Evaluation: Question Four

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

Evaluation: Question Three

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In order to get audience feedback, I produced a SurveyMonkey survey, recorded an interview, uploaded the video on YouTube, shared the video on Facebook and posted images on Instagram.

The qualitative and quantitative audience research I carried out pre-production enabled me to understand my audience and what they would want. The quantitative research was carried out using SurveyMonkey and the easy to complete surveys we created meant we were able to collect 60 responses, which gave us a rather large demographic to analyse and from the quantitative research we took very important information that strongly influenced our decisions. Those surveyed made choices like a strong narrative in the final product as opposed to a live performance and also the emphasis on album artwork for the digipak and album advert. The qualitative research helped us understand our audience, as we learnt from questions such as "If you were given £50, what would you spend your money on?" that music and image was at the forefront of our audience's mind and therefore we had to carefully consider these ideas throughout our process. Our interviewee for the interview below told us about how important he felt a narrative was in a music video and also how his favourite genre was dance, listing some of the sub-genres in to which Sub Focus has delved, and how Sub Focus was his favourite artist.

I posted a few stills from our day shooting on Instagram in order to promote our forthcoming video. The pictures were quite well received and people seemed to be interested as quite a few of my friend asked me what I was doing in a forest with lots of masks. In hindsight, had I used hashtags, I could have promoted the pictures to a wider audience.

Uploading the video to YouTube allowed us put our video in the location where it seemed the majority of our audience got their music videos for free from. YouTube's comments section also allowed us to obtain compliments and constructive criticism.

The bottom two comments were generally very positive and did not offer much in the way of improvements, but we were lucky enough to receive a very detailed comment from MegaBrayDog who told us what they liked and what they didn't (such as the black and white filter at the beginning) and what they would change (adopt a run sequence like the one used in the video for Voodoo People by Pendulum and Prodigy).

Sharing the video on Facebook was another way of getting feedback, although constructive comments were seemingly harder to come by. We did receive '16 likes' on our video, which suggest people did enjoy the video. Here is an example of the comments we received on Facebook:

They complimented our use of props and the use of beat-matched cutting. Obviously not everyone who watched our video was an A Level Media student and therefore some of the feedback was limited.

I think overall the main thing I took from audience feedback is that it would have beneficial to have had or to have allocated more time to promotion of the video, in order to gain a bigger audience and thus a bigger feedback. Established artists spend weeks promoting their singles, albums and videos and I think as a group this would have been really helpful had we found the time to do this. It is interesting that recently we have seen artist such as Jay Z and Beyonce release full albums on the back of no promotion, using their image and stature alone as the chief promotional technique. Fascinatingly, with the drive of social media, both these albums proved to outsell all their competition at the time.

Evaluation: Question Two

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

My main product and the ancillary texts were designed hand in hand, with constant consideration regarding the video, digipak and magazine advert constantly taking place. All the stills used in the digipak and the picture used for the magazine advert were taken during filming and therefore the colour schemes, lighting, costumes and quality are all cohesive.

The advert shows just the main character from the video, linking the two products. The advert still however creates suspense by showing the tree of masks, which is the centrepiece of the closing scenes of the video, but not the masked characters. Members of the audience who have seen the video will identify with the character and the tree and those who have not will be enticed to watch the video to gain full understanding of the advert. This provides a source of information and entertainment relating to Denis McQuail's Uses and Gratifications model.

The advert and digipak work well together as they use the exact same house style, with identical fonts and colouring, in such minor detail as to have matching opacity levels. The image for the advert is not used for the digipak but does demonstrate synergy as the shot for the advert features the the character who is also in one of the images on the diqipak. The digipak features two more characters from the video, who are not in the advert, but the digipak plays a role in aiding the understanding of the advert because we can see that the masked characters are related to the tree bearing masks. The advert and digipak both also feature the logos of the record companies involved with Sub Focus.

The digipak and video are very well intertwined as the digipak features shots from the various different stages of the video, replicating different edits from the video, such as the black and white filter and the mirroring effect. The digipak is made up of mainly establishing shots and close ups, as is the video.

Overall, I feel the main product and the ancillary texts are very cohesive and interlinked. I think they are a good example of cross-media convergence, as we see video, advert and digipak all promoting the same thing with the same house style across different platforms.

Evaluation: Question One

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

My final video and it's accompanying texts were heavily influenced by the forms and conventions of real media products from the research stages of my advanced portfolio through to the completion of the final pieces.

The Video

Two key conventions of a music video are narrative and concept and my video follows a narrative and there is a concept. These conventions are spoken about by Andrew Goodwin, who also says that live performance is a convention of music videos, however for the genre of dance, the idea of a live performance in music videos scarce, according to my research. The narrative sees the main character chased down before eventually joining with the masked chasing characters. The concept is one of a slightly surreal feel, something that challenges the norm of everyday life, yet crosses over to said life. We chose to avoid the other convention of live performance as it did not reflect the genre of dance music and we felt it would be more difficult to create a genuine video with an amateur cast. Goodwin's book, 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory', explores key elements of music videos, including genre, relationships, close ups, looking and intertextuality. Tvetan Todorov talks of the idea of equilibrium (the norm), disequilibrium (breaking of the norm) and a new equilibirum (the reestablishment of a new norm). This convention is one that my video develops, where we see the equilibrium behave almost as an immediate disequilibrium with the main character alone and the masked characters appearing mysteriously. The disequilbirum occurs when the main character approaches the masked characters and there is a tense moment, before the establishment of the new equilibrium where he takes a mask and joins with them.

The camerawork demonstrated a lot of conventional shots of the genre of dance music, with establishing shots at the beginning and low angle shots of feet, much like the ones seen in 'Endorphins'. The use of close ups and extreme close ups echoed the video for 'Turn It Around', allowing the capturing of the emotions of the lead character and creating the binary opposite of the emotionless masked people and the scared lead character. The use of these close ups was interesting as we were not trying to promote the artist, as Goodwin suggests, but trying to develop the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, which is a key point of Goodwin's work. The emotions of our lead character suggest he was in fact "holding on for some kind of miracle", as he is lost, alone and being hunted, therefore he must wait to be saved or to find a way out, which in the end turns out to be joining the masked characters.

In my video, there is the superimposition of the song title and artist name over the opening scenes, a motif that was demonstrated in the videos I analyzed, specifically Spinnin' Records videos, such as 'I Could Be The One' by Nicky Romero vs. Avicii. This editing is likely due to the influence of  record labels, trying to promote the name of the artist and song in an alternative way, as many DJs and producers do not feature prominently in their own videos, due to the fact they rarely sing their own lyrics. The use of beat matched cutting, especially at the start where the cuts are rapid and to the beat, is something that is also demonstrated in all the dance music videos I analyzed, such as at the beginning of the original 'Endorphins' video. In terms other special effects, we struggled to achieve anywhere near the level of special effects demonstrated in other videos that I analyzed, such as 'Tidal Wave', where there was impressive mirror techniques and superimpositions. There was, however, use of a black and white filter and a less advanced mirroring edit in the opening cuts of the video.

In terms of mise-en-scene, we tried to get all the cast in all black costume, as the cast are in Martin Garrix's 'Animals', but not everyone stuck to this particular memo and so the costume is definitely something that could be improved were we to do this project again. Unfortunately, health and safety would not allow for the use of fire or flares, which I wanted to use, complying with what I noted was a convention in the music videos I analyzed. 'Endorphins' and 'I Could Be The One' both used fire to great effect and I hoped we would be able to do the same but unfortunately we could not adapt this convention for our own video. The masks are an interesting prop that have seemingly become the vital convention for dance music videos, as demonstrated in 'Animals' and 'Toulouse'. We used the masks as a key piece of costume as well as a prop, much like in Nicky Romero's 'Toulouse'. The lead character's coat was big and had a fury hood, which demonstrates a certain amount of protection and the constant hands in pockets suggests a fear of the unknown, the coat also made him look smaller than he is. Interestingly we did have a female masked character but she was portrayed in no way differently to the males around her, as the animal personas the cast took seemingly wiped out any gender differences. She was not purposely there to satisfy the Male Gaze talked about by Laura Mulvey.

The location is one similar to what we see in 'Turn It Around' and develops the idea that nature allows people to be free and to dance ridiculously in public, as is demonstrated in many of the videos I analyzed. The location did in many ways reinforce the teenage audience's need for identity and choice, as the forest is individual, natural and does not conform, it is not man made and it does not follow a set structure. It is unknown and many teenagers watching may be having issues with knowing themselves, knowing what they are about, and in many ways the message the video pushes that people shouldn't be scared of the unknown. Another interpretation is that the whole episode is drugs or alcohol-fueled, which is not uncommon in dance music videos, as the glorification of such substances is prominent as Beullens, Roe and Van den Bulck speak about. This offers gratification for audience, as spoken about by Denis McQuail, as the audience can identify and feel accepted in to these different ideas about teens.

Digipak

My digipak follows the house style of my video, with the use of stills taken on the day of filming, in the same lighting and therefore they all look very much alike. The black and white filtered images and the mirrored image are demonstrative of the montage shown at the beginning of the video. The cutout photo image is extremely similar to this image from the opening montage in the 'Tidal Wave' video I analyzed.

This still influenced the digipak image. As I found from my research the digipaks, such as Calvin Harris' digipak for '18 Months' and Sub Focus' own 'Torus', are often similar to the style of the videos shot for the singles taken from the album. The back of the album features a tracklist, a barcode and credits to the record company as was evidenced in all the digipaks I looked at.

Magazine Advert

The magazine advert I produced uses the same font and colour scheme as that used on the digipak. The artist name is bigger than the album name due to the fact the artist Sub Focus is a more recognisable name than his new album's name. The use of the 5 star review is a slight development on the quotes that were shown on the Avicii advert I analyzed, the addition of the 5 stars adding the the classy look of the advert and also promoting the album in a very positive light. This review from Q Magazine is also an example of synergy and the two step flow model, as Q Magazine are opinion leaders and therefore will influence the audience. The logos to the right at the bottom are the record labels. I changed the opacity so they could remain in colour but not intrude on the house style of the advert. I did the same with the social network logos at the bottom right, which I put there to slightly develop on the Chase and Status poster which had the Chase and Status website on. Considering the younger demographic for the audience, I felt social networks were more accessible than websites to teenagers. In contrast to the Chase and Status advert, we did not include the vendors of the album on the advert, as we felt, considering the audience once again, they would know how to locate and access the album. In hindsight, we could have including a barcode for smartphone users to scan in order to be taken to download the album.

Magazine Advert

This is the final piece for our magazine advert:

Digipak

This is our final piece for our digipak:

Final Piece

This is our final edit of our music video. We have uploaded the video to YouTube.