Evaluation 1

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


When we began the process of creating our music video, there were many different factors that we felt we needed to focus on. Once we had decided on our definite track, we looked at how we could make our video convincing enough, and how it would withstand in the media industry. For it to be successful and follow in the footsteps of other videos in that genre we used a certain criteria. We researched a lot of other videos in the indie/rock genre, and had an advantage as we are all fairly familiar with this kind of music. We took inspiration from videos by bands such as the Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and MGMT.


We wanted the target audience to be young teenagers of both genres. We felt that the video would appeal to girls because of the emotional value and connotations of the video, which relates to heartbreak. Also, boys would enjoy the video because of the music values, and the fact that the band is quite masculine. We also thought very carefully about the different locations and the type of shots that we chose, in order to mirror the videos from that genre in the music industry. It was also necessary for us to think about the different effects that we created on the editing suite, so we achieved the style of video that we felt would reach out to our audience accordingly. We also, however, wanted to make our music video unique and memorable, and through the casting we believe that we have achieved this.

Content:

As opposed to a concept style of music video, we decided that a mixture of narrative and performance would be the right balance for our music video. We wanted to make sure that we had enough band shots so it would be easily seen that we were promoting a new artist into the industry. This therefore did involve an adjustment to the storyboard, as when we had begun the editing we did not feel that we had enough shots of the band. The narrative was necessary to draw the attention of our audience by focussing on the idea of something that all teenagers can relate to, which is relationships and heartbreak. The majority of the time, the media industry matches the visuals to the storyline in the video, and this is where we collected our inspiration from. To make our video match the style of those in the industry, we decided to have the couple getting back together in the end, to show the normal conventions of a young person’s story. When conducting our research, we looked at many videos; however we did focus on “Teddy Picker” by the Arctic Monkeys. They show a wide range of band shots, both of them playing the instruments and them walking down the road together and just generally having fun to show their relationships. We took this idea and then expanded on it by adding the narrative as well to make the video more interesting for our target audience. We therefore took the inspiration from the real media, and used it as a template for our own media product.


We used stereotyping to create our main characters. We had the main boy in his room doing his hair in the mirror, and his room was very sensual with all of the colours and the decorations, such as red walls and a lava lamp. This portrays to the audience that the boy is a bit of a player. With the girls bedroom we chose to focus on the pictures on the wall and the colours of the decor, which shows that she is a typical teenager with pictures of her friends on the wall.

We chose to make the band stereotypical through the use of their costume, which also showed their age and made it easier for teenagers to relate to them because of their dress sense, as they were wearing hoodies and jeans for a lot of the time. We focused in particular on the image of the main singer, as we had a lot of close ups on him, and it felt as if he was selling the band more than the others, which can be reflected in the amount of close ups that we decided to use of him. The style of a shirt with a tie and a cardigan went perfectly with the genre, and meant that teenagers would feel a connection to the individual, and in turn, the band as a whole.

Target Audience:
As our target audience are teenagers, we used conventions that would directly relate to them, such as the mise en scene. This incorporated the use of costumes of all the characters and the lighting of the different locations. The inspirations for the costumes were taken from the media industry, such as the bands costumes, which show them wearing hoodies and cardigans with shirts. We designed our band image to specifically relate to the target audience.

We were confident that the audience would relate to these characters because we focussed on examples from the industry. The girls and boys costumes were their own clothes, and we decided that we would keep it this way because it would be more authentic.
The locations also would attract the target audience because we filmed in locations that teenagers would be able to relate to, such as their bedrooms and a local music club in Brentwood called The Hermit, where many teenagers choose to go for social evenings.

The use of technology within the video such as texting helps to relate to the target audience. The narrative related directly to the target audience, as the relationship in the video can be related to by teenagers; because many young relationships are very unstable and people break up and get back together because they do not really know what they want from life. This matched the lyrics of “Those dirty girls, girls are gonna have their wicked way with you”, because a lot of boys believe that girls are just out to get them and just use them, which also juxtaposed with the narrative of the video because it was in fact the boy who was hanging around with other girls.

Locations:


From our research, we concluded that location would be a very important part of our video. The location had to represent somewhere that young people could relate to, as well as somewhere that they were likely to hang out in real life. From our knowledge of the area, we decided on locations such as the field in our school as it was easily accessible and meant that we would not be disturbed by members of the public whilst filming. We also chose this location because it was very light and we felt that this portrayed the happy and youthful side of the band. We chose the Hermit as another location because it added a contrast of colour with the band shots, and young people associate with parties and music. The external shots of the bands show that they are friendly as we can see them mucking around with the trolley and things. The variety of locations helped to keep the audience intrigued and also to make sure that they did not get bored whilst watching the video.



Visuals and Sound:

With the genre, we decided that a lot of the time we would had the visuals to match the lyrics. For the majority of the video after each time the song said “Those Dirty Girls”, we had a shot of the main girl doing something to show that the narrative was mainly focussed on her and her relationship with the main boy. Although a lot of bands and celebrities use dance moves in their videos, we decided that we would have the band singing and being friendly as we wanted to portray them as musicians and a light hearted band, not for their performance factors.
We used a lot of close ups of the main singer as we felt that the emotion of the song could be seen in his
facial expressions, and he had a great ability to connect with the audience.

Throughout various points in the video we made sure that the shots cut in time with the music and the lyrics, so to keep the pace and to enable us to get all of the shots that we wanted in the video. Near the beginning of the video with the lyrics of “In the trendy bar at the worlds end”, the shots fade in and out with the beat that is in the background of the song. Nearer the end of the song there is a section where the words “With you” are repeated four times, and these notes are elongated. We felt to contrast with the rest of the video and to show versatility, that we would have these shots as longer and with slower cuts to show different locations of the video. For example on one of the four times we had the main girl running down the road, and on another one we had a close up of the lead singer to yet again show emotion. The variety of shots and cutting techniques such as fade in and fade out helped to keep the attention span of our target audience who are known for losing interest very quickly.

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


Evaluation 4 - how did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? from Matthew Cornwell on Vimeo.

Evaluation 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?



To gather information and opinions regarding our music video, we created a questionnaire consisting of 10 questions, and handed them out to our peers, who were all members of the target audience. We had a viewing of our video and once they had filled out the questionnaire, we created a spreadsheet of all the different responses that we got from the questions so we could compare opinions on things such as the quality of the editing, the song itself and how clear our storyline was. The need for audience feedback was huge, as we needed to make sure that we had correctly got across the point of the video and to make sure that the narrative was clear enough, and if they could relate to the song. We received a variety of answers, both praiseworthy and providing constructive criticism, and all opinions were taken into account as we wanted our audience to be honest with us. The majority of the questionnaires said that the video was good and that the narrative was clear. We were told that the quality was good for the equipment that we had, although we could have had more band shots. The video features some of the opinions that we gathered from our friends and other media students, as well as members of the cast.

Group Timetable

To figure out when we could do extra filming in our free periods, we created a group timetable of of our frees to decide when would be the best possible time.




Band Internet Sites

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Maybe-Tomorrow/163280773690774




MySpace: http://www.Myspace.com/wearemaybetomorrow



Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/MaybeTomorrow__

Letter of Permission to Record Company

This is a copy of the letter that we sent to the production company, Roadrunner records, to ask for their permission to use the song in the first place. This was used to make sure that we did not intend to steal the song, and that its use was for educational purposes only.

Production Diary - Session 54

6th January 2011

Matt was ill again today so Amanda and I decided to start filming the audience feedback. We asked people to come and watch our video and then asked them some questions from our questionnaire for them to answer. By asking our peers we knew we would get honest feedback and as our video was targeted at teenagers and young adults they would be perfect for feedback. We asked the 10 questions from the questionnaire and asked a variety of people so we had a variety of answers. We then captured the footage on the editing suite ready to edit tomorrow.

Production Diary - Session 53

5th January 2011

Today Matt was ill, so Amanda and I discussed the evaluation questions and decided how we were going to present them. We looked on Pete's Media Blog for inspiration on ideas of how to present our evaluation and found some good suggestions.

Production Diary - Session 52

4th January 2011

Today was our first day back from the Christmas holidays, so we continued to work on the evaluation process. We worked on the spreadsheet that we had created to store and compare the different responses to the questions that we had asked our target audience. This took quite a while as we had to sort all of the responses into different piles. We then carried on with work on our blogs.

Our Final CD Cover



This is our final CD Cover. We decided to change the idea for the front cover because the shoot in the road was unsuccessful. We really like this image because it is very simple, yet we feel that it sums up our band very well. As Matt is separate from the others we can tell that he needs to stand out, insinuating that he could also be the lead singer. The others also have their hoods up to highlight this difference once more. The bright colours portray the fun side to the band, and give them an almost 'alternative' nature. It also shows youth, which obviously would relate to both them and their target audience. Their different facial expressions also show their individuality.

Shooting Schedule - Extra Band Shots

Shooting Schedule - Hermit and Highstreet

Our Final Inside Cover



This is the final version of our inside cover. We chose this image because it has the whole of the band in it, and we thought that it shows the personality and individuality of each person in the band, whereas the other photos were more 'posed' and it was as if we had told them where to stand, and in this photo it was completely spontaneous, which makes it more effective and realistic. We added the quotes because we felt that on a debut album it would be important for a band to make a connection with the audience and to gain their respect from the start. The colours match the front cover and the theme of the actual CD as well. Therefore we are very happy with this picture overall.

Our Final Back Cover



This is our album back cover. We decided that as it is such a simple and artistc image, that we did not want to alter it, as it may reduce the effect. Therefore, the colours from the other pictures are now translated into the text, rather than the image itself. We decided to focus purely on Matt, to follow the conventions of the other pictures, which was to emphasise that he is the main singer of the band, and to show his versatility and the fact that he could survive as a single artist. We can see the snow in the background, which makes it more artistic.

Production Diary - Session 51

10th December

Today we attempted to upload the video onto vimeo but it was taking so long (20 hours) that we had to cancel it as we didnt have enough time. Matt has taken the video home on his memory stick to see if he can do it quicker on his computer at home.

Amanda and I carried on with the digipacks by putting writing on the album cover and insides and we updated our facebook, twitter and myspace pages.

Production Diary - Session 50

9th December

Today Amanda had returned from her Uni visit, and we asked Miss Brookes to show us the faults in our video again. We quickly adjusted these, and then began to render the video and attempted to put it onto YouTube, however as it was a popular video it was refused. We will therefore try again to upload the finished video!

Production Diary - Sessions 49

8th December:

Today Amanda was away on a University Visit, so Matt and I decided to make the merchandise for our band using our final album cover. We made a teddy, a bag, a mug and a hoodie. These are all up on our MySpace and Facebook. We also had Miss Brookes look at our video and she gave us some advice as how to improve our video.

Production Diary - Sessions 48

7th December:

Today we had a double lesson, so we decided to upload the final album cover to the blog, and we also decided that we wanted to have a completely different picture for the back of the album. As it was a relatively nice day, and there was still a bit of snow around we thought that we would go onto the field and take some photos of Matt. We got some of him running through the field and also on a tree. We took these back to the room and had a look through them and decided which one we wanted to use.

Production Diary - Sessions 44

29th November:

Today we got all of our band together and began to shoot the photos for our DigiPak. We had a few issues with the filming, such as that George had to go to the orthadontist, and also that Peter could only do Mondays because he works the rest of the week. We also filmed the rest of our shots of the band. We decided to have them singing in some of them, and in the others to just have them being friendly around each other. These had to be filmed quickly, as in November it gets dark very quickly, so we had to be very quick about it. Overall, we were happy with the shots

Production Diary - Sessions 45, 46 & 47

30th November, 2nd December & 3rd December.

On these days we unfortunatley we could not get into school because of the snow fall. Therefore we could not edit, as the footage and the programme were on the school

Production Diary - Session 43

29th November

Today Amanda edited the new shots that she retook from her house and organised what shot we are filming tonight into a list. Matt has updated the myspace and facebook while i made our final CD inside for our digipack.

Actual CD


Press Release

Maybe Tomorrow are a great new band who have just finished their A-Levels. They have burst on to the scene with their debut album entitled 'Girls'. Consisting of Matt, Peter, George and Luke, the boys are determined to fill the gap in the market that has been calling them for so long. They have already been praised by many artists, and one day would like to achieve the fame of a band such as Kids in Glass Houses. Their live performances have been described as 'amazing', and they have an incredible stage presence. They are not just a band, they are also great friends, and this is apparant throughout their performances and their videos. Their friendship is second to none. Their fame has arisen through YouTube, and also Twitter and Facebook. Being young, they have the amazing oppportunity to feed off of their audience and to expand their fame from national to international. The song 'Girls' portrays the bands' feelings about teenage relationships, and how they feel that girls can cast a spell onto their partners. The video is fun and lively, which gives a glimpse of their personalities. They love making music, and ultimately love their fans.

Our Facebook page



This is a print screen of the bands facebook page where we can keep in contact with the fans and promote things about the band!

Our Twitter page


This is our Twitter page, where we can reach out to a different audience to that of Facebook and Myspace. The pages are also all linked, to make sure that all of our followers and fans can recieve updates.

Our myspace page



This is our MySpace in the first stages of creation, where we have edited our information and added a few pictures.

Production Diary - Session 42

25th November

Today i finished off the planning for the digipack and put it on the blog. Amanda and Matt managed to find away to make the banner bigger on the myspace finally and updated the facebook and twitter pages.

Inside of Album



The inside cover follows along the theme of the road but we wanted to do a thankyou page to everyone who took part in the making of th 'album'. The idea is that the band will sit on the kerb so that there is enough room above for text without obscuring the band from view.

Planning for CD inside



We decided to follow on the black and white theme inside and adding bold colours to it the same as the outside.

Planning for the Album Back Cover



This is a draft of the albums back cover. The idea is simular to the front but instead of the band walking towards the camera they are walking away. The band will be holding their instruments to show that they are the band.

Planning for the Album Cover



This is the plan for our album front cover. We would obviously make it square but the idea is to base the image in black and white but edit colours in. The stick men are actually the band walking down the road.

Production Diary - Session 40 + 41

23rd November

Today Amanda tweaked the edidting to make it perfect while Matt updated all of our twiter, myspace and facebook sites and begun brainstorming album names. I drew up a plan of our album cover on fireworks and experimented with fonts and colours.

Production Diary - Session 39

19th November

Today we captured all of our footage from last night and Amanda edited all the shots in. Matt and I discussed the digi pack and our ideas and we run them past Amanda to make sure we were all happy :)

Production Diary - Session 38

18th November

Today we filmed at Billy's house for the getting ready for the party shots at the beginning of the video. Again we filmed alot more than we needed so that we would be covered if some footage wasnt good enough and we filmed from lots of different angles.

Production Diary - Session 37

15th November

We needed to organise times and days when we were going to film some of the final shots we need for our music video, so we all found out when we were free and organised times so that we can get all the filming done and then focus on our digi pack and editing.

Production Diary - Session 36

12th November

Today we edited our music video and discussed further ways in which we could improve the video, such as using a few more running shots. We also discovered how to split screen on adobe premiere pro.

Production Diary - Session 35

11th November

We discussed changing a few shots that we had planned as we felt that it would fit the song better in certain parts such as when the verse begins, a shot of Matt singing the opening line of the song will provide a bigger impact that we want to make with our video, and also at the beginning of the 3rd chorus. Me and Matt also did some editting.

Production Diary - Session 33 - 34

9th November

Today was our double lesson which was handy as we could capture all our footage from friday whih takes a while and we also begun to edit it all. We also continued to add events and updated our my space, twitter and facebook pages and invited our friends to visit these pages to get our profile views increased.

Production Diary - Session 32

5th November

We met in the evening in the high street to do the external shots of Amanda running down the high street and the shots in the hermit of the party.

The high street shots went really well and the light was really good considering how dark it was, so these shots turne out exactly how we wanted. Although things didnt really go to plan in the hermit as nobody danced which was essential to our party shots. We still got the shots of billy and amanda at the part, although they will need to be lightened slighty as it was very dark inside. We will need to think of another place to film dancing and perhaps cut down on the amount of shots of dancing and add some of the extra shots that we have filmed.

Production Diary - Session 31

5th November

Today we have captured all the footage that we filmed at Amanda's house last night and watched it through. We got alot more footage that we needed just to be on the safe side and i think we got alot of really good footage.

We also begun to edit the footage but the capturing took a long time as we had so much to capture so we didnt get alot of editing done.

While our filming was capturing we watched other groups video's and gave our opinions on their video's so far.

Production Diary - Session 30

4th November:

As we are filming tonight we planned out all of the shots that we needed specifically. We also charged the camera in order to use it without wasting time charging it when we could be filming. We wrote down all of the shots that are going to be filmed at my house and also how long they need to be. We also wrote a list for the 'party shots' that we are going to film at a local music club tomorrow.

Production Diary - Session 29

2nd November

Today we decided that we decided tht organising a party would mean that we would be alot behind schedule for filming and we may not complete for the deadline. Instead we decided we would go to a local music club and film there as this would have a good atmosphere and be alot more realistic.

We have also planned our shooting schedule for this week and we plan to get all of it done so that if anything needs to be filmed again we will have time to do it.

Production Diary - Session 28

1st November

Today we looked up venues for our party and emailed a few people with no success. While waiting for replies we updated our blogs and discussed the risk assessment.

Production Diary - Session 27

22nd October:

Matt faced dilemas whilst trying to edit the myspace, as he couldnt get it to do what we wanted it to. We were aiming to design it to how we wanted, yet it wouldnt let us. Amanda had to re-capture the party shots that we filmed earlier on in the week, because they had deleted for some reason. Once she had done that she put them onto the edit suite and used two shots that we thought were acceptable to use in our video.

Production Diary - Session 26

21st October:

Today I was absent so Amanda continued to work on the editing suite, whilst Matt created a banner to use on our myspace. We also worked on our facebook page by adding a picture and making Amanda and myself admin so we could edit the page whenever we wanted. Amanda moved some band shots around on the editing suite as she thought that they looked better in other places.

Production Diary - Session 25

20th October:

We worked on our twitter, facebook and myspace pages whilst Amanda continued to edit our band shots on the editing suite. Matt begun working on the fonts for the digipak and also looked for inspiration for our possible track names to go on the CD. I verified the twitter account and we also added more to our myspace to make it more individual.

Production Diary - Session 23+ 24

19th October

Amanda finished the editing of the band shots to our video and Matt begun editing our myspace and creating facebook and twitter pages.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/MaybeTommorow/163280773690774?v=info#!/pages/MaybeTommorow/163280773690774?v=wall

https://twitter.com/#!/MaybeTomorrow__

We also captured and watched all our footage from the party scenes ad came to the conclusion that we needed a proper party as our footage was unrealistic and there weren't enough people. So i started looking at possible venues at a short notice.

Party Outfits




Lead Females Friends

Lizzie Hubbard, Ellie Craven & Danielle Cripps

Ellie, Danielle and I were selected to be the lead female, Amanda's friends. As we are all friends anyway we fit the part well and also this means that we would put in effort to make the video good and also be reliable and not miss any filming. Our wardrobes are also fitted to the roles and out outfits easily fit the idea that we were looking for.

Lead Female

Amanda Champion

Having to females in our group allowed us to pick between Amanda and I. Originally i was going to be the lead male but we then decided that as Amanda is doing A level drama she would be more appropriate at the larger role and also more confident with it. Amanda and our lead male, Billy, also have experience working together throughout GCSE and A level drama so we knew they would work well together. By having Amanda in the group we knew we could count on her reliability and effort and her style is also perfect for the role.

Lead Male


Billy Webb

Straight away the group agreed on having Billy as the lead male as we knew he was reliable and would make the effort for our video. Aswell as being an A level drama student who could obviously act well, he has the perfect image that we wanted for the lead meaning that he didnt need to be restyled or even told what to wear.

Production Diary- Session 22

18th October

Today we filmed our party scenes in the drama hall at school. We managed to get all of the shots done and extra shots as a back up done in about 1-2 hours. Although we had a techincal issue with getting the correct lights and making sure the scene looked realistic it was easier than filming at a real party as we were able to position people and give alot more direction. We got plenty of dancing shots from all angles so that we would have back up shots if necessary and overall i think we did really well.

Possible Fonts


Mood Board of Band Photo Shoots

We decided to create a mood board of other peoples band photo shoots to inspire us and so that we could get ideas for our own photo shoot for the digipack.

Production Diary - Session 21

15th October

Today Amanda was back so she was able to get on with the editing while i researched ideas for band photo shoots and our digi pack ready to design. I created a mood board of a selection of band photo's that we liked the idea of. I am then going to design the album combining a few ideas from the mood board. Matt continued on the myspace and then begun designing possible fonts fot our band name on the album cover and on the myspace. He is making five so that we can choose our favourite from them.

Storyline of Our Music Video

We decided that we should do a clearer and better annotated outline of our video as this is easier to read and is more descriptive.

Production Diary - Session 20

12th October

Today Amanda was off school ill and as she is the best at editing in our group it took alot longer for Matta nd I to do it. We needed to edit the band shots that we filmed the other day. From today we have learnt that Matt and I will need to learn to edit better also in case of an absence again, so we will make sure we can each do everything. Matt also continued to design and plan our myspace.

Production Diary - Session 19

11th October:

We uploaded our band footage that we took on Friday onto the editing suite, and watched it a few times and discussed what shots we felt would be good to use. We also did work on our band profiles, talking about each band member and the difficulties that we faced when filming, both with the band and the actual filming. We also created our myspace and assigned ourselves some extra work to carry out. I am going to do the character profiles, Amanda is going to annotate the lyrics with our storylines, and Matt is going to start on our health and safety sheet.

Band Image


Adjustments and Final Decisions.


After we had our first run through of the song with the band we decided to change the second guitarist Chris for our backup guitarist Peter.
Peter came across as more enthusiastic and confident on the camera and was able to wear Chris' leather jacket making him fit into the band really well.
Peter is also a drama student so was comfortable on the camera whereas Chris didnt seem so confident. Peter has also agreed to take on the role of guitarist and is reliable for future shoots.
We also faced some difficulties when shooting, as there were two P.E. lessons on the field at the time that we were shooting, which has made us realise the importance of checking the availability of the location that we intend to use in the future.
We were also infested by ladybirds, and therefore some of the shots we cannot use.