Evaluation Question 2

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

The themes used within our main product and ancillary texts link together directly from the continued use of similar colours and images. The band members are seen wearing the same costumes in the digipak images as in the video, this is a motif drawn from the bands stage costumes.

The most prominent aspect that links the music video, digipak and magazine advert is that the all include the image of the back of the straight jacket with 'I'm A Freak' cut into it. This is an iconic image that will be easily recognisable. It is the cover of the digipak so it makes sense that we would use this as the main aspect of the magazine advert as well. This visual is also the final shot of the music video meaning that the digipak and advert will be recognised from the video.

We decided that we would use the image of the lead singer (and only member who's face is shown in the video) holding the lens of the camera within the digipak. This is also another shot that is seen within the music video. The main reasoning behind wanting to use this image in the digipak is because in the image that shows the full band, you can only see his back, so this way the audience is able to see the band as a whole. The image of the band also allows the audience to connect the band members to the video even though they don't see their faces in the video. Since the bassist is wearing the same mask in the image as is seen in the backing vocal shots of music video.

The font used in the track listing is the same as the font that is used for the information on the magazine advert, the font used for the band name is the same every time is has been used to show consistency. We chose to use a different font for the information and tracklisting to the band name because we found that it was more legible for the areas with more text.

The filters used over the photos on the digipak and magazine advert give a similar effect to the 'old world' filter that we used in our music video. This allows the colours to be consistent throughout. We had to use a different location for filming the music video to that of the promotional images as we were unable to safely get the band and equipment inside. We didn't want to waste the photos as we were really happy with how they turned out so decided that they would be used within the digipak instead.


Digipak Design

CD Print Design

Magazine Advert


Evaluation Question 1

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

When creating our media product, we researched into the generic conventions used in real media texts from the same genre. This gave us a much greater understanding of what would be stereotypical for the audience to see within our product.

Our media product follows the generic conventions of our chosen genre from the way that we shot the footage to the themes used throughout the video and also included in our digipak and poster design.

We were inspired by the video for 'Asylum' by Disturbed as the themes used within this video are very similar to the initial thoughts that our chosen song gave us in relation to the music video. We felt that the motifs used within the video portrayed a very similar atmosphere to that by our chosen song.

We also noticed whilst analysing this and other videos in the metal genre was that they are often quite dark in colour and mainly use white light to give a colder feel.
Another generic convention of metal/rock music videos is that they use fast paced editing to give a chaotic feel.

These are some comparisons of shots taken from our music video and shots taken for existing real media texts.

 

From researching into the metal genre, we noticed that it is often much less about how the band members look than is seen in other genres such as pop. This is shown in a very literal sense in nu-metal band Slipknot's video for 'Before I Forget'. The use of very interesting camera angles means that even though you never see a full profile or head shot of the members, the video is still engaging to the audience. We took inspiration from this in our own music video by never showing the band members in the performance shots, the attention is entirely placed onto their instruments.

Below are some comparisons of performance shots from the video 'Before I Forget' and our own music video.

Another music video that followed a similar theme to ours through both lyrics and visuals is Avenged Sevenfold's 'Nightmare'. This video was a perfect example of how we wanted to combine a strong narrative with performance shots. This is also a convention that is commonly used within the metal genre. Fast paced editing that includes links between the music and visuals create a very effective atmosphere in a video and is used in most metal videos and we felt that this was the most important convention for us to follow when creating our music video product.

There were only a few actual shots that have been used as comparison against our own from this video, but the others were used as inspiration.

Music Video Final Cut