A2 Evaluation

Our brief for our production was to create a music video along side with two ancillary tasks of a CD cover and a magazine poster. For our music video we decided to use the song ‘We Speak No Americano’ by Yolande Be Cool & DCUP because it’s a well known popular tune that is fun and lively. The video is simple and comical with its editing techniques from which we were influenced from. We’ve created a music video about two nerdy tourists having fun and being mischievous as they are touring Windsor’s historic landmarks.

From our research of real media texts of the music video ‘We Speak No Americano’ by Yolande Be Cool & DCUP and Charlie Chaplin’s silent comedy movies we’ve either used, developed or challenged forms and conventions for our media product. For example, we’ve used similar editing techniques from the ‘We Speak No Americano’ video. The original video uses fast paced footage and sepia effects to create an old cinema style. The fast paced footage technique made the overall video look fun and lively as it was in time with the fast upbeat music, so we used this technique to create a comedy theme and to keep the audience interested and entertained. By having the fast paced technique, it created a relationship with the beat of the music. They way the actors ran, walked, behaved and reacted to things always went in time with the repetitive beat of the music which created a funny side in the video. We developed our editing by using split screens and layered footage on top of one another which made our video entertaining and different from the original video. We used the style of visual comedy with no dialogue like the slapstick silent movies of Charlie Chaplin. This is shown in our video where the two immature characters are messing around in a trolley where in the end they fall. This is noticed when the camera falls on its side as from a point of view shot.

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

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

The genre characteristics of both our main product and ancillary texts are quite comical, visually. Comical behaviour is shown in our video by the actions and personality of the actors. For example, the two nerdy tourists become mischievous when messing around with a trolley which eventually falls over this is noticed from a point of view shot when the actors land on the ground with the camera. For our CD cover and magazine poster we have used comical images, taken as we filmed, of the actors in funny poses with Windsor’s historical landmarks.

To add more humour in our video we used repetitive editing techniques of split screens and layering footage on top of another which we then carried on in our ancillary texts of layering our comical images in different angles and placed them randomly like a collage. This made our ancillary texts look fun and interesting to look at.

We tried to construct a comical image that would fit well with the music to keep our target audience interested and entertained. Our ideas came from the original video of ‘We Speak No Americano’ and the slapstick movies of Charlie Chaplin. Both of these real media texts used fast paced editing techniques and jump cuts to flow in time with the upbeat music. They both had an old cinema style feel of the 1920’s as the images were either black or white or the sepia effect was used. The ‘We Speak No Americano’ video’s producers were influenced by the silent movies of Charlie Chaplin, they wanted the video to look authentic and wanted to bring back the era of the 1920’s. We thought we’d carry on these conventions as well, light sepia effect and sped up our footage, however we dressed the actors in more contemporary clothing and filmed in a well known area, Windsor, and used a lot of colour for a contemporary appearance.

The target audience for our music video was people aged between 17-21, the young adults who enjoys listening and watching lively pop videos. we used a simple and easy method to gather information to find out what our target audience would be for our music video. To do this we used a questionnaire which contained 8 questions for our 15 participants to fill out.We used a questionnaire because we knew we could get fast straight answers from our participants. We also used pie charts to show which category was popular in each question. From this we found out that our target audience is the young adult generation who enjoy pop soundtracks. For our production, we needed to find out what people mostly enjoyed hearing and seeing on a music video. For our research we wanted to find out what favourite genre of music they like. The categories for this question was pop, rock, drum and bass, dubstep, rap, hip-hop or other. Finding out the genre was important as we needed to find out what type of music people enjoy. The questionnaire also asked the age of the participants which were either 17-21, 22-30, 31-40 or over 40. Finding out the age group told us what age would enjoy the music video the most.

Other things we researched into was types of genre of the music video, types of characters that liked to be seen or what type of music video for example either performance based, narrative based or concept based. With all the answers to these questions we received, we could get an overall view of what our target audience would like to see in a music video that would appeal to them. From our research the target audience was young adults aged between 17-21 and the most popular music genre was pop. So to keep our audience interested in our video we made some creative decisions whilst editing our video on Final Cut Express. Our first creative decision was the fast pace of the video. The ‘ We Speak No Americano’ video is a upbeat fast song and so we sped up our footage to go with the beat of the song. Our second creative decision was the characters we used, how we dressed them and they acted in the video. This decision was an important part as it would keep the audience interested from their actions, emotions and expressions. Our third decision was the camera movements and shots. We wanted to use a variety of shots, angles and movements to make our overall video look creative and fun which would go with the upbeat song. Other creative decisions we made whilst editing was the use of split screens. This technique made our video lively from either splitting the screen into twos, threes or fours. In some parts of our video we over lapped some of the footage using the split screen technique which would appeal to the audience.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the editing process of our production we received positive feedback from friends and teachers. As the editing process went on, we took advice from teachers of how to improve our production a more which we took into account. For example the tempo of the music was quite fast and an upbeat song, so as well as speeding up our footage, we were advised to add in more footage to go with the fast beat.

We were also advised to add in split screens to make our overall video look enjoyable to watch which would entertain the audience more.

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

For research and planning the media technologies we used music channels and YouTube from where I embedded links onto my blog. By watching similar media texts to our production, we gained ideas of what camera shots and movements and editing techniques we could use that would be appropriate for our video that would keep our audience entertained. We used a blog to record our research and planning of our production. The blog shows our planning of ideas, the journey of our filming for example the shooting schedule, storyboards, the risks that might take place and also photos of us filming around Windsor.

For the construction of our production we used a Cannon Mini DV digital camera with a tripod to film our music video. The camera we used was practical as we were able to tilt the camera in any direction, angle and set it any position to gain interesting shots of zooming in/out, point of view, close up, mid close up, establishing shot, handheld movements to create a shaky effect or a stable steady shot to capture actions, emotions and expressions of the two actors. An example of a shoot that went well was when we used two different positions of filming the nerdy tourists going up the stairs, the top and bottom, which we then later combined when editing. The overall result was a back and forth shoot of the tourists going up the stairs.

By using ‘ Final Cut Pro’ for our editing software we were able to use the editing techniques of speeding up footage, effects, transitions split screens and adding music to create creative decisions. This advanced software enabled us to create moods and emotions, for example, speeding up our comical footage in time with the upbeat music to add humour to the video. Increasing the pace of the footage was very effective as the video looks fun and lively to watch. Final Cut Pro had a lot of effects to experiment with like black and white and sepia to create a historic mood as the video was filmed in the historic landmarks of Windsor. We used the sepia effect to follow the conventions of the 1920’s movies of Charlie Chaplin and the original music video of We Speak No Americano. To develop our music video we split the screens up into two to four screens and also layered our footage on top of one another. This technique was quite effective as its quite enjoyable to watch the footage in different ways. We also rotated our footage and cut and jumbled up footage to the beat of the song We also used the Photoshop software to create our ancillary texts of a CD cover and a magazine poster. We wanted to carry on the theme of layering footage which is shown in the video but instead layering our comical images, taken as we filmed, of the two tourists in Windsor historic landmarks to create a collage appearance. We used bold writing in a brush script font in black on the CD cover to make it clear and standout.