Evaluation Question 4

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



We were able to use a much more advanced array of technologies in constructing our Media coursework this year which enhance our footage taken and especially the editing process both for the video and advert and the digipak.


We used the apple editing programme Final Cut which really provided us with a far superior standard of editing software than on just Imovie, and this made the final product look professional and neater, as this programme is used in Hollywood for some very big blockbusters movies, notably 'Brokeback Mountain' directed by Ang Lee. The software allows for more indepth and intense editing of footage shot by shot as well as sophisticated transitions as well as overlaying footage and changing gradients and the colour of footage. It is a far more complex piece of software than Imovie and so took a while for us to gain a grasp of how to use it though once able to we really got to work with it! We initially used Imovie as we were more comfortable with it original then latterly moved the project into Final Cut.
Finally we used IDVD to burn our music video onto a disk, we were happy to use this programme as we used it when burning our A2 coursework onto DVD, we were able to create a nice DVD menu with the Australian flag appearing in the windscreen and made it look like it was the windscreen of a car driving past a country lane, travelling - hitchhiking concept!

The biggest advancement of technology used for our coursework in my view was using the HD cameras- the footage taken with these was an unbelievable difference from the basic video camera's we used in our AS coursework. The shots had a wider image due to the wider frame of the lense and so we could take fantastic long shots. Also there was no need for video casette tapes as all the footage was digitally stored on an SD in the camera, this saved money and time when both filming/setting up and uploading the footage to the MAC's as it also uploaded the footage in 'real time'. The batteries on the HD cameras also seemed to last a while longer than those of the basic cameras and charging these was just as easy to do, not that we really needed to as it did not really run down as quickly!
Initially we did not use a tripod, though we learnt from this mistake as the footage taken when using the tripod looked suuperb and we were very happy that we were able to re-take all the 'shaky footage' as we would have lost a great deal of marks for this as it looked amateur and made us look incompetant behind the lense.

The internet was a fantastic source of information in the researching stage of our coursework and also in getting some publicity and our music video viewed by a much wider audience through sites and networks such as Youtube and Facebook, and also gaining feedback on video throughout all the stages of making it, including the initial idea, changes to that, location scouting, rough cuts of the video and audience feedback.
We were able to embed these onto our blog's very easily for all to see, concisely and neatly.

Websites were helpful in not only researching our band but a wide array of music video's and genre, including - http://www.remembertheeighties.com/
 As this us great insight to all 1980's music and bands as well as providing links to other good sites that were more of a narrow focus. It also included Archive footage and any recent news, such as rebranding which was useful to us in our coursework project and upcoming gig's and concerts.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?s




Overall the feedback we received was through Voxpop, where we asked a wide range of questions about genre and what our primary target audiences understanding of 80's music, to try and discover if it would be possible to rebrand' Men At Work' to appeal to a youth asdience. The Voxpop and Facebook response extremely beneficial it helped us to discover there was scope to sell to a 'youth' audience for a initial song preformed and released in the 80's.


The response from Facebook, showed a general group of 17- 18 and 30+ had a positive response the video, enjoying the comical spin, and does give us general criticises about casting and details to change.

Overall the feedback we received through Voxpop, where we asked a wide range of questions about genre and what our primary target audiences understanding of 80's music, to try and discover if it would be possible to rebrand' Men At Work' to appeal to a youth audience. The Voxpop and Facebook response extremely beneficial it helped us to discover there was scope to sell to a 'youth' audience for a initial song preformed and released in the 80's.

The response from Facebook, showed a general group of 17- 18 and 30+ had a positive response the video, enjoying the comical spin, and does give us general criticises about casting and details to change.

We found through our target audience video. That teenagers aged between 16 - 18 reacted to the positively, they could recognize the song from recent media coverage, showed in a earlier post e.g a recent scrubs episode. This overall means the song was able to be re-branded to appeal to a youth audience, but it needed it to be comical.
Initially however we found hard to distinguish if people found the video comical because of the narrative and style of the product or whether it was because a lot of the audience knew members of the cast and were laughing along.
Luckily though this was resolved as I managed to show the video to lot's of people who didn't know any cast members including myself and gained feedback that it was purely the expression, energy and overall style of the music video that was enjoyable and funny, and especially 'quirky'.

Evaluation Question 2

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



Our ancillary texts and main product I believe compliment each other quite nicely, as both have the underlying theme of the Australian traveller, we purposefully put the koala bear on the mag ad as we felt this was the one thing if any that people would take away from our video as it was like a leit-motif or mascot/recurring theme. As well as using the road sign again a great signifier used in both texts.

As we were also re-branding the song we had to take into account the connection between original 'Men at Work' videos and their adverts and posters as well as single/album covers.
We tried to use nice bright colours in the advert as there is plenty used in the video and most of the footage was taken on sunny days so the shot for the advert was taken of the moors on a bright day to enhance the grass and landscape, with a road sign with bright yellow colour and almost a nice cartoon style to it.

Also both the advert and the video are taken in similar locations as it is meant to be a juxtaposition and so the locations are surburban yorkshire again signifying the backpacker style to the whole concept.

Evaluation Question 1

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


The three types of music video are Performance, Narrative and Concept.

5 Codes and Conventions;

•  Editing
• Continuity
• Cut-to-the-beat
• Mise-en-scene
• Diegetic intro's/endings

Our Mag Ad is similar to a teaser advertisement almost, as it is purely the name of the band and song and says coming soon - no dates, so it works well alone, with a quirky style of poster which is in keeping with the rest of the products.

It captures you as you look at it, something with good use of colours and interesting to look at, as well as keeping within the genre. So nice big 'funky' text and almost a cartoon style to it, whilst not giving too much away.

In our music video we tried to keep the main conventions of 1980's music video's not just within the 'New Wave' genre but also pop and even reggae to an extent as these influence the  'New Wave' genre.
Due to the style of our editing as kept it fast paced as well as the use of rewinds and cut to the beat in our opening scene, as well as the use of tints and effects to add to an almost nostalgic/psychedelic feel especially when we did the almost instrumental interludes, here we also tried to add an unusual quirky feel to it as we were incorporating performance aspects to the video even though the instruments seen were not the ones creating the sounds as we had a didgeridoo being played as flute music played.

Also the narrative/performance concept of the lead singer breaking the fourth wall and creates speculation over whether it is narrative or concept as he sings to the camera whilst the story plays on, like a narrator style to the video, like seen in many 'Pet Shop Boys' videos. Though the main influence of the video is of course the music videos of 'Men at Work' not so much the original 'Down Under' music video as we wanted to make our video unique and with a fresh mind but we looked at many other songs like 'Be Good Jonny' and 'Who Can it Be' as these all combined the three forms of music video with narrative and performance strongly overlapping whilst also concept thrown in though arguably this could be narrative too and metaphorical/alternative interpretations of the lyricsso there is negotiated reading within the original videos and as well as ours.

Aspects of our video also made it feel a home video in parts due to the shakey camera work as well as the sepia tone we added on at certain parts which helped signify the idea of a journey of an Australian back packer, some of the influence of this came from the 'Sweet Child O' Mine' video by 'Guns N' Roses'.
Our mise-en-scene was full of a variety of locations, props and costume, which were large signifiers to our production as we included stereotypes and cultural symbols of Australian people and ways of life - road signs, koala bears, etc.

The koala used in our video almost worked as a motif as it was a constant feature within the production as it followed the story and characters throughout, in many ways this was like our mascot and influence by the Compare the Meerkat advert as that gain so much success and is incredibly memorable to it's audience and is found amusing by a wide age group.

Our video both began and ended with the song we did not add in a digetic intro/ending like that in 'Welcome to the Jungle' or 'You Were Always on My Mind' as we like the way that the action began with the drum beat and the beginning of the song and slowly faded out towards the end, so it began fun and fast paced excitement and became calmer towards the end and had a nice slow ending of our Koala motif wandering out of frame though we did use it to break the fourth wall by having the bear looking into the camera lense.

Final Cut: Music Video

Final Ancillary: Mag Ad

Final Ancillary: Digipak

Ancillary Draft: Mag Ad

There are many forms of advertising bands most commonly with magazine ads in magazines such as; NME, MOJO, Rolling Stones, Q, Kerrang and Billboard. Each focusing on one or more genre.

George and myself want to use a magazine advertisement.

How do bands promote themselves?

More often or not the band will have a myspace page, where fans can leave comments to receive feedback.
E.G http://www.myspace.com/menatwork

Magazine Adverts

Madonna - Celebration.

The advert for this is done in a pop art style, and clearly influenced by Andy Warhol's Marilyn prints. Using a nice vibrant use of colours that would appeal to a wide audience as it is an attractive print and it is not offensive or too suggestive. It also links back to her 1985 music video of 'Material Girl' where she portrayed Marilyn Monroe in her 'Diamonds are a girl's best friend' style so there is a strong link between those two. The print was designed by Mr. Brainwash, 2009.

Gorillaz - Escape to Plastic Island Tour

This advert for Gorillaz has been done in a cartoon/comic style whilst incorporating photographs of band members in it almost to look like they are cardboard cut outs. This seems that it will appeal it's target audience of young adults/teenagers therefore a youth audience and possibly there is even scope for the "tweenager" age group as well. The almost gothic comic book style comes across with the use of colours the blood red of the band name with the dark blues and and blacks in the background, almost like a DC Batman comic.

All  three of these magazines advertisements do all have similarities, despite them being from all different genres and magazines.

The majority of adverts have one main large photograph of the band or artist,

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• A large variety of fonts and sizes to attract the readers attention.  
• Bright colors
• Album name 
• Magazine ratings
• Where the album is available for purchase 
• The artist or some form of representation of the band or singer.
• Often has the same theme as the album and digipak. 

In our magazine advert we wanted to capture the two main features of our music video, the strong Australian stereotype and icons of road signs, didgeridoo's, etc. contrasted with England, especially the North of England and the suburban setting of Ilkley. 

We have the kangaroo road sign turned upside down as a quirky signifier of it being "Down Under", these are our two initial drafts of the mag ad's. The one with the grenadier guard is meant to be a juxtaposition as we have the very British setting of the guard in full attire and that is a strong stereotype and figure of London and the UK so the contrast of the chilled out Australian stereotype through the road sign works nicely. Though I feel the road sign needs to be bigger or instead of having the road sign it could have been quite quirky to have the koala bear climbing about on the street light or perhaps just above the grenadier's head.

The second draft idea we had was of making the road sign, a motif throughout our music video, the central focus of the poster, with the scenic landscape behind the sun shining down. Though this seemed a little too simple for an idea and the text was rather basic, so decided to play around a bit more with the idea and thought about incorporating the koala bear into this ad with it climbing along the rock behind or clutching onto the road sign, as the koala is almost like the central protagonist in many ways following the singers about as they wander.    

Ancillary Draft: Digipak

Call Sheet

Call Sheet 1

Call Sheet 2

Call Sheet 3

Call Sheet 4

Call Sheet 5

Call Sheet 6

Call Sheet 7

Redraft Storyboard

FinalStoryboard1

FinalStoryboard2

New Wave Genre

New Wave was to be the 1980's less threatening alternative to the Punk Rock of the 1970's, such as The Sex Pistols.  Most New Wave music of the 1980's has stayed popular and well known up to present day, so its unique style and influence is still significant, most notably bands like The Police being one of the first white reggae bands are still incredibly popular today as they set a trend in music style and this specific genre.
It was a less roughed edged and less political form of music but lighter and less abrasive influenced by the light hearted feel of 1960's music and 1950's fashion.
Other strongly significant New Wave Bands of the 1980's are The Cars, Culture Club, Cyndi Lauper and The Human League. 

Audience Feedback

I recieved a lot of comments about the video when I posted it on my facebook page including a comment that read

"

OMG, George!!!!!! That is just FANTASTIC! I would definitely give it an A*! Might have known you would choose that song! The whole storyline is brilliant, and I love the Beatles/Monkies-esque feel to it (that's meant to be a compliment, you realise!) Never realised the dangers to Olicanians of all those furry animals around the place. Rob is a star in the making (although not too sure about the exposure shot near the end of the video - he's incorrigible!) Well done, George. (If you ever need any "oldies" for your videos, I would gladly volunteer!!) x"

As well as a variety of other ones, it has certainly appealed to a wide audience as people from 16-50 have throughly enjoyed watching it and said whilst it is funny and uplifting (and quirky) it is slickly produced and has it's own style whilst the inspiration from past bands like quoted above the monkee's/beatles is there, and the feel of an original 1980's men at work video, whilst also having a feel of the 1980's in it, similar to the Pet Shop Boy's video's - e.g. You Were Always on my Mind.



Rough cut 2#

Initial storyboard

InitialStoryboard2

InitialStoryboard2

Rough Cut 1#