Evaluation

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

Our video follows the conventions of metal music videos pretty well. It is very fast paced
and energetic like most other heavy metal music videos. There is always some sort of
movement happening on screen whether it comes from the band moving around or the
camera moving. This really helps to keep it looking lively and engage the audience. The
performance shots are very predominant in the video and are shown more than the
narrative shots, again this is a
very typical feature of a metal
music video. One set of
performance shots were filmed
in a garden at night. This made it
look really creeping and quite
eerie. The whole clothes the
band was wearing were quite
dark and had skulls on. Even the
plot of the narrative was quite
dark and morbid. This fits the
whole persona of the metal
genre and is very stereotypical
to be shown in the music videos.
All the editing is cut to the beat and develops with the music which again fits the
conventions of music videos as well as keeping continuity. The narrative in a lot of rock and
metal music videos often crosses over to the performance shots and you get both in one
scene. This is usually done by either the characters in the narrative are in some performance
shots or one of the band members is
acting part of the narrative. We
chose to keep them completely
separate and not have any band
members in the narrative. This
means we could focus on keeping
the performance shots really dark
and aggressive and still have the
narrative shots being believable and
realistic. We made a big contrast
between the two by lightening up the narrative shots. As you can see they are a lot brighter
than the performance shots.

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

The Digipack and the magazine advert

work well with the main video. They
both have similar styles and looks. The
Digipack is very black and dark with
blood splatters on it. This is very
similar to the darkness and the
aggressiveness of the video. The
record label logo, credits and barcode at
the bottom of the back cover really
make it look authentic and realistic.

This really helps the whole product to be believable.

After looking at other similar bands album covers we
decided to go for a more cartoon theme rather than
having a picture of the band on the cover. This is very
conventional of metal bands which also helped in making
the Digipack more realistic. For the magazine advert we
took a picture of the band and put it on top of the blood
background we used for all the album covers. This
ensured continuity between all the products and helps
people to recognise that it is the same band. All in all I
think the products worked really well together and they
all have similar styles and all contain the forsaken soul’s
logo.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback was really helpful before and after

making the video. The questionnaires were useful but
mainly just reinforced what we expected to see. There
were some surprise results though, for example most
people found out about new albums in magazines. I
thought it would have evolved to the internet in today’s
upgrading technical society but apparently there’s still
nothing like a magazine! The rough cut was a very helpful thing to do. The comments were
very positive so we knew what we were doing was believable and looked good. We did take
some helpful points away though like making sure we kept the intensity and the in your face
editing going throughout the whole song. This took a long time to do but in the end we
finished with a really good looking video. The feedback was also helpful we had finished the
video as we needed to make sure people could understand the narrative and they could so
there were no worries there.

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

We used tons of technology in our project. During the first few stages we were using the
blog and various websites to let us upload things to it, for example slide.com. This enabled
us to upload pictures onto the website and it made an embeddable montage of them for us
to put on our blog. Scribd.com was also a very useful website as it allowed us to upload
documents onto the blog which was a big help as it saved us having to format things on the
blog and is much clearer than a screenshot. Scanners were useful in uploading our original
ideas and plans. When we started filming
we used cameras, lights, tripods, strobe
lights. These all helped get the right effect,
especially the lights. In the studio we used
coloured gels to get some really nice
lighting and in the garden they were
essential in stopping the footage from being
grainy. The strobe light was definitely our
centre piece though. Without this it would
be very difficult to make the video so in
your face for the solo without just copying
what we were already doing for the beginning of the track. Obviously the editing software
was essential in creating the video as well as all the effects we had on offer. The image mask
was used quite a lot along with the earthquake. The earthquake just shook the footage
which was especially useful on some of the stiller shots as it kept a sense of movement
going throughout the whole video. The image mask made everything look a lot darker which
really helps the metal music video persona. It also enabled us to layer multiple shots on top
of each other which created a really nice disorientating and insanity effect. Photoshop was
an essential tool in the creation of the Digipack as it enabled us to manipulate images and
create backgrounds with tools such as the rubber, magic wand and custom brushes. Our job
would’ve been a lot harder without the custom brushes.
Overall I am really pleased with the project and the video looks very good. After many hours
slaving away at a computer in the editing suite we ended up with a product that really fits
the genre well and looks visually stunning.