A2 Media Evaluation

What we'd do differently.

Feedback

Overall people seemed to enjoy the video, but found the ending to be too confusing and the narrative not laid out properly. It may have been a result of different target audiences responding differently. The original intention with the ending was supposed to be a reference to the use of elipsis within French cinema. However the mise en scene and general production quality of the shots may have been to amateurish for it to translate effectively across to our audience.

For a start, 'Take a Fall For Me' wasn't the original song which we wanted to use, instead we would've prefered to do a louder, more high-energy song, and possibly one of a more defined genre. Ideally hardcore like Trash Talk or Black Flag.

However, in 'Take a Fall For Me' I would've liked to work on a tighter production schedule, meaning that we would've had at the least one consecutive season of filming, so the theme of winter would've been more prevalent in our video. If a day with Snow was available for us to film on, it would have been perfect.

In particular, people seemed to enjoy the shot of the ink falling into the glass, the "sex shapes the body" shot, and the use of the montage shots in general. The reception of my performance however wasn't as nice. People tended to consider it slightly awkward, but I thought it was part of the desired performance based on the song's level of energy. As such I didn't feel the need to be particularly energetic or active.

3.What have you learned from Audience Feedback?

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

Evaluation Stage

Research and Planning Phase

To create this presentation, I used Prezi. It's a fantastic piece of web kit thanks to it's simplicity and layout. As such the presentation looks pretty and flows nicely. For the screenshots I used a freeware tool called Gyazo which you can use to cut part of your desktop, and instantly upload it to their website, providing you with a PNG hyperlink, easy to embed into anything you want. The majority of discussions raised within this presentation had already existed on the group blog which my partner and I had made over the course of making the video.

Construction of the video, and ancillary texts

Our research came primarily from tumblr, the social networking and art site of choice for people within our target audience. From there we gathered a series of images which represented the general ideas behind our music videos, from blogs that I personally already follow. It's a constant stream of inspiration which allowed us to easily find what our target audience would want to see, and it has all been compiled through individual blogs; the majority of which adhere to a single, consistant aesthetic. As such, finding what we wanted and making a mood board was easy. Other ways of research was arduous music-video-watching in order to screen cap shots we wanted to steal and finding out genre conventions.

To actually create the mood board we used Photoshop to bring together the images which we found, as it is an easy way of just bringing multiple images onto one and manipulating them through the use of layers.

We filmed the video on a Canon 700d DSLR, a capable camera which helped us film good, professional quality shots. We edited our footage together using Final Cut Pro, slicing it to the beat of the song and actually constructing our video. It was a solid product to use due to the extensive things you can do in regards to the colour palette, overlaying shots on top of each other, and the easy to understand interface. As such the process of splicing our footage together was actually easy thanks to the drag and drop editing time line. Since a lot of our shots had to be recolored to fit our aesthetic, being able to choose a theme from a drop down menu or see raw statistics for saturation/contrast etc. was greatly beneficial. To store our loose footage or photographs we used Dropbox, an easy to use cloud storage platform which gives you 2.5gb of space for free, making it convenient for transferring work between one computer or another.

We also used Photoshop to create our Ancillary texts, the minimalist style of which didn't require many advanced techniques. Primarily we worked on the typography and editing of photos. The Elements edition of Photoshop (more basic than the CS5 I pirated myself) lacks certain features for typography, so some of the editing had to be done at home, the transfer of these files was done through Dropbox.

We exported our video in full 1080p and uploaded it to YouTube, and it is easy to find; simply search "Haggerston Media"

For Pitching our video we used presentation software EMAZE, which lends itself well to simple and efficient presentations.

As for the storyboarding we drew our shots out by hand on sticky notes, which we were able to easily move around and manipulate. We then snapped photographs of these, and used Final Cut pro to synch them to 'Take a Fall For Me'.

Question 2;How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Ancillary Texts

Inside Cover/Frontside

Title image

Album Covers, and Digipak

Front Cover

The image is black and white, and looks to be damaged. We wanted to make the audience recall imagery of old photographs which have been left behind.

The artist is facing away from the audience, and it echoes some of the shots within the music video itself, where there are tracking shots of the protagonist from behind. The same voyeurism has been used for the inside cover.

We settled on this single image as the inside cover doesn't need to promote the artist in question, as the audience would have already bought in to the image and the album

We use the same font as the promotional material in order to maintain our house style and image, which carries over to the music video. This same font is featured in the video itself, as part of the title screen at the end of the video

The artist is featured, in costume, showing star promotion, but lacking any form of context to grasp, evoking themes of mystery and putting the focus on the art rather than the artist themselves.

It's a move that we believe would resonate with our target audience, but probably not the larger masses.

The font also builds on the brand, as it is the same one featured in the title shot at the end of the video.

He is also wearing the same costume as within the video itself, promoting him as an image. There is no apparent pathway in the forest, which coincides with the theme of wandering featured prevalently within our video

Back Cover

Ancillary to Video

Inside Cover/Back

We have decided to continue down the path of minimalism for the back cover design. We have maintained our use of font and avoided literally anything unnecessary. The tracks aren't numbered, and occupy a single vertical column. The entirely black background is a continuation of the black margins on the top and bottom of the front cover.

As with the black used elsewhere on our ancillary texts and in the video itself, it reinforces the artist's image that we seek to promote; that being his lack of image.

There is some intertextuality, the last song's title being a reference to a Wes Anderson film. This would promote it towards our target audience.

We have lyrics to a singular song; 'Take A Fall

For Me', the one featured in our music vide. It is the title track of the album and is being promoted as the main single. Again we have black and white in order to fit in with the motif of the inside cover, and have inverted colours on the text itself to make it stand out. The use of a single verse for lyrics as opposed to the traditional printing of entire lyrics was done in order to make the audience recall some of the imagery associated within the video itself, which features this verse, repeated.

Thematically our ancillary texts seek not only to act as advertising but also reinforce the themes which lie within our music video and also surround the artist themself. The theme of Loneliness is carried throughout all of our ancillary texts through the use of black and white to set the mood which we are trying to relay. For instance the motif of not being able to see people's faces is reinforced through our poster, as well as our inside cover. As evidenced by the frame below, which is a mid shot from behind the female character. The landscape featured within our Ancillary texts is the same as that of our filming location, which makes sense due to the promotion of 'Take A Fall For Me' as the leading single for the entire Isaac Crowe album.

A2 Media Evaluation

The Video

Genre Stylings within the video

Locations and Imagery - forests, urban, & outdoor

Application of theory

To create the genre characteristic themes of isolation and coldness, we had a lot of wide shots in the video, showing desolate and empty landscapes. The majority of the locations were centred around nature, with contrasting empty fields, and overgrown forests. This fit in with the conventions of our genre.

The following is a comparison between one of our shots and a shot from Rejjie Snow's video for 'Lost in Empathy'

Voyeurism applies as the protagonist is male and we see the world presented within the video from his perspective; a literal Male Gaze, if you will. The female character is idolised, rather than objectified. However we also have sexual imagery for the male character, so there is a certain equality which falls outside of Goodwin's theory of music videos; the female form must be sexualised.

Strauss' Theory of binary opposites applies in a number of ways. For instance the costumes of the two characters, the male's is entirely Black whereas the female's is primarily white. The structure of the video is also applicable, as the first, quieter half is made up of a montage of iconography which amplifies the lyrics, whereas the second, more intense half is based around performance shots.

Iconography and conventions

Our video encorporates all three of Sven Carlsson's theories of narrative; it contains Performance, Narrative, and the abstract. The abstract is used to reinforce the narrative, and the emotions felt by the protagonist in relation to the past, whereas the performance is interwoven into the narrative in order to create the image of the present.

Our urban shots focused on other desolate or abandoned places, as part of our genre theme of atrophy and isolation. There was both similarity and contrast in the urban/natural shots. Whereas the outdoor shots juxtaposed the protagonist against the sky, the urban shots blended him in as part of their surroundings. Either way they echoed abandonment, a key theme both lyrically and visually within our genre.

Thematically our iconography tended to follow the conventions of the genre, with a lot of the shots being dark and brooding, and the shots reaffirming genre conventions, and themes.

We affirmed the theme of sexuality and culture, but complied with the presentation of sex found within our genre. Instead of being explicitly sexual, we instead presented it through iconography, such as the shot of ink being rubbed across the protagonist's chest, or the collar bones of the female. Unlike a genre like mainstream hip hop or pop, where it is explicit, we went for a more subtle approach.

We also implemented the Italian technique of Chiaroscuro, wherein there is play between light and darkness. This technique is rather prevalent in genre videos, for instance Blake's own videos, but also in other artist's such as FKA Twigs.

By Dan Murawski

Isaac Crowe

Conventions of artists

To create the star image we followed the conventions of this relatively unclassifiable genre, which is a fusion of Dubstep, Electronic Dance Music, and Dark pop. The stars of which tend to follow the nature of their music, prefering striking, strong imagery, thus spreading out a media presence through content, rather than personal exposure.

As such we began creating this image of shroud and mystery, similar to that presented by artists like James Blake, Flying Lotus, Daft Punk etc by creating a promo teaser trailer for the video itself. We followed this concept of creating an image, rather than exposing the star themself in order to build hype for the release, we chose to go the route of making our viewer ask questions

James Blake's "Take a Fall For Me"

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

The Teaser, Costume, and Star.

The teaser video didn't show the protagonist's face, and was a tracking shot which we edited with final cut pro to make blurred, distorted and dark. The artist's name was left out delibarately, instead simply opting for the title of the song; 'Take a Fall For Me'. It was an exaggeration of some of the effects and motifs in the video, a more abstract take on some of the featured shots to further the questions. The subject of the video is left ambiguous order to make the viewer wonder of the motivations and identity of the artist.

Another theme we wanted to create with both our star and with our video was that of solitude and atrophy, hence one of the reasons I was picked. My gaunt physique, pale skin, and bags under my eyes had the same imagery as our landscape, something like Chernobyl.

The costume of our star; Isaac Crowe, was inspired by Blake's own garments, the monochromatic colour scheme added to the mystery behind the protagonist, and fit the motifs of the video. We aimed to replicate some of the detatched coldness of the genre, which is more exclusive and pretentious than Mainstream pop or Hip Hop, which has far more self-recognition, irony, and visible designer labels. As such we wanted to make the costume blank, this quote by Yohji Yamamoto summises the objectives we tried to meet.

Promotional Material; Poster and Album Cover

We followed the established conventions of Blake's own promotional material, which was simple, understated, and avoided giving the audience much information on the star themselves, but rather was an advertisement for the art produced by the star on a whole.

This was the original poster we were planning to

use, similarly to the James Blake poster we drew

inspiration from, we had the artist's face, but it was

partially obscured, the black/uniform look of the costume is featured, and it is minimalistic. At the time of production we were unaware we had to create our own persona's title, so instead just used the actual artist of the music. However we corrected this.

This was our final poster/print ad for our star's album

It uses the same photo as the previous, though cropped and less elongated. We maintained the use of black as our primary background colour, and also attempted to subtly emulate the style of artist Piet Mondrian with the use of lines and blocks surrounding it. The typeface also has connotations of sophistication, but isn't perfectly alligned, representing the lack of conformity to the common stylings of adverts.

Album Covers

Again the works of Blake himself served as an inspiration for the kind of album cover we wanted to do. Genre characteristics dictated that we settle for a subtle and elegant design, hence our choice of font and fear of over-designing.

The back cover is singly black, and the single column of un-numbered songs feels confident and elegant at the same time. There is some intertextuality in the titles of the songs (a Wes Anderson reference), which is unconventional for the genre, which tends to steer clear of any recognition of other texts, however it would resonate with our target audience.

The inside cover's use of a single photograph reinforces the minimalist characteristics of the genre, as well as it's lack of conventional star power, with

the artist facing away from the audience.

Target Audience Profile

This is Tara, a hypothetical person who would fit within our target demographic. She is 24, comes from a lower middle class background, is formally educated, works for a start-up, owns an Apple Computer but not a television, she reads novels as well as poetry, and is in a band. She listens to artists like Flying Lotus, The Smiths, Aphex Twin, St. Vincent, Japandroids, Neutral Milk Hotel, Hozier, and alt-J. She is fashion conscious but tends to buy second-hand vintage goods. Her video media consumption is done purely through the internet, through Netflix or other streaming services. She buys albums on Vinyl or through Bandcamp, but her primary source of music is Soundcloud.

Psychographic

-Likely to be of a left wing belief

-Against sexual objectification of women, likely to hold a feminist viewpoint

-Involved with the arts and passionate about them

-Likely to be considered social outsiders

-Tend to enjoy things which are subversive or edgy

-Pro-DIY, low-budget, independent