A2 Advanced Portfolio - Evaluation

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

The use of conventions started with our research as we did a lot of research into the drum and bass genre. We wanted to understand how the already established conventions of drum and bass can be applied to the mainstream music market. Looking into successful drum and bass artists such as Aphex Twin, Prodigy and Sub Focus, we were able to acknowledge what was apparent in all of them that enabled them to appeal to their target market. From the music videos themselves we saw consistent use of fast cuts and edits, also from their product design we saw a strong, definitive use of colour. After concluding our research we took these already established conventions and applied them to the construction of our product, this enabled us to gain a stronger appeal to our target audience of 18-35.
As well as using already established conventions from within the drum and bass market, we were also keen to develop the typical understanding of a music video. Music videos are a tool to express the story within or behind a music track and often express a strong and clear narrative. We wanted to express this idea of telling a story but aimed to extend it further to make it a more specific, symbolic portrayal of narrative. Thus through the use of Alec's script we were able to construct semiotic representations of class, society and age; this in itself gave the video an abstract look and theme.

Our music video also challenged typical conventions when constructing a music video. The typical music video relies relatively heavily on the interpretation of the song's lyrics; this is seen throughout the music industry from all manners of genres, from Indie to pop, Classic Rock to R&B, and even the more popular drum and bass artists such as the Prodigy. The track that we chose to use, however, has no lyrics at all; thus forcing us to derive meaning from something other than lyrics. So our initial ideas for the music video all stemmed from the title of the track 'Mainline'. This word resonates with words such as mainstream and control; the line in which everyone is made to follow. From this we were all able to get a foundation for what we wanted the content of our video to consist of and gave Alec a strong basis to construct a script. Though it would seem that having a track with no lyrics would be a con when constructing a music video, it was in actual fact one of the key reasons why we chose the track in the first place. The lack of lyrics allowed us more creative freedom in our interpretation of the song and didn't limit us to the clichéd conventions seen in other genre's music videos such as love songs.
We tried to include postmodern theme within our video not only in its narrative by using strong symbolic representations, but also in the video's overall look. We wanted to draw a comparison by juxtaposing the use of strong saturated colour alongside the grainy sepia look seen in early cinema. Through its postmodernity the video becomes very abstract and challenges typical conventions of story telling which matched our initial intentions.

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



The combination of our music video with our ancillary products was an important issue with us. As we have such a specific theme in our video we wanted to keep the theme and style consistent throughout. We therefore constructed our ancillary texts after the completion of the video and actually used the video in order to create the CD/DVD cover as well as the magazine advert. For our ancillary texts we decided to actually take a still from our video to become the centre point in the design. Our covers and advert display a still of the villain within a circle, we then edited the image; turning it into solid shapes of black and white. The magazine advert we approached slightly differently, we wanted the ad to show a little bit more of the theme and ideas behind the video itself. To do this we took the same colour scheme from the video and applied it to our design. Also we tinted the edges of the advert to mimic the colour of the old style film. All this is done to great effect as the repetition of the same images raises enigma codes that provoke curiosity, along with the abstract use of colour.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We learnt a lot from our audience feedback from very early on, at every stage of our production we were keen to get as much input from our perspective audience as possible. We posted our video on YouTube in its various stages in order to find what needed be tweaked or changed. The video on a whole was met with a lot of positive feedback, not only from friends and family but also by complete strangers. A few people however did make comment on a few aspects of our video, the most frequent of which was the choice of colour; we initially had used a strong sandy yellow colour but some people didn't feel that it fitted with the effect we wanted to achieve. Also due to the theme of the video being intentionally abstract and postmodern, some people struggled to understand it, however were still able to enjoy it merely on an aesthetic level.
A few people did comment on the choice of song, however we put this largely down to the fact that comparatively few people are fans of the drum and bass genre.
We also posted a series of polls and questionnaires on Facebook in order to help us construct our ancillary texts, helping us to make decisions such as colour choices.
The feedback we got was a key component in helping us reach the final cut of our video and was an influential tool throughout.

4. How did you use new media technologies in construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In terms of study, the Internet became a vital method of research. We researched a lot into the drum and bass genre and, through the use of YouTube, studied a series of video examples in order to gage the typical conventions of the genre. Also through this site we were able to research tutorials on how to make a snorricam which we were keen to include in our video.
Sites like MySpace gave us an idea of the presentation and advertising of a music artist and were able to research music magazines from their own homepages.
Our blogs were a central piece of technology throughout all the stages of our coursework. We were able to use them to aid research, help plan and assemble our ancillary texts and receive feedback to aid us in our evaluation.
Social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook also helped at various stages of our coursework, Facebook especially. Through Facebook we were able to set up poles, post various stages of our video and immediately gain feedback.
We used other technologies to create our music video; we had access to two HD cameras, with a series of lenses such as a Fish Eye lense. We also had the use of two laptops with Final Cut Pro in order to compose and edit our video.