Evaluation

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have tried in various ways to gather our audience research. We started off by writing a Questionnaire, then we decided to set up a Facebook group for a new way of gathering information and we also decided to film people telling us their personal views on MUSE (see attached video).
Our feedback was really rather insightful into the different opinions on our band and the extremes and similarities of peoples thoughts and views on Rock music as a whole.

Here are some quotes from our Facebook group:

Ellie Rushtont: Time is running out has an good video
id suggest if ur looking at muse, try out something that builds an atmosphere rather than a literal translation of the lyrics
some of the best music videos are barely linked to the lyrics, the audience make the connection themselves, you just need to create the right atmosphere or environment
this song seems pretty ironic, they dont seem to be 'feeling good' the way they sing it.
Im thinking subvert that and show people going through something tragic???
and slow motion at some point. it always makes stuff look more dramatic and the tempo is perfect in this song.
have a look at 'one last chance' by bloc party. not a massive fan of the song but the videos pretty powerful. Check out the girl who has like a fit in slow mo, pretty atmospheric.

hope this helped some. :)

James Oliver: Ellie makes some good points about music videos in general. This period of Muse's career was, in my opinion, their best. Since then I think they've got a bit self-indulgent, particularly the newest album; they seem to spend too much time trying to be orchestral and strange like late '70s Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody etc.)

Alexandra Ricci-Hart: I really like the cover of feeling good, love the fact that its the only rock cover thats been made. Although I'll always prefer the Michael Buble version. Muse did freshen it up though.


The people we asked in the video responses said the improvements we could make are:
-It could have a stronger story line.
-It could have more bad scenarios in for the characters to face.
-It could have some more humour included in it.
They also said the things they enjoyed most about our video were:
-It was a good story choice with the ironic moments in it.
-The humour as it adds another level to the piece.
-The story line and surreal qualities of the different scenes.

I believe this shows that our video was effective in the sense that people enjoyed the special effects and humour we put in, but, it has also shown that perhaps in some parts it was not as effective for example the story wasn’t coming across as strongly as we had hoped.

We have also had interesting and positive feedback from other Youtube users where our video has been posted.

coolcaz198: I like this, although the title is 'feeling good', the muse version is really quite dark, this "de constructured" atmosphere reflects it with guitar riffs times well to the track.

deadmanwalking2006: I really like this video... It's a bit patchy in places but overall... I like it. It has a light sense of continuity...

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

For the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of our work we listened to the opinions of our fellow students to guide us in the right direction of what they would want to see in a MUSE video or one like it. We also depended heavily on the computers for creating our Blogs and gaining research about our chosen band and genre of music. We also used magazine articles, past and present, to compare and contrast the different approach and lasting effect MUSE has had on the music industry.

Image from Google.

We obviously used cameras and tripods when shooting the video and this proved to be easier then I first thought. I had the privilege of shooting quite a few scenes and this gave me more confidence with using the equipment which I was perhaps slightly lacking in at the beginning.

While we edited and created the digipak we used Adobe Photoshop and Premier. I thought that the editing was easier to do then I first anticipated. The technology was not as complex or worrying as I had thought and I was pleasantly surprised. They all linked in with on another very nicely and showed good examples of convergence.
As a majority of our work was done via a computer this, I believe, is one of the best examples of convergence in all modern day technology.

All of the above helped us communicate our message in different way, as all had very different things to offer. The research into the magazine articles and the opinions from the people we asked in our audience research helped us get a steady grounding about what we wanted to portray in our video and also the articles and research we did on the band helped us gain an understanding of what MUSE videos are all about. The camera equipment helped us capture the essence of our video, the raw ideas and images, to which we added our own spin and took hold of our artistic licence and chopped and changed scenes, and added effects when we thought would be effective. This I believe shows how all of the different media technologies really have helped us come out with, not just our work, but a deeper understanding of creative media as a whole.



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

We used many media forms and conventions in our work, for example, in the editing we decided to use a special effect for a few of Lewis’ scenes as we wanted to keep in with the theme of slightly surreal that MUSE so often use in their videos. We also used black and white and slow motion to create a dramatic effect in the scene were Vicky drops her handbag and her things tumble out of it. This more simple approach, we believe, challenged MUSE’s normal style of extravagant budgets and special effects.
Also for our performance elements we added in a band sequence of someone playing guitar, this is almost always seen in MUSE videos and also videos of other bands in the alternative rock genre. We did not have a full band but we used a location which had graffiti in the background on the walls; this shows the rebellious rock side to MUSE.
We used mise-en-scene effectively with the mobile phone scene when Lewis gets dumped because this shows teenage culture and also it’s a stereotypical teenage thing to do, dump someone by text. Also we wanted to keep it quite natural so we all wore our own everyday clothing and used everyday props, which we bought before filming, like a ball to play catch with; nothing over the top.

Our narrative structure I believe challenges normal ‘Alternative Rock’ videos in the sense that we don’t have an extravagant storyline. We have something which has slight deliberate in continuities in and some special effects but it is, as we intended it to be, a normal day with normal people. This again is were is differs and quite dramatically from many MUSE videos; we don’t have any real obvious surreal qualities in so much as overly ambitious special effects. We wanted to keep it simple and we did, but in a way in which we still kept the mysterious elements (for example in our video the unconnected walking shot), that MUSE so often include.

Our camera angles were originally going to be mainly low angles as we wanted to show a sense of status about our characters after they have smiled and moved on with the scene, but, we found in most cases this was not possible. We also tried to use a variety of distance shots, this is different to to many of the Muse videos as they tend to use a lot of close up shots on the band and characters which we didnt particularly want to do.

The imagery of our product we have tried to keep continual throughout and our theme is nature. For example we have the song ‘Feeling Good’ which is very nature orientated and so we wanted to film in the Museum Gardens to keep this theme of being surrounded by nature.

This then leads us on to our Digipak and Advert. We have designed them both to include trees to again, re-enforce this idea of nature throughout the song. We also picked the film ‘New Moon’ to style it round. Muse is inface the favourite band of the author of the 'Twilight' series and they are featured in the film itself so we thought it a good idea to include this film into our Digipak. This theme we believe is effective but perhaps not challenging to any existing media products as like our Digipak the films advertisements are also rather dark.

However our Digipak is challenging in one way and that's because we do not use a picture of the bands featured on the CD which is really rather unusual. We have meerly used this simple yet effective image to re-enforce the mysterious feel we are aiming for, which also fits in the genre of music on the CD.

I have also compared our magazine advert to one which I found in a KERRANG magazine. One thing which i noticed stood out was the name MUSE and the logo, these play a major part in the advert showing the importance of the band and it also shows them as a selling point. Another the important point is the image of the album. This immediately shows the reader what company is selling.

So as I have pointed out both products use images as a strong selling focus point. The existing product (MUSE’s new album) has the image of the album cover as the background to the advert. Ours on the other hand has the image of the product itself, this I believe does challenge this certain MUSE advert but in a positive way. One significant difference as well is the fact that the existing product could not get any brighter whereas ours uses mysterious, darker colours which is more like MUSE’s first album cover then their latest and this is another reason why I believe it challenges the product.

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

I think the combination of our media video and the ancillary texts the digipak and magazine advert, are rather complement each other somewhat. They both display a slight subdued yet mysterious element about them. This I believe would attract a reader or potential buyer instead of repelling them with some overly busy and rather manic product. The video is show an ordinary day life but with unfortunate bad luck befalling our characters. I also believe that because the pace of the video itself is not manic and the story really takes its time in a subtle way to unfold; this matched the sereneness of the trees on the cover on the digipak which makes it rather more effective.
I believe our target audience were pleased with the outcome when we showed them the video and digipak together for the first time. As i have mentioned in the comments in my previous question. Also because the film is very popular with people of the same as our target audience (teenagers/young adults) I think this would bring people in as well as they would be interested as its linked to the film directly. This shows a form of convergence.