1. A2 Media Evaluation – Michael Bull.

2. Introduction
• Basically, My group and I were set the task of producing a music video a band or artist of our choice. The
video in question had to stick to the codes and conventions which best suited the genre of music, in order
to identify our target audience. By doing this, we had to create a brand identity for our “band” in order
not to alienate our newly acquired target audience. The age of this targeted audience would be about
16/25, so image would be fairly important. This meant we had to have a collaborative style which would
suit the misc-en-scene ; clothing etc.
• We were also presented with the task of providing print based work which would accompany our video.
This consisted of Album artwork; Front, back and inside covers, and a magazine article.
• All of the above tasks were completed equally by members of our group, with each person specialising in
a certain aspect; I helped with the editing of the footage, making sure the music was in sync etc. This, as
well other tasks, such as creating the ancillaries on Photoshop. We really felt that, by involving everyone
in the production through to editing, it would help shape our project, as everyone gets their own
individual input. There were no set roles, just if you had an idea, you pitched in and were allowed to
creatively aid the project.
• (In my PowerPoint, I have featured some embedded YouTube clips, which may not work. I have enclosed the url
for each of the videos, just in case.)

3. This is the permission
letter received from the
Black Kid’s
management/record label,
allowing us to use their
song for our media project.

4. Research and planning
We initially came up with the idea of making the video seem fairly
comical. I believe that we did this through various different methods.
Firstly, the use of the “Guitar Hero” peripherals (Drums, guitar and Decks)
all aid the overall comedy feel. The audience would appreciate this and
possibly find this comical, as it’s a something out of the ordinary.
We gained inspiration from this video by
Smosh.com.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
R_6ItxioUco

5. • The problem was though, how could we portray this sense of fun and humour to our
target audience? Originally we had discussed whether or not to actually try to
intentionally do “silly things”, such as falling over etc. Yet, this idea had a few flaws,
the main point being that the video would look fake and stale, which the audience
would have intentionally picked up on.
• We decided that the best method was just to film us being ourselves, without this
sense of intention. This proved to be very effective in connecting with our audience,
as they could imagine themselves in the performers shoes. This also creates
connotations of the band being regular people, someone who our audience could
connect with.
• In our project, we decided upon featuring James skateboarding. This was to help
demonstrate the above point. Yet, It also helped us to carve a small niche market,
also, as well as our main target audience, who effectively were the general public and
those who listen to “indie”.
• This sub-target audience of ours would be in the same age range as our first
audience, yet their musical tastes would differ slightly. These people would be more
inclined to listen to “pop-punk”. Pop punk is effectively punk rock, yet sung with
similar vocal styles to every day chart music, filled with harmonies etc, not much
unlike our song.

6. • Choosing our location was another problem. Our original intention was for the video to be shot in the
“juice bar” in Clitheroe. Yet, as apparent in some of our shots, the month of snow and ice changed this.
We then noticed that Clitheroe itself is a fairly perfect to film. The town itself is fairly unique, a mixture of
new and old buildings coincide with each other to create something different. In the performance shots,
we are actually stood outside of a row of hairdressers and shops, which is fairly unusual.
• Which is the most obvious difference about Clitheroe is that at the centre still stands a castle. This is
where we did most of our filming, on the grounds of the castle.
• Below are picture of the locations used, using Google maps.
Used for another band shot,
and some of Hassan’s close
This was the location for
ups during the beginning. At the
Where the band performance one of the establishing
time was covered in snow.
was filmed. shots of the band

7. •
Genre
Seeing though that each of the members in our group all have fairly varied musical tastes
from one another, it was vital that we found a song/band, that we all enjoyed, in order to
work effectively on our project. Hence, after various attempts at connecting various bands,
we heard from the Black Kids, and chose them for our media project. The Song in question –
Love me already – Is a rock/indie song.
• By choosing this genre of music in which to film, there were two routes in which we could
take, in order to get our final product; Either having a narrative based video, or try to be
experimental, and do something different. We decided to go for a spontaneous feel to the
video, to capture the feel of the song, which personally I believe is extremely upbeat. Thus,
We decided upon filming each of us “messing around” with friends, something our target
audience could relate to.
•
here is the song in
full – taken from
YouTube.
(not the official
video)
http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=d9V3
oITDq0U

8. • Typically, this genre of music has quite a varied dress code. Firstly, we thought that by dressing the
different band members individually, would help give them a certain identity. Dressing each member in
identical clothing was deemed a bit too gimmicky for our liking. The below shot is an example of this. Also
note each of the members posture. This shot of the band allows our audience to interpret our different
“personas”. For example, most bands do have someone you would deem to be a “character”.
Though, Hassan was our front man, he had decided to place him centre back, James’ posture is something
to reflect his character. Positioned with his hand in the pockets of his joggers, to note. Hiding his face would
portrays him as quite laid back, something which helps, in my opinion, his show the audience that he is a
role in the band. “practical joker”, especially
He is dressed in quite bland colours, which seem to be a juxtaposition of his with his positioning in this
role as front man, which is fairly energetic. shot. Dressed in fairly bright
colours also reflects this. His
particular clothing style, to
me, would attract the younger
Ben; Dressed in, my opinion, a fairly members of our target
typical “indie” fashion – the coat, is audience, as he is dressed
slightly reminiscent of a parker. The hat, quite “funky”.
mainly because it was cold, was also a
fashionable item around Winter.
His posture is standing proud, In hindsight, I didn’t
something the audience could interpret intentionally mean to
as his love for the band. Though, he was avoid looking at the
mixing samples, Ben gives off the camera, yet I think this
impression that he doesn’t want to take creates a slightly
a back seat, creating his own persona. mysterious/cool feel to
my persona. I was
dressed in a jumper and
skinny jeans, which are
part of the whole “indie
dress code”.

9. There are various different aspects of our video, which help to create this idea of comedy.
Though we have our main shots, primarily band shots, Hassan’s performance and some
location shots which follow the conventions of a music video, we decided to interject these
shots with something unusual. Take for example the following screen shots taken from the
video. These are some examples of the above point.
To me, this is one of the more humorous scenes of
our project. I say this as we originally intended to
We decided upon place this shot in to portray that the use this as a serious shot, but Ben completely
band are “up for a laugh”. This sense of being childish messed up the timing of everything, resulting in
and enjoying yourself, in my opinion, would relate him blocking what James was doing in the
with the audience, especially if they have gone background. Which hopefully the audience would
sledging. pick up on.
It was also with a sense of irony we decided upon this shot, seeing though it
Note that James is again skateboarding, yet on a half says “Hollywood Production” in the top left of the board. The audience
a sledge. could interpret this in their own way, but to me, it’s making fun of the
quality of our video.

10. Though, this shot was a result of a slip up on my part,
yet in the final project worked quite well. The shot
before is of Hassan performing. Followed by this shot
which looks like I’m laughing at Hassan’s performance.
Notice the inclusion of the Guitar hero drum
kit. I believe this shot to work quite well
seeing though, I’m “performing” on a set of
stairs outside.
The aptly nick-named “headless dance scene”.
Originally, this was Ben walking back up the icy
path, to turn the camera off. Yet with the music
behind it, it makes him look like he’s performing a
“jig”. To our audience, his rigid almost robot-like
movements along with the music would seem
fairly comical.

11. Branding The green and purple, was
chosen due to the vibrancy
of the colour. Used as a
technique to catch the
• After the clothing and music, In order This logo on a glance, to consumers eye.
to be striking to your target audience, me, has connotations of
you must firstly create yourself a “royalty”. This could be
brand image, something which will be interpreted by the
associated almost permanently with audience that the band
your band. This comes, firstly, in the may be good. (if a
form of your logo. band/artist is good at
what they do, they are
• The logo will be on everything print
usually referred to as the
based that your label would release,
“kings or queens”.
posters, magazine articles etc, so it is
crucial to have something
aesthetically and visually pleasing for
the target audience.
• This logo must also fit into the codes
and conventions of your genre - you
couldn’t have a logo with inverted
crucifix’s for a pop/rock band.
A fairly individual logo, nice contrast with the green
and purple. We essentially chose this as the font as
we believed that it was visually pleasing and
something different.

12. As well as creating a video project, we were also required to create ancillary’s projects to accompany the video.
This took the form of CD covers. Below are our completed covers.
Front Cover;
Carrying on with the colour scheme of the
logo was, to us, quite important, as it
continued the brand which he intended to
The graffiti style of the font create.
gives of the connotations of the
bands youthfulness and energy.
Though cluttered, I believe that
it is visually appealing to our
target audience.
The front cover itself is quite sporadic
in it’s design. We intentionally created The logo was placed
a juxtaposition of “organised chaos” behind the font to draw
for our cover. I mean this as though it the readers eye. It is also
looks like scribbles, if you look into the at a different angle to
picture properly, you can see the sense the actual writing, again,
of symmetry and pattern. a statement of the bands
individuality.

13. Back Cover;
The inclusion of the recording/label information was
also added to add authenticity
We actually decided
upon using the Black
Kid’s real record label Seeing though that
on our back cover. This this is a CD cover,
helped to create some the inclusion of a
authenticity to our
project.
bar code was
imperative.
Again, following a
similar design as the Each of the band
front cover. Yet we members are
striped the use of the featured on the back
green font as it would page, yet in a
be visually “sketchy” image. This
overpowering for the to me looks visually
consumer pleasing, and fits in
with the style of the
The song titles are taken from the band’s actual cover.
album “Partie Traumatic”

14. These images are meant to be displayed like this
when the cd cover is open. Notice the repetition of
the image. It is intended to symbolise that our
band are here, and the “new kids on the block”
Inside cover; Behind cd;
Instead of having a conventional band
photo. We decided to do it a bit differently, The text here is again to
The logo is prominent to
hence the above image. Having this sketchy emphasise who the band are.
reinforce this idea of our It is placed directly across from
image gives the picture a bit of character as brand image.
well as fitting in with the colour scheme. the band photo for the same
effect.

15. We were also tasked with creating a magazine article;
As in our Cd covers, we have
followed certain codes and
The emphasis on this
conventions which we created for
almost slogan like
our brand. Evident here, is the use
sentence is hype.
of the green and purple colour’s
Placed in the
recognisable with our album
sentence quite
cover.
cleverly are the
words “new, and
scene”. This would
instantly draw the
readers eye due to We have also reused the same
the nature of these image to create a sense of
“buzzwords”. mystery. This will hopefully pose
“Kids” reflects upon the question to the audience;
the youth of our “who are they?”
band, something the
younger audience
would pick up on.
By mentioning the
single, we could
Debut being a attract the audience
different colour who have heard that
attracts the song alone. Say for
audience’s eye. example those who
have heard the song
on the radio.

16. Something also to comment upon
would be the use of the British flag
in our video. This is something
which also helps with the branding
aspect. It gives the target audience
an idea of who we are. Yet also,
portrays our pride for our country,
something not usually shown in
music videos. This could alienate
some viewers, yet I believe it could
strengthen our potential fan base,
due to the fact our nationality is
adding to our brand identity.
This image was edited to bright out the
vibrancy of the flag. Due to the weather
conditions, the flag was almost a musty grey.
This is done to aid the above point.

17. Audience Feedback
Luckily, the overall impression given from
the group questioned were all positive. This
shows myself and the group that our video
and ancillary products firstly followed the
codes and conventions of the music video,
but also, those which we had set ourselves (
in respect to the comic aspect).
It also gave us the impression of how
effective the video could be if realised to
the general public.
The idea of the audience feedback though
was to basically inform us whether or not
we had completed our project effectively.
Watching back the footage, I get the
impression that we did well.
See further down the blog for this video.

18. With the video, we also issued a questionnaire as a quick summary of what each individual thought of our video. This slide
and the next feature two of those questionnaires, chosen at random.

19. • Looking at the feedback which my group has received, the data collected in the audience
feedback and the filmed discussion of the class, I believe that our group has quite effectively
completed the targets which we had set each other.
• For example, during the research and planning stages of our project, when had intentionally
decided to stay within the codes and conventions of our respective genre, eg mise en scene.
I believe that because no one from the audience feedback mentioned this, that we had
achieved our goal in that respect. For example, if we were wearing clothes completely
unsuited to the song/video, then our audience would have taken a more negative stance
toward our video.
• Also, we had set out initially to give our video a “comedic” feel, which I believe was achieved
effectively, this thought correlates through our audience feedback sheets and also in the
video.
• Though, I believed there was plenty of room for improvement with the editing of the
footage, our audience didn’t have any complaints.

20. Final Cut was a quite interesting editing software, it allowed
us to do quite a lot with our work, but was also incredibly
easy to use, once the main shortcuts were learnt. For
example the cut tool – “b” button- allowed me to cut the
timeline into sections so I could easily edit them.
Stupidly, the two windows you see were filmed
at two different times. Hence it was quite
difficult to edit. Yet, it seems to have fit in
perfectly.
In order to create this, I had to place the
second bit of footage, in this case the small
window, on a separate timeline, just
underneath the original.
Then, by selecting the options in the viewer –
top right of final cut, I could tamper with the
size and position of this footage.
I used this technique twice in the footage, just
to create something different.

21. In conclusion to everything, I believe that, opposite to our groups beliefs, we successfully
managed to complete our a2 media coursework.
There are a few points myself which I was unhappy with, such as the editing. Though the
audience all said that they liked the editing, I myself think otherwise. This may be because I
did quite a large amount of editing and I can easily spot my own mistakes in certain scenes.
This is mainly due to the fact that I learnt how to use final cut pro, just after filming and had to
build my knowledge of the software programme whilst editing. Luckily, it was fairly simple to
get the hang of, plus I had the assistance of group members. What I’m quite proud of
though, is the timing of the song with the actual video. I am quite pleased that I managed to
get the whole song in time with the respective clips, though it took some time.
Though at the start of the year, we barely knew
each other, except for myself and James, I believe
that this experience was beneficial as we were
able to all put in our own inspirations and
thoughts into this project.
I believe that we completed the tasks set for us to
a quite good standard, and personally, I’m
incredibly pleased with the outcome.
Michael.