Media Evaluation

The real media products I had used to help shape my video were other music videos of the same genre; ‘Kelly Rowland- Work’. ‘Eric Prydz- Call on Me’. And ‘Lady Gaga- Pokerface’.

However I had initially decided on using a R’n’B type genre video, but when I had considered the conventions required for this genre, (afro-Caribbean men, guns, explosives, and scantily dressed women) and also considering the limited resources in relation to these conventions, I thought it would prove difficult.

I then decided on the pop genre, this, I felt, enabled me to show-off my postproduction skills most effectively. As most people in my A2 group had decided on using indie style video genre, I wanted to produce something different, and eye-catching.

After more research into the genre, I had decided on using green screen, I had found that most ‘dance/pop’ videos had used this as part of their conventions, however, I wanted to exploit this convention, and this resulted in my whole video consisting of varied green screen shots. The videos I had researched had consisted of minimal narrative, however, my partner in my group researched less ‘dancey’ videos and looked at ‘Lilly Allen’, ‘Coldplay’ and ‘Oasis’,

As these artists weren’t as relevant to the actual video, we thought that they might become more useful in connection to the ancillary tasks. The main conventions of the dance/pop genre are; dance based video (motif, minimal narrative), female models, high energy and lots of colour use.

Also the use of a band, if the song used was actually created by a band. The song that my partner and I had chosen was ‘Bodyrockers- I like the way you move’. I wanted to challenge the use of a band in my video, as I focused my aims into developing the other conventions, also I felt that the lyrics of the song enabled me to create a non-narrative video, as the lyrics were pretty self explanatory, I wanted my video to convey to the audience that it is ‘the audience themselves’ that are singing the lyrics to the females in the video. Hence the obvious reactions of the females to some of the lyrics, you can see this when in the video, the lyrics say:

‘ I like the way you look at me with those beautiful eyes’ and then a second later you see the females reaction, shown via a close up on her facial expression.

I think that way that the video is represented my the marketing products was done not completely to my satisfaction, as the advert and the digipack cover consisted of heavily photoshoped still frames from the actual video, the images aren’t quite legible, however, the use of bright colours and bold writing did create a link between the two.

If we had the option to do them again, I think I would ask my partner to tone down the effects, as she is an amateur photography student, and having edited the whole video by myself, I felt that a more clean cut, simplistic design would have done it more justice.

The initial impression I got from the feedback was that my video portrayed what I wanted to convey, for example, some people stated that the video made them feel as if they wanted to go out and dance, due to the high energy it conveyed.

The general emotions that people said my video made them feel were happy, excited, and energetic. There were some comments on the problems I had encountered during the editing process, for example, where I had cropped a person out of a group dance scene, there was still a hand left on the screen as it over-lapped the dancer, of whom I had chosen for this specific dance move.

Also, a fellow pupil had commented on some writing that was on one of the backgrounds, this was because I had downloaded it from Google to use as a background shot, as it was a bright screen shot of a strobe light, I have checked the copyright laws, and I am aware that I am within the guidelines to use this picture.

When getting the feedback, Roberta and I had found that using photobooth to record people’s reactions and views/opinions was convenient, it enabled us to retrieve the feedback quickly and efficiently.

The software I used to edit the video was predominantly final cut; I felt this software provided a sophisticated array of editing options/ techniques. As the video is wholly green screen, I had to use the chroma keyer excessively, and as well as this, to exploit the use of vibrant colours, I also lapped the colour keyer on top, this effect was inspired my Martin Parr, a high colour photographer/ artist.

I used the speed adjustment key also, as it enabled me to synchronise dance moves and lyrics to the beat. Towards the end of the video, I concentrated the visual effects to rely completely on the beat, I had varied the effects to keep the audience interested visually, however I used the same scene shots to create a sense of continuity in the film, as it does not consist of any narrative.

The lighting proved to be a problem with the production and post-production, as the filming we had done without the green screen proved difficult to edit with the same techniques as the rest of the film. Also, there were problems with the storyboards, as they were initially completed on time, however, a cleaner miss-placed them which then resulted in myself having to re-do the whole lot, in a short amount of time, and also, the scanner was not working properly.

In the research stage, we used the YouTube website for researching the videos, this was helpful in seeing which videos had the most viewings (via the viewing status), and for the advertisement research, we used magazines and their websites, such as ‘Q’ and ‘Empire’ etc, these allowed us to develop out ideas into the typical conventions for the advertisement stages.

Finally, for my evaluation, I am using photobooth, yet again, the reason for this is, efficiency and convenience, and the shots are also easy to edit in final cut.