Advanced Portfolio Evaluation

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

The most clear way we used conventions of the pop/rock genre is in the location choice for out band shots. Most videos looked at in this genre show the band playing and quite often in a garage, stage or studio and we had access to the latter. The singer featured most prominently in the video, balanced with the drummer and the guitarist. This was to emphasise the link between the singer and the Boy from the story. The story narrative itself doesn’t deviate from usual conventions with the ‘good guy’ winning the girl in the end but challenges the structure of most videos in this genre in other ways. There is a deliberate break in the track to emphasise the story more which is not entirely unusual but longer than normal. It also signals the start in the video of where the story takes more importance than the band shots which are used more to break up the story. When filming the story shots we also tried to get as few people as possible in shots after the two characters met each other so as to show the characters’ isolation and running from others which reflects the song’s title, Running From Lions. The ending of the video has a more uplifting tone as the ‘good guy’ wins and is revealed to be the lead singer, we added this twist to give our serious video a more fun ending. This has worked because most people who have seen the video have enjoyed it and think the amusing end works really well. It doesn’t, however, break from genre conventions as twists like that often appear on pop/rock music videos. Overall the video mostly fits with the genre but we challenged conventions with progressively letting the story take more importance than the band as the video plays along. Through looking at other band’s albums in the same genre we quickly found that most consisted of drawn or manipulated images and not photos of the band. This was consistent not only for the band All Time Low who’s song we chose to do but for other pop-rock bands. I drew the album artwork in a similar sort of cartoon-like style to the original Put Up or Shut Up album. I also mimicked the font style for the band name and tried to keep it as recognisable as an All Time Low album. The album also involved a lot of research because, similarly to the digipak, every genre has different ways they advertise their music and albums. The examples we found in Kerrang! were very simple with the background consisting entirely of the album cover art and minimal writing. This proved to be more difficult than we thought as we wanted to include as much about the album as we could but, in keeping with the conventions we observed from out research, the advert looks more like the examples we found and better shows how we have observed and learnt from our research.

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

The music video is the strongest and most involved product we produced with an engaging storyline and fast editing. The story itself links to the digipak as on the track list it shows the two main characters from the music video sat on the grass similar to how they are in the ending of the video. The ripped out pages of the notebook on the digipak that show the track list and also the band and studio information on the inside covers are also references to the notepad the Boy is writing the song in during the video. Similarly the front cover is of a fist clenching some paper with the band title All Time Low. The paper is, once again, a reference back to the notebook that was a subtle link between the characters of the Boy and the vocalist before the end. The fist was an expression of the frustration and jealousy that was very much a part of the video and appears when the Boy sees the Girl with the Boyfriend and again when the Boyfriend pulls the Girl away and the Boy attempts to stop him. It is also why we decided the image in the advert should be of the album art not only because of our research showing it to be the biggest convention of album adverts but also because it encompassed the whole story we’d tried to tell. The advert also quite obviously links with the digipak with the use of the same image. People shown the images knew they were linked and in combination with the music video both fans of the band and those who were not said they were very in-keeping with the genre style.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback given on our music video that was posted on YouTube has been really good with positive comments and high ratings. People in other classes have said they really enjoyed our video and that they really understood the story as it was portrayed without words and we were very selective about which shots to use to show emotion and heighten the engagement with the characters as that was crucial to get the audience to enjoy our media product, that for the three minutes they were watching they liked what they saw. As is typical with most YouTube comments they don’t offer much in the way of improvements or details of what they enjoyed but the overall impression is that they liked it. When showing it to a focus group of friends to see their reactions they especially liked the way the story progressed with the song with their being shorter or more mobile shots towards the end and faster editing whereas it begins with longer in places and much slower shots. The digipak, during its construction, has also received positive feedback from classmates and other students. The colour scheme is eye-catching without being too bright as that would break from convention but the use of the green with the black and white that is present in the advert as well works well to compliment the three products against each other.

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

In our research we used a lot of the internet to get information about the band utilising the band’s Myspace page, fan sites and forums. They helped us gain an understanding of what audience focus we were aiming for. Then we researched pop-rock in general to find more similarities using Kerrang! magazine and a questionnaire to find out what sort of bands people associated and recognised with the genre we had chosen. We also used Amazon.com’s ‘customer’s who bought this also bought…’ feature to see what other band’s albums were bought so that we had other bands to look into

The planning stages of our video involved watching other music videos All Time Low have made and seeing their usual themes. Then we compared them to other videos such as the Teenage Dirtbag video by Wheatus. This involves a similar story to the one we included in our video and helped us to understand how we should structure it. Even when filming and editing we regularly referenced back to things we had independently researched when discussing how things should look and where certain shots should go at different times in the song. For example, we extended a pause in the song at 1.02 minutes through the song to emphasise the reaction shots. This decision was made based on the flow of the song and the story after that point compared to before it as the both the song and story become a lot more fast paced from that point.

The Advert

This is the finished product:





After looking at similar adverts of pop-rock band albums we realised they were quite plain. There is minimal writing and often the advert itself is just a big picture, usually the artwork from the cover of the album. We had various ideas of how we could make the advert and this was my sketch:


The artwork at the top was coloured as we had plans to use it but after consideration we decided that it would be more inkeeping with conventions if we used only the album artwork I had drawn for the cover. It looks more as expected from a pop-rock album advert and matches our research conclusions well.

Rebecca

The Digipak

Our finished Digipak:

Because our research into similar band's albums in the same genre showed that their covers mainly consisted of artwork rather than photos of the band or photos at all the cover and the track list page are all drawn by hand in our digipak. The two inside panels are both manipulated photos that distort the band members but they are still recognisable. This is to mimic a style present on both these covers:

This is the album our song came from so we decided to mimic certain styles from it such as the font 'All Time Low' is written in and the small 'Put Up Or Shut Up' written at the bottom.

The cartoon-like style of real people is a recurring theme among bands of this genre.

The Video

The editting has finished on the video and it is up on youtube. It was definitely worth reshooting the band scenes as the overall video looks a lot better now. People who have watched it understand the story we were trying to tell and comments on the video are all positive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GG1rQuod5A







To promote our video, and get more views and opinions on it, I posted it on the All Time Low Facebook page.






Rebecca

Filming.

Since the problems with our original filming of the Band Shots we were able to move the location to a band studio. This has given our clips a better look to them, more in-keeping with the style of music the song we've chosen fits into. Aside from the aesthetic look of the shots the wider space also allowed for better camera movements. Over all we filmed around 25minutes of band shots to allow fast paced editting and more freedom when it came to editting.

DigiPak development design

This is the digipak cover I skectched out as an idea for the album.


Front Cover



Track List





Left Inside





Right Inside





The track list and the front cover will be in the final version as they fit well with the convetions of album art from All Time Low and also from bands in the same genre. For the inside covers we will use two of the photos that were taken of the band when we were filming.

Rebecca

DigiPak Research

In conjunction with the music video we are filming, our group is to come up with a design for a digipak and a magazine advert. To do this I have been researching albums the All Time Low have already brought out and what sort of styles and themes they have.

The album covers featured are all by the band All Time Low, the band whose song my group and I have chosen to do our music video to.
All album covers have the appearance of either being drawn or being altered digitally. The colours are reflective of the content of the album and vary accordingly but do have quite bright colour schemes with abstract artwork in favour of actual photos. The band’s name also features prominently in a similar sort of font on the Put Up or Shut Up, Nothing Personal and So Wrong, It’s Right albums.

Rebecca

Schooting Schedule

Due to the complications with the band shots, and us needing to reshoot, the location for the band scenes have changed as we were able to get access to a band studio. The original shooting schedule is still relevent, however, as the angles and shot descriptions have stayed the same.

Modified version of the shooting schedule for our reshoot:

If you click on the image it will become less blurry.

Rebecca

Storyboards

We divided the storyboards up amongst the three of us because there are 3 minutes in the song so we all took one minute to draw from the storyboards.

Shot List

This is the more detailed plan for out music video that we made after our general plan of the story. It gives detailed references to shot changes and compositions. These were made so detailed because we knew how we wanted to the music video to look and when filming or storyboarding we didn't want to lost that level of detail or forget something.




The image is less blurry if you click on it.

Rebecca

Filming Problems

We managed to film over the 30th of September and the 1st of October. However, due to camera problems the filming on the first day has turned out faulty and unsuable. So we have to organise to reshoot that day which consisted of most of what we wanted to use in our music video- the band shots. But due to time constraints the first time round we were only able to get access to one of York College's music rooms and it wasn't large enough for the band let alone the camera and space to move. Though we managed it the first time we've decided to film in John's garage the second time. Thanks to further research this setting should be more keeping with the genre and although it is disappointing to find half our footage unusable, it should mean that we are able to make it better.

Rebecca

Our Plan

This is the plan for our music video. The storyboards will be put up later along with the shot list.

Acoustic Intro

Shots of band setting up- from low angle, shallow focus etc. Until real intro. Use unusual angles until song begins properly. In music studio.

Intro Change

Film effect, reel running out.

Real Intro

Band playing, mix of close shots and medium-long shots. Shots of boy walking through York writing with his head down as he walks.

First Verse

Boy and girl bump into each other (writing on paper so he doesn’t see). Shots of them looking at each other mixed with shots of the band. Boyfriend comes over and grabs girl, walking away.

First Chorus

Band shots, reaction shots of girl and boy. Shows boy looking back down at his paper when she’s gone and continues writing.

Second Verse

Sees girl with boyfriend (boy is writing again) but doesn’t go over. Second time he sees girl they are on their own so he goes over. Set in museum gardens.

Interlude

Shots of the boy and the girl hanging out. Boyfriend finds them, yells at boy and drags girl away. Fewer band shots in this section. York city centre. Girl pushes boyfriend away, texts boy to meet up. More band shots, longer.

Last Chorus

Boy sat in field with guitar writing, girl walks up. Plays a song to girl, band shots and close up of singer as he sings into the mic. Close up of boy as he takes off his glasses revealing the singer and the boy to be the same person. Shows pad of paper boy has been writing on and it has the lyrics of the song ‘Running from Lions’ on it.



It has been fleshed out since but this is our essential plan for the video.

Rebecca

Research into the Music Genre

Thinking about the image of the band in the video we'll be making, we have been looking at videos and pictures of All Time Low and other bands.

To find out what other bands fans of All Time Low like, we went on Amazon and looked up what people who bought All Time Low albums were also buying. As we guessed, they were mainly other albums by other pop-punk bands.

We chose 3 of these bands to look into: Mayday Parade, blink-182 and Paramore.

Mayday Parade

Mayday Parade are a band from the same generation as All Time Low and therefore are a good band to look at when considering the modern styles.
In this shot of the band we get a good idea of the style of these bands. Long hair seems to be prominent, but a couple of the band also have shorter, styled hair. All of the band are wearing jeans, some light, some dark. The frontman is wearing plaid shirt, there rest are in t-shirts, with one of them in a v-neck.


blink-182

Recently re-formed pop-punk band blink-182 are one of the main inspirations to the modern scene. They were at their peak in the late 90's and although the styles have changed since then, they all draw their inspiration from here.
This album cover for blink-182's live album, The Mark, Tom & Travis Show, the band is drawn performing live as cartoons. Cartoons are used as there is more artistic freedom to be silly in cartoons than there is in a photograph, and the pop-punk genre has a large amount of silliness and fun attached to it. Although this is only a drawing, the styles are accurate. The drummer usually plays topless and the other two stick to t-shirts. They all usually wear shorts, and skate shoes and have shorter, styled hair. They all have either tattoo's or piercings.

Paramore

This video for That's What You Get for Paramore shows more of the style of bands of this genre. The guys are wearing jeans and casual shirts/t-shirts and hoodys. The video also helps when working out a good ratio of band shots to storyline shots.

Rebecca

Questionnaire analysis

We created a questionnaire designed to find out what our audience wanted to see in our video for All Time Lows Running from Lions.

We asked:

What would you expect a pop-rock music video to be like?

We had 70% of our respondents aged between 16-18 because this is their main market audience.

40% of all respondents were female and 60% were male.

Most of the female respondents expected a pop-rock music video to have band shots and a love story. However 1 respondent expected graveyards, churches and quite dark scenery.

Also we found that males would expect to see band shots and romance.

One of our (male) respondents which was in our 25+ category expected either a dark and serious video or a light and funny video for pop-rock.

A (male) respondent in our 19-25 category would expect a pop-rock video to be set in a church-so again a dark scenery.

A (male) respondent in the 10-15 category would also expect a band singing and performing.

We also asked:

What themes/things do you like to see in music videos?

(E.g. humour, romance, band playing)

60% of the respondents answered, humour, band playing and romance.

Only one of our respondents didn’t want to see band shots and wanted to see romance.

Also one of our respondents wanted the video to build and enhance on the songs performance and also suggested on a live performance.

Because the majority of our respondents wanted to see romance, humour and band shots we decided to go with this idea as a base for our video. We tried making the ‘geeky’ boy quite humorous by having him walking down the street and trip up as his opening shot to show he is the ‘geeky’ one as well as his side swept hair and glasses.

We also had band shots in a band studio which made it look much more professional. We used shot reverse shots to go between the band shots and the separate story.

Rebecca