Evaluation

Doing the music video was a good experience for me, allowing me to practice skills with the video cameras, editing software and other computer software. I had never used most of the things we used in the process of this video so admittedly I found it a bit tricky at the start, using things like Final Cut Pro but I've progressed quickly allowing me to feel more confident in using the software. Using the other computer software like InDesign and Photoshop I feel has improved my presentation overall and made me care more about the little details in design. What the whole experience has taught me is about how much effort goes into these sort of things. Even for a three minute video that amount of planning that is necessary is astonishing for someone who had no experience in this sort of thing 6 months ago but I can now see why these things take so long. Also the amount that can go wrong is ridiculous and it does get stressful but it was a good feeling after I had finished to see what months of toil has come out with.

As my video is based on Paranormal Activity, which is one of the most successful horror films ever, with one of the lowest budgets out of any film does mean we have challenged the typical music video convention by having a film with a low budget. Also by having a music video that has its own genre in a film sense not just musically does challenge the way people will view music videos, showing that they are not just to promote a band musically but also an opportunity to show how music can be directly linked with other genres of film to create something that works really well together. The fact that the band are in the video is almost essential when it comes to indie-rock bands, as with other bands such as Biffy Clyro or Artic Monkeys there hasn't been a single music video released by them that hasn't got the band in it so in this sense we are using traditional media conventions for our genre but this only helps to promote the band themselves.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8hUVBlvod8vOTI1NzI3ZmMtZjkwMi00ZjBlLWIwM2YtNWJiMTgzNTU2NTli&hl=en

When I created a digi-pack and advert I looked at artists of a similar genre for inspiration for designing my own. I took what I believe to be the positive aspects from them and used them to my advantage creating a striking advert that contains all the necessary information that any advert needs to. I also managed to create them in a way that they can be linked in with the music video as well, creating an intertextuality that will only benefit the bond between the video and the promotional packages. For example with the Biffy Clyro advert I analysed, I saw that using the album cover on the advert and by having as little writing as possible creates something artistic and straight to the point. I used this information and put my digi-pack cover on my advert and only wrote as short as sentences as I could. The Foo Fighters advert showed me the importance of having a brand logo and a bold title. This assisted me by having the same "The Montagues" title font on both my digi-pack and advert creating a further link between them and having the band name as striking and more obvious than anything else on the page will make it easier to remember the bands name as that would be the thing you would have looked at most. With all my ancillary texts I used dull colours with bright whites on top of them to give it both a feeling of eeriness and then have the text shine above like The Montagues music does. The narrative parts of the music video are shot in relatively low light to give the same dull look visually making a coherent package throughout the main product and promotional pack.

The film cameras we used were a step above the traditional household video camera and gave you complete control over the footage you were taking allowing you to bring things in and out of focus, adjust the white balance etc. Even after you filmed you can still pretty much change the visual experience of your footage by using Final Cut Pro on the Apple Macs. Without Final Cut Pro I would not been able to do any of the visual effects and editing tricks that would have been my video feel as though there was a haunting going on. Using Photoshop to edit my photos to give an eerie and mysterious look was equally important coupled with InDesign it made it easy and simple to get the effects I wanted to have on my advert and digi-pack. Before doing media A2 I had no understanding over to change the visual colours on Photoshop, what white balance was on cameras or any of the editing stuff on Final Cut Pro. Even things like Facebook to get feedback from people easily and Google to quickly search for adverts and Digi-packs from artists of a similar genre.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8hUVBlvod8vOWQyMGRkY2EtMzExYy00ODk1LWI5ODgtYjEzNjU2MWJhNWIy&hl=en