last piece media

Evaluation

Joshua Welbelove

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

Question one


  The genre is “geek rock” which Johnathan Coulton often uses for his songs, this means that the song lyrics reflect the “geek” theme involving zombies and office workers popping pills. This is shown further by tracks named “our bodies, ourselves, our cybernetic arms”,”a laptop like you” and “code monkey”.


  One of the characteristics of “geek rock” is a lot of performance within the music video. Johnathan Coulton also uses a folk genre feel over most of his songs, I choose to show this through Al on a stool which he sits on when doing the performance pieces in the studio.


  The relationship between lyrics and visuals are all illustrative to follow the narrative of the zombie siege whereas the relationship between music and visuals is limited to keeping the melody and the slow tempo represented by a long time between the cuts.

Illustrative visuals and lyric relationship examples

  “Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand” this is were the demands are slipped beneath the door.

  “I’m not a monster tom well technically I am” this is

shown by through the look of thought on Al


  “Got another meeting tom, maybe we could wrap it up” The meeting room was used and we choose to place Al behind a computer with the smart board in the back ground.


  “meanwhile I’ll report back to my colleagues who are chewing on the doors” which is directly shown as the two actors, Al was standing with before hand claw at the doors.


  Within the guild music video “date my avatar” Felica Day is lip synched for the entire video this co-insides with my video however this only fits “geek pop” but not “geek rock” so I took into account that and then looked at 30 seconds to mars “from yesterday” that I followed with cuts to them performing on the temple stairs. 30 seconds to mars also cuts to narrative within the Asian temple complex/palace. This is what I decided to use.


  Johnathan Coulton himself does not belong to a record label instead he posts his music onto his own website. Johnathan Coulton has worked as a computer programmer and thus is able to easily sell his own music online. Due to the lack of advertising etc. close ups aren’t important as there is no stress from record companies.


  Johnathan Coulton stays to his core beliefs of alternative music, that its for the music and creative thrill not money. Throughout the music video there is no voyeuristic treatment of the female and male body with little references to the notion of looking.


  There are a few inter-textual references like the actor max in the nazi costume mise-en-scene and myself (josh) dressed in school shirt, with red tie being ginger I made a lose reference to “Shaun of the dead” this image could have been reinforced by a base ball bat and a record which Shaun throws throughout the start of the film “Shaun of the dead”.

Inter-textual reference

Inter textual reference explained

  Al represents Johnathan Coulton so I decided to not give him the costume to make him an inter-reference however I’m dressed as Shaun from “Shaun of the dead” played by Simon Pegg whereas Max is dressed as a nazi zombie such as the ones in “dead snow”, “call of duty” and “Hellboy”.


  Genre characteristics across all three tasks are kept closely performance and artist based alike to other songs and CDs of the “rock” genre this is why on the CD Al as Johnathan Coulton is throughout, on the back and front while max is on the inside cover. Performance like this is shown throughout the music video in the music studio and on the stage during the solo.


  The target audience is catered for by the mise-en-scene, zombie dress has always been targeted and always attracted “geek” also there is no advertising like product placement so the target demographic knows that he produces music for enjoyment and not personal gain in terms of wealth. Al being shown a lot playing guitar throughout the music video also attracts more fans as people would want to see the artist proving his authenticity.

how effective is the combination of main product and ancillary tests?

Question two


  Al represents Johnathan Coulton and he is shown on every piece of the tasks on the CD he is on the back, front and inside cover while max is shown on the inside cover behind the CD. Max and I is less important to the brand and image that Johnathan Coulton upholds however if he were part of a record label the actors/dancers Josh (me) and Max would not be able to make appearances within the tasks.


  This is partly the reason why I choose to only include Al on the poster to the right with a few layers of him to give an artistic shadow effect. I still had to have the CD cover so that buyers and target audiences will know what they are looking for in store and see what they are buying with the release date.


  The zombie image has always been key to gaining access to the target audience/demographic as many of them will have used other media like video games, films and website coverage. The theme of the song is zombies so that “unlocks” the potential to use this market place.


  The CD covers and poster tasks used the same programmes to be produced, I used macromedia fireworks to add the effects like shadow, outer bevel and glow.


  The demographics of Johnathan Coulton’s primary audience is “geeks” this is due to the themes and underlying narratives of all his songs. I choose to accommodate the audience by keeping all the tasks clean of voyeurism of women and men something that you’d expect of a rap CD however I have included shots of Al that would please the demographic of rock as they look for authenticity and promote Johnathan Coulton’s music and brand.

What have you learned form your audience feedback?

Question three

What have you learned from audience feedback?

  I have learnt a great deal from audience feedback. At the start if the project I asked what the target demographic and psycho graphics what they thought of the story boards. The audience agreed that the video should be split into part main sections using performance and illustrative film to follow the narrative of the song.


  I asked who the audience thought would be good for the roles and got these results. Max was swiftly nominated as he attends acting lessons and is handy with filming even well known for being creative. Next was Hannah whom also attends acting lessons and after a closer look had some mise-en-scene to use so that she would make an inter textual reference to milla jovovich in the film “resident evil”.


  On the other hand Hannah would be more awkward to coordinate, being at a different school and generally quite busy with events. I had two Alexs wanting to be in the film (Alex Cook and Alex Preston) upon seeing the plans however due to height I did not choose Alex Cook as he’d dwarf any one on shot nor Alex Preston as I knew that he hadn’t heard the song before and didn’t match the look of Johnathan Coulton.


  I soon choose my three actors as Al, I’d been told had listened to Johnathan Coulton before and has a lot of free time which was perfect for representing the artist as the audience and I could see the same body build shared by both. Then I choose Max as he himself had produced his own films and acted while living close enough so that I could see him freely and I was informed that he is a very reliable character.


  Finally I choose to include myself in the acting as people debated if in costume I looked like Simon Pegg (I before told them about inter textual references). I then realised that with a bit of work I could become Simon Pegg form “shaun of the dead” quite easily, Due to this choice I took on Chris as a camera man after asking peoples advice on the choice. They gave me the evidence I needed saying that he had gone on filming trips before posting them onto youtube with a group of friends and that he easily understood the types of shots when I questioned him for advice.


  When looking at the storyboards a few more of the technological members of my audience questioned the placement of an animated bat (which I later took out completely). The members simply said it feels out of place and when it is played it will be so odd in comparison with the rest of the film that it simply doesn’t deserve being put in.

  Others notified me that shooting the security peep hole shot would be very difficult to edit and produce so I looked into it searching the web for the effect and asking my parents friend that is often doing professional videos about the effect. The result was that only high end programmes would be able to do this to the standard I had in mind and buying such a programme would be costly so I simply changed my shot plan to take the shot from the open door on set.



  I went off to shoot my first draft after which I showed it to my actors and target audience who had a few points. The audience said the lip synching was a touch off from Al and that he needed to really emphasise the lyrics. So when it came to re-shooting I could remind Al so that each shot was better linked to the music that was playing.


  Others stated that the solo was missing, I took the solo out for the first draft as it made it clearer too the actors and allowed us to combat time constraints within the team. Many of the audience told me that the solo was there favourite part and that if I used it lip synching would be easier to sort out, as in the editing stages removal of the solo lead to issues with lip synching I instantly saw that I should attempt to film a solo to test the reaction of the audience whom told me that it was a vast improvement when the old and new videos were shown together.


  Peoples opinions generally want more excitement on screen with more pace, I told the audience that the shot transitions had been slow to match the slow melodic tempo of the song. The audience agreed with the theory but made it clear that the rate of cuts were too slow so I had to take note to edit again some stages that they had highlighted for example the “meeting” scene.

How did I use Media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Question four


  I used macromedia fireworks extensively while making the CD covers and my poster. Macromedia fireworks is a very powerful tool, it has many available choices for editing like inserting shadows bevels (an aura effect) and glows etc. the list is near endless dependant of how much you are willing to pay. All the effects also had a custom aspect to then, allowing the user to change the colours fonts even being able to fill the text with patterns like glass bubble which I used on my CD covers.


  As you can see the words are full with the glass bubble effect with glows added and sharpened.


  The glow effect has been added to both the text on the CD cover and the title on the poster. These have been sharpened too fireworks is an awesome tool that allowed me to gain quick easy access to effects and good editing software that allowed me to make professionals looking tasks by simply adding blur effect and the brilliant layer means that should anything needs quick editing I can select the section and un-effect all the other layers by locking them so it saves the aspects of the other work.

Macromedia Fireworks


  I also used final cut to cut and edit the music video so that it ran smoothly. We could take multiple takes which then are easily cut into place. Final cut express is good as it is a relatively low cost editing software and is highly effective. School computers and personal one I used have final cut which meant that I could continue work steadily through the project.


  I used it while re-filming several times, when all the film was cut in the right places I could then add music which I used. A simple drag and drop swiftly got myself on my way to fitting the music to the film. For this I used the cut/razor tool so it was a real must have piece of software. On the second time round of filming saving everything to an external hard drive and USP cards gave me ease of access so I could open the file up and work anywhere.


  This time the solo had been and gone, editing it was a little harder. I had to delete the pre edited music and move the film sections apart to allow the solo which I edited separately to sit in the centre of the other song pieces. Then I rendered it and listened to the new area. That is one weakness of the final cut software Is that in any changes mean you must wait for it to render for 1-5 minutes which is quite time consuming.


  I added effects putting a “slug” in for the in-film title screen. The slug then had to be edited to a more suiting zombie text effect that shook the text this took some time however choosing so a fair amount of time was spent like a child in a sweet shop choosing the best effect.


  I used the internet with fibre optic wires to gain near unlimited access to information on the web watching videos of the same genre on youtube while being able to read back ground information like where the videos where shot who acted within them and who created the videos. The internet and using phones were used to communicate with the actors in my own video as well via face book and messenger I could tell my actors what they needed when and where which made life a little easier to organise.


  For actual filming I used a HD camera over a standard camera because HD gives a better quality and is less grainy than the standard. A tripod was used so that the camera man didn’t need steady hands which helped me a lot as I could set the angle of the camera myself and tell my camera man Chris what I wanted for example the shot where we follow Al’s leg up would be almost impossible to shoot without seriously steady hands.


  I created a blog, so that if any audience members were interested and had idea they could easily communicate them to me. The blog allowed me to show my progress and order my work which makes editing and referencing to previous ideas a lot simpler. Being able to find saved files is much more effective if there organised on a blog. Using a blog allowed people to discuss in comment boxes with other audience members who often provide new, complex ways of looking at the posts as two minds have debated over good and bad points.

New technology: Blogs

last piece media

Documents

media productuse

guild music video date

illustrative visuals

cd al asjohnathan coulton

textual referenceexplained

entire video

lyricrelationship examples

geek theme