other about early ideas for the concept of the music video. We took breaks between calls to get on with research and called back when we had ideas that we wished to discuss.

Cameras and Lighting used during production

The Sony V1E

We used this camera to film the majority of our music video. The main reason we used this camera is because through research we found out that this would allow us to obtain our 'infinite black' look. It was very sophisticated camera, but was fairly easy to use and we had no problems through the process of filming of our video.

The Canon 5D Mark II

We used this camera mainly to take behind the scenes pictures that we would be able to include on our website. The other important use of this camera was when we took our promo shots of the band and album cover photos. The Various settings were useful in getting good high quality images.




We used a variety of Roof lights in our school Seward Studio

As well as general lighting of the band members. This setup allowed us to create loads of different effects during our filming process, such as back lights and spotlights.



Arri 650K red heads

The Arri 650K floor lights were very useful for allowing us to get any additional lighting that we needed. It was particularly useful on our outside school shoots in the narrative scenes where without the a Arri 650K red heads we would only have natural lighting.

Software and Web 2.0 that we used

This is a website that allows you to make your own websites, which we used to create the website for our band 'The Defiance'. It was a extremely helpful program that was easy use and allowed us to produce a realistic and professional site. You had to make a free account using your email, but then we were able to easily create the website with the technology it provided.

Adobe Photoshop is a very good software that we were all very experienced at using. It allowed us to edit pictures to include on various parts of our project such as the website and album cover. We also used Photoshop to create our album cover Digipack.

We used Adobe Premier to edit any videos that we created such as the Music video and the Behind the Scenes video. Again we were all advanced users of this software so found it easy to use.

Using New Media Technologies to assist in Establishing Band Image

We created a band twitter page for our band 'The Defiance' to make our band more interactive. It allows us to keep our audience updated with what is going on with our band. And also allows the audience to have a stronger connection with the band through interactivity of comments and tweets.

Below is a screenshot of our twitter page we created

We also made a Facebook Page for our band. As Facebook is the most used Social Network in the world it was good to use this as lots of people would be able to follow the page, therefore widening our audience reach. We exploited the popularity of Facebook by providing information on tour dates on our page and important notices and info about out band.

Below is a screenshot of the Facebook page we created.

Throughout the project and each stage we used a variety of different new media technologies that helped us make our successful media products. Without them as well as the quality of footage from less technologically advanced cameras, it would also have been a lot harder to organise tasks which we did through use of new social media like Facebook and Skype.

Teacher feedback on overall project

Feedback on our website:

• Branding needs to be throughout, a picture of the band on the banner needs to be added
• Photos need to be edited to make them interesting/quirky
• Replace Behind The Scenes photos with Promo Shots and only put Behind The Scenes photos in a Behind The Scenes gallery

Video:

Narrative-

• Scene of the person trying to buy the guitar is not clear, possibly cut that out and simplify the storyline

Performance-

• More Close Ups of Shobnam
• Cut to Shobnam before narrative shots
• With the shot of the mum coming in for Daniel's narrative, show Daniel first

Further feedback on the Music Video:

• Many of the band shots have too much space around the members, crop the shots
• First vocal shot needs to be big, maybe from the front, let the shot last longer
• Grading takes time so we need to allow time to grade
• Start the guitar shot earlier