Charlie Potter - Media Evaluation

Media Evaluation - Charlie Potter

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

The way that our music video and digipack use forms and conventions of real media products is because they match a number of things. The first one being that they portray typical features like comedy that match the genre of indie music and the fact that it is quirky and qu

ite random in terms of mise en scene. The reasoning behind including this in our video was because we found that many bands in the same genre do use comical and random props and narratives in their music videos and the

 album covers. For example, the Arctic Monkeys video, ‘Florescent Adolescent’ is random and comical and the same time because they have a gang of clowns fighting with some men in leather jackets.

The standard forms and conventions of the indie genre are that the videos tend to be comical with 1 certain band member being the biggest instigator of chaos and comedy. They are also quite random in terms of narratives, mise en scene and character personalities. Another typical feature of promoting a band in the indie genre is that the band is sold as one whole product. we have changed this convention because we have tried to sell each member of the band individually. We did this by varying each members costumes to give off their personalities. For example: Cool, Rebellious, Wacky etc. We also showed their personalities through what they were doing in the music video. For intense, the rebellious one stole the car, the wacky one decided to take a difficult route through some brambles at the beginning and the cool one just takes it easy throughout the whole video. This creates a band image overall that desirable for the target audience. It also creates brand loyalty or fan loyalty because the audience now feel like they know each member individually as well as knowing the band.

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

The main purposes of our media product are to promote the band and the band image, promoting the genre of indie music. The other important purpose of the music video is to make money. This could be achieved by selling songs, albums and music video in shops and online on websites and applications such as iTunes.

Our ancillary texts, (our poster and CD covers) also promote the band and the band image but in a different way. The poster is used for advertising our new album and the digipack which includes inlays, CD cover and back cover, is to promote band members as individuals not just as a whole. 

It shows the audience a different side of a band member’s personality besides the one that is used whilst in the band. It can also make the audience feel like they know the members a little more.

Another aim of ours is to meet the criteria of the indie genre. This means making sure that everything we create and do for our project has to be within the boundaries of the genre. This also means that we have to create an image for the band that is not necessarily unusual but shows that the band are in control of the image that they put across.

The ways in which we are going to advertise the band to our audience would be:

• Play songs over the radio and play the music video on music channels such as MTV. This way, we can get the product to our designated target audience as well as getting people from outside of those boundaries to listen to our songs.


• Advertise the release of the album (with the poster) in indie magazines like NME. This is targeted just at our target audience.


• Create pages on music and social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. Fans can keep up to date with the band and what they are doing as well as them getting to know the band and band members better.

Another good way of promoting a new band is at music festivals like Reading, Leeds and Glastonbury. All of these festivals have an introducing stage for new artists who want to get their music to their target audience. Or they could be using the introducing stage to land a bigger record deal.

We also want to connect the music video and our digipack in a strong way so that the audience that have seen the video can immediately relate the CD cover and the poster to the video when the go to buy the album or the song. The way in which we have achieved this is using the television as our trademark prop.

It adds a certain comical affect to the band image and also achieves the random type of image stereotypically portrayed by other bands within the same genre. We also used our favourite shot of the whole music video for our CD cover. This creates a link between the album cover and the music video that the audience can recognise immediately.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience are people aged 18 to 30 who are indie rock fans. The research that we did was mainly based around what an audience would want in a music video from the indie genre. The main expectation was comedy. People wanted and recognise comedy with music video in the same genre. This is a screen shot of one of the com,edy aspects that we incorperated into our music video. Another point was random props. Like the Vampire Weekend video, ‘Oxford Comma’, we tried to meet this demand in the video by using locations and props that were a surprise to the audience. For example, the random props we used while filming were, the TV, a coffee table, motorised John Deere buggy, swimming pool and myself in trunks, goggles and flippers.

The one thing that was picked up on by most of our target audience was the fact that they couldn’t understand or even detect any sort of narrative. We did want to create a narrative that was difficult to follow so that the video has to be watched over and over by the audience just so they might eventually understand what the band members are running for. This means that we have achieved enigma for our media product and added a certain repeatability factor. I think we achieved this very well but we may have made it a little too difficult to understand. I say this because many of people who have watched the video hadn’t noticed the bag in the middle of the swimming pool at the end. 

We could have included just one small shot of the bag in the pool by itself to make a bit easier but then the video would only have to be watched once by the audience because they would understand it.

The audience that have seen the video did say that they would buy either a copy of the song or album and they would go and see the band live. They said that the most likely way of them buying the song would be downloading it from iTunes.

The image of the band and band members was deemed realistic by our audience. One sentence that did stand out was, “The band actually look real and not like a bunch of A-level students.” They did get pleasure out of watching the video as well. There was laughter whilst the video was playing. I think this means that we have achieved audience engagement and audience pleasure.

The corrections and suggestions for improvement that I have would probably be making sure that when we film a shot, the next shot has to be exactly the same. In our video, Richard is running towards the camera with his hood down. Then when we cut to him running towards the car with the shot through the windscreen, his hood is up. Fortunately, none of our audience noticed this but it has being annoying me ever since I saw it 2 months ago.  

We also set up a facebook group in order on obtain some audience feedback. We posted out final video and put a series of questions up for the audience to answer. Go to Our Facebook Group

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

For the construction of our music video, we used a brand new HD camera that the school had bought. We booked it and then planned how we would use it, when we would use it, and for how long. This made our filming quicker and easier becuase we werent sitting about wondering what to do with the camera once we had it.

To shoot our CD covers, inlays and our poster we used the schools digital camera which was also new. We set it to a timer so that we didn’t have to have someone taking the pictures.For the editing side of our construction we used Final Cut Express on one of the schools Macs. This made editing so easy and painless. We also used the Macs for researching other bands in the same genre to see what we could incorporate into our music video and to see if our original ideas would be in keeping with the genres image.