What have we learnt from our audience feedback?

We got pretty similar feedback from the people that watched our video. We picked a few of the video reviews to show on the blog.

1. “I liked the way that I could follow the story easily and understand that the protagonist was heartbroken. Also I liked the contrast between the two versions of the protagonist, the down trodden and the confident one in the suit. I also liked the red effects used on sections of the studio footage.
The only thing I disliked was that part of the lip syncing was out of synch.”

2. “The one thing I liked most about the music video is the way I could follow the story of the protagonist losing his girlfriend and seeing her replace him with someone else. I noticed the slight way the lip syncing was out of synch. Also their could have been more narrative involved in the video and less studio shots of the protagonist.”

3. “I particularly liked the way the protagonist’s pain was shown through the mix of different shots and red effects used. I also liked the contrast of the dark room with a more confident protagonist and the brighter outdoors with a more vulnerable protagonist. I think the narrative story could have been shown more.”

From the feedback above we can see that the story in our video is easy to follow. We can also see that the contrast between the two different versions of the protagonist is easily visible.
Throughout the feedback we noticed that almost everyone recognised that the lip syncing was out of synch in sections of the video. Also some of the feedback told us that we could have included more of the narrative story.

Written by Liam

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

Our final music video for ‘The Killers Mr Brightside’ follows general story of most of ‘The Killers’ videos of the protagonist singing the song about something that has happening in their past.

We used the contrasting parts of the narrative up against the performance which is often used in music videos. Also used in music videos is the way that the story is told by the video as well as the song, this I think we did well with our video as the song is about the heartbreak of a man which we have shown in our video.

During the editing of the video we decided to include effects to improve our video. These are used in music videos to show the emotion of the song and the protagonist. In our video we used the red colour to show the pain in the song and the protagonist.

Our CD cover also followed real music products. The CD covers we researched were often one colour contrasting with another, in ours we used the pink against the black to show the little bit of the protagonist’s happiness in his upsetting life. But we also made sure that the singer is seen so that they can get a bit of fame from the cover. We did all this while keeping the cover appealing.

The magazine advert also shows the singer for fame, but also shows that contrast of colours, but the magazine shows reviews from well known music reviewers. All this is done by real media products.

Written by Liam

Our music video

Evaluation Question

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

The ancillary texts support the main product by attracting audiences with the same or similar features as the main product. For example, both the music video ancillary texts include the protagonist of the video wearing a suit. Obviously this reoccurring theme isn’t by coincidental, and helps establish a clear link between the video and ancillary texts.

For the magazine advert, we decided to stick to the same font as would have been used by The Killers if they were to create it. Although, where The Killers used a silhouette of a woman with a block colour background, we decided that it would be more suitable to include a picture of the protagonist instead, as this is common among pop artists.

The CD cover kept the same image of the protagonist as the magazine cover, although this time incorporated a magenta colour scheme. This was in keep more with the original album cover although instead of a silhouette of a woman on a block background, we used more of a generally black background, hinting at magenta in corners and trough the image of the protagonist. Also, we made the font script like as we felt that the link between this and the glitzy Killers font gave the album a showbiz type feel upon viewing.

The main combination between the main product and ancillary texts is that both involve the protagonist, and both involve him in the suit. Although the narrative to the video doesn’t link to the ancillary texts clearly, the studio work helped give the main product more of a produced feel, which links more obviously to the ancillary texts with block colours, the suit and the microphone that can be viewed on all three.

Written By Sam

Evaluation Question

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

During the planning, research and evaluation stages of our music video we used the apple mac computers to conduct background research into The Killers and also plan our own version of Mr. Brightside, all of our planning, research and evaluations was written into Microsoft word to correct any spelling and punctuation mistakes before being posted on to the blogger website.

During the construction of our music video we used various programmes such as final cut pro and photo shop and the versions we used are only available on apple mac computers, as macs are renowned as being one of the best editing computers available on the market today.

During filming we used a lot of media equipment such as tripods, cameras and memory cards. During filming we used the media studio to film our master shots of the protagonist with artificial dimmed studio lights and 3 master shot cameras so we had a large variation of shots. Even though most of our lighting was artificial some natural lighting was used when filming our narrative story however we did notice a constant problem when using the tripod and small hand held camera as the tripod fixture on the camera tended to be loose so when filming we had to be careful to keep control of the camera.

We used facebook during the evaluation stages of our video as we posted our music video and had people watch it and “like” our video and it also gave people an opportunity a chance to comment and give their opinions on our music video.

Written by Katie Maher