Evaluation.

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

In terms of conventions I think we've done quite a good job.  During our piece we managed to blend live performances, cinematic photography and offstage band footage.  The first of which clearly sticks with the typical conventions of rock, as artist very frequently forego narrative or a storyline in favour of professionally filmed footage of the band performing.  Various popular camera shots include longshots to view the entire band, close ups on the singer's face or the guitarist's hands, shots that zoom out from the front of the stage which slowly reveal the entire band or shots from a slightly higher angle.  A good example of this that includes narrative would be "Relentless Chaos" by Miss May I.

This video is full of fast-paced cuts between the band's performance, the vocalist in solitary confinement and the mild narrative involving the vocalist, which ends in the same room that the band is performing in.

Our video focuses more on the band offstage rather than on it, as well as preparing for a show.  A good example to compare to would be Bon Jovi's "Living on a prayer" where the first half of the video consists of the band exchanging banter and preparing for a live show, just generally being themselves around their crew.

 The majority of footage is of the band members interacting with each other or preparing for a stage performance.  I was to be the fun member of the group, and as such various parts of our piece may convey this. Andy was the moodier member, and certain sections, for example his refusal in certain parts to be filmed were intended to reinforce that image.  Typically within a band's image there are certain "types" of member, such as the angry one or the quiet one etc: we attempted to go with this kind of setup.  During our filming we wanted to get as much of the band members "being themselves" as we possibly could, this was more difficult than we originally thought it would be because it meant that we had to be acting almost all of the time. 

The live performance part of our video went well though, playing along with the song helped us to fit in the with convention by which the first half of the video will consist of the band members out of performance or rehearsal, being themselves and mucking about, the second half or segment of the video is more devoted to actually seeing the band play live, whether it be a rehearsal or in concert.

A lot of the time the camera zooms on the instrument that is being played or the focal instrument at the time, for instance, this is a shot from Foo Fighters' "The pretender"

This is a shot from our video, of the bass in mid-play, we thought that this would be a good conventional idea to stick to, as it draws focus away from yhe prominent singer and plays more to the rest of the band, as the singer is often heavily focused on.


Other conventions of a Male rock band might include the "bad boy" image portrayed by Andy, or the "rebellious" image, as well as using lots of fast-paced themes. (For example, the sped-up shots of the car or the camera out the window.)  Incorporating these was much more difficult than we had originally thought it might be because we hadn't originally planned to include these shots, so we decided that placing them early in the song to coincide with the speedily played intro music would be the best course of action.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As a combination, I believe that our product and texts work very well together.  Our video was in black and white, which is a very simplistic way to present a music video but as such it seemed to work quite well when our audience feedback is considered, we were given a lot of good feedback about the use of black and white.  Because of this we decided it would be a good idea to keep within thie monochrome themes of simplicity and darkness.  As such we designed our digipack and website with similar themes in mind.

We made the front cover of the digipack first and decided to continue with the same sort of dark, wet theme with light sources only being indirect or reflected.  This was continued with the back cover and one of the inlays, seen below to the right.











This picture on the left is the first Inlay, seen as soon as the digipack is opened.  Within the digipack are CDs and pictures of the band.


The continuity of our texts seemed to work well, the dark moodiness of the video and digipack were reflected in the website we made.
A link to the website can be found here:  http://www.thecroft.co.cc/
As you can see, the website is predominantly black and grey, and is set out so that it can be easily navigated.  It contains information pertaining to the release of the digipack.  This makes the whole project seem more realistic, as the look and feel of all the parts conform to the overall theme.  We felt we had taken the initiative well in terms of our digipack design by including a second CD containing the music video we filmed. This also helps to make the whole release seem more believeable and authentic.

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



What have you learned from your audience feedback?